New-York tribune., 1921-11-20
Makes Debut at Metropoli-
tan; Has Beautiful Voice
and Person and Displays
Superb Dramatic Power
Portrays Fantastic Dream
S'Die Tote Stadt'' Has Its
Charms Despite Lack of
Orig ality in Spots
By II. E. Krehbiel

for Nine. Marie Jeritza to effect her
American debut. The title of the
opera, which is q German one and
musically the product of Erich Wolf
gang korngold, Of whose precocious
talents we heard a great deal a decade
or so ago, is "Die Tote Stadt"--"The
Dead City" Some years ago Georges
Rodenbach, Belgian ecclesiast, we be-
lleve, wrote a novel entitled "Bruges
la Morte," which he afterward made
into a play called "Le Mirage" This
play contained SO much operate ma
terial Of the kind which has been in
vogue for twenty years or so that it is
bit surprising that it remained un-
discovered until Paul Schott made it
into libretto for young Korngold The
title wakens memories of a drama bv
d Annunzio which was played here by
Nine. Duse. Our memory of the play
is f1occulent and vague, but is asso-
Grated with something morbdly patho-
cal-eXhalations of moral plague
consequent on the disturbance of the
relics of a dead civilization, or some
thing of the kind. There is nothing of
this in "Die Tote Stadt," but a curiously
presented study Of q morbid mind torn
twixt devotion to a dead woman and
sensual desire stimulated by contact
with a simulacrum of the dead.
The structure of the drama is that
of vision, or dream within mimic
action. We had it in German novelty
last year, when it provoked the rcfec-
ton that such things are done better
in the moving picture shows and might
better be left to them. But the dream of
Matthias in "The Polish Jew" is as
nothing ompared to the dream of Paul
in "Tbe Dead City" This lyric drama
is all vision except short pro-
logue and shorter cplogue, which
serve but to Introduce the two prin-
cipal people of the play and give hint
of their respective psychic and physi-
cal characteristics. All the rest is sup
posed to be a dream, dream which
requires two hours in the telling, a
complex of visions within vision, Wis
ions made of so much substance and
pageantry that though they are sup
posed to be only shadows of a shade
they require masonry to melt and
stones to become transparent for the
benefit of the occupants of the audi
ence room. In such illusion all the
real action of the play is cast, and to
understand the images supposed to ex-
ist in diseased mind and compre-
hend the extraordinary conduct of the
hero as an actuality or as a figment Of
the imagination, the occupants of
boxes and stalls ought to be versed in
psych pathology and know all about
psychic complexes, subconscious In
tellectuation and score or hundred
other things that Nordau, Freud and
their scientific brethren have written
about and which we have never had
time to study. Being thus unread we
can only discuss in a matter-of fact
opera.
The Actualities of the Play
That which the observer is supposed
to accept as real in the drama amounts
to this: man has lost his wife by
death. She was a beautiful creature
| Chat Nine. Jeritza, as her counterfeit
presentment, makes plain), and her
crowning glory was her hair. To sport
and to inhale their odor seems to have
been the consuming passion of the hus-
band. After her death he cut them off
and sent her bobbcd to her grave, but
the hair he put in a crystal reliquary
and this, with a portrait and other
memorials of his love, he shut up in a
room in the dead city which becomes
his sanctuary. But one day he sees a
woman who in appearance is the image
of his departed consort. She accepts
his invitation to visit him, and he
throws the temple of the dead open to
sunlight, flowers and her. She speaks,
and the tones are those of his Marie.
She wears garments in color and fash
ion like those of his idol. To make her
completely the counterpart Of the por-
| trait, which is kept piously screened
he puts a guitar in her hand ("lute.''
says the text, but a careless stage
management has not only substituted
guitar, but omitted the instrument
| from the picture where it ought to be
to give dramatic verisimilitude to the
scene), and when she has sung a
! song with a pathetic burden he is raw
ished, mind, soul and body. But she
explains that she is dancer, is due at
the theater, and goes away to re-
hearsal, forgetting her parasol and the
roses he had brought in to speak his
admiration. Scarcely gone, she returns
for the forgotten things
Would he not take hint from her
affected slip of memory and ask her to
hide while with him? She receives
no answer, and so she departs, and he,
impeied by dreadful dream and WELD
ing to the arguments of friend, pom
I ders the advisability of ending his mel
J ancholy communion with the dead and
gong out into the world to share life
with the living. He ponders. but we
do not know his eventual decision.
perhaps 'twould be better so; there
is no resurrection of the dead in this
vale of sorrow"
MultitudinOus Fabric of Dream
That is full recital of the incidents
which are presented in the mimic show
as actualities. The rest is dream
! The pscycAoanalyst probably would tall
US that primitive instincts held in sinh
/ lection during his hours of wakefulness
asserted themselves in the sleep into
which ne fell while brooding over his
lost love, who had apparently returned
to him in the flesh of his visitor. His
mental activity became subject to
strange vagaries, his intellectuation
contradictory and weak, his physical
| appetites clamorous. The portrait of
his wife becomes imbued with life and
! speaks, appealing to him to be true To
his troth, warning him of danger. vet
! at the last urging him to seek corni-
|. ton by experience.
| And now the real drama begins. He
has been accepted by the dancing girl