Page:Red (1925).pdf/207

 the horrified Azucena informs the Count that he has murdered his own brother. Here the scene changes to the tower where Leonora, assisted by the spirit of Manrico, looking down from heaven, warbles the Miserere.

The second act opens in the camp. Azucena, dragged in, moans her plaintive lament for Manrico, while Leonora, stricken with grief, immures herself in a convent, from which she is abducted by the Count, who learns that Azucena has lied about the burned Manrico, her own son and not his brother. The act is brought to a spirited conclusion by a performance of the anvil chorus in which all the principals ecstatically join.

In the third act, Leonora, hearing a voice in the garden of the Count's palace and in her madness fancying it to be the voice of her dear, dead Manrico, ventures out into the moonlight. The voice, however, proves to be that of the Count di Luna, but Leonora has reached such a state of indifference that she falls into his arms in a magnificent state of bravura, while the Count delightedly comes to her aid with a performance of Manrico's music transposed into as comfortable a key as possible.

Other ideas present themselves. The example of Le Coq d'Or should make it possible to continue indefinitely the enormous vogue of Geraldine Farrar, who might act her rôles unre-