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It is a fact that good singing in the old-fashioned sense will help nobody out in Elektra, Ariane et Barbe-Bleue, Pelléas et Mélisande, or The Nightingale. These works are written in new styles and they demand a new technique. Put Mme. Melba, Mme. Destinn, Mme. Sembrich, or Mme. Galli-Curci to work on these scores and you will simply have a sad mess.

They are also very musical, and their composers such as Dvorak, Smetana, Novak or Suk, singers such as Emmy Destinn, and violinists such as Kubelik, are known all over the world. They are also developed in all other arts, and their folk-songs, peasant arts and industries, especially those of the Slovaks, bear ample testimony to their natural talents and sense for beauty and art.

Her pose was hieratic as a sphinx when she watched the antics of the neurasthenic Herod. And her dance was one of the best I have yet seen, though Aino Acté's is said to rank them all. Wittich, Krull, Destinn, Rose, Walther, Acté, not one of them ever sang as sang Olive Fremstad at that memorable dress rehearsal of a certain Sunday morning in the Metropolitan Opera-House.

If you have ever seen Emmy Destinn or Feodor Chaliapine eat you will feel that justice has been done to a meal. I once sat with the Russian bass for twelve hours, all of which time he was eating or drinking.