Balieff has brought his Chauve-Souris to Boston again, "entirely new", according to the program, but containing in the actual performance three of the acts which appeared in Boston last year. Two of these--"Katinka", and "The Parade of the Wooden Soldiers"--were thrown in as pseudo-encores; the third, "Siciliana", was a puppet show burlesque of Italian grand opera, with more scenery and less archness than formerly. Balieff dominated everything except the audience, although he put up a stiff fight for the possession of this domain also. He looked as though he were very much the worse for America.

The program of thirteen numbers and two reminiscences proved much of the same sort as last year's. There was melodrama in "Stenka Razin", high tragedy in "The King Orders the Drums to be Beaten", sentiment in "A Winter Evening", sentimentality in "The Arrival at Bethlehem", sugar-sweet delicacy in many others, and varying degrees of piquancy, satire, burlesque, and buffoonery in the rest. Their were pleasures for all tastes. Color, line, and grace abounded; the characters, whenever there were any, stood out distinctly in the talents of the actors, but best of all were the voices. Whether in verse or prose, speech or song, they remained truly magnificent, truly unapproachable.

A Broadway producer with an eye for color, a feeling for the genre, and a playful sense of humor 4 grant that there is none such might bring out an American Chauve-Souris which could tour Europe with notable success; but nobody would listen to it, though their eyes might burst in wonder, for only in Russia could he find such voices as those that enchant or dominate the air of Balieff's Bat. From the piercing shriek of Katinka, through the lyric beauty of the soprano, the sombre resignation of the contralto, the passion of the tenor, the expansiveness of the baritone, to that epitome of Slavdom, the resonance of a Russian bass--all were perfection in every register; a complete organ in themselves, though composed only of the vox humana