He tells us in the second act.

“My name?  I have none.  I am He who dreams; I am He who loves.  I have passed through many countries, and sailed on many seas, loving the poor and needy, dreaming of the happiness of the brotherhood of man.”

     “Where have I seen you?—­for I know you.”

     “Where? you ask.  But everywhere:  under the warm sun of the East, by
     the white oceans of the Pole....  I have found you everywhere, for
     you are Beauty itself, you are immortal Love!”

The music is not without a certain nobility, and bears the imprint of the calm, strong spirit of belief.  But I was sorry that the story was only about a mere entity when I had been getting interested in a man.  I can never understand the attraction of this kind of symbolism.  Unless it is allied to sublime powers of creation in metaphysics or morals—­such as that possessed by a Goethe or an Ibsen—­I do not see what such symbolism can add to life, though I see very well what it takes away from it.  But it is, after all, a matter of taste; and, anyway, there is nothing in this story to astonish us greatly.  This transition from realism to symbolism is something in opera with which we have grown only too familiar since the time of Wagner.

But the story does not stop there; for we leave symbolic abstractions to enter a still more extraordinary domain, which is removed even farther still from realities.

There had been some talk at the beginning of an emerald that sparkled in the Stranger’s cap; and this emerald now takes its turn in the action of the piece.  “It had sparkled formerly in the bows of the boat that carried the body of Lazarus, the friend of our Master, Jesus; and the boat had safely reached the port of the Phoceans—­without a helm or sails or oars.  For by this miraculous stone a clean and upright heart could command the sea and the winds.”  But now that the Stranger has done amiss, by falling a victim to passion, its power is gone; so he gives it to Vita.

Then follows a real scene in fairyland.  Vita stands before the sea and invokes it in an incantation full of weird and beautiful vocal music:  “O sea!  Sinister sea with your angry charm, gentle sea with your kiss of death, hear me!” And the sea replies in a song.  Voices mingle with the orchestra in a symphony of increasing anger.  Vita swears she will give herself to no one but the Stranger.  She lifts the emerald above her head, and it shines with a lurid light. “’Receive, O sea, as a token of my oath, the sacred stone, the holy emerald!  Then may its power be no longer invoked, and none may know again its protecting virtue.  Jealous sea, take back your own, the last offering of a betrothed!’ With an impressive gesture she throws the emerald into the waves, and a dark green light suddenly shines out against the black sky.  This supernatural light slowly spreads over the water until it reaches the horizon, and the sea begins to roll in great billows.”  Then the sea takes up its song in an angrier tone; the orchestra thunders, and the storm bursts.