Stage Anomalies [pp. 358-362]

S.IAGE ANOMALIES.
ward the bottom of the machine two or three
foul candles, badly snuffed, which, while the
greater personage dementedly presents himself
swinging in his seesaw, fumigate him with incense worthy of his dignity. The agitated sea is
composed of long angular lanterns of cloth and
blue pasteboard, strung on parallel spits, which
are turned by little blackguard boys. The thunder is a heavy cart, rolled over an arch, and is
not the least agreeable instrument heard at our
opera. The flashes of lightning are made of
pinches of resin thrown on a flame, and the
thunder is a cracker at the end of a fuse. The
theatre is, moreover, furnished with little square
traps, which, opening at the end, announce that
the demons are about to issue from their cave.
When they have to rise into the air, little demons
of stuffed brown cloth are substituted for them,
or sometimes real chimney-sweeps, who swing
about suspended on ropes, till they are majestically lost in the rags of which I have spoken."
Contemptible, however, as toward the end of
the eighteenth century was the character of stage
decorations, both at the Paris Opera and the
Comtdie Francaise-and doubtless, therefore, at
nearly all the French theatres-the art of presenting theatrical pieces suitably and magnificently was not at that time by any means in its
infancy. It was rather in its decadence.
During the reign of Louis XIV., the sun and
moon were so well represented at the French
Opera that, as Saint-Evremond informs us, the
Ambassador of Guinea, assisting at one of its
performances, leaned forward in his box when
those orbs appeared, and religiously saluted them.
In the days before Gluck and Mozart, the Opera
at Vienna was chiefly remarkable for its size and
for the splendor of its scenery; and in a wellknown description of an operatic performance at
Vienna, addressed by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu to Pope, we are told that "nothing of the
kind was ever more magnificent," that "the decorations and habits cost the Emperor thirty thousand pounds sterling," and that "the stage, built
over a very large canal, divided at the beginning
of the second act into two parts, discovering the
water, on which there immediately came from
different parts two fleets of little gilded vessels
that gave the representation of a naval fight."
When opera began to be treated seriously as
a form of musical art, these spectacular vanities
were abandoned. But, in Rousseau's time, the
French Opera was remakable neither for its scenery nor for its singing. In the eighteenth century the Italians already thought more of the
music of their operas than of the decorations to
which, at an earlier period, they had accorded
the first place. The stage-effects of Servandoni
and Brunio, who were at once architects, sculp
tors, and painters, are said to have been marvelous. Many of the Italian theatres had been constructed so as to admit of the most elaborate
spectacular representations.
M. Edouard Fournier, contrasting in his
"Vieux Neuf' the poverty of our modern stage
representations with the richness by which those
of ancient times were distinguished, sets forth
that the Farnesino Theatre at Parma, built for
dramas, tournaments, and spectacles of all kinds,
contained at least fifty thousand spectators. Servandoni was for some time scene-painter and
decorator at the Opera of Paris; but a stage
which (as Rousseau, speaking through the medium of Saint-Preux, has told us) was "fifteen feet
broad, and long in proportion," could not afford
the Italian artist fit scope for his designs; and he
accordingly left Paris for Dresden, where Augustus of Saxony (Mr. Carlyle's "Augustus the
Strong ") enabled him to work on a grand scale,
and to produce pieces in which four hundred
mounted horsemen could manceuvre with ease.
It was not until three quarters of a century
later that horses, or even a single horse, were destined to appear on the boards of the Paris OperaHouse. To Meyerbeer, or perhaps to Meyerbeer
and Scribe conjointly, belongs the doubtful honor
of having introduced live horses in the musical
drama. But, long before Marguerite de Valois
rode on to the stage in the opera of " Les Huguenots," a real horse had, in the year 1 682, appeared
before an ordinary theatrical audience in the character of Pegasus. As poets, according to an inhuman creed, make better verses for being kept
without money, so it was held that the unhappy
Pegasus ought, until the end of his performance,
to be deprived of oats. The sensation of hunger
gave, it is said, "a certain ardor" to the movements of the poetic courser; a&ad the -sguad 3t
corn shaken in a sieve had the effect of making the
proud but famished steed neigh, snort, and stamp
in a style thought worthy of Pegasus himself.
The white horse which figured in the first
representation of " Les Huguenots," at our Royal
Italian Opera, without being precisely a Pegasus,
had often served as hack to one of the greatest
of English writers. It was, or had been, the
property of Mr. Thackeray, and answered to the
name of "Becky Sharp."
From the work in which Servandoni in the
eighteenth century introduced at the Dresden
Theatre four hundred horsemen to the one-horse
opera of "Les Huguenots" the step is indeed a
long one. Nor does it seem to mark a progress;
though, as a matter of fact, the history of the
theatrical spectacle is something quite apart from
that of the musical or of the poetical drama.
Opera has never profited by being represented
with great scenic magnificence, nor by the at
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