Four modern operas stand out as Spanish in subject and atmosphere. I would put at the top of the list Zandonai's _Conchita_; the Italian composer has caught on his musical palette and transferred to his tonal canvas a deal of the lazy restless colour of the Iberian peninsula in this little master-work. The feeling of the streets and patios is admirably caught. My friend, Pitts Sanborn, said of it, after its solitary performance at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York by the Chicago Opera Company, "There is musical atmosphere of a rare and penetrating kind; there is colour used with the discretion of a master; there are intoxicating rhythms, and above the orchestra the voices are heard in a truthful musical speech.... Ever since _Carmen_ it has been so easy to write Spanish music and achieve supremely the banal. Here there is as little of the Spanish of convention as in Debussy's _Iberia_, but there is Spain." This opera, based on Pierre Louÿs's sadic novel, "La Femme et le Pantin," owed some of its extraordinary impression of vitality to the vivid performance given of the title-rôle by Tarquinia Tarquini. Raoul Laparra, born in Bordeaux, but who has travelled much in Spain, has written two Spanish operas, _La Habanera_ and _La Jota_, both named after popular Spanish dances and both produced at the Opéra-Comique in Paris. I have heard _La Habanera_ there and found the composer's use of the dance as a pivot of a tragedy very convincing. Nor shall I forget the first act-close, in which a young man, seated on a wall facing the window of a house where a most bloody murder has been committed, sings a wild Spanish ditty, accompanying himself on the guitar, crossing and recrossing his legs in complete abandonment to the rhythm, while in the house rises the wild treble cry of a frightened child. I have not heard _La Jota_, nor have I seen the score. I do not find Emile Vuillermoz enthusiastic in his review ("S. I. M.," May 15, 1911): "Une danse transforme le premier acte en un kaléidoscope frénétique et le combat dans l'église doit donner, au second, dans l'intention de l'auteur 'une sensation à pic, un peu comme celle d'un puits où grouillerait la besogne monstreuse de larves humaines.' A vrai dire ces deux tableaux de cinématographe papillotant, corsés de cris, de hurlements et d'un nombre incalculable de coups de feu constituent pour le spectator une épreuve physiquement douloureuse, une hallucination confuse et inquiétante, un cauchemar assourdissant qui le conduisent irrésistiblement à l'hébétude et à la migraine. Dans tout cet enfer que devient la musique?" Perhaps opera-goers in general are not looking for thrills of this order; the fact remains that _La Jota_ has had a modest career when compared with _La Habanera_, which has even been performed in Boston. _Carmen_ is essentially a French opera; the leading emotions of the characters are expressed in an idiom as French as that of Gounod; yet the dances and entr'actes are Spanish in colour.