The Dragon's Fore-Legs.

OON after the curtain had risen on the first performance of Wagner's "Parsifal," at Baireuth, in July, 1882, my attention was suddenly attracted by a peculiar excrescence on one of the rocks in the left foreground of the stage. Gradually, as I looked, the excrescence assumed the shape of a human head, and some minutes afterward I was able to distinguish the face of Wagner himself outlined against the piece of rock scenery. At first I supposed he had ventured out too far from behind the scenes in order to observe the effect of his last music-drama upon the audience. But this supposition was dispelled by the circumstance that he rarely looked toward the auditorium. He seemed rather to be watching the singers on the stage. The face remained in view until the panoramic change of scene from the forest to the Castle of the Grail. It struck me as a curious circumstance that although I frequently looked at the face during the progress of the scene, it did not grow into any bolder relief

against the rock, but remained almost as flat as though it had been painted into the scenery. Afterward I asked a number of friends in the audience if they had seen what I had. They had not; nor had others of whom they made inquiries. I was beginning to think that the appearance of Wagner's face against the rock was a freak of mirage, resulting perhaps from the positions of some of the lights behind the scenes, when I mentioned the matter to one of the principal singers in the cast. He manifested surprise, not at what I had discovered, but at my having discovered it. He then told me that weeks before the production of "Parsifal," Wagner had chalked little crosses on the stage to indicate the exact spots where he wanted the singers to stand and had also drawn lines to show the direction in which they were to move from one point to another; and had himself drilled them in every movement. At the dress rehearsals and during the performance he had watched them, except during the first scene of the first act, from behind the scenes, in order to observe whether or not they closely followed his directions. Discovering that in the scene referred to he could not command a full view of the stage from any point at which he was entirely hidden from the audience, he had selected the place where I had noticed him, because there, when the stage was light

ed, his complexion and the coloring of the scenery almost blended, and he considered himself safe from detection. I was much impressed at this incident. For it furnished a clue to the vast amount of labor which, unknown to the public, preceded the production of "Parsifal." If one detail in the performance had necessitated so much thought, drilling, and watchfulness, how much of these, beyond the most liberal estimate of the public, must have been developed during the long period of preparation. As I thought the matter over, the energy expended in the performance of the work dwindled into insignificance compared with that which must have been called into play while the work was preparing for production.

Some years later, amid entirely different surroundings-at the Metropolitan Opera-House, New York, during the cathedral scene in Meyerbeer's "Prophet"-I was reminded of my Baireuth experience. In the scene of "The Prophet" a brilliant pageant unfolded itself as smoothly as if it were regulated by a machine controlled in turn by the rhythm of the Coronation March; for each division of the procession came upon the stage with the first beat of the measure at which it made its appearance and kept step with the music. The stagemanager seemed to have calculated the exact interval of time which would be occupied by each division in crossing and going up the stage, for the soldiers who brought up the rear disappeared behind the scenes with the last chord of the march.

It then occurred to me that an audience sees but a small portion of a theatre. What goes on in the space above, beneath, behind, and on either side of the stage? Are not the unseen regions of a theatre more interesting perhaps than those that are seen? These questions arose in my mind during the performance of "The Prophet," as they had at Baireuth. In that instance I had been unable to follow up the subject. In the latter, however, I was more fortunate. For, through the courtesy of the managing director, I was enabled to penetrate the innermost recesses of an opera-house of the first rank, an establishment, a tour of discovery behind whose scenes reveals

all the resources of the modern stage; inasmuch as one finds there not only everything pertaining to a theatre, but also the numerous and varied contrivances which have been devised for the production of the works of the modern German repertoire. This is especially true of the Metropolitan Opera-House because every article used in the performances at that house is manufactured on the premises, and because in the special line of mechanical contrivances needed for the production of Wagner's works, now so prominently before the public, Yankee ingenuity has grafted many improvements on German designs, so that our opera-house, though young in years, has in stage-craft a longer head than the oldestablished German opera-houses.

The regions in which the labor of preparing a musico-dramatic work for production goes on are a veritable bee-hive of activity. They embrace, besides the rooms of the heads of the various departments-musical conductor, stagemanager, scenic artist, costumer, property-master, gas-engineer, and master carpenter-those in which their ideas are materialized. Connected, for instance, with the property department is a modelling-room, a casting-room, two rooms in which such properties as flowers, grass-mats, and birds are manufactured, two armories, and three or four apartments in which properties are storedbut this is taking the reader a little too far behind the footlights for the present. Before we begin our voyage of discovery it is well to box the theatrical compass.

The stage, properly speaking, is that portion of a theatre which can be seen from the auditorium, and the space on either side, behind the proscenium, utilized in shifting the "wings," as the sidescenes are called, when a scene is changing. The stage is widthwise divided into five parts. The side to the extreme left of the spectator is called the promptside. The prompter stands there in theatres in which there is no prompter's box. Half-way between the prompt-side and the point which marks half the width of the stage is the prompt-centre. Then there are the centre proper, and, corresponding with the prompt-centre and

the o-p-centre and o-p-side. The depth of the stage is divided into "entrances' according to the number of wings. Thus the "first-prompt-entrance" is between the proscenium and the first wing on the prompt-side. Corresponding with it on the opposite side is the "first o-pentrance." All these divisions and their appellations hold good not only of width and depth, but also of height. For instance, the prompt-centre extends from the floor of the stage to the beams far above a height sometimes of 160 feet -to which are attached the pulleys and huge leverage wheels for running the ropes that lower and raise the drop

scenes.

Everything above the proscenium arch is summed up in the term "flies," a word more frequently misused than any other

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invariably use this term in speaking of the strips of canvas painted to resemble sky, foliage, arches, or the ceilings of interiors suspended across the stage above the wings. These are the "borders," and form but a small portion of the flies, which include the border-lights (rows of gas-jets running across the flies and illuminating the borders), innumerable ropes, cleets, pulleys, the beams to which these last are attached, and the fly-galleries on either side, from the lowest of which the drop-scenes and borders are worked. These galleries vary in number according to the size of the house. opera-houses of the first rank they are four in number, so that the flies are four stories high. Then, from the promptside across to the o-p-side, stretch, a story higher, the beams already referred

to. These in the aggregate have two names, according to the position of the person speaking of them. Looking upward from the floor of the stage, he would call them the gridiron; standing on them, he would speak of them as the rigging-loft. The drops in large houses are about 56 feet high, and as they are raised, not rolled up, the space from the top of the borders, on a line with the first fly-gallery, to the gridiron is about 80 feet high, giving room for the drop and 24 feet of rope. There are five ropes to each drop the prompt, prompt-centre, centre, o-p-centre, and o-p rope. These run from the gridiron down to the first fly-gallery, where they are fastened around cleets and from where they are worked. [See p. 446.]

While the floor of the stage runs from the footlights to the rear wall of the building, the entire depth is rarely utilized, because a section extending about eight feet forward from the rear wall is reserved for the paint-room. The floor of the paint-room is a platform called the paint-bridge, which extends across the stage and can be raised and lowered between the floor of the stage and the first fly-gallery. [P. 445.] The canvas to be painted having been hung in position so that its top is level with this gallery, the work of painting begins, the bridge being lowered as occasion requires. Frequently, however, the canvas is hung on pulleys from one of the gridiron beams and gradually lowered, the bridge remaining suspended between the promptside of the first fly-gallery and the o-pside, thus forming a convenient crossing from one side of the house to the other for those at work in the upper stories, who would otherwise have to descend to the stage floor, cross it, and ascend several flights of stairs on the other side. Until within about a fortnight of the production of an opera or music-drama the work of preparation goes on in the buildings on either side of the stage and flies, and is not until that seemingly late period transferred to these latter.

At the production of the work the audience, comfortably seated, watches the performance unfold itself so smoothly that it suggests no idea of preliminary labor. This is as it should be. For as an actor must cause the result of his art to

seem nature itself, so the theatrical manager must cause the action and its scenic surroundings to appear the spontaneous product of the time in which the drama or opera plays. We are apt to credit only the actor with the genius of simulating nature. As a matter of fact, the principle upon which he proceeds governs every detail of a theatrical or--to remain by the subject in hand—an operatic production. What the actor strives for, the manager, stage-manager, scenepainter, property-master, gas-engineer, master machinist, musical conductor, chorus, and principal singers are striving for. Each in his respective department is endeavoring to simulate nature. Iemphasize simulate because the simulation of nature as distinguished from the actual reproduction of nature is the peculiar province of stage art. It is a fact that a real tree upon the stage looks less like a real tree from the auditorium than a tree painted upon a piece of canvas; and that with a bit of canvas and a little paint the scene-painter can, at the expense of a few dollars, produce a Persian rug looking costlier and more like the real article than would an actual Persian rug costing a thousand dollars. What in real life would be exaggeration becomes on the stage perfect simulation of nature. The actor's natural bloom would be a ghostly pallor in the glare of the footlights, so that he is obliged to rouge his cheeks in order that their color may look natural. And as in this case the look of nature is produced by exaggeration, so it is with everything pertaining to stage art-voice, gesture, costume, scenery, "properties," light-effects. They must all, so to speak, be rouged. A stage production, to be successful, must be prepared with this principle always in view. It can easily be traced through the work going on behind the scenes of an opera-house.

When Napoleon III., before declaring war upon Prussia, asked one of his ministers if everything were in readiness for the army to move on Berlin, the latter replied: "To the last button on the last gaiter." Unless everything pertaining to an operatic performance is in readiness to the last papier-maché shield for the last "super," there will be an operatic Sedan. The operatic host must be

On the 1st of August, 1887, the managing director handed the libretto to the members of his staff. They immediately set to work to exhaust the bibliography of the episode lying at the basis of the action as thoroughly as though they intended to write a history. For they knew the production would have to be as far as possible a materialization of a page from history. They found the Despatches of Cortez and Charnay's work on Mexico of especial value, the illustrations in the latter suggesting designs for scenery, costumes, weapons, and other properties. The scenic artist and costumer came almost at the very outset of their investigations upon stumbling-blocks in the way of "putting on their share in the production with historical accuracy. The buildings in which part of the opera plays were a mass of granite, and their faithful reproduction would have been inconsistent with the desired spectacular effect. The costumer, who was obliged to study both the Spanish and Mexican costumes of the period, discovered that the garbs of the Mexican women were not picturesque, while those of the Mexican priests were indecent. These matters were exhaustively discussed at a cabinet meeting in the managing director's office. It was decided, so far as the unbroken mass of granite and the costumes of the Mexican priests and women were concerned, to abandon historical accuracy, and, while retaining the architectural forms, to introduce some colors and to use the costumes of a somewhat later period. Here we observe that stage art demanded a sacrifice of historical accuracy, but that the semblance of the latter was maintained as far as possible. It became necessary to "theatreize" or idealize history. This is one of the most delicate problems presented to a conscientious theatrical manager. The solution is always in the line of the princi

Meanwhile the property-master had made out a list of the articles to be manufactured in his department. He had not been hampered by the problem of historical accuracy. He found drawings of Mexican antiquities from which he made sketches of the Mexican implements of war and peace to be used in the opera, and from a genuine Mexican relic of that period, seen by chance in the show window of a store, he obtained his scheme for the principal property in the work, the image of the god Talepulka. He found he could have all these historically correct, except that he did not think it necessary to go to the length of decorating the idol with a paste made from a mixture of grain with human blood. A problem arose, however, when he considered the construction of the idol. He ascertained from the libretto that the idol and the back wall of the temple are shattered by an explosion, and that, just before the catastrophe, flames flash from the idol's eyes and mouth. He consulted with the gas-engineer, who had already considered the matter, and concluded that it would be most practical to produce the flames by means of gas supplied through a hose running from the wings.

The property-master then made the following note in his plot book: Flames leap up high from the heathen image-the gas-hose must be detached and drawn into the wings immediately afterward so as not to be visible when the image has fallen apart." The necessity of having the gas-hose detached determined the method of shattering the idol. It is a theatrical principle that a mechanical property should be so constructed that it can be worked by the smallest possible number of men. This principle was kept in view when