The story of Carmen's entrance song is worth retelling in Mr. Philip Hale's words ("Boston Symphony Orchestra Programme Notes"; 1914-15, P. 287): "Mme. Galli-Marié disliked her entrance air, which was in 6-8 time with a chorus. She wished something more audacious, a song in which she could bring into play the whole battery of her _perversités artistiques_, to borrow Charles Pigot's phrase: 'caressing tones and smiles, voluptuous inflections, killing glances, disturbing gestures.' During the rehearsals Bizet made a dozen versions. The singer was satisfied only with the thirteenth, the now familiar Habanera, based on an old Spanish tune that had been used by Sebastian Yradier. This brought Bizet into trouble, for Yradier's publisher, Heugel, demanded that the indebtedness should be acknowledged in Bizet's score. Yradier made no complaint, but to avoid a lawsuit or a scandal, Bizet gave consent, and on the first page of the Habanera in the French edition of _Carmen_ this line is engraved: 'Imitated from a Spanish song, the property of the publishers of _Le Ménestrel_.'" There are other operas the scenes of which are laid in Spain. Some of them make an attempt at Spanish colouring, more do not. Massenet wrote no less than five operas on Spanish subjects, _Le Cid_, _Chérubin_, _Don César de Bazán_, _La Navarraise_ and _Don Quichotte_ (Cervantes's novel has frequently lured the composers of lyric dramas with its story; Clément et Larousse give a long list of _Don Quixote_ operas, but they do not include one by Manuel García, which is mentioned in John Towers's compilation, "Dictionary-Catalogue of Operas." However, not a single one of these lyric dramas has held its place on the stage). The Spanish dances in _Le Cid_ are frequently performed, although the opera is not. The most famous of the set is called simply _Aragonaise_; it is not a jota. _Pleurez, mes yeux_, the principal air of the piece, can scarcely be called Spanish. There is a delightful suggestion of the jota in _La Navarraise_. In _Don Quichotte_ la belle Dulcinée sings one of her airs to her own guitar strummings, and much was made of the fact, before the original production at Monte Carlo, of Mme. Lucy Arbell's lessons on that instrument. Mary Garden, who had learned to dance for _Salome_, took no guitar lessons for _Don Quichotte_. But is not the guitar an anachronism in this opera? In a pamphlet by Don Cecilio de Roda, issued during the celebration of the tercentenary of the publication of Cervantes's romance, taking as its subject the musical references in the work, I find, "The harp was the aristocratic instrument most favoured by women and it would appear to be regarded in _Don Quixote_ as the feminine instrument par excellence." Was the guitar as we know it in existence at that epoch? I think the _vihuela_ was the guitar of the period.... Maurice Ravel wrote a Spanish opera, _l'Heure Espagnole_ (one act, performed at the Paris Opéra-Comique, 1911).