the term Africanne applied to the heroine.  They also introduced the Brahmin religion to Madagascar in order to avoid moving the characters to India where the fourth act should take place.  The first performance was imminent when they found that the work was too long.  So they cut out an original ballet where a savage beat a tom-tom, and they cut and fitted together mercilessly.  In the last act Selika, alone and dying, should see the paradise of the Brahmins appear as in a vision.  But Faure wanted to appear again at the finale, so they had to adapt a bit taken from the third act and suppress the vision.  This is the reason why Nelusko succumbs so quickly to the deadly perfume of the poisonous flowers, while Selika resists so long.  The riturnello of Selika’s aria, which should be performed with lowered curtain as the queen gazes over the sea and at the departing vessel far away on the horizon, became a vehicle for encores—­the last thing that was ever in Meyerbeer’s mind.  But the worst was the liberty Fetis took in retouching the orchestration.  As a compliment to Adolph Sax he substituted a saxaphone for the bass clarinet which the author indicated.  This resulted in the suppression of that part of the aria beginning O Paradis sorti de l’onde as the saxophone did not produce a good effect.  Fetis also allowed Perrin to make over a bass solo into a chorus, the Bishop’s Chorus.  The great vocal range in this is poorly adapted for a chorus.  Some barbarous modulations are certainly apocryphal....

We are unable to imagine what L’Africanne would have been if Scribe had lived and the authors had put it into shape.  The work we have is illogical and incomplete.  The words are simply monstrous and Scribe certainly would not have kept them.  This is the case in the passage in the great duet: 

    O ma Selika, vous regnez sur mon ame! 
    —­Ah! ne dis pas ces mots brulante! 
    Ils m’egarent moi-meme....

The music stitched to this impossible piece, however, had its admirers—­even fanatical admirers—­so great was the prestige of the author’s name at the time of its appearance.  We must not forget that there are, indeed, some beautiful pages in this chaos.  The religious ceremony in the fourth act and the Brahmin recitative accompanied by the pizzicati of the bass may be mentioned as an indication of this.  The latter passage is not in favor, however; they play it down without conviction and so deprive it of all its strength and majesty.

* * * * *

I said, at the beginning of this study, that we were ungrateful to Meyerbeer, and this ingratitude is double on the part of France, for he loved her.  He only had to say the word to have any theatre in Europe opened to him, yet he preferred to them all the Opera at Paris and even the Opera-Comique where the choruses and orchestra left much to be desired.  When he did work for Paris after he had given Margherita