In Giraudoux's hands, the legend has the usual fairy tale moral lurking within it: a warning that marriage between people of different worlds leads to tragedy. Rather more profoundly, though, the play hints at the need men have for a certain privacy of spirit, a need which women seem not to share. Giraudoux provocatively asserts that it is precisely this female single-mindedness that makes woman the stronger sex.

What have I done to thee? Where wouldst thou go?
Is it the world of men that thou wouldst know?
I warn thee, maiden. Man's a curious thing,
Who naught but woe, to such as thee could bring.
Although, perchance, with ours his fate's entwined,
He is, yet is not quite, of our own kind.
His world is ours - and yet, I say, beware!
Half here, he lives - half, no-one could tell where!
Half he's our brother; yet, this many a day,
A foe he's been, and lost to us for aye.
Woe, woe to all who our free mountains flee
To join these mortals, hoping bliss to see!
Hauptmann

In 1938, "Giraudoux produced what many believe to be his finest work" (Phyllis Hartnoll in The Oxford Companion to the Theatre), Ondine. The play opened in Paris in April 1939 with a cast including Louis Jouvet and Madeleine Ozeray. A French production by the Theatre-National de Belgique was seen at the Lyric Hammersmith in 1953.

This translation was first performed on Broadway in 1954 in a production by Alfred Lunt with a cast including Mel Ferrer and Audrey Hepburn - in the role that made her a star. The play also won the 1954 New York Critics Circle Award for Best Play. Its London premiere was presented by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1961, directed by Peter Hall, with Leslie Caron in the title role, and a cast that included Richard Johnson, Diana Rigg, Eric Porter, Clive Swift, Sian Phillips, Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies, Roy Dotrice, Ian Holm and Peter Jeffrey.

Although not based on the Giraudoux play, the legend is also known through ballet and opera. Ondine, a ballet, was choreographed by Sir Frederick Ashton to a score by Hans Werner Henze and opened at the Royal Opera House in 1958 with Margot Fonteyn and Michael Somes in the lead roles. It was revived by Sir Anthony Dowell in 1988 with Maria Almeida and Dowell himself dancing the leading roles. A similar tale is told by Dvorak's opera, Rusalka (text by Jaroslav Kvapil), which was first performed at the Czech National Theatre in Prague on March 31, 1901. The most recent production of Rusalka was at the English National Opera in 1991.

"The naive and the ultra-sophisticated are blended here in such a manner as to blur the frontiers of human experience...The technical skill with which the author accomplishes his tight-rope passage from mood to mood is only equalled by the virtuosity of his scene-construction and the certainty of his delineation of character."
Donald Inskip discussing Ondine in Jean Giraudoux: The Making of a Dramatist, 1958

"Giraudoux's lines, imaginatively adapted by Maurice Valency, glint with romantic gems... [and] exotic verbal nuggets..."
Milton Shulman, Evening Standard, January 13th 1961

"Giraudoux, who died in 1944, undoubtedly possessed one of the finest talents in the modern French theatre. His titles... echo the wistful cerebration, the scented emotionalism, the sophisticated recasting of ancient legend that are blended together in his unique and inimitable plays."
Robert Muller, Daily Mail, January 13th 1961

"At its best, this play has a sad, sighing beauty... At its most assured, it has a lingering beauty, a melancholy grace..."
Illustrated London News, January 28th, 1961