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On the banks of the Carcarana, a few miles distant, the lowest bed visible was pale Pampean mud, with masses of tosca-rock, in one of which I found a much decayed tooth of the Mastodon: above this bed, there was a thin layer almost composed of small concretions of white tosca, out of which I extracted a well preserved, but slightly broken tooth of Toxodon Platensis: above this there was an unusual bed of very soft impure sandstone.
It also affords a reason why plays of which the audience does not understand a single word are frequently successful. Mme. Sarah Bernhardt's thrilling performance of La Tosca has always aroused enthusiasm in London and New York, where the crowd, as a crowd, could not understand the language of the play.
Nicholas died in the French capital on the evening of March 11th; and Ivan, struck to the heart, crept yet closer into the solitude and isolation of Klin, where, for three months, he yielded himself to Tosca and opium, till a second catastrophe in the Russian musical world was averted only by Kashkine, who routed out his friend and forcibly insisted on beginning rehearsals for "Boris Telekin"; which opera saw its première in November; and became the sensation of the season.
On the last Saturday night in June the Ravinia season opened with Tosca sung in Italian; Paula singing the title part and Fournier as "Scarpia." A veteran American tenor, Wilbur Hastings, an old Ravinia favorite, sang "Cavaradossi." Taken as a whole, the performance was quite as good as any one has a right to expect any opening night to be.
During also the deposition of these strata, we have in the intercalated layers of red Pampean-like mud and tosca-rock, and in the passage near S. Juan of the semi-crystalline limestones with agate into tosca undistinguishable from that of the Pampas, evidence of the same action, though continued only at intervals and in a feeble manner.
The heavy, middle-aged woman with the good-natured face and the painted cheeks could not possibly be the tragic Juliet, the terrible Tosca, the poor, mad, fluttering Lucia, whose marvellous voice had so often thrilled the young girl to the heart, in Paris and in London. It was either a dream or a cruel deception. Her own words sounded far away and unsteady when she was at last allowed to speak.
Moreover, if the poor dear wanted to be absurd, she would let him parade his marquisate; while, as for herself, she would have to say good-bye to so much that had been so little. Good-bye! Addio per sempre! The phrase from La Tosca came to her. It told of kisses and caresses that she had never had. Yet, beneath her breath, she repeated it. Addio per sempre!
Hence the formula of Sardou's melodramas. His heroines are almost always Sarah Bernhardts, luring, tremendous, doomed to die. Fédora, Gismonda, La Tosca, Zoraya, are but a single woman who transmigrates from play to play.
This earthy mass is of a pale reddish colour, like the less pure varieties of Pampean mud in Banda Oriental; it includes small calcareous concretions, like those of tosca- rock but more arenaceous, and other concretions of a greenish, indurated argillaceous substance: a few pebbles, also, from the underlying gravel-bed are also included in it, and these being occasionally arranged in horizontal lines, show that the mass is of sub-aqueous origin.
For it was actually at this time, through these means, when he was barely past twenty-nine, that there was born in him the seed of that final effort of his genius, to be dreamed over for twenty years, and finished only as the shadow of death lengthened over him: his first faint vision of the master-work to be known to the music-loving world as the Tosca Symphony.
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