glimpses of hell in Der Freischütz and Robert, le Diable; in Grisélidis, Massenet turned his attention to a bourgeois, boisterous, Gothic, gargoyle kind of devil, which he has limned with no little humour. The most important air of this amusing apparition is called Loin de sa femme! Another comedy devil is to be encountered in Tchaikovsky's charming opera, Vakoola, The Smith.[1] Charles Martin Loeffler, the Alsatian composer who resides in Boston or thereabouts, has written The Devil's Villanelle, a tone-poem after Maurice Rollinat's Villanelle du Diable. The music follows the verse line by line, word by word, while the two refrains, Hell's a burning,
- ↑ Variously known as Oxana's Caprice and Cherevichki. This opera is based on Gogol's Christmas Eve Revels. Later, Rimsky-Korsakoff composed an opera on the same subject.
that he can only be cured by the blood of a maiden who shall, of her own free will, consent to die for his sake. Regarding the remedy as impossible, the Prince prepares to die when he is visited by Lucifer disguised as a physician. The demon tempts the Prince with alcohol, to which he yields in such measure that ultimately he is deprived of place and power and driven forth as an outcast. Then, of course, a maiden offers herself to save him, and he is cured. This happy ending is foreshadowed in the prologue, in which Lucifer makes an unsuccessful attempt to demolish the Cathedral of Strassbourg. The second act of C. Villiers Stanford's dramatic oratorio, Eden, is laid in hell, and Satan naturally plays a prominent rôle in the ensuing scene which is devoted to the fall of man. In 1921, Ludomir Rozycki's ballet, Pan Twardovski, was performed at Warsaw. In this pantomime, based on an old Polish legend, the devil is the principal mime.
