Musical theatre

“ My theatre will put an end to those disheartening revivals (or resurrections) of popular musical shows because the shows will be kept alive, just as “grand” operas are kept alive by appearing in a repertory. Into the repertory I shall incorporate—as soon as their independent existence is at an end—such successes as The Night Boat and such failures as The Land of Joy. There will never be a chance for fashion to destroy things essentially good. ”

“ The results demonstrate an art of which every American can be proud.
Our concert, which was given under the auspices of the local symphony society, was received with great favor. The interior of the theatre is delightfully intimate, and the audience gave the impression of belonging to an old musical civilization. We were presented with huge bouquets of flowers tied with the American colors. Albert Spalding’s performance made a splendid impression, and the “Meistersinger” Overture came in for special enthusiasm. ”

“ The words, however, do constrain the music in a manner thoroughly unjustifiable: “In composing an opera the stage should be the musician’s first thought, he must not abuse the confidence of the theatre-goer who comes to see as well as to hear.... The stage often paralyses a composer’s inspiration, that is why symphonic and chamber music are so far superior to opera. A symphony or a sonata imposes no limitations, but in opera, the first necessity is to speak the musical language of the great public [43] .” ”

“ The building of a beautiful theatre in London, and the establishing therein of an excellent company of foreign artists, with the view of producing foreign works in various languages, is, however interesting to the musical enthusiast, and courageous of the impresario in making such a venture with reduced prices of admission to the performances, of no national significance whatever. The experiment will, doubtless, prove whether a sufficiently numerous body of opera [Pg 199] lovers, native and foreign, can be found in the metropolis to permit of its success. ”

“ It may be noticed, that, in those towns and cities containing a preponderance of cultivated people, theatres do not flourish to the same extent as in neighborhoods where the reverse is true. The reason is obvious: cultured people have attractive and generally musical homes, and are thus made, to a great extent, independent of the amusements afforded in public places. This I mention, not to decry the theatre, which, I hold, has its appropriate, and, under proper conditions, educational and refining uses. ”

“ Up to the present the police have not interfered with them, apparently taking them for workmen employed in repairing the roadway.
AT THE PLAY. "KISSING TIME."
For an infrequent worshipper at the shrine of Musical Comedy the atmosphere of a first night at a new, or renascent, theatre is perhaps rather too heady. There are so many potent vintages set on the board; so many connoisseurs who will offer to tell you beforehand of the merits of their favourite brands. ”

“ The interest in music is wonderful, no matter if the performance is operetta, opera, or concert; it is an amazing sight to see the audience surge up to the platform at the end of a performance and storm it, offering applause and congratulation to the artist or artists. After Act 1 at the theatre, the 166audience rise as one man, and pour out into the vestibule, where they walk round and round, eating heartily of dark-brown bread sandwiches, drinking beer or wine which they buy from the buffet. ”

“ Light poured from the huge lustre in the centre of the roof, ran along the crimson velvet cushions of the boxes, and flashed upon the gilded frame of the proscenium—satyrs and acanthus scrolls carved in the manner of a century ago. Pit and orchestra scarcely contained the crowd of men who stood in lively conversation, their backs turned to the stage, their lorgnettes raised from time to time to sweep the boxes. This surging sea of faces and sober costumes enhanced by contrast the glitter, variety, and luminous tranquillity of the theatre above it. ”

“ Our theatre merely offers the convenient locale for the tempting exhibition of the heterogeneous wares of art manufacture. How incapable is our stage to gather up each branch of art in its highest and most perfect expression—the drama—it shows at once in its division into the two opposing classes, play and opera; whereby the idealizing influence of music is forbidden to the play, and the opera is forestalled of the living heart and lofty purpose of actual drama. ”

“ The music pounded itself, with endless repetition, through the senses, into the soul. The rhythm of legs became the rhythm of the universe. The people of the audience were absolutely at one with each other and with the genius of the slapstick, who talked to them familiarly now, as his friends. Cries and handclaps of applause mingled with the rhythm. The heart of the theatre beat gigantically, joyously, ecstatically. The play rose to its climax. ”

“ By the side of the rum curse flourishes, as our author points out, the low theatres and concert halls, but he wisely observes that these places must not be confounded with the first-class and reputable houses, whose managers are ceaselessly striving to entertain and elevate their patrons. Music may be made one of the most inspiring and ennobling agencies, while the theatre holds a power for the education and elevation of the masses possessed by few other popular agencies, for it appeals simultaneously to the eye, the ear, and the heart of the people. ”

“ The spaces beneath these galleries were shadowy and dark, seeming to stretch away endlessly. So, too, was the perspective of the lower floor, at the back, elaborated by the gloom into a vast, yawning mouth which fairly ached with its own emptiness. But at the front the screened angles of sunlight, stippled as they were with billions of dancing [229] motes, brought out clearly enough the stage of the old theatre and, down under the lip of the stage, the railed inclosure of the orchestra and, at either side, the scarred bulkheads and fouled drapings of the stage boxes, upper tier and lower tier. ”

“ Although none of them are spoken of very highly, they will, in all probability, succeed in a certain degree; for a piece scarcely ever has a complete fall at the opera. This theatre has so many resources in the decorations, music, and dancing, that a new piece is seldom destitute of something worth seeing. ”

“ On the whole, it would probably be wisest to produce Shakespeare with very simple scenery, in order, on the one hand, not to dim the imagination of the spectators by elaborate magnificence of setting, and, on the other, not to distract their minds by the unaccustomed conventions of a sceneless stage.
What has been said of scenery may be applied also to the use of incidental music. So soon as such music becomes obtrusive, it distracts the attention from the business of the play: and it cannot be insisted on too often that in the theatre the play's the thing. ”

“ Now, what is the Chorus, this anomalous character standing between the spectacle and the spectator, if it be not the poet completing his epic?
The theatre of the ancients is, like their dramas, huge, pontifical, epic. It is capable of holding thirty thousand spectators; the plays are given in the open air, in bright sunlight; the performances last all day. The actors disguise their voices, wear masks, increase their stature; they make themselves gigantic, like their roles. ”

“ Sometimes folks wait at the corner of the street to see the stage people come out. If the piece is a burlesque or a comic opera, much life moves in the darkness back here. Light comes from the up-stairs windows of the theatre, the dressing rooms of the subordinate players being up there. Snatches of song from feminine throats, mere trills sometimes, isolated fragments of melody, break into the silence. These are always numerous during the half-hour after the performance and before the actors have left the theatre. ”

“ The intense interest appertaining to all things connected with music and the theatre noticeable in the French of to-day, was tenfold as eager a century ago. Passionate curiosity, even extending to enthusiasm, with which that worn-out and utterly corrupt society, by some subtile contradiction, threw itself into all questions concerning philosophy, science, literature, and art, found its most characteristic expression in its relation to the music of the stage. ”

“ We have seen that the orchestra, with its dancing chorus, stands for ritual, for the stage in which all were worshippers, all joined in a rite of practical intent. We further saw that the theatre, the place for the 142spectators, stood for art. In the orchestra all is life and dancing; the marble seats are the very symbol of rest, aloofness from action, contemplation. The seats for the spectators grow and grow in importance till at last they absorb, as it were, the whole spirit, and give their name theatre to the whole structure; action is swallowed up in contemplation. ”

“ It is a vast building and unites the conveniences both of the ancient and modern theatres. It has a roof like a modern theatre, and the seats in the parterre are arranged like the seats in an ancient Greek theatre. Above this are what we should call boxes, and above them again what we usually term a gallery. A vast and deep arena lies between the parterre and the orchestra and fills up the space between the audience and the proscenium. It is admirably adapted both for spectators and hearers; when a tragedy, comedy or opera is acted, a scaffolding is erected and seats placed in the arena. ”

“ She occupied her opera-box this year, resplendent in satin and diamonds, radiating light on a tiara night from the circlet of stars and roses that trembled on their delicate wires as she turned her head from the stage to the auditorium. She had her visitors as of old: attachés, ambassadors even, literary men, musical men, painters, politicians. ”

“ It is the theatre that last feels its approach. Poetry, painting, sculpture, music, all have met it halfway; only the stage lags in the rear. Plot, action, trickeries, cheap illusions, must be swept away into the limbo of things used up. Atmosphere, the atmosphere of unuttered emotions, arrested attitudes, ideas of the spiritual subconscious, are to usurp the mechanical formulas of to-day. The ideal is music—music, the archetype of the arts. ”

“ The plot or libretto takes a comparatively secondary place and does not attract much attention, it being only the setting of the music, which is the chief attraction. But as a set-off, we are frequently brought face to face with a ballet of a most improper nature. Certainly the inference drawn by the ordinary frequenter of the theatre is that such performances are not wrong, and it is prudish to object to them. ”

“ The stories of 'Faust' and of 'Carmen' and of 'Lohengrin' are delightful in themselves, merely to read; and a musical expert can find pleasure in playing the music from them on the piano. "Yet how much more effective they are when we hear and see music and play together on the stage." ”

“ The street is crowded with a mixed audience, composed of coloured people and of whites in mourning, for whose accommodation chairs of all kinds are brought from their houses in the neighbourhood. The interior of the Philharmonic is perfectly visible to these spectators of the pavement, who, consequently, watch the proceedings within, as they would watch an entertainment at the theatre.
The ladies of the ball are attired in simple muslin dresses of the grenadine, the tarlatan, or the tulle kind; but no rule is observed with regard to the cut or shape of their costume. ”

“ The stage rehearsals with the almost invariable and inevitable shouting and excitement are very trying to the nerves, especially when one is making two or three débuts a week, that is, singing a new part for the first time almost every other night as I did, at the beginning of my career. The better the theatre, of course, the greater the smoothness and lack of confusion at stage rehearsals. The singers and orchestra men are more experienced, and more competent, and the manners of the Kapellmeister improve in ratio to the importance of the opera house. ”

“ A piano and voice are heard overhead. Quickly retracing his steps he mounts higher and higher in his anxiety to be an early performer, tries passage after passage, to find nothing but dressing-rooms, until he arrives breathless at the top of the building opposite [Pg 294] two large apartments relegated later to the chorus. Utterly bewildered by the intricacies of the theatre, and a sound of music which he cannot locate, the poor novice is almost in despair of reaching the stage at all. ”

“ I am too English to have that cushion.. . . The immense theatre, faced all in white marble, with traces here and there in a box of crimson upholstery, is as dim as a church. There are hundreds of electric bulbs, but unlighted: the sole illumination comes from a row of perfectly mediæval gas-burners along the first gallery. After all, economy must obtain somewhere. I count an orchestra of over seventy living players; the most numerous body in the place: somehow they must support life. Over the acreage of the parterre are sprinkled a few dozens of audience. ”

“ Henceforth the Miracle play was doomed, and hereafter budded forth a new drama, the full blossom thereof culminating in the immortal works of William Shakespeare.
The construction of the open-air stage, where the Miracle plays were exhibited, totally differed from any kind of stage adopted by Europeans for the last three hundred years. The inn-yard performance presents a greater likeness to our present theatre than the primitive shows represented before our ancestors of the Middle Ages compared with the inn-yard performances. ”