"Prince Igor."
All is fair in Love and War, and the only ethical difficulty arises when they clash. This was the trouble with Vladimir Igorievich, heir of Prince Igor. Father and son had been taken in battle, and were held captive in the camp of the Tartars; but, while Prince Igor felt very keenly his position (though treated as a guest rather than a prisoner and supplied every evening with spectacular entertainments), Vladimir beguiled his enforced leisure by falling in love (heartily reciprocated) with the daughter of his captor, Khan Konchak. An opportunity of escape being offered, Prince Igor seizes it, but Vladimir's dear heart is divided between passion and patriotism, and before he can make up his mind the chance of freedom is gone. A study of the so-called "libretto" showed that this was the only thing in the opera that bore any resemblance to a dramatic situation. Figure, therefore, my chagrin when I discovered that the character of Vladimir Igorievich had been cut clean out of the text of the actual opera. I could much more easily have dispensed with the buffooneries of a couple of obscure players upon the goudok (or prehistoric hurdy-gurdy), who wasted more than enough of such time as could be spared from the intervals.
There was no part of adequate importance for M. Chaliapine, so he doubled the rôles of Galitsky, the swaggering and dissolute brother-in-law that Prince Igor left behind when he went to the wars, and Khan Konchak, most magnanimous of barbarians. Neither character gave scope for the particular subtlety of which (as he proves in Boris Godounov) M. Chaliapine is the sole master among male operatic singers. But to each he brought that gift of the great manner, that ease and splendour of bearing, and those superb qualities of voice which, found together, give him a place apart from his kind.
Of the rest, M. Paul Andreev, as Prince Igor, gave his plaint of captivity with a noble pathos. As for the chorus, it sang with the singleness and intensity of spirit which are only possible to a national chorus in national opera, and which (I hope) are the envy of the cosmopolitans of Covent Garden.
The clou of the evening was the ballet, already well-known, of the Polovtsy warriors, executed with the extreme of fanatic fervour and frenzy. The art of M. Michel Fokine can turn his Russians into Tartars without a scratch of the skin. Borodine's music, taking on a more barbaric quality as the action travelled further East, here touched its climax, and the final scene, where Prince Igor returns home and resumes the embraces of his queen, (a model of fidelity), was of the character of a sedative.
"Daphnis et Chloë."
Those who complained—I speak of the few whose critical faculties had not been paralysed by M. Nijinski—that in L'Après-midi d'un Faune the limitations of plastic Art (necessarily confined to stationary forms) were forced upon an art that primarily deals with motion, will have little of the same fault to find in Daphnis et Chloë. Here there is no fixed or formal posing, if we except the attitude adopted (after a preliminary and irrelevant twiddle) by certain Nymphs to indicate, appropriately enough, their grief over the inanimate form of Daphnis. The dances in which, to the mutual suspicion of the lovers, Chloë was circled by the men and Daphnis by the maidens, were a pure delight. There was one movement, when heads were tossed back and then brought swiftly forward over hollowed breasts and lifted knees that had in it an exquisite fleeting beauty. But memory holds best the grace of the simpler and more elemental movements, the airy swing and poise of feet and limbs in straight flight, linked hands outstretched.
In the pas seul competition M. Adolph Bolm as Darkon did some astonishing feats which made the performance of M. Fokine as Daphnis seem relatively tame and conventional; and if I, instead of Chloë, had been the judge I should have awarded the palm to the former. I am sure that Chloë was prejudiced, though certainly Darkon was a very rude and hirsute shepherd, and had none of Daphnis' pretty ways.
The dancing of the brigands was in excellent contrast with the methods of the pastoral Greeks. I will not, like the programme, distinguish them as "Brigands with Lances," "Brigands with Bows" and "Young Brigands." To me they were all alike very perfect examples of the profession; though I admit that the flight of their spears was not always as deadly as it should have been, and that one of the arrows refused to go off the string and had to be thrown by hand into the wings.
It is not easy at a first performance to take in everything with both eye and ear, and I shall excuse myself from attempting to do justice to M. Ravel's music. But I was free (the curtain being down) to listen to one long orchestral passage which followed the capture of Chloë. It was of the nature of a dirge, and it seemed to me to suggest very cleverly the sorrows of a poultry-yard. I suppose Chloë must have been in the habit of feeding them and they missed her.