ABOUT "OPERA."

(Dion Boucicault in the "North American Review.")

44

"

**** LET us ask ourselves frankly: If Beethoven had published the score of his great work as simply a piece of music, and had called it, as Mendelssohn might have done, an opera without words," could any musician have discovered the plot, character, and passions in 'Fidelio by means of the music alone? Could he have imagined what it was all about? If Wagner had done likewise, would any Wagnerite pretend to say he could have had the remotest idea of "Lohengrin?"

Music, in its simplest form, may be called a sensuous art acting upon the nervous system; it appears to be, to a great extent, a physical faculty of appreciating the quality and consonance of certain fine vibrations of the air. It excites passions and emotions, especially an excitement which might be called "hysterica musica," but it cannot describe or bring form or action to the mind. It is, as it were, color without outline. It emits joy, grief, triumph, despair, love; but unless we are helped to the knowlege by explanation, we fail to understand what it is joyful, plaintive, triumphant or despairing about! It is a language of vowels without consonants. It is inarticulate. Among the arts, therefore, it is the most sensuous and the least intellectual. Being understood without effort, it gratifies equally the savage and the child, and the reptile; it inflates us with volatile emotions, requires no brains to enjoy its charms; it makes us dance without cause, and cry without reason, and so it is the most popular of all the

arts.

The recent representation of an opera composed by M. Verdi, entitled "Otello," and the criticisms on the work, brought forward in my mind these reflections, and caused me to put to myself these simple questions:

What position does Shakespeare hold in this work? "Othello" is a purely domestic tragedy; it is one of the best constructed of all the poet's works. The prefatory action in Venice, and up to the arrival of the wedded pair in Cyprus, is managed with great skill. The play really commences with this attitude, but the characters have been so skilfully developed in the first act that, as instruments, they are ready and familiar. The musical composer sweeps away the Act 1st and begins with Act 2d. He then strips the remainder of the piece, using it as a form on which to arrange his music, as the sculptor twists a frame of iron rods into a suitable shape to support the figure he is about to model in clay. One rod passes into the arm, and another up the back through the neck into the head, and so each limb depends on some internal stay of this kind, which is covered up by the figure, but without which it would fall to pieces. The frame is previously bent and its parts inclined to follow the intended subject. Shakespeare served as the iron frame-the skeleton form -on which M. Verdi shaped his music. ***

Some years afterwards Sir Julius Benedict asked

me to give him the "Colleen Bawn" in operatic shape. I related my experience with Balfe, over which we laughed together very heartily, but Benedict clung to his affection for the Irish play, and we took John Oxenford into our counsels. Our names are coupled on the title-page of the libretto, but all my share in the business consisted of witnessing how my lamb was butchered into a marketable shape, and called the "Lily of Killarney." All the sentiment, all the tenderness, all the simple poetry was swept away. We attended the first performance and I could have cried over it, but it was so drolly burlesque that as I sat and witnessed the attempted murder of Eily, laughter got the best of us both. "Yes," said John, "but listen to that!" The house was on its feet, and amid enthusiastic shouts the singers were called out to receive an ovation.

The glamour, the intoxication produced by the music not only covers and conceals the wretched thing on which it rests, but it transmutes the poorest acting into admirable effort. The most wooden of tenors becomes a miracle of tragic passion when he pronounces an upper D from the chest. ***

With the music, which forms, of course, the greatest part of this exhibition, I have nothing to do. With the singers, as singers, I have no concern. But with the Drama that is degraded, and with the actors who present the figures in this performance, I have some business. The more so, as the press (who know better) have encouraged this misbegotten thing to assume a royal place in the theatre, to which it has no title. If the press has a vocation, so far as art is concerned, it is to guide and admonish the public, of which it is the brain. It has failed conspicuously in its duty in this respect to the Drama. Let us ask the wildest melomaniac on the press this simple question: If any of your tenor Romeos, or your soprano Lucias, should lose their voices, and find themselves obliged to tender their services as juvenile tragedian or leading woman in any dramatic company, where would they stand? Do you think Brignoli could have replaced Irving in a satisfactory manner? Do you think that Gerster or Adelina Patti could take the place of Ellen Terry or Ada Rehan ? Divested of the glamour of the music, in what shape would these operatic artists appear?

You know that this is so, and knowing it, you write in the Parisian journals, in the London press, and in the American papers, in a strain of ridiculous extravagance concerning the dramatic powers of the singers! Why must I read with contempt of your pens that " Signor F., in the character of Othello, attained to such ideal perfection, in the scene of the bedchamber, that the artist had to repeat the morceau again and again amidst a furor rarely paralleled ?"

And you fail to perceive the astounding absurdity contained in all this! Othello is called on to play a scene over again, and this is paraded seriously by you as evidence of his ideal perfection in the character! You cannot find adjectives in our language adequate to glorify this solemn buffoonery!

Either I am suffering under an aberration of mind an artistic and literary cecity-or there is an idol in the sacred precincts of our Temple which diverts the worship of a portion of the people from their true and pure devotion to the drama. Out with it!

LONDON DRAMATIC CRITICS.

"Book of the Play! Book of the Play! Only correct edition!"

The crowd of amusement seekers besieges the doors of the Lyceum, the Gaiety, the Princess'. Policemen stand by to keep order. Cab on cab rolls up and deposits its burden of masculinity in full evening dress, its burden of delicate woman kind in gauzy, perfumed wraps and robes.

It's a first night-else why this crush?-the critics are here in full force. I espy, among others, Archer and Labouchere, Knight and Clement Scott and Hollingshead, Yates and Sala. We have heard much of the players. Suppose we devote a few paragraphs to those who often, by a stroke of the pen, make or unmake them.

He

William Archer, tall, slight, blonde, melancholylooking, the representative of the World, is a Scotchman by birth, a graduate at Edinburgh, well-read, a man who has knocked about in his own country, in Australia, on the Continent. wrote plays, and was unsuccessful. He essayed dramatic criticism, and hit the mark. His book on English Dramatists of To-Day" is a work of scholarly and permanent value. Men like Byron and Grundy, Boucicault and Robertson, Sims and Buchanan, Pinero and Pettitt, Paulton and Merivale, Gilbert and Sullivan-these, and more, are passed in review, commented upon, criticised,

His elaborate criticism, "Henry Irving, Actor and Manager," created a sensation. The Cato" of Addison hardly provoked more comment in its day. Advocates of Irving flew to the rescue. Mr. Frank Marshall wrote "A Criticism of a Critic's Criticism. By an Irvingite." The controversy began to make one think of the polemics of the days of Collier and Prynne.

Meanwhile careful and conscientious Dutton Cook, of the World, author of "Book of the Play," of "Hours with Players," died, and, after a short interregnum, William Archer took his place. He has high views of the duties of the position. You find no frivolity, no banter, few anecdotes, in the critiques of William Archer. He is acute, serious, correct, logical. He grows enthusiastic over an actor just as little as Chorley grew enthusiastic over a musician. I can easily imagine him saying to a young and rhapsodic critic what Oxenford, in his dry way, once said to a young and scribbling enthusiast :

"It's no use printing in italics, if you've got no ink." A representative critic of the first rank, Archer is yet not insular. His essays in his latest volume, "About the Theatre," on the play of Victor Hugo, on Hugo and Wagner, on the Stage of greater Britain, prove, if proof were necessary, that Archer takes as his motto the words of a character in the "Volpone" of Ben Jonson :

To a wise man all the world's a soil;

It is not Italy, nor France, nor Europe,

"

That must bound me, if my fates call me forth. Francis Cowley Burnand, short, pale, with grayish hair, heavy eyebrows, merry eyes, with a head and beard in the style of Guise, took interest in matters theatrical even when a boy at Eton and Cambridge. The bump of respect for the serious was never manifest on his cranium. He early wrote short comic plays, squibs, parodies. His sketches Out of Town are sparkling and readable. His "Happy Thoughts" have given him a wide reputation. His Black-Eyed Susan ran four hundred nights. His parody plays, “Pau Claudian," Stage Dora," "The O'Dora," "Vicar of Wide-A-Wakefield," 'Faust and Loose," are clever as titles, and abound in clever things. Successor of Mark Lemon as editor of Punch, Burnand has contributed to that sheet laughable travesty criticisms on prominent actors and actresses. Samuel Foote could not have done them better. George Coleman could not have made merry over the defects, eccentricities, mannerisms, of the players of our time with keener wit. Whatever you do, don't ask Burnand for anything like clocklike method in criticism. He twits a prosaic critic just as Sterne twitted one in that imaginary conversation between a nobleman and a pedant.

"How did Garrick speak the soliloquy last night?"

"Oh, against all rule, my Lord-most ungrammatically. Betwixt the substantive and the adjective, which should agree together in number, case, and gender, he made a breach thus-stopping as if the point wanted settling; and betwixt the nominative case, which your Lordship knows should govern the verb, he suspended his voice a dozen times, three seconds and three-fifths by a stopwatch, my Lord, each time."

"But in suspending his voice, was the sense suspended also? Did no expression of attitude or countenance fill up the chasm? Did you narrowly look ?"

"I looked only at the stop-watch, my Lord." Excellent observer!"

I give no extracts from the criticisms of Burnand, nor from those of the veteran John Hollingshead, critic, author, manager; from scholarly, militarylooking Moy Thomas, of the Daily News and the Graphic; nor from those of large, portly, goodnatured Joseph Knight, of the Athenæum and Globe. How ephemeral is a dramatic critic's fame! His productions are so essentially the work of the moment, and for the moment, that an extract from even his best passages seems, when reproduced, as trite as the average joke of a college professor. Like the actor, whom it is his business to criticise, the dramatic critic leaves behind him nothing but a memory. A few of the witticisms of Sir Oracle may for a time float around green rooms and club rooms, some of his anecdotes may be retold, but the mass of his work, filling columns, is soon as completely forgotten as the promises which he in his day made to keep his rendezvous or to pay his tailor. Blame not the critics too severely for a slipshod style at times, for a lack of judicious

calm, for errors of fact. It is often difficult for them to do the right thing. They work generally with the printer s devil at their elbow calling for copy. They never compose, as did M. de Buffon, with lace frills on their wristbands and twelve hours at their disposal. Our daily play reviewers may justly exclaim with Austin Dobson:

More swiftly now the hours take flight,
What's read at morn is dead at night:
Scant space have we for Art's delays,
Whose breathless thought so briefly stays.
We may not work-ah! would we might!-
With slower pen!

Clement Scott, medium-sized, inclined to be stout, well dressed, hardly ever seen without a flower in his button-hole, is the dramatic critic of the Daily Telegraph and editor of THE THEATRE. He was long employed in the civil service. Tom Hood first pushed him into literature. Always fond of the play-house, Scott has a distinct remembrance of Madame Vestris-has not missed an important first night in twenty-five years. His prose was the attraction of I know not how many newspapers. His verse "Lays of a Londoner" are well known. There is a good deal of the Frenchman about Scott, although his work in adapting to home audiences such plays as 'Diplomacy," 'Peril," "Bad Boys," would lead you to suppose that he is a thorough going Englishman. He is often prejudiced. He is often peppery. At times he plays the rôle of Snarl. At times he enacts the part of Soaper. His enemies are as numerous as his friends. You may not have seen this bit of confession which I find cited in Gossip of a year ago: "I possess a collection of letters," said he, "that will be valuable some day. There is scarcely a manager or actor of note who has not, in turn, blessed me or scarified me. I paste these letters side by side. On the one page any one can see what an infamous person I am-how dastardly, how cruel, how cowardly, how contemptible, how unfit I am for human society. Criticism, indeed, say these sneerers; it is not criticism, but retaliation! Time passes away, and from the very same men and women I receive the most extravagant and fulsome compliments. I am a benefactor to the human race. I am a blessing to the stage. I, who was once the most unfair, am now the fairest creature in existence. I, who was once cursed, am now blest. The wretched individual who was yesterday held up to scorn is now a man of sense and feeling. My Janus-like or double-headed collection of autographs is curious indeed; nay, more, it is instructive to the student of human nature.

Is his the experience of many a dramatic critic? Could Labouchere and Yates make a collection somewhat of that kind?

Edmund Yates, athletic, dark-complexioned, is the son of an actor. Educated at Highgate and Düsseldorf, he was early thrown in with players, wrote sketches and poems, dined as a friend with Dickens, and in consequence of a "personal" on Thackeray was expelled from the Garrick Club. The traits which make him so excellent a feuilletonist in the World to-day were early developed. "What an existence was that led by those men !"

he thought of the critics when, as a boy, he saw them in their boxes at the theatre. "To write, and to publish what you wrote, and to be paid for writing it!" Such are Yates's words in the "Memoirs of a Man of the World," which he published not long ago. "Free entrée everywhere, and wielding such enormous power! I knew them all by heart, and used to sit gaping at them with won. der and admiration."

Yates has all the qualities that go to make a boulevard journalist. He can spin out a novel; trifle over a feuilleton; construct verses; relate gossip; correspond for out of-town papers; lecture; libel; go to prison; interview a czar or write up a play. His style is light and colloquial. Souvenirs of the past crowd his lines. Doran, Planche, Chorley, peep out between them, and the old dramatic critics, Shirley Brooks, Charles Hervey, Bayle Bernard, Sterling Coyne, are not forgotten.

When we read Yates we seem to be eating almonds and raisins. He is not a purveyor of heavy literature. He is a caterer of desserts.

It is difficult to say what Henry Labouchere, of Truth, has not done during the fifty odd years of his life. After graduating at Eton and Cambridge, he scoured Mexico on horseback, fell in love with a circus girl and followed her for months in a wild country; hunted the buffalo on the plains with the Chippeway Indians; gambled and drank with the first settlers of St. Paul; lounged around and looked around in Boston, Philadelphia and New York. He then entered the diplomatic service and acted as an attaché to legations in most of the capitals of Europe. Tired of this, he undertook to manage the Queen's Theatre, and failed; he ran for Parliament and failed; he traveled in Italy and resided in Nice; he wrote letters to home papers.

The style of Labouchere is light and flippant. He indulges largely in the first person singular. He dislikes the Germans. He likes the French. But there is a certain Parisienne whom he never admits to his pages. I mean

Ennui, the dowager lady nee Pleasure.

To-day, this short, thick set man, with his keen, small gray eyes, his peaked beard, the editor of Truth, the M. P. of swallow tailed democratic proclivities, resides in a villa on the Thames, and rarely visits a play-house. But he writes abundantly on theatrical matters. He knew Fechter and Macready, Charlotte Cushman and Adelaide Neilson, and he delights to talk of them. He is personally acquainted with the Bancrofts, the Kendals, with Irving and Terry, Langtry and Patti, with Joachim and Barrett-and how many more?-and he is ever on hand to spin yarns about them. Labouchere is proud of his anecdotes.

You may impugn my motives and dissect my arguments," said he one day, but pray do not say my anecdotes are old. They may not be true, but they are surely new, for I have made them myself.'

It is impossible in a single paper to do justice to the dramatic critics of London. I am compelled to restrict myself to merely mentioning Mr. F.

Thomas of the Daily News, Mr. Nisbet of the Times, Mr. Watson of the Standard, Mr. Northcott of the Chronicle, Mr. Henry Howe of the Advertiser, Mr. Dunphie of the Post, Mr. Wedmore of the Academy-men of authority in the histrionic circles of the world's metropolis. I pass, with a word, Austin Brereton, Joseph Hatton, Percy Fitzgerald, Saville Clarke. I simply allude to Hueffer, and Mowbray Morris, and Walter Herries Pollock. Even Robert W. Lowe, whose "Bibliography of Theatrical Literature" is an erudite work of permanent value, must excuse me for a mere passing allusion.

Time is short, and George Augustus Sala must yet be considered. This critic, of the Illustrated News and Daily Telegraph, was born in London. His father was an Italian, engaged in business. His mother was at one time a singer on the stage. "I possess painfully unquestionable documentary evidence," he once wrote, "that my great-grandmother danced on the tight-rope at the Carnival of Venice, in 1763; and I am afraid that a great-aunt of mine kept a tripe-shop at Como, during the Italian vice royalty of Eugene Beauharnais." Sala wrote for the "Household Words" of Dickens; sent out a book, "Breakfast in Bed;" furnished letters to the Daily Telegraph, during our civil war; rattled off short stories; manufactured threevolume novels; sent home letters from Russia, Algeria, France. His burlesque, "Wat Tyler, M.P.,' was a fizzle. His "Twice Round the Clock," a trip through London in twenty-four hours-is bright and clever. Few writers are more versatile than Sala. Read his papers and you come to the conclusion that it was of him and not the Vicar that Praed wrote:

His talk is like a stream which runs,
With rapid change from rocks to roses;
It slips from politics to puns,
It glides from Mahomet to Moses.
Beginning with the laws which keep
The planets in their radiant courses,
And ending with some precept deep,
For skinning eels or shooting horses.

Few writers have a keener eye to the scenes, acts, denouements, of the comedy of life than Sala. Few of them could go to the opera and thus jot down their impressions: "I should be willingly deceiving you, and unworthy the name I havethat of faithful chronicler-if I were to lead you to imagine that the brilliant theatre is full only of rank, fashion, wealth, and happiness. In the great equality that dress-coats, bare shoulders, white neck-cloths and opera-cloaks make among men and women, how much dross and alloy might we not find among the gold and silver! In the very next box to the mother of the Gracchi, resplendent among her offspring in her severe beauty, is poor, pretty, lost Mrs. Demmymond, late Mrs. Vanderplank of the Theatres Royal. The chaste Volumnia, who only comes to the opera once in the season, and always goes away before the commencement of the ballet, is elbowed in the crushroom by Miss Golightly. . . . who comes with a head of flaxen hair one night, and with raven black tresses the next. Captain Spavin, of the 3d Jibbers, shudders when he finds his next-stall neigh

bor to be his long-suffering tailor, and Sir Hugh Hempenridge, baronet, is covered with confusion when he feels the hawk glance of little Casey, the sheriff's officer (and none so bravely attired as he), darted full at him from Fox's alley."

Could Mr. Du Maurier sketch a scene like that more effectively?

I forgot to describe roughly the personality of this man of the graphic pen. He is stoutish, appears shorter than he really is; has a bulbous kind of nose, that has been the subject of anecdote; looks at you merrily from out of small, quickglancing eyes; twirls a bristly mustache which partially hides a firm mouth; has a decided double chin; moves with a nervous activity that denotes a foreign origin. He enjoys good eating and drinking.

Though Sala has been at great pageants, receptions, inaugurations, debates, murder trials; has interviewed princes, diplomats, bureaucrats, eminent citizens, he has a weakness for the "player folk;" he is never more at his ease than when he writes of them. His views on them in the Illustrated News, captioned "The Playhouses," are always suggestive. Go with him into a greenroom and hear what he says:

"Who that is not a mysogynist, can sufficiently case himself in brass to withstand the Parthian glances of those pretty, dangerous creatures? Surely they dress better, look better, walk better, sit better, stand better, have clearer voices, cheerier laughs, more graceful curtsies than any other women in the world. But they are not for the likes of you and me, Thomas.

"See, there is fat, handsome Captain Fitzblazer, of the Heavies,' the Duke of Alma's aide de camp, pretending to flirt with little Fanny Merrylegs, the coryphee, and the rogue has one eye on Mrs. Woffington Pegley. I wish some robust scene-shifter would step on his varnished toes. The Pegley is aware of the Fitzblazerian oeillade, I wager, though she makes believe to be listening to young Martinmas, the walking gentleman's nonsense. Come away, Thomas, come away, my friend."

Do you notice the influence of Dickens, and do you not think the disciple worthy the master? Is there not something of the Hogarth about all this? an artist, by the way, on whom Sala once wrote a book at Thackeray's request.

It is half past eleven o'clock. The cabbies in front of the theatres stand, whip in hand, ready to receive their charges. The gentlemen, in full evening dress, escort the ladies, enveloped in nubias, to the vehicles that are ranged in a row. Boys in uniform call out numbers. Urchins in rags beg alms. There is the slamming of doors, the cracking of whips.

It is midnight in London. The heavy bell of St. Paul's announces the fact through the dense, foggy air; the sonorous bell of St. Margaret's, Westminster, confirms the news.

The play-houses are silent and deserted; the chop-houses blaze with light and bustle with life. "Come away, Thomas; come away, my friend,” Lewis Rosenthal.

union SQUARE THEATRE

ANNIE PIXLEY Isaiah Jubal Homeweb, of Pautukset, Conn, "The Deacon "...M. C. Daly Charley Lawton, a young New York business man. George Backus Irving de Vere Chillington, a club man with artistic tendencies The star of amateur theatricals.... W. G. Reynier Signor Malatesta Tomkins, a painter of the Impressionist School.. Ed. Temple Squire Hiram Slimbergast, who goes to the theatres in New York. Robert Fisher Amadie, Signor Tomkins' assistant, P. Redmond Mrs. Rachel Homeweb, the Deacon's wife.. Miss A. Douglas Mrs. Dashington Brown, a society conundrum, Miss A. Barclay Mary O'Dougherty, Ruth's maid. Miss Irene Avena

Arsena..
Mirabella.
Sandor Barinkay.
Ottocar..
Kalman Zsupan..
Count Carnero..
Count Homonay.

Laura Bellini Marion Singer Lydia O'Neill Jenny Reifferth Harry de Lorme

Sig. Taglieri -Jacques Kruger Gustavus F. Hall Fred Urban

Boxes......$6 and $8 | Balcony.. Orch. & Dress Cir.,$1 Gallery Broadway and 30th Street.

BIJOU

Broadway, bet. Thirtieth and Thirty-first Street.

Evening at 8. Saturday Matinee at 2.

---50c 250

MADISON SQUARE
THEATRE

Mr. A. M. Palmer, Manager,

Evening at 8.30. Saturday Matinee at 2.

Brilliant reproduction of the charming comedy, adapted by Clinton Stuart, Esq., and entitled

OUR SOCIETY.

in which Messrs F. H. Vanderfelt, Walden Ramsey, H. Eytinge and H. Hogan, and Misses Maud Harrison, Annie Russell, Virginia Buchanan, Jenny Eustace, Adele Clarke, Marie Greenwald and Mrs. E. J. Phillips will appear. Remaining seats for Couldock Benefit now on sale.

Javotte..

Marie.

IN

ADONIS.

HOWE & HUMMEL,

THEATRICAL LAWYERS,

CENTRE AND LEONARD STREETS.

SAFE-SOUND-SECURE CONTRACTS A SPECIALTY.

Boxes. Orchestra.

Eugene Marcel.

Chevalier de Brabazon..

Viscomte de Brissac..

-$8, $10, $12 | Balcony..

$1.50 Admission.

Pauline Hall

Isabelle Urquhart

Mrs. Germon Marie Jansen Sadie Kirby Miss Varry Francis Wilson Mark Smith -J. A. Furey Henry Hallam Max Freeman .C. L. Weeks

. $1.00

-50