"MADAME SANS-GENE" AND OTHER OPERAS BY GIORDANO The opera-goers of New York enjoyed a novel experience when Giordano's "Madame Sans-Gene" had its first performance on any stage in their presence at the Metropolitan Opera House on January 25, 1915.

It was the first time that a royal and imperial personage who may be said to live freshly and vividly in the minds of the people of this generation as well as in their imaginations appeared before them to sing his thoughts and feelings in operatic fashion.

At first blush it seemed as if a singing Bonaparte was better calculated to stir their risibilities than their interest or sympathies; and this may, indeed, have been the case; but at any rate they had an opportunity to make the acquaintance of Napoleon before he rose to imperial estate.

But, in all seriousness, it is easier to imagine the figure which William II of Germany would cut on the operatic stage than the "grand, gloomy, and peculiar" Corsican.

The royal people with whom the operatic public is familiar as a rule are sufficiently surrounded by the mists of antiquity and obscurity that the contemplation of them arouse little thought of the incongruity which their appearance as operatic heroes ought to create.
Henry the Fowler in "Lohengrin," Mark in "Tristan und Isolde," the unnumbered Pharaoh in "Aida," Herod in "Salome" and "Herodiade," and the few other kings, if there are any more with whom the present generation of opera-goers have a personal acquaintance, so to speak, are more or less merely poetical creations whom we seldom if ever think of in connection with veritable history.