Reviews — The New York Times

A WEEK’S MUSICAL TOPICS
Gossip of Concert and
Opera House
Gilbert and Sullivan Write Operetta
for Intellectual People - Witty Dia-
logue and Humorous Verse Wed-
ded to Pretty Music - Champions of
Liszt in Great Discomfort - Massen-
et’s Latest Opera, “Ivanhoe” in Germany.

***

     Jules Massenet’s new opera, “Thaïs,” was produced at the Grand Opéra, Paris, on March 16. The libretto is taken from Anatole France’s story in the Revue des Deux Mondes. The London Telegraph says: “The story made a great impression, not only because of its style, which appealed to the most refined literary tastes, but because of the delightful fidelity of its art in the descriptive scenes, and of the cheerful philosophy with which the characters were drawn. After all, however, Thaïs is Iseyl over again. It illustrates the struggle between love and duty. It is the story of the beautiful Thaïs, one of the most refined courtesans of Alexandria. She becomes enamored of a monk, who is at the head of a powerful religious community, and who, wishing to save her from her sins, is himself captured by the beauty of the fair sinner, but emerges victorious from the struggle, while Thaïs, abandoning her worldly goods and changing her life, dies a penitent in the friendly shade of a convent.
     “This story of Thaïs has been set to music by M. Massenet, developed and illustrated amid a wealth of stage effects nothing short of brilliant, and rendered by Miss Sibyl Sanderson and M. Delman. These conditions render far more striking than in its original form the beauty of the first conception.
     The music of M. Massenet is full of ideas and richly imaginative. The orchestration is treated with the easy superiority of a man for whom the science of composition has no secrets, and its variety proves that M. Massenet should rather repress than stimulate his exuberance. Indeed, in this respect, perhaps, a certain weakness is to be noted in the score. Thaïs, it seems to me, lacks unity of musical conception, recalling in turn, as it does, all the modern schools. But yet there is a goodly amount of the excellent Massenet, that one knows, his warm, broad color tones, his passion, and his tenderness, his cries of love and despair, and, except for the ballet, which, notwithstanding the sympathetic talent of Mlle. Mauri, is extremely poor, there is not a page which is not worthy of the celebrated composer.