The fantasy told how a certain Dryad, fairest of the Wood Nymphs, subdued all mortals to her by her loveliness and the magic of her dancing, whom the implacable Aphrodite caused to be imprisoned in an oak tree, only granting her freedom to come forth once in every ten years between sunrise and sunset until she should find a mortal faithful to her during the allotted period. A shepherd, passing through the wood on the night of her freedom, sees her dancing beneath the moon, and is lured to love her and vows eternal constancy. When the dawn breaks she bids him farewell and re-enters the tree, which closes around her. After ten years have passed away, the Dryad comes forth again seeking to allay the longing she has kindled, but her lover had not been constant, and the wood is empty. She dances through the night, deluding herself with hope until the hour of her doom returns and she is compelled to re-enter the tree.
The Dryad, afire with joy at being released from the imprisoning tree, and discovering the beauty of the sunlit, flower-strewn forest glade; joyous in her love of the handsome shepherd and his love returned; her sorrow at parting to return to the tree; her deeper joy on her renewed release; her alternating hope and fear as the concluding moment of the ten-year tryst draws nigh; her eager search for her lover; the shuddering tremors of doubt as she finds him not; her triumphant happiness as she hears his voice; the heart-wringing suspense, and then the overwhelming despair, as she finds he has forgotten her for another love and passes on his way, leaving her solitary and doomed to be imprisoned yet again within the tree, desolate amid autumnal desolation; these, and a thousand more nuances, expressive of poetic emotion, were conveyed with a sureness, a sensitiveness, a depth of instinctive dramatic genius that astonished, delighted and enthralled.
So great was the success of “The Dryad” that Mlle. Génée’s engagement was extended, but the strain of appearing in both “Coppélia” and Miss Bright’s exquisite fantasy proving too considerable, the famous dancer reserved her strength for her final appearance in the latter, while Mlle. Lydia Kyasht, then comparatively a new-comer to the Empire audiences, took up the part of “Swanilda,” in Delibes’ masterpiece with considerable success.
Ere departing for a forty weeks’ tour of America, Mlle. Génée gave a farewell “professional” matinée at the Empire, at which everyone of note in “the profession” was present, and gave her the same enthusiastic appreciation as had always been accorded by the lay public.
Following Mlle. Génée’s departure for America, and Mlle. Kyasht’s appearance in “Coppélia,” came the production on October 19th, 1908, of a ballet in five scenes by Lieut.-Col. Newnham-Davis, entitled “A Day in Paris,” produced by Mr. Fred Farren, with music by Mr. Cuthbert Clarke, the entire production being designed and supervised by Mr. C. Wilhelm, who was at his happiest in invention and control of colour in the prismatic beauty of the final tableau of the Artists’ Ball.
On the occasion of her previous appearance Mlle. Kyasht’s name had been printed in the programme as Mlle. Lydia Kyaksht, and I remember well the humorous dismay the late Mr. H. J. Hitchins expressed to me as he asked: “How can one pronounce a name like that?” and the eagerness with which he welcomed the suggestion that it would be easier if the second “k” were omitted. Kyasht it became, and it is as Mlle. Kyasht that we shall always remember the handsome dancer who was first of the Russians to win a following in London. She had, of course, received her training at the Imperial Theatre, Petrograd, to which she had been attached some time, appearing there for some eight months each year, and at Monte Carlo and other fashionable centres for the remaining months, before she made her London début. She has little of that vehemence and abandon which characterises so many of the modern Russian school, but she has au fond the same technique, a finely formed and balanced figure, and personal beauty, and her first appearances with that fine dancer, M. Adolf Bolm, in national dances and pas de ballet evoked very cordial admiration.
“A Day in Paris” was notable not only for the appearance of the new Russian première in a couple of pas seuls and an extremely charming Danse Russe, but for the brilliant acting and step-dancing of Mr. Fred Farren, who as a Montmartre student freakishly officiating as “a man from Cook’s” to a party of tourists, proved himself a born comedian; while in association with that lithe and graceful dancer, Miss Beatrice Collier, his Danse des Apaches—a dance without the charm of beauty but undeniably clever—was one of the “sensations” of the production, so much so that the dancers became in much request for entertaining at social functions that season, as Tango performers have been since. Another member of the company, who, though but a child, achieved a marked success, was Miss Phyllis Bedells, who did some wonderful toe-dancing with, and without, a skipping rope. The ballet was one of the liveliest and “jolliest” of many such topical and essentially “modern” entertainments at the Empire, and it ran from October 1908, well into the next summer.
Yet once again Mlle. Adeline Génée returned to the scene of her former triumphs to achieve one more, this time in the famous ballet-divertissement from the third act of Meyerbeer’s opera, “Roberto il Diavolo,” which was produced by her uncle, M. Alexandre Génée, on July 3rd, 1909, the mise en scène and costumes being designed and supervised by Mr. C. Wilhelm. Once more we had an opportunity of enjoying a perfect representation of one of the classics of Ballet, in which Mlle. Adeline Génée appeared as the Spirit of Elena the wicked abbess, who, with the spectres of the dead and buried nuns, haunts a ruined Sicilian Convent. It was a fine and spirituelle performance, and a fitting crown to what we may perhaps be allowed to call Mlle. Génée’s Imperial career.
This was followed on October 9th, 1909, by “Round the World,” a new dramatic ballet in six scenes, by Lieut.-Col. Newnham-Davis and Mr. C. Wilhelm, the entire production being designed and supervised by the latter, and the dances arranged by Mr. Fred Farren, who himself played the part of a resourceful chauffeur, while Mlle. Lydia Kyasht impersonated the lovely heroine, Natalia, a Russian gipsy girl, and Miss Phyllis Bedells her younger brother, Dmitri. The story concerned the winning of a wager by the hero, a Captain Jack Beresford, (Mr. Noel Fleming), who has to circle the world in a month; and the course of his adventures took us from the grounds of the Monaco Club to the Place Krasnaia, Moscow, on the occasion of a wonderfully realised national fête, where he rescues Natalia and her brother from Tzabor, a brutal proprietor of a troupe of gipsy dancers. The third scene was on the Siberian railway; the fourth a lovely scene at Tokio, in the Garden of Ten Thousand Joys, where the hero is nearly poisoned; the fifth, ’Frisco, in “One-eyed Jack’s” saloon, with a capital Duo Mexicain for Mr. Fred Farren and pretty Miss Unity More; the sixth and last scene being laid in the foyer of the Empire Theatre. The production was a sort of cinema-ballet in the variety of its scenes and the excitement of its story, and gave scope for a number of attractive and characteristic dances from Mlle. Kyasht, Mr. Fred Farren and Miss Phyllis Bedells. It proved so popular that it ran on into 1910, when, on March 21st of that year, it went into a second edition called “East and West.”