156 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO STUDIES 



actress, Mme. Bertha Kalich. California and the far West were 

 again indebted to Miss Florence Roberts for an excellent performance 

 of Marta of the Lowlands. In England, the version used by Mr. 

 Martin Harvey is called The Lowland Wolf. Guimera's play has also 

 served as the text to the opera Tiefland, with music by Eugene 

 D 'Albert, which is in the repertory of the Metropolitan Opera House, 

 New York. 



The most recent play of Guimera to reach America is Maria Rosa, 

 translated into English from the Castilian version of the eminent 

 Spanish playwright, Echegaray, already mentioned. It was presented 

 in the spring of 1913 at the Toy Theater in Boston before an exclusive 

 audience of ninety persons at the most, that being the capacity of the 

 tiny playhouse. It might be feared that a play performed before a 

 picked audience of less than a hundred exclusive spectators would 

 not be one calculated to win the plaudits of the great public. But 

 there is no reason why Maria Rosa, with its powerful appeal to the 

 human heart, should not please the masses as well as did Marta of 

 the Lowlands. It is a mistake to believe that the great public is 

 impervious to beautiful thoughts couched in beautiful language. 

 Guimera's literary sense is of the highest. He is forceful, imaginative 

 and poetic. Yet his plots are elemental and quite within grasp 

 of the average man. The story of Maria Rosa depicted on films could 

 not fail to please a moving-picture audience. Briefly told it is as 

 follows: Some Catalan peasants are at work building a new road in 

 the mountains. The men are angry over a reduction in their wages 

 and the foreman is mysteriously murdered. Andres, the young hus- 

 band of Maria Rosa, is accused, tried and convicted of the murder. 

 At the opening of the play, he has already been sent away to prison, 

 and the young wife who firmly believes in his innocence tells us 

 the sad story. Word soon comes that Andres has died in prison. 

 Maria Rosa then hesitates no longer. Vowing an oath of fidelity 

 to the memory of her husband, she swears vengeance. But a lover 

 appears on the scene in the person of Ramon, a handsome, dashing 

 fellow, a captivator of women. Maria Rosa's intuitions avail nothing. 

 She falls under the spell of Ramon. A terrible struggle ensues, a 



