(Aubert)
Act I
Although the name of Louis Francois Marie Aubert is as yet hardly known in this country, his work has attracted considerable attention in France, where he is recognized not only as a gifted and original composer, but-as a teacher, critic, and writer on musical subjects, of more than ordinary distinction. He began his musical career as a treble with an exceptionally fine voice, and was a pupil of the Paris Conservatoire at a very early age. Already while in his teens, he was composing both sacred and secular music, and he was still a very young man when a fantasia of his for pianoforte and orchestra, played by his own master at the Colonne Concerts, in 1901, made it clear that hero was a new composer with a message of his own.

His fairy tale opera, The Blue Forest, was finished in 1910. Its rather delicate and elusive charm failed to enlist the interest of the Paris Opera, nnd it was in Boston, U.S.A., that it was first performed in 1913. The tale is made up of three of the best known fairy tales, 'Hop-o'-my-Thumb,' 'Red Riding Hood,' and 'The Sleeping Beauty.' Less obvious in its appeal than Humperdinck's 'Hansel and Gretel,' and without its folk-lore element, it caters none the less equally well for the young people who hoar only three of their beloved stories presented with a new charm, and for the music lover who can realize something of the grace and delicacy of the score.

An article on the work, by Watson Lyle, the music critic, will be found by listeners in the Christmas number of Cassell's Magazine.