In no ballet, perhaps, are the resources of the Russians so characteristically and comprehensively displayed as in “Thamar.” In certain other spectacles particular aspects of their art receive more emphasis, are more acutely perceived. But in this barbaric legend from the far Caucasus their powers are revealed at their ripest and fullest. There is a “body,” a full-blooded vigour in this swift, fierce drama, and its vivid enactment, which bespeaks maturity. The miming, the dancing, the very _mise-en-scène_ draw fire from quickened pulses, albeit so subordinated to controlling restraint, that of no ballet is it less possible to resolve into component elements the spontaneous, arresting whole. The _ensemble_ is perfect. And what “Thamar” lacks in preciosity is compensated by abounding vitality. It is possibly not mere fancy which suggests that in “Thamar” the Russians give peculiarly spontaneous vent to their artistic impulses. Western Europe has a proverb, which it would scarce be gallant to repeat here, anent the affinity between a Russian and a Tartar; and it would certainly seem as if to the presentment upon the stage of this old tale from the folk-lore of wild Georgia had gone a native appreciation--a relish--of all that it embodies, which must be wanting to the treatment of themes more conventional or exotic. Only in the wonderful exuberance of the crowded Moscow fair in “Pétrouchka” does one find again that subtle access of spontaneity and vitality which can derive from a national instinct alone. For the story of “Thamar” it seems there is some warrant in history. At least tradition reports that the castle, now in ruins, which stands in the gorge of Dariol, had once a royal mistress, whose inhospitable custom it was to lure unsuspecting strangers into her toils, and presently cause them to be hurled to destruction from a secret door giving upon a precipitous face of the rocky crag on which the castle is perched. What measure of historical fact is foundation for the legend, who shall say? Certain it is that the tale has lost nothing by the telling, in the handing down from one generation to another; that the lurid colours in which Queen Thamar’s character has been painted have lost nothing--have gained, indeed--in intensity. Yet, if time has not mellowed their barbaric crudity, at least it has arranged them decoratively. Romance has been busy at her loom, from which at length has issued a legend so cunningly woven as needs only the gorgeous embroidery of the Russians’ art to reach an apotheosis. The master hand of Léon Bakst has designed nothing more startling and impressive than the great chamber of the castle in which Queen Thamar holds perpetual court. By some wondrous trick of [Illustration]