With a nice appreciation of poetic effect, and of rising to strong
climax from an opening note struck in a low key, the performance began
by the appearance in that heroic setting of a single figure:
Mademoiselle Breval, in flowing white draperies, who sang the "Hymn to
Pallas Athene," by Croze, set to music by Saint-Saens--the composer
himself, hidden away with his musicians beneath the branches of the
fig-tree, directing the orchestra.
The subduing effect produced by Mademoiselle Breval's entrance was
instantaneous. But a moment before, the audience had been noisily
demonstrative. As the ministerial party entered, to the music of the
"Marseillaise," everybody had roared; there were more roars when the
music changed (as it usually does change in France, nowadays) to the
Russian Anthem; there were shouts of welcome to various popular
personages--notably, and most deservedly, to M. Jules Claretie, to whom
the success of the festival so largely was due; from the tiers where the
Parisians were seated came good-humored cries (reviving a legend of the
Chat Noir) of "Vive notre oncle!" as the excellent Sarcey found his way
to his seat among the Cigaliers; and when the poet Frederic Mistral
entered--tall, stately, magnificent--there broke forth a storm of
cheering that was not stilled until the minister (rather taken aback, I
fancy, by so warm an outburst of enthusiasm) satisfied the subjects of
this uncrowned king by giving him a place of honour in the ministerial
box.
And then, suddenly, the shouting ceased, the confusion was quelled, a
hush fell upon the multitude, as that single figure in white swept with
fluttering draperies across from the rear to the front of the stage,
and paused for a moment before she began her invocation to the Grecian
goddess: whose altar-fires went out in ancient ages, but who was a
living and a glorious reality when the building in which was this echo
of her worship came new from the hands of its creators--seventeen
hundred years ago. The mistral, just then blowing strongly and steadily,
drew down upon the stage and swept back the singer's Grecian draperies
in entrancing folds. As she sang, standing in the golden light against
the golden background, her supple body was swayed forward eagerly,
impetuously; above her head were raised her beautiful bare arms; from
her shoulders the loose folds of her mantle floated backward,
wing-like--and before us, in the flesh, as in the flesh it was of old
before the Grecian sculptors, was the motive of those nobly impulsive,
urgent statues of which the immortal type is the Winged Victory.
The theory has been advanced that the great size of the Greek stage, and
of the palace in its rear which was its permanent set of scenery, so
dwarfed the figures of the actors that buskins and padding were used in
order to make the persons of the players more in keeping with their
surroundings. With submission, I hold that this theory is arrant
nonsense. Even on stilts ten feet high the actors still would have been,
in one way, out of proportion with the background. If used at all in
tragedy, buskins and pads probably were used to make the heroic
characters of the drama literally greater than the other characters.
In point of fact, the majestic height of the scene did not dwarf the
human figures sustaining serious parts. The effect was precisely the
contrary. Mademoiselle Breval, standing solitary in that great open
space, with the play of golden light upon her, became also heroic. With
the characters in "Oedipus" and "Antigone" the result was the same: the
sombre grandeur of the tragedies was enlarged by the majesty of the
background, and play and players alike were upraised to a lofty plane of
solemn stateliness by the stately reality of those noble walls: which
themselves were tragedies, because of the ruin that had come to them
with age.
Upon the comedy that so injudiciously was interpolated into the program
the effect of the heroic environment was hopelessly belittling. M.
Arene's "L'Ilote" and M. Ferrier's "Revanche d'Iris" are charming of
their kind, and to see them in an ordinary theatre--with those intimate
accessories of house life which such sparkling trifles require--would be
only a delight. But at Orange their sparkle vanished, and they were
jarringly out of place. Even the perfect excellence of the players--and
no Grecian actress, I am confident, ever surpassed Mademoiselle
Rachel-Boyer in exquisitely finished handling of Grecian
draperies--could not save them. Quite as distinctly as each of the
tragedies was a success, the little comedies were failures: being
overwhelmed utterly by their stately surroundings, and lost in the
melancholy bareness of that great stage. It was all the more, therefore,
an interesting study in the psychology of the drama to perceive how the
comparatively few actors in the casts of the tragedies--how even, at
times, only one or two figures--seemed entirely to fill the stage; and
how at all times those plays and their setting absolutely harmonized.