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The Story. Ouiarak, Eskimo fisherman, is married to the young and beautiful Kaddara. One day he has bad luck. Kaddara taunts him for coming home emptyhanded. Enraged, Ouiarak returns to his kyak, again paddles out to sea. Led by a magic fish, he is then enticed by an enchantress-siren, one Announa. He lands on her beach (the "beach of widows"), succumbs to her charms. She prepares to destroy him, but he escapes in a blinding snowstorm over the frozen ocean. Kaddara, awaiting his return with her infant child, dashes out into the storm and rescues him. She welcomes him home with her warm kisses just as the first signs of the Arctic Spring show above the horizon. The happy ending is enhanced by a dance of villagers and flashes of the aurora borealis.
Meanwhile, boosters of American savage folklore in opera need not despair. In London, Hiawatha, produced as an opera with Coleridge-Taylor's music, filled the great Albert Hall.
Herbert
A great melodious Irishman, singer of happiness and love, Victor Herbert, fell dead as he ascended the steps of his doctor's office to find out if he was ill.
On the first day of February in 1859, in Dublin, he was born. While a mere child his father died in Paris, and his maternal grandfather, Samuel Lover, poet and novelist, took the management of his education. At the age of nine he was sent to Germany to study music. He studied at Leipsig, Munich, Berlin and Stuttgart, and made his first public appearance as a cellist in the Royal Orchestra of Stuttgart. In 1886 he married and came to America. He played with or conducted many orchestras, Metropolitan, Thomas's, Seidl's, Pittsburgh. But the great successes of his career were to come as a composer, as a weaver of the light airs of musical comedies and light operas.
The roll call of his successes swelled to vast proportions. It included Babes in Toyland, It Happened in Nordland, Mile. Modiste, The Wizard of the Nile, Naughty Mariette, Princess Pat, The Red Mill, Angel Face. It included innumerable songs, "Kiss Me Again," "A Kiss in the Dark," "Two Little Love Bees."
His prolificity continued to the end. He was working on music for the forthcoming Follies, and on an overture for Janice Meredith, a motion picture. His home in Manhattan was his principal workshop, equipped with a sound proof composing room, drafting boards, on which he worked seated on a high stool, five grand pianos.
On the day of his death, after a business conference, he lunched at the Lambs Club (theatrical). He felt ill and went home. After a rest he started for his doctor's office in his automobile. He left the car unassisted and started up the doctor's steps. As he did so, he fell dead of heart trouble.
"World Court"