Ida Rubenstein, as "Phaedre"

EACH year Ida Rubenstein, the most distinguished tragedienne in France, appears in an important classical festival in Paris. These revivals are usually the most distinguished single event of the year in the European theater. Madame Rubenstein's dramatic vehicle this year is the "Phaedre" of Gabriele d'Annunzio, the great Italian poet, who has himself defined his tragedy as "un poème bleu noir où rugit une lionne deux pieds. "This remarkable play has been given a lavish production at the Opera, in Paris, with a notable cast. The costumes and décors for the production were designed by Léon Bakst, and are in his most felicitous manner. These settings and costumes are especially remarkable in the application the artist has made of the archaeological remains of a period much more remote than that in which other productions of " Phaedre" have been placed—the Minoant—in the outlandish idols and effigies which dominate every set and in the wasp waists and audacious juxtaposition of colors in every costume. Incidental music for the play has been composed by Ildebrando Pizzetti. Madame Rubenstein, as the tragic heroine rendered immortal by the genius of Sophocles, Euripides, Racine, and now D'Annunzio—the abducted wife of Theseus, who was consumed of a lamentable love for her stepson Hippolytus, and, rejected by him, hanged herself, falsely accusing him in a letter—reaches in this performance the pinnacle of her career, which began, quite humbly, as a dancer in Diaghiliev s Ballets Russes