An outdoor entertainment in the gardens of the Pitti Palace in Florence in the early sixteenth centuryFrom a contemporary print
In time there would be necessary specialization, and after a while certain artists came to devote themselves chiefly to scene-painting, finding their immediate opportunity in the decoration of the operas, which then began to multiply. The opera has always been aristocratic, expensive, and spectacular, and it continued the tradition of the highly decorated open-air festivals. In fact, it improved upon this tradition, in so far as that was possible, and it achieved a variety of mechanical effects scarcely less complicated than those which charm our eyes to-day in 'Rheingold' and 'Parsifal.' Thirty years ago the late Charles Nuitter, the archivist of the Paris Opéra and himself a librettist of wide experience, drew my attention to Sabbatini's 'Practica di fabricar scene e machini ne' teatri' (published in 1638), and he assured me that the resources of the Opéra did not go beyond those which were at the command of the Italians three centuries earlier. "They could do then," he asserted, "almost everything that we can do now here at the Opéra. For example, they could bring a ship on the stage under full sail. We have only one superiority over them: we have abundant light now, we have electricity, and they were dependent on candles and lamps."
Yet even in Italy in the Renascence the most popular form of the drama, the improvised play which we call the comedy-of-masks, was performed in a traditional stage-setting representing an open square, whereon only the back-cloth seems to have been the work of the scene-painter, the sides of the stage being occupied by four or more houses, two or three on each side, often consisting of little more than a practicable door with a practicable window over it, not made of canvas, but constructed out of wood by the carpenter, with the solidity demanded by the climbing feats of the athletic comedians and by their acrobatic agility. The traditional set of the comedy-of-masks conformed to that recommended for the comic drama by Serlio, in his treatise on architecture, published in 1545; but it may be noted also that Serlio's suggested set for the tragic drama was not dissimilar even if it were distinctly more dignified.
III
The opera seems to have been the direct descendant of the court-ballet, known in England as the mask, as that in its turn was derived from the open-air spectacle of the Italian Renascence, such as survived in Florence in the seventeenth century. In the beginning the court-ballets of France, like the masks of England, were not given in a theater with a stage shut off by a proscenium arch, but in the ball-room or banqueting-hall of a palace. One end of this spacious apartment, often but not always provided with a raised platform, served as the stage whereon one or more places, a mountain, for instance, and a grotto, were represented, at first by the decorated machines of the artistic engineers only, but afterward by the canvas frames of scene-painters. The action of the court-ballets or of the masks was not necessarily confined to this stage, so to call it. The spectators were ranged along the walls and under the galleries (if there were any), leaving the main part of the hall bare; and the performers descended frequently into this area, which was kept free for them, and which was better fitted for their dances and processions and other intricate evolutions than the scant and cluttered stage.
A twentieth-century analog to this sixteenth-century practise can be seen in the spectacle presented in our modern three-ringed circuses—the 'Cleopatra,' for example, which was the opening number on the Barnum and Bailey program not long ago, where the Roman troops and the Egyptian populace came down from the stage and paraded around the arena. Bacon in his essay on 'Masques,' used the word "scenery" as tho he meant only decorated scaffolds, perhaps movable; and his expression of desire for room "to be kept clear" implies the use of the body of the hall for the maneuvers of the performers. Ludovic Celler, in his study of 'Mise en scène au dix-septième siècle' in France, shows that the action of the court-ballet was sometimes intermitted that the spectators could join in the dancing, as at an ordinary ball. In the earlier Italian open-air festivals, and in the earlier French court-ballets there was not even a proscenium sharply separating the stage from the rest of the hall; but in England by the time of Inigo Jones the advantage of a proscenium had been discovered, and we have more than one of the sketches which that skilful designer devised for his masks. But even then this proscenium was not permanent and architecturally conventionalized; it was invented afresh for every successive entertainment, and it was adorned with devices peculiar to that particular mask. Inigo Jones had also advanced to the use of actual scenery, that is to say, of canvas stretched upon frames and then painted. Mr. Hamilton Bell believes it possible that the invention of grooves to sustain wings and flats may be ascribed to Inigo or to his assistant and successor, Webb.
Even in the Italian opera, where all the scenery was due to the brush of the scene-painter, there was for a long while a formal and monotonous regularity. Whether the set was an interior or an exterior, a public place or a hall in a palace, the arrangement was rectangular, with a drop at the back and a series of wings on either side equidistant from one another. This stiff representation of a locality is preserved for us nowadays in the toy-theaters which we buy for our children, altho it is now seen on the actual stage only in certain acts of old-fashioned operas. It lingers also in the variety-shows, where it is the proper setting for many items of their miscellaneous programs.
Altho the Italians had discovered perspective early in the Renascence they utilized it on the stage timidly at first, bestowing this rectangular regularity upon all their sets, both architectural interiors or exteriors and rural scenes, in which rigid wood-wings receded, diminishing in height to a landscape painted on the drop at the back, thus leaving the whole stage free for the actors. Not until the end of the seventeenth century did an Italian scene-painter, Bibiena, venture to abandon the balanced symmetry of the square set, and to slant his perspective so as to present buildings at an acute angle, thereby not only gaining a pleasing variety, but also enlarging immensely the apparent spaciousness of the scene, since he was able to carry the eyes of the spectator into vague distances, and to suggest far more than he was able to display. This advance was accompanied by a more liberal use of stairways and platforms—"practicables" as the stage-phrase is—that is to say, built up by the carpenters so that the actors could go from one level to another. Hitherto flights of steps and balconies had been only painted, not being intended for actual use by the performers.
The set for the opera of 'Persée' (as performed at the Opéra in Paris in the seventeenth century) A prison (designed by Bibiena in Italy in the eighteenth century)
A similar development took place also in the landscape scenes; the foreground was raised irregularly, so that the persons of the play might climb up. Practicable bridges were swung across torrents, and the earlier formality of pastoral scenes began to disappear. Apparently the scene-painters were influenced at this time by the landscape-painters, more especially by Poussin. The interrelation of painting and scene-painting, each in turn affecting the other, is far closer than most historians of art have perceived. It is not unlikely, for example, that Gainsborough and Constable, who were the fathers of the Barbizon men, had been stimulated by the stage-pictures of De Lutherbourg. David Garrick profited by the innovating art of De Lutherbourg, a pupil of Vanloo, who came to England in 1771. Apparently it was De Lutherbourg who invented "raking-pieces"—as the scene-painters term the low fragments of scenery which mask the inclines of mounds. To him also is credited the first use of transparent scenes to reproduce the effect of moonlight upon water, and to suggest the flames of volcanoes. Thus to him must be ascribed the beginnings of that complicated realism by which our latter-day scene-painters are enabled to create an appropriate atmosphere for poetic episodes.
IV
The next step in advance, and one of the most important in the slow development of the scene-painter's art, took place in France early in the nineteenth century, and simultaneous with the romanticist movement, which modified the aims and ambitions of the artists as much as it did those of the poets. The severe stateliness of the stage-set which was adequate for the classicist tragedies of Racine and Voltaire, generally a vague interior of an indefinite palace, stiff and empty, was hopelessly unsuitable for the fiery dramas of Victor Hugo and the elder Dumas. An even greater opportunity for spectacular regeneration was afforded, in these same early decades of the nineteenth century, by the bold and moving librettos which Scribe constructed for Meyerbeer and Halévy at the Opéra, and for Auber at the Opéra-Comique. The exciting cause of the scenic complexities that we find in Wagner's music-dramas can be discovered in these librettos of Scribe's, from 'Robert the Devil' to the 'Africaine.' For one act of 'Robert the Devil,' that in which the spectral nuns dance among the tombs under the rays of the moon, Ciceri invented the most striking and novel setting yet exhibited on any stage—a setting not surpassed in poetic glamor by any since seen in the theater, altho its eery beauty may have been rivaled by one scene in the 'Source,' a ballet produced also at the Opéra forty-five years ago—a moon-lit tarn in a forest-glade, with half-seen sylphs floating lightly over its silvered surface. This exquisitely poetic set was imported from Paris to New York and inserted in the brilliant spectacle of the 'White Fawn.'
The ample effect of these scenes was made possible only by the immense improvement in the illumination of the stage due to the introduction of gas. Up to the first quarter of the nineteenth century the stage-decorator had been dependent upon lamps—a few of these arranged at the rim of the curving apron which jutted out into the auditorium far beyond the proscenium, and a few more hidden here and there in the flies and wings. Early in the nineteenth century gas supplanted oil; and a little later than the middle of the century gas was powerfully supplemented by the calcium light. Toward the end of the century gas in its turn gave way to the far more useful electric light, which could be directed anywhere in any quantity, and which could be controlled and colored at will. It was Henry Irving, more especially in his marvelous mounting of a rather tawdry version of 'Faust,' who revealed the delicate artistic possibilities of our modern facilities for stage illumination.
In France the romanticist movement of Hugo was swiftly succeeded by the realistic movement of Balzac, who was the earliest novelist to relate the leading personages of his studies from life to a characteristic background and to bring out the intimate association of persons and places. From prose fiction this evocation of characteristic surroundings was taken over by the drama; and a persistent effort was made to have the successive sets of a play suggestive and significant in themselves, and also representative of the main theme of the piece. The actors were no longer dependent upon the "float," as the footlights were called; they did not need to advance out on the apron to let the spectators follow the changing expression of their faces, and in time the apron was cut back to the line of the proscenium, and the curtain rose and fell in a picture-frame which cut the actors off from their proximity to the audience—a proximity forever tempting the dramatic poet to the purely oratorical effects proper enough on a platform.
When the modern play calls for an interior this interior now takes on the semblance of an actual room. Apparently the "box-set," as it is called, the closed-in room with its walls and its ceiling, was first seen in England in 1841, when 'London Assurance' was produced; but very likely it had earlier made its appearance in Paris at the Gymnase. To supply a room with walls of a seeming solidity, with doors and with windows, appears natural enough to us, but it was a startling innovation fourscore years ago. When the 'School for Scandal' had been originally produced at Drury Lane in 1775, the library of Joseph Surface, where Lady Teazle hides behind the screen, was represented by a drop at the back, on which a window was painted, and by wings set starkly parallel to this back-drop and painted to represent columns. There were no doors; and Joseph and Charles, Sir Peter and Lady Teazle, walked on thru the openings between the wings, very much as tho they were passing thru the non-existent walls. To us, this would be shocking; but it was perfectly acceptable to English playgoers then; and to them it seemed natural, since they were familiar with no other way of getting into a room on the stage.
The screen scene of the 'School for Scandal' at Drury Lane in 1778From a contemporary print
The invention of the box-set, of a room with walls and ceilings, doors and windows, led inevitably to the appropriate furnishing of this room with tangible tables and chairs. Even in the eighteenth century the stage had been very empty; it was adorned only with the furniture actually demanded by the action of the drama; and the rest of the furniture, bookcases and sideboards, chairs and tables, was frankly painted on the wings and on the back-drop by the side of the painted mantelpieces, the painted windows, and the painted doors. In the plays of the twentieth century characters sit down and change from seat to seat; but in the plays produced in England and in France before the first quarter of the nineteenth century all the actors stood all the time—or at least they were allowed to sit only under the stress of dramatic necessity—as in the fourth act of 'Tartuffe,' for instance. In all of Molière's comedies there are scarcely half a dozen characters who have occasion to sit down; and this sitting-down is limited to three or four of his more than thirty pieces. Nowadays every effort is made to capture the external realities of life. Sardou was not more careful in composing his stage-sittings in his fashion than was Ibsen in prescribing the scenic environment that he needed. The author's minute descriptions of the scenes where the action of the 'Doll's House' and of 'Ghosts' passes prove that Ibsen had visualized sharply the precise interior which was, in his mind, the only possible home for the creatures of his imagination. And Mr. Belasco has recently bestowed upon the winning personality of his 'Peter Grimm' the exact habitation to which that appealing creature would return in his desire to undo after death what in life he had rashly commanded.
V
While the scene-painter of our time is most often called upon to realize the actual in an interior and to delight us with a room the dominant quality of which is that it looks as tho it was really lived in by the personages we see moving around in it, he is not confined to those domestic scenes. There are other plays than the modern social dramas; and these other plays make other demands upon the artist. On occasion he has to supply a gorgeous scenic accompaniment for the Roman and Egyptian episodes of 'Antony and Cleopatra,' to suggest the blasted heath where Macbeth may meet the weird sisters, and to call up before our delighted eyes the placid charm of the Forest of Arden. The awkward and inconsistent sky-borders, strips of pendent canvas wholly unsatisfactory as substitutes for the vast depths of the starry heavens, he is able to dispense with by lowering a little the hangings at the top edge of the picture-frame, and by thus limiting the upward gaze of the spectators, so that he can forgo the impossible attempt to imitate the changing sky. He can achieve an effect of limitless space, as in the last act of the 'Garden of Allah' (which brings before us the endless vision of Sahara), by the use of a cyclorama background, the drop being suspended from a semicircular rod which runs around the top of the stage, shutting in the view absolutely, and yet yielding itself to a representation of sand and sky meeting afar off on the faint horizon.
A landscape set Designed by P. Fontanesi in Italy in the eighteenth century A set for the opera of 'Robert le Diable' At the Paris Opéra
In the past half-century, and more especially since the improvement of the electric light, scene-painting has become very elaborate and very expensive. Instead of being kept in its proper place as the decoration of the drama, as a beautiful accessory of the action, it has often been pushed to the front, so as to attract attention to itself, and thereby to distract attention from the play which it was supposed to illuminate. Sometimes Shakspere has been smothered in scenery, and sometimes the art of the actor has been subordinated to the art of the scene-painter. Now, it must be admitted that nothing is too good for the masterpieces of the drama, and that Sophocles no less than Shakspere ought to be presented to the public with all the pomp that his lofty themes and his marvelous workmanship may demand. But the plays of the mighty dramatic poets ought not to be used merely as pegs on which to hang gorgeous apparel. After all, the play's the thing; and whenever the scene-painter and his invading partner, the stage-manager, are prompted to oust the drama from its pre-eminence, and to substitute an exhibition of their accessory arts, the result is a betrayal of the playwright.
A well-known British art critic once told me that when the curtain rose at a certain London revival of 'Twelfth Night,' and disclosed Olivia's garden, he sat entranced at the beauty of the spectacle before his eyes, with its subtle harmonies of color, so entranced, indeed, that he found himself distinctly annoyed when the actors came on the stage and began to talk. For the moment, at least, he wished them away, as disturbers of his esthetic delight in the lovely picture on which his eyes were feasting. But even a stage-setting as captivating as this might very well be justified if it had been employed to fill a gap in the action, and to buttress up the interest of an episode where the dramatist had allowed the appeal of his story to relax. Perrin, the manager of the Comédie-Française thirty years ago, declined to produce a French version of 'Othello' because he found a certain dramatic emptiness in the scenes at Cyprus at the opening of the second act, which he felt he would have to mask by the beauty of spectacular decoration, too costly an expedient in his opinion for the finances of the theater just then.
The set of the last act of the Garden of Allah From the model in the Dramatic Museum of Columbia University A set for Medea Designed by Herr Gustav Lindemann
It was Perrin, however, who produced the French version of the 'Œdipus the King' of Sophocles, and who bestowed upon it a single set of wonderful charm and power, at once dignified, appropriate, and beautiful in itself. It represented an open space between a temple and the palace of the ill-fated Œdipus, with an altar in the center, and with the profile of another temple projected against the distant sky and relieved by the tall, thin outline of poplar-trees. The monotony of this rectangular architectural construction was avoided by placing all the buildings on a slant, the whole elevation of the temple being visible on the left of the spectators, whereas only a corner of the colonnade of the palace on the right was displayed. This set at the Théâtre-Français was the absolute antithesis of the original scenic surroundings in the theater of Dionysus more than two thousand years ago, when the masterpiece of Sophocles had been performed in the open-air orchestra, with only a hut of skins or a temporary wooden building to serve as a background for the bas-reliefs of the action.
So elaborate, complicated, and costly have stage-sets become in the past half-century, that there are already signs of the violent reaction that might be expected. Mr. Gordon Craig, an artist of remarkable individuality, has gone so far as to propose what is almost an abolition of scene-painting. He seeks to attain effects of massive simplicity by the use of unadorned hangings and of undecorated screens, thus substituting vast spaces for the realistic details of the modern scene-painter. No doubt, there are a few plays for which this method of mounting would be appropriate enough—M. Maeterlinck's 'Intruder,' for one, and his 'Sightless' for another, plays which are independent of time and space, and in which the action appears to pass in some undiscovered limbo. As yet the advanced and iconoclastic theories of Mr. Craig have made few adherents, the most notable being the German, "Professor" Reinhardt, who lacks Mr. Craig's fine feeling for form and color, and who is continually tempted into rather ugly eccentricities of design, being apparently moved by the desire to be different from his predecessors rather than by the wish to be superior to them.
VI
Interesting as are Mr. Craig's suggestions, and wellfounded as may be his protest against the excessive ornamentation to which we are too prone nowadays, there is no reason to fear that his principles will prevail. The art of the scene-painter is too welcome, it is too plainly in accord with the predilections of the twentieth century, for it to be annihilated by the fiat of a daring and reckless innovator. It will be wise if the producers should harken to Mr. Craig's warnings and curb their tendency to needless extravagance; but we may rest assured that a return to the bareness of the Attic theater or of the English theater in the time of the Tudors is frankly unthinkable now that the art of scene-painting has been developed to its present possibilities. In fact, the probability is rather that the scene-painters will continue to enlarge the boundaries of their territory and to discover new means and new methods of delighting our eyes by their evocations of interesting places.
The set of Œdipe-Roi (at the Théâtre Français) The set of the Return of Peter Grimm From the model in the Dramatic Museum of Columbia University
Perhaps they would be more encouraged to go on and conquer new worlds if there was a wider recognition of the artistic value of their work. Altho De Lutherbourg and Clarkson Stanfield won honorable positions in the history of painting by their easel-pictures, the art of scene-painting does not hold the place in the public esteem that many of its practitioners deserve. Théophile Gautier, often negligible as a critic of the acted drama, was always worth listening to when he turned to pictorial art; and he was frequent in praise of the scene-painters of his time and of scene-painting itself as a craft of exceeding difficulty and of inadequate appreciation. Probably one reason why the scene-painter has not received his due meed of praise is because his work is not preserved. It exists only during the run of the play which it decorates. When the piece disappears from the boards, the scenes which adorned it vanish from sight. They linger only in the memory of those who happened to see this one play—and even then, in fact, only in the memory of such spectators as have trained themselves to pay attention to stage-pictures. For the scene-painter there is no Luxembourg; still less is there any Louvre. As Gautier sympathetically declared, "it is sad to think that nothing survives of those masterpieces destined to live a few evenings only, and disappearing from the washed canvas to give place to other marvels, equally fugitive. How much invention, talent, and genius may be lost—and not always leaving even a name!"
It is pleasant to know that at the Opéra in Paris a formal order of the government has for now a half-century prescribed the preservation of the original models—the little miniature sets which the scene-painter submits for the approval of the manager and the dramatist before he begins work upon the actual scene. These models are always upon the same scale, and in the gallery connected with the library of the Opéra a dozen of these models are set up to be viewed by visitors. Of course no tiny model, however cleverly fashioned, can give the full effect of the scene which has been conceived in terms of a huge stage; and yet the miniature reproductions do not betray the scene-painter as much as an engraving or a photograph often betrays the painter. Whatever its limitations, and they are obvious enough, the collection of models at the Opéra is at least an attempt to retard the oblivion that Théophile Gautier deplored, and to provide for the scene-painter a substitute, however inadequate, for the Louvre and the Luxembourg.
(1912.)
IXTHE BOOK OF THE OPERA
THE BOOK OF THE OPERAI
A fewyears agoPunchhad a satirical drawing representing a British matron conveying a bevy of youthful daughters to the French play in London. To a friend who called her attention to the rather risky atmosphere of the very Parisian comedy which they were about to behold, the worthy mother promptly explained that she was not bringing her daughters to see the play itself; she was bringing them to see only the acting. Probably a great many opera-goers would make a similar explanation if they were asked whether they were interested in the book of the opera or only in the music. They would be likely to protest that they cared little or nothing for the libretto, and that they were attracted solely by the score. But, as a matter of fact, the opera-goers who might make this reply would be self-deceived. Whether they are aware of it or not, they are unlikely to be attracted to any opera unless it happens to have an interesting story, built up into a coherent and captivating plot. When the libretto is unintelligible or uninteresting, the most delightful music fails to allure them into the opera-house. This is one of the reasons why the 'Magic Flute,' which contains much of Mozart's most beautiful melodic invention, is so rarely heard in our opera-houses, and why it is so sparsely attended when it is presented. The libretto of the 'Magic Flute' is dull and ineffective, and even Mozart's genius proved unable to overcome this initial handicap.
The ordinary opera-goer is likely to treat the libretto with calm contempt. He is prone to assert that nobody cares about the words, and he does not reflect that behind and beneath the words is the supporting structure of the story. After all, an opera is a play, it is a music-drama, and the plot is as important in a play the words of which are to be sung as in a play the words of which are to be spoken. True it is, of course, that in an opera the words may not be heard distinctly, and perhaps they need not be seized with certainty, since the emotion they set forth is more amply conveyed by the music. But the musician cannot express emotion musically, unless there is emotion for him to express, unless he has characters immeshed in a series of situations which evoke vivid and contrasting sentiments for him to translate into music. As the music-drama is a drama, it must obey the laws of the drama; it must represent a conflict of contending desires; it must be carried on by characters firm of purpose and resolute in achieving their several aims. These characters must be sharply individualized and boldly contrasted; and the story in which they take part must be at once strong and simple, calling for no elaborate explanation and moving forward steadily and irresistibly. It must have a lyric aspect, lending itself naturally to song; and it ought also to afford opportunity for the spectacular effects appropriate to the large stage of the opera-house.
So contemptuous of the libretto is the ordinary opera-goer that he rarely inquires as to the name of the author of the book, altho he is generally familiar with the name of the composer of the score. He may or he may not be aware that Wagner was his own librettist, and quite possibly he supposes that it is the ordinary custom of the composers to write the words for their own music. He knows that 'Carmen' was composed by Bizet, and that the 'Huguenots' was composed by Meyerbeer; but he would be greatly puzzled if he was asked to name the librettists of these two operas, the adroit playwrights who devised the skeletons of dramatic action which sustained the composers and provided them with ample opportunities for the exercise of their melodic gift. As a matter of fact, the book of 'Carmen' was written in collaboration by two of the most distinguished French dramatists of the nineteenth century, Meilhac and Halévy, the authors of 'Froufrou' and of the librettos of Offenbach's 'Belle Hélène,' 'Grand Duchess of Gérolstein,' and 'Périchole.' And the book of the 'Huguenots' was the work of the master stage-craftsman, Scribe, the author of 'Adrienne Lecouvreur' and of the 'Ladies' Battle,' and of countless other plays performed in every modern language, and in all the countries of the world.
Bizet wrote other operas besides 'Carmen,' and if these other operas have vanished from the stage, the reason may be that the librettos to which they were composed were not as ingenious and not as interesting as the book of 'Carmen.' One of these forgotten operas of Bizet's was a dramatization of the 'Fair Maid of Perth,' and another was called the 'Pearl Fisher'; but neither of these books was devised by Meilhac and Halévy. And Scribe was not only the librettist of the 'Huguenots' and of the 'Africaine' for Meyerbeer; he also wrote the books of 'Fra Diavolo' and of 'Crown Diamonds' for Auber, the book of the 'Dame Blanche' for Boïeldieu, and the book of the 'Juive' for Halévy. Indeed, it is evident that Wagner himself as a librettist must be considered as a direct disciple of Scribe; certainly his book of the 'Flying Dutchman' has its points of resemblance with the books Scribe invented for 'Robert the Devil,' and for the 'Prophet.' Even the libretto of Wagner's 'Master-Singers of Nuremberg,' altho it is far richer in tone than any of Scribe's librettos for Auber, is constructed in accord with principles already applied by the French playwright. In fact, the influence of Scribe is patent thruout the long history of opera in the nineteenth century; he was not only the most prolific of librettists himself, but the operatic formula he devised was borrowed by the best of the librettists who followed him. Scribe was not the writer of the books of 'Faust,' or of 'Roméo et Juliet,' or of 'Aïda,' but all these librettos were carefully built in accord with the principles that he had practised for half a century.
II
Probably the average opera-goer is contemptuous of the libretto, because he thinks it is an easy task to write the mere words of an opera. To him, no doubt, the opera lives by its music, and by its music alone. But there is really no warrant for this uncomplimentary attitude. An opera is a music-drama, and if it is to achieve success, wide-spread and long-lasting, its drama must be as effective as its music. Experience proves that, so far from being as easy as it seems, the construction of a satisfactory libretto is really a difficult feat, to be achieved only by an expert in stage-craft. It is no task to be confided to an amateur play-maker, to a mere lyrist, ignorant of the art of the theater. First of all, a satisfactory book must contain the skeleton of a good play; and, second, this must be the special kind of play which will not only inspire the musician, but afford him a succession of special opportunities for the exercise of his own art. The book of an opera must be a good play; and more than once have we seen a libretto deprived of its music and written out again in prose for production in non-musical theaters. 'Carmen' is one example of this transformation. The late Sir Henry Irving was so taken with Wagner's 'Flying Dutchman' that he had it made over into a play for his own acting—'Vanderdecken.'
The book of an opera must be a good play, and therefore not a few successful operas have been composed on plots which had already won approval as plays on the stage. Indeed, many modern composers are so convinced of the necessity that librettos shall be attractive in themselves that they are continually borrowing popular plays to deck with melody. 'Salomé' and 'Pelléas et Mélisande,' 'Madam Butterfly' and 'Cavalleria Rusticana,' the 'Bohème' and the 'Tosca' were all successful without music before they were set to music to win a second success. The book of Verdi's 'Rigoletto' is based on Victor Hugo's drama, 'Le Roi s'Amuse'; and oddly enough it was the operatic libretto, rather than the original poetic drama, which suggested the English play on the same theme, Tom Taylor's blank-verse drama, the 'Fool's Revenge.' Another of Verdi's librettos was borrowed from Hugo's 'Hermani', while his 'Traviata,' as we all know, is taken from the play of the younger Dumas, long popular in America as 'Camille.' Two of Verdi's latest operas had Shaksperian themes, 'Otello' and 'Falstaff.'
It is instructive to note, so an American musical critic once asserted, that of all Gounod's dozen operas, "the only two which have survived are the two which are derived from Goethe's 'Faust' and from Shakspere's 'Romeo and Juliet'"; and he added a reminder that in these operas the music owes its success "not only to the aid derived from its associations with a favorite play, but also in part to the fact that the composer's creative imagination was fertilized by the splendid opportunities for dramatic composition offered by these plays. Gounod was moved by the joys and woes of Margaret and of Juliet, and it is only under the influence of deep feeling that such masterworks can be created." When Gounod set to music a poetic play by Goethe, and when Verdi set to music a group of characters created by Shakspere, the composers might well be inspired by the poets; and they were thus aided to attain the utmost of which they are capable as musicians.
But it may be doubted whether any musician could find any really helpful inspiration in dramas of vulgar violence, such as the 'Tosca' of Sardou, and the 'Salomé' of Oscar Wilde; and it is extremely improbable that the operas composed to such unworthy themes will be able to achieve any durable popularity. In plots of so coarse a character there is neither beauty nor poetry, and the vogue of music-dramas having subjects so debased is likely to be fleeting. On the other hand, there was both poetry and beauty in the original plays of 'Madam Butterfly' and 'Cavalleria Rusticana,' and we need not be surprised if the operas composed on these themes prove to have a long life in the musical theaters. We may even go further and suggest that there was a haunting and ethereal grace about Maeterlinck's 'Pelléas et Mélisande' which seemed almost to demand translation into the sister art of music.
The two most effective French comedies of the eighteenth century, the 'Barber of Seville' and the 'Marriage of Figaro,' supplied librettos, one for Rossini and the other for Mozart. We may be sure that sooner or later some other composer, Italian or American or German, will be tempted to undertake an opera based on Fulda's 'Two Sisters,' in which there could not help being a very effective part for the prima donna. And sooner or later again some musician with an appreciation of humor and sentiment will be moved to take for his libretto the comedy of 'Masks and Faces,' by Charles Reade and Tom Taylor, generally known by the name of its fascinating heroine, Peg Woffington. No doubt there are not a few other modern plays in which composers will discover musical possibilities.
III
The key to an understanding of the importance of the libretto lies in the term Wagner used to describe the art-work of the future; he called this a "music-drama." The exclusive lover of music is tempted to look down on opera because its music is contaminated with drama; and for a similar reason, the exclusive lover of the drama is not attracted to opera because the drama is there more or less sacrificed to the music. But there are many opera-goers who best relish music and the drama when they are presented in conjunction. In a music-drama of the highest type, in Wagner's 'Tannhaüser,' for example, the music and the drama are Siamese twins; they were brought forth at a single birth. Each helps the other, and neither calls upon the other for any undue sacrifice. They can be enjoyed together better than they can be enjoyed apart, since each depends upon the other; and united they stand or fall.
Mr. H. T. Finck was not overstating the case when he insisted that the ideal opera is one in which the book and the score are each of them of absorbing interest, "and yet make a doubly deep impression when heard together." 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." And then the same writer goes on to point out that the best "libretto is one which tells its story to the eye," as in the case of 'Carmen,' for example. "No one with eyes to see can fail, for instance, to follow the career of 'Carmen,' from her flirtation with the young officer to the scene before the bullring where he stabs her."
It was an acute French dramatic critic who once asserted that "the skeleton of every good play is a pantomime," and the assertion is more emphatically true when applied to the skeleton of a libretto. Indeed, as the words are rarely heard distinctly, and as they are often in a foreign language, there is double need of a story so clear and so straightforward that it can be caught by the eye alone from the actions and gestures and facial expressions of the performers without the aid of the actual words. But the inventing and the constructing of a plot of this seemingly simple effectiveness is a task of extraordinary difficulty—if we may judge by the infrequency of its achievement. And undoubtedly it is this difficulty which has led so many musicians to compose their scores to books only slightly altered from plays which had already an attested popularity in the theater. By so doing it has seemed to them that they were minimizing the risk of finding their music handicapped by an ineffective story. The danger in this case lies in the temptation to set to music any play which may chance to be successful without considering sufficiently whether it is really worthy of the composer's labor.
There is another disadvantage also in this snatching at successful plays to serve as opera-librettos. Most successful plays nowadays deal with modern life, and they may owe much of their success to the skill with which the dramatist has been able to seize the external aspects of reality. Now, it is an interesting question whether a realistic piece of this sort can ever supply an entirely satisfactory book for an opera, since music is emotional and idealizing. To many persons the opera seems singularly unreal, strangely remote from actual life. Such persons are shocked that Tristan, for instance, should sing for half an hour when he is dying from physical weakness. Tolstoy sided with those who take this attitude, and he had no difficulty in showing up the absurd unreality of an operatic performance, if one insists upon applying to it the standard of our ordinary existence, since we do not burst into song ordinarily to express our every-day desires. Of course, there would be no great difficulty in showing up the absurd unreality of every other art, if the same standard is insisted upon. No art can justify itself for a moment unless we are willing to admit the essential conventions which alone permit it to exist.
Tolstoy might as well have pointed out that sculpture is ridiculous, since no human being is ever all of one color, body and clothes, as a statue must be, whether it is made of marble or of bronze. He could have declared that painting is equally untrue to the mere facts of life, since it represents nature absolutely without motion, as when it depicts a field of waving corn which does not really wave but stands fixed forever. If Tolstoy or any one else refuses to accept the conventions of any art, there is no possible reply, except to make it clear to him that he is thereby depriving himself of the delight which that art can give. A departure from the mere fact underlies every art; and it is only because of that departure that the art exists. By convention, that is to say, by tacit agreement between the artist and the public, the artist is allowed to deny certain of the facts of life in order to provide the public with the specific pleasure which only his art can afford.
In the Shaksperian drama the underlying convention is that the persons of the play belong to a race of people who always express themselves poetically in English blank verse. In opera this necessary agreement requires us to concede the existence of men and women to whom song is the natural means of communicating all their sentiments and all their thoughts. If we are willing to accept this implied contract, then there is no absurdity in Tristan's singing with his dying breath, since he belongs to a race of creatures who have no other method of speech. If we are unwilling to be parties to this agreement, if we deny the existence of any such creatures, then there is nothing for us to do but to keep out of the opera-house. It was this convention which Tolstoy rejected, and by this rejection he refused the enjoyment which the opera can give to those who are satisfied to accept its conditions.
IV
But there is no denying that the imperative operatic convention requires us to admit a very violent departure from the facts of life as we all know them. We are now so accustomed to blank verse in Shakspere's plays, tragic and comic, that we accept it almost without noticing it. By long habit, we have come to consider blank verse as "natural" in a poetic play, especially when that play sets before us heroic figures of the remote past. And here is the danger in the operas which have been composed on books made out of modern popular pieces, more or less realistic in their atmosphere. The "naturalness" of the men and women in these plays of to-day tends to draw attention to the "unnaturalness" of their customary use of song to express their emotions.
This danger Wagner skilfully avoided in his later music-dramas derived from the Nibelungen myth. He set before us shadowy creatures involved in strange intrigues far back in the legendary past and wholly devoid of any modern or realistic suggestion. As Tristan and Siegfried and Brunhild are all idealized persons, taking part in poetic fictions, we are willing enough to accept their exclusive use of song; and we recognize at once the artistic inconsistency of Tolstoy's protest. To beings so remote from our daily life, from our ordinary experience, the standard of fact cannot fairly be applied. We acknowledge the full right of such creatures to dwell eternally in the land of song alone.
But we are perhaps a little less willing to make this acknowledgment when we find the composer asking us to believe that men and women of our own time and of our own country, the characters of the 'Girl of the Golden West,' for example, or even some of those of 'Madam Butterfly,' should eschew the plain prose of ordinary speech and insist on discussing their love-affairs in the obviously "unnatural" medium of song. That is to say, there is a striking incongruity between musical expression and the realistic characters of most modern plays. We enjoy the opera partly because it is not "natural," not "real," in the ordinary meaning of these words; and if the plot and the people are aggressively modern and matter-of-fact, our attention is necessarily called to the "unnaturalness" of their incessant vocalization. A certain remoteness from real life, even a certain vaporous intangibility as to time and place, seem to be a helpful element in our enjoyment of a music-drama.
Perhaps it is due to this remoteness, to this unreality, that the opera-goer is willing enough to have a story end unhappily, altho the playgoer is now likely to be painfully affected by a tragic ending. Whatever the reason, it is a fact that most of our popular plays end merrily in a church, while most of our popular operas end sadly in a churchyard. The calculation has been made that out of twoscore operas sung in New York at the two opera-houses a season or so ago, only half a dozen ended happily; the large majority of them culminated in the death of the hero or of the heroine or of both together. Music is a sister of poetry, and we need not wonder that the musicians are likely to prefer the opera-book which has a tragic catastrophe.
(1910.)
XTHE POETRY OF THE DANCE
THE POETRY OF THE DANCEI
TheGreek of old was wise in his generation and poetic as was his habit, when he imagined nine muses and when he feigned that each of them was to watch over a separate art, and to inspire those who might strive to excel in this. It is true that nowadays we cannot help feeling that the sister-muses of Tragedy and of Comedy have been a little derelict to their duty, if they are really responsible for all the plays of our time, not a few of which seem to be sadly lacking in inspiration. But of late another of the sacred nine appears to have aroused herself out of her lethargy and to have awakened to a fuller realization of her opportunity. At least, there are many evidences now visible in the United States that Terpsichore has been attending strictly to business, and sending out travelers with many diverse specimens of her wares. Indeed, there has probably never been a time when so many different varieties of the dance have been on exhibition before the American people. It was once remarked by a shrewd observer that there were only three kinds of dancing, the graceful, the ungraceful, and the disgraceful. And in the United States we have had presented to us in the past few years specimens of all three kinds.
In the middle of September, 1910, the Playground Association of America held an outdoor session in Van Cortlandt Park, in New York, and three hundred persons, mostly children, took part in the exercises. The most interesting feature of the program was a series of national folk-dances executed by boys and girls from the public schools. New York is the huge melting-pot where all nationalities of Europe meet to be fused into Americans; and these children were, most of them, executing the dances of the countries their parents had come from—dances for which they had, therefore, a traditional and hereditary predilection. German girls in the costumes of the Rhine, gave a peasant dance to the simple tune of 'Ach, du lieber Augustin'; and colored children, in perfect rhythm, moved thru a reel to the music of the 'Suwanee River.' The wild Hungarianczardaswas carried off with a splendid swing by men and women born on the banks of the Danube; and an Irish quartet displayed their agility and their precision of time-keeping in a four-handed country-dance. And at the end, all the participants in the several national dances took part in a general harvest-dance. This was an effective spectacle, possible only here in America, where representatives of many peoples come to mingle, even tho each of them retains a sentiment of loyalty to the old home it has left forever.
Here in the open air, in a public park, at this meeting of the Playground Association, there was this joyous and wholesome revival of the folk-dances of a dozen different races; and at the same time, in one or another of half a score of the theaters of the great city, ill-trained and half-clothed women were vainly capering about the stage in doubtful efforts to suggest the Oriental contortions of Salomé. These were, most of them, consciously and deliberately inartistic, appealing directly to the baser instincts and to the lower curiosities of man. Nothing could have been in sharper contrast with the folk-dances of the foreign-born children, which were gay and healthy and spontaneous. The exercises in the park were examples of the kind of dancing which cannot help being graceful, while most of the performances in the theaters were specimens of the kind of dancing which can fairly be described as ungraceful, even if they cannot all of them be dismissed as disgraceful. While the folk-dances of the children would fill the heart with a pure delight, the sorry spectacle presented in some of the theaters was not to be witnessed without a certain loss of self-respect; it recalled the gross pantomimes of the later Roman theater, righteously denounced by the Fathers of the Church.
Yet it is only just to record that in other theaters there were then other spectacles to make amends for these sorry exhibitions. There were several interesting attempts to recall the severe beauty of Greek dancing. Lithe figures with free and floating draperies sought to recapture the irreclaimable charm that lives for us in the lovely Tanagra figurines, or that flits elusively around the sides of Attic vases. Ambitious efforts were made by one dancer and by another to translate into step and posture and gesture the intangible poetry of Shelley and the haunting music of Mendelssohn. Unfortunately, the result was rarely commensurate with the effort; and, in fact, a complete success was not possible. The muse of dancing has no right to endeavor to annex the territory of her sisters, who are charged with the care of poetry and music. The several arts are strongest when each remains strictly within its own limitations. For example, program-music is not yet assured of its welcome, and program-dancing is far more difficult to follow with complete comprehension.
And there was a further defect in these efforts to revive the classic dances and to devise more modern interpretations of poetry and music. Success, if possible at all, would be possible only to a highly trained performer, mistress of every device of the terpsichorean art and elaborately schooled in pantomimic expression. Now, it is not unfair to say that no one of the performers of these so-called classic dances had undergone this severe schooling. No one of them had the lightness, the ease, the perfect mastery of method, the floating grace of the true dancer, who has been taught from childhood, until all the tricks of the craft are second nature. Without this arduous training any one who attempts an ambitious display can scarcely fail to reveal instantly the lamentable fact that she is not mistress of the technic of the art she has undertaken to practise. She does not know how to get her effects; she does not even know what effects are possible. She is almost certain to appear amateurish, and she is likely to seem awkward also, not to say ungainly. As Pope put it tersely: "Those move easiest who have learned to dance."
These well-meant attempts to link dancing with poetry and music could be entirely satisfactory only to those who have given little consideration to dancing as an art, or who have small opportunity to see any really beautiful dancing. There is no wonder that any effort to spiritualize dancing, to give it a soul, to elevate it to the lofty level of the lyric, should be welcomed by those who have been disgusted by the ugly and vulgar high-kicking of the so-called pony ballets. The acrobatic contortions of these athletic performers were wholly without charm, as unalluring as they were violent. And equally unacceptable are the frequent exhibitions of toe-dancing, sheer gymnastic feats, difficult, indeed, but essentially uninteresting. Of a truth, these pony ballets on the one hand, and these toe-dancers on the other, are exponents of eccentricity. What they accomplish lies outside the true art of dancing. It is not inspired by Terpsichore, and the saddened muse must veil her face when she is forced to behold these crude exhibitions of misplaced energy.
II
The true art of dancing is entirely free from all apparent effort. No matter how difficult may be the feat that is accomplished, it must seem easy. Every gesture must be expressive, every movement must be beautiful, every step must have ease and lightness and grace. Forty years ago and more, the 'Black Crook' brought to America three or four dancers trained in the best schools of Europe—Bonfanti and Betty Rigl, Rita Sangalli and Morlacchi. One of this quartet, Rita Sangalli, was afterward the chief dancer at the Paris Opéra, where she was followed in time by Rosita Mauri, a dancer who added beauty of face and of form to a masterly accomplishment. They were all gifted pantomimists; they had all of them the perfection of technic; they were all of them capable of the most varied difficulties of the art; and they all of them vanquished these difficulties with unobtrusive ease. They had attained to that perfection of art, when the art itself is hidden, and when only the consummate result is visible. Each of them had absolute certainty of execution, and each of them could float across the stage the embodiment of grace, exquisite in its ethereal delicacy.
For those whose memories cannot recall the haunting remembrance of the days that are gone there is abundant compensation in the opportunity which has been afforded of late to behold the dancing of Mlle. Genée and of Mlle. Pavlova. They are, at least, the equal of any of their predecessors, and it may be doubted whether Taglioni or Fanny Elssler surpassed them in mastery. They are the perfection of effortless ease; altho they suggest only the lightness of the butterfly, they have the steel strength of the gymnast. Behind their marvelous and bewildering accomplishment there is a native gift, rich and full; and there is also the utmost rigor and perseverance in training. What they are able to do with seeming spontaneity and with apparent freedom is the result of indefatigable industry and of merciless labor.
But tho this schooling sustains them, it is never paraded—indeed, it is scarcely perceived. There is not the faintest suggestion of hard work about their performances; there is nothing that hints at effort; their art is able to conceal itself absolutely, and to delight us only with the perfect result of their long apprenticeship. Capable of the most obstinate feats of strength and of agility, Mlle. Genée and Mlle. Pavlova never "show off"; they are never guilty of parading a difficulty for its own sake, and their conquest of technical obstacles serves only to support and intensify the continuous suggestion of aerial elevation and of ineffable lightness. It is to be noted, also, that as they scorn the task of the mere gymnast, they do not wear the scant costume of the acrobat; they are enveloped in ample draperies, which fall into lines of beauty with every movement.
Nothing more exquisite than their dancing has ever been seen on the American stage. Theirs is the dancing which is graceful—which, indeed, is grace itself. Here is the art at its utmost possibility, purged of all its dross. When they are floating effortless thru space we cannot help recalling the possibly apocryphal anecdote which records the visit of Emerson and Margaret Fuller to the theater to see Fanny Elssler. They gazed with increasing delight, until at last Margaret Fuller could not contain her enthusiasm. She turned and said: "Ralph, this is poetry!" To which the philosopher is said to have responded: "Margaret, this is religion!"
Perfection is always rare, and there is now only one Mlle. Genée, and only one Mlle. Pavlova, as there was only one Rosita Mauri a quarter of a century ago. It is a pity that the Danish dancer has had to appear here in an ordinary musical show and not in a framework more worthy of her and of her art, and better fitted to display it. She has revealed herself only in two or threeentrées de ballet, as the French term them—incidental dances; and she has not yet been seen here in aballet d'action, a complete story told in pantomime. It was the poet, François Coppée, who devised the plot of the 'Korrigane' for Rosita Mauri; and he had had Théophile Gautier as a predecessor in the preparation of a ballet-libretto. All those who are interested in every manifestation of the art of the drama, must find pleasure in theballet d'action, with its adroit commingling of dance and pantomime; it gives a delight possible to no other form of the drama; and at its best it is more closely akin to pure poetry. Being her own manager, Mlle. Pavlova has been seen in a series of ballets more appropriate to her extraordinary gifts than those in which Mlle. Genée has been permitted to appear.
III
There was one scene of the 'Source,' a ballet popular at the Opéra in Paris during the exhibition of 1867, which must linger in the memory of all who had the good fortune to behold it—a scene so beautiful that it was borrowed for the 'White Fawn,' which was the successor of the 'Black Crook' here in the United States. It represented a silvery glade in the lone forest, with a mysterious lake, on the surface of which the spirits of the springtime came forth to disport themselves. It was a vision of airy grace and of haunting legend; and it is only one example of the poetic possibilities of the contribution of dance and pantomime in a coherent story. It may be well to recall the fact that the plots of theseballets d'actionare often strong enough to enable them to serve as the basis of a libretto for an opera. It was a ballet of Scribe's, for example, which was taken for the book of the 'Somnambula'; and the book of the favorite opera 'Martha' began its existence as a libretto for a ballet.
While theballet d'actionaffords the fullest opportunity for the perfect art of dancers like Rosita Mauri and Adeline Genée and Anna Pavlova, there are other forms not to be despised. Twenty-five years ago the Italian Marenco brought out his stupendous 'Excelsior,' which was taken from Italy to Paris, then to New York, and finally to London. 'Excelsior' was an allegorical ballet; it represented the conflict of light and darkness, of progress and superstition, of invention and reaction. It filled a whole evening with spectacle and glitter and movement. It lacked the poetic simplicity of the 'Source' and of the 'Korrigane'; but it had other qualities of its own. What set it apart from all the ballets that had gone before was the subordination of the individual terpsichorean artist to the main body. Marenco employed the best dancers to be found in Italy, no doubt, but he did not rely on them so much as on the intricate and ingenious handling of the crowds of lesser dancers, by whom they were surrounded.
The novelty of 'Excelsior' and of the two or three gigantic Italian spectacles which were patterned upon it—'Messalina' and 'Sieba'—lay in the maneuvering of the masses, in the extraordinary skill with which squadrons of figures were made to charge across the stage and combine and melt into one another most unexpectedly and most delightfully. The whole stage was a blaze of artfully contrasted colors, and it was filled with a riot of motion and of glitter. And Marenco made use of male dancers far more abundantly than any of his predecessors, utilizing them to wear the more somber colors, to suggest a sterner vigor, and to emphasize a bolder contrast. He was responsible also for another novelty, often employed by others since; he increased the height of his swerving lines of dancers, now and again, by mounting some of the figures on stands, and by putting revolving globes and iridescent banners into the hands of the men in the background.
It is the method of Marenco in 'Excelsior' which has been followed in the often pleasing ballets of the Hippodrome in New York. Really good soloists are now very scarce, even in Milan and in Vienna, long the nurseries of the ballet; and there seem to be none too many even in Petrograd, which has preserved and improved upon the traditions of Paris and Milan. And in the absence of accomplished soloists, the deviser of the ballets at the Hippodrome has been compelled to get along without them as best he could. He has been forced to rely on the maneuvering of masses of girls, possessed of only a rudimentary instruction in the elements of the terpsichorean art. In other words, he has had to make up in quantity for the absence of quality. But he has at his disposition an immense stage, across which he could set his squadrons marching and gliding and glittering. He could not count on the skill of his principals who were not expert enough to demand the attention of the spectators; but he could seek striking effects of light and color in the costumes, as he moved his masses to and fro and as he swung them together. If only there had been a little better training for the more prominent performers, the 'Four Seasons' would have been a most artistic entertainment, in spite of the absence of any single dancer of real distinction.
IV
The dearth of remarkable dancers is due to the inexorable fact that dancing is the most arduous of all the arts; its technic is the most difficult to acquire. Indeed, this technic can be acquired only in early youth, when the muscles are flexible and when they can be supplied at will. It is early in her teens that a dancer must begin her training if she aspires to eminence in the art. This training is very severe, and it must never be relaxed. Rubinstein used to say that if he omitted his practise for a single day he noticed it in his playing; if he omitted it two days his enemies found it out; and if he omitted it three days even his friends discovered it. The apprentice dancer can never omit a single day of hard and uninteresting toil. Incessant application, during all the long years of youth, is the price the ambitious beginner must pay for the mastery of her art. She can have no vacations; she can have few relaxations; she must keep herself constantly in training; she must be prepared to surrender many of the things which make life worth living. And it is no wonder that so few have the courage to persevere, and that there is only one Rosita Mauri, only one Adeline Genée, and only one Anna Pavlova in a quarter of a century. It is no wonder that the inventor of terpsichorean spectacles nowadays finds himself compelled to get along as best he can without a satisfactory soloist and to rely rather on his handling of a mass of inadequately trained dancers.
But even if the highly accomplished soloist, absolute mistress of all the possibilities of the art, is very rare, there are certain forms of dancing which do not demand this ultimate skill and which call for little more than grace and ease and charm, combined with a knowledge of the simpler steps. For example, the Spanish Carmencita, whose portraits by Mr. Sargent and by Mr. Chase now hang in the Luxembourg in Paris and in the Metropolitan Museum in New York—Carmencita was not a skilful dancer; she had undergone no inexorable schooling; she glided thru only a few elementary movements. But she made no effort; she did not pretend to what was not in her power; she was simple and unaffected. Her charm was not in her singing or in her dancing; it was in her personality, in the alluring and exotic suggestion of her individuality.
Nor could anybody venture to assert that Miss Kate Vaughan and Miss Letty Lind were dancers in the same class with Mauri, Genée, and Pavlova; but then they did not pretend to be. They knew only a few steps of obvious simplicity, and they displayed no unexpected dexterity. But the skirt-dance as they performed it was a memory of delight, with its grace and its ease, with its perfect rhythm and with the swish of its clinging draperies. It had a fascination of its own, quite different from the fascination of the more poetic and ethereal ballet-dancing of Rita Sangalli and Rosita Mauri. It was not of the stage exactly, but almost of the drawing-room. It gave the same pleasure which we felt when we were privileged to behold a court minuet led by the late Mrs. G. H. Gilbert, who had been a dancer in the days of her youth. There is one perfect beauty of the best ballet-dancing and there are other beauties of different kinds in the skirt-dancing of the two Englishwomen and in the languorous swaying of the Spanish gipsy.
Beauty of yet another order there was in an exhibition which was called a dance, perhaps because there was no other word for it, but which demanded no skill with the feet and which necessitated rather strength in the arms. This was the luminous dance of Miss Loie Fuller, when she swirled voluminous and prolonged draperies in lights that came from above and from below, and from both sides—lights that changed by exquisite gradations from one tint to another, the figure of the dancer spinning around, now slowly and now swiftly, while her arms weaved fantastic circles in the air, revealing unexpected combinations of color, controlled by perfect taste. This may not have been dancing, by any strict definition of the word, but it was decorative, artistic, imaginative, and inexpressibly beautiful. It supplied a glimpse of unsuspected delight; and probably Terpsichore would not disdain to claim it for her own, however vigorously she might repel the suggestion that she had any responsibility for the violence of the toe-dances, for the vulgarity of the pony ballet, or for the ungainly caperings which pretend to recapture the free movements of the Greeks.
(1910-1915)
XITHE PRINCIPLES OF PANTOMIME
THE PRINCIPLES OF PANTOMIMEI
Inhis suggestive study of ancient and modern drama, M. Émile Faguet dwells on the fact that the drama is the only one of the arts which can employ to advantage the aid of all the other arts. The muses of tragedy and comedy can borrow narrative from the muse of epic poetry and song from the muse of lyric poetry. They can avail themselves of oratory, music, and dancing. They can profit by the assistance of the architect, the sculptor, and the painter. They can draw on the co-operation of all the other arts without ceasing to be themselves and without losing any of their essential qualities. This was seen clearly by Wagner, who insisted that his music-dramas were really the art-work of the future, in that they were the result of a combination of all the arts. Quite possibly the Greeks had the same idea, since Athenian tragedy has many points of similarity to Wagner's music-drama; it had epic passages and a lyric chorus set to music; it called for stately dancing against an architectural background.
But altho the muses of the drama may invoke the help of their seven sisters, they need not make this appeal unless they choose. They can give their performances on a bare platform, or in the open air, and thus get along without painting and architecture. They can disdain the support of song and dance and music. They can concentrate all their effort upon themselves and provide a play which is a play and nothing else. And this is what Ibsen has done in his somber social-dramas. 'Ghosts,' for example, is independent of anything extraneous to the drama. It is a play, only a play, and nothing more than a play.
Yet it is possible to reduce the drama to an even barer state than we find in Ibsen's gloomy tragedy in prose. Ibsen's characters speak; they reveal themselves in speech; and it is by words that they carry on the story. A story can be presented on the stage, however, without the use of words, without the aid of the human voice, by the employment of gesture only, by pure pantomime. No doubt, the drama makes a great sacrifice when it decides to do without that potent instrument of emotional appeal, the human voice; and yet it can find its profit, now and then, in this self-imposed deprivation. Certain stories there are, not many, and all of them necessarily simplified and made very clear, which gain by being bereft of the spoken word and by being presented only in the pantomime. And these stories, simple as they must be, if they are to be apprehended by sight alone without the aid of sound, are, nevertheless, capable of supporting an actual play with all the absolutely necessary elements of a drama.
In his interesting and illuminating volume on the 'Theory of the Theater,' Mr. Clayton Hamilton has a carefully considered definition of a play. He asserts that "a play is a story devised to be presented by actors on a stage before an audience." Perhaps it might be possible to amend this by saying "in a theater," instead of "on a stage," since we are now pretty certain that there was no stage in the Greek theater when Sophocles was writing for it. But this is but a trifling correction, and the definition as a whole is excellent. It includes every possible kind of dramatic entertainment, Greek tragedy and Roman comedy, medieval farce and modern melodrama, the music-drama of Wagner and the problem-play of Ibsen, the summer song-show and the college boy's burlesque. Obviously it includes the wordless play, the story devised to be presented on a stage and before an audience by actors who use gesture only and who do not speak.
In forgoing the aid of words the drama is only reducing itself to its absolutely necessary elements—a story, and a story which can be shown in action. It is not quite true that the skeleton of a good play is always a pantomime, since there are plays the plot of which cannot be conveyed to the audience except by actual speech. Yet some of the greatest plays have plots so transparent that the story is clear, even if we fail to hear what the actors are saying. It has been asserted that if 'Hamlet,' for example, were to be performed in a deaf-and-dumb asylum, the inmates would be able to understand it and to enjoy it. They would be deprived of the wonderful beauty of Shakspere's verse, no doubt, and they would scarcely be able even to guess at the deeper significance of the philosophy which enriches the tragedy; but the story would unroll itself clearly before their eyes so that they could follow the succession of scenes with adequate understanding.
With his customary shrewdness and his usual gift of piercing to the center of what he was engaged in analyzing, Aristotle more than four thousand years ago saw the necessity of a neatly articulated plot. "If you string together a set of speeches," he said, "expressive of character and well finished in point of diction and thought, you will not produce the essential tragic effect nearly so well as with a play, which, however deficient in these respects, yet has a plot and artistically constructed incidents." No broader statement than this could be made as to the all-importance of the story itself—and pantomime is a story and nothing else, a story capable of being translated by the actions of the performers, without the aid of speech. Nor need we suppose that a play without words is necessarily devoid of poetry. There may be poetry in the "set of speeches expressive of character and well finished in point of thought and diction"; but there may be poetry also in the theme itself, in the actual story. 'Romeo and Juliet,' for example, is fundamentally poetic in its theme, and it retains its poetic quality even when it is made to serve as the libretto of an opera, as it would also retain this if it should be stripped bare to be presented in pantomime.
In a recent work on the 'Essentials of Poetry,' Professor William A. Neilson has made this clear: "Many a drama is a genuine poetic creation, altho it may be simple to the point of baldness in diction and exhibit the fundamental qualities of poetry only in the characterization and in the significance, proportion, and verisimilitude of the plot." That is to say, the drama can use two kinds of poetry, that which is internal and contained in the plot, and that which is external and confined to the language. It can employ