The Christmas Kalends of Provence Part 9

However aggravating was this entrance-effect in the matter of composition, its dramatically graded light-and-shade was masterly. From the outer obscurity, shot forward as from a catapult by the pushing crowd, we were projected through a narrow portal into a dimly lighted pa.s.sage more or less obstructed by fallen blocks of stone; and thence onward, suddenly, into the vast interior glaring with electric lamps: and in the abrupt culmination of light there flashed up before us the whole of the auditorium--a mountain-side of faces rising tier on tier; a vibrant throng of humanity which seemed to go on and on forever upward, and to be lost at last in the star-depths of the clear dark sky.

Notwithstanding the electric lamps--partly, indeed, because of their violently contrasting streams of strong light and fantastic shadow--the general effect of the auditorium was sombre. The dress of the audience--cloaks and wraps being in general use because of the strong mistral that was blowing--in the main was dark. The few light gowns and the more numerous straw hats stood out as spots of light and only emphasized the dullness of the background. The lines of faces, following the long curving sweep of the tiers, produced something of the effect of a grey-yellow haze floating above the surface of a sable ma.s.s; and in certain of the strange sharp combinations of light and shade gave an eerie suggestion of such a bodiless a.s.semblage as might have come together in the time of the Terror at midnight in the Place du Greve.

The single note of strong colour--all the more effective because it was a very trumpet-blast above the drone of bees--was a brilliant splash of red running half-way around the mid-height: the crimson draperies in front of the three tiers set apart for the ministerial party and the Felibres. And for a roof over all was the dark star-set sky: whence the Great Bear gazed wonderingly down upon us with his golden eyes. We were in close touch with the higher regions of the universe. At the very moment when the play was beginning there gleamed across the upper firmament, and thence went radiantly downward across the southern reaches of the heavens, a shooting-star.

Not until we were in our seats--at the side of the building, a dozen tiers above the ground--did we fairly see the stage. In itself, this was almost mean in its simplicity: a bare wooden platform, a trifle over four feet high and about forty by sixty feet square, on which, in the rear, was another platform, about twenty feet square, reached from the lower stage by five steps. The upper level, the stage proper, was for the actors; the lower, for the chorus--which should have been in the orchestra. The whole occupied less than a quarter of the s.p.a.ce primitively given to the stage proper alone. Of ordinary theatrical properties there absolutely were none--unless in that category could be placed the plain curtain which hung loosely across the lower half of the jagged gap in the masonry where once the splendid royal portal had been.

But if the stage were mean in itself it was heroic in its surroundings: being flanked by the two castle-like wings ab.u.t.ting upon huge half-ruined archways, and having in its rear the scarred and broken mighty wall--that once was so gloriously magnificent and that now, perhaps, is still more exalted by its tragic grandeur of divine decay.

And yet another touch of pathos, in which also was a tender beauty, was supplied by the growth of trees and shrubs along the base of the great wall. Over toward the "garden" exit was a miniature forest of figs and pomegranates, while on the "court" side the drooping branches of a large fig-tree swept the very edge of the stage--a gracious accessory which was improved by arranging a broad parterre of growing flowers and tall green plants upon the stage itself so as to make a very garden there; while, quite a master-stroke, beneath the fig-tree's wide-spreading branches were hidden the exquisitely anachronistic musicians, whose dress and whose instruments alike were at odds with the theatre and with the play.

Two ill-advised electric lamps, shaded from the audience, were set at the outer corners of the stage; but the main illumination was from a row of screened footlights which not only made the whole stage brilliant but cast high upward on the wall in the rear--above the gaping ruined niche where once had stood the statue of a G.o.d--a flood of strong yellow light that was reflected strongly from the yellow stone: so making a glowing golden background, whence was projected into the upper darkness of the night a golden haze.

VII

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 "Ma.r.s.eillaise," 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 mult.i.tude, 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 G.o.ddess: 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 n.o.bly 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 s.p.a.ce, 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 n.o.ble 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 surpa.s.sed 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.

VIII

Of scenery, in the ordinary sense of the word, there was none at all.

What we saw was the real thing. In the opening scene of "Oedipus," the _King_--coming forward through the royal portal, and across the raised platform in the rear of the stage--did literally "enter from the palace," and did "descend the palace steps" to the "public place" where _Creon_ and the priests awaited him. It was a direct reversal of the ordinary effect in the ordinary theatre: where the play loses in realism because a current of necessarily recognized, but purposely ignored, antagonistic fact underruns the conventional illusion and compels us to perceive that the palace is but painted canvas, and (even on the largest stage) is only four or five times as high as the _Prince_. The palace at Orange--towering up as though it would touch the very heavens, and obviously of veritable stone--was a most peremptory reality.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SCENE FROM THE FIRST ACT OF "OEDIPUS"]

The fortuitous accessory of the trees growing close beside the stage added to the outdoor effect still another very vivid touch of realism; and this was heightened by the swaying of the branches, and by the gracious motion of the draperies, under the fitful pressure of the strong gusts of wind. Indeed, the mistral took a very telling part in the performance. Players less perfect in their art would have been disconcerted by it; but these of the Comedie Francaise were quick to perceive and to utilize its artistic possibilities. In the very midst of the solemn denunciation of _Oedipus_ by _Tiresias_, the long white beard of the blind prophet suddenly was blown upward so that his face was hidden and his utterance choked by it; and the momentary pause, while he raised his hand slowly, and slowly freed his face from this chance covering, made a dramatic break in his discourse and added to it a naturalness which vividly intensified its solemn import. In like manner the final entry of _Oedipus_, coming from the palace after blinding himself, was made thrillingly real. For a moment, as he came upon the stage, the horror which he had wrought upon himself--his ghastly eye-sockets, his blood-stained face--was visible; and then a gust of wind lifted his mantle and flung it about his head so that all was concealed; and an exquisite pity for him was aroused--while he struggled painfully to rid himself of the enc.u.mbrance--by the imposition of that petty annoyance upon his mortal agony of body and of soul.

In such capital instances the mistral became an essential part of the drama; but it was present upon the stage continuously, and its constant play among the draperies--with a resulting swaying of tender lines into a series of enchanting folds, and with a quivering of robes and mantles which gave to the larger motions of the players an undertone of vibrant action--cast over the intrinsic harshness of the tragedy a softening veil of grace.

An enlargement of the same soft influences was due to the entrancing effects of colour and of light. Following the Grecian traditions, the flowing garments of the chorus were in strong yet subdued colour-notes perfectly harmonized. Contrasting with those rich tones, the white-robed figures of the leading characters stood out with a brilliant intensity. And the groups had always a golden background, and over them always the golden glow from the footlights cast a warm radiance that again was strengthened by the golden reflections from the wall of yellow stone, so that the whole symphony in colour had for its under-note a mellow splendour of golden tones.

IX

In this perfect poetic setting the play went on with a stately slowness--that yet was all too fast for the onlookers--and with the perfection of finish that such actors naturally gave to their work amidst surroundings by which they were at once stimulated and inspired.

Even the practical defects of the ruinous theatre were turned into poetical advantages which made the tragic action still more real. The woeful entrance of _Oedipus_ and the despairing retreat of _Jocasta_ were rendered the more impressive by momentary pauses in the broken doorway--that emphasized by its wreck their own wrecked happiness; in "Antigone" a touching beauty was given to the entry of the blind _Tiresias_ by his slow approach from the distant side of the theatre, led by a child through the maze of bushes and around the fallen fragments of stone; and Mademoiselle Bartet (_Antigone_), unable to pa.s.s by the door that should have been but was not open for her, made a still finer exit by descending the steps at the side of the stage and disappearing among the trees.

But the most perfect of those artistic utilizations of chance accessories--which were the more effective precisely because they were accidental, and the more appreciated because their use so obviously was an inspiration--was the final exit of _Oedipus_: a departure "into desert regions" that Mounet-Sully was able to make very literally real.

Over in the corner beside the "garden" exit, as I have said, was a tangled growth of figs and pomegranates; and thence extending almost to the stage was a light fringe of bushes growing along the base of the rear wall among the fragments of fallen stone. It was through that actual wilderness that _Oedipus_--crossing half the width of the theatre--pa.s.sed from the brilliant stage into shadow that grew deeper as he advanced, and at last, entering the gap in the stone-work where once the doorway had been, disappeared into the dark depth beyond.

An accident of the moment--the exhaustion of the carbons of the electric lamps--gave to his exit a still keener dramatic intensity. The footlights alone remained burning: flooding with a golden splendour the stage and the great yellow wall, and from the wall reflected upward and outward upon the auditorium; casting over the faces in the orchestra a soft golden twilight, and a still fainter golden light over the more remote hill-side of faces on the tiers--which rose through the golden dusk, and vanished at last in a darkness that still seemed to be a little softened by the faint suggestion of a golden haze.

Interest and light thus together were focused upon the climax of the tragedy. Leaving the light, and with it love and hope and life, behind him, _Oedipus_ descended the steps of the palace, leaning upon the shoulder of a slave, and moved toward the thickening shadows. Watching after him with a profoundly sorrowful intensity was the group upon the stage: a gorgeous ma.s.s of warm colour, broken by dashes of gleaming white and bathed in a golden glow. Slowly, painfully, along that rough and troublous way, into an ever-deepening obscurity merging into darkness irrevocable, the blinded king went onward toward the outer wilderness where would be spent the dreary remnant of his broken days.

Feeling his way through the tangled bushes; stumbling, almost falling, over the blocks of stone; at times halting, and in his desperate sorrow raising his hands imploringly toward the G.o.ds whose foreordered curse had fallen upon him because of his foreordered sin, he went on and on: while upon the great auditorium there rested an ardent silence which seemed even to still the beatings of the eight thousand hearts. And when, pa.s.sing into the black depths of the broken archway, the last faint gleam of his white drapery vanished, and the strain relaxed which had held the audience still and silent, there came first from all those eager b.r.e.a.s.t.s--before the roar of applause which rose and fell, and rose again, and seemed for a while to be quite inextinguishable--a deep-drawn sigh.

X

"Antigone," played on the second evening--being a gentler tragedy than "Oedipus," and conceived in a spirit more in touch with our modern times--was received with a warmer enthusiasm. No doubt to the Greeks, to whom its religious motive was a living reality, "Oedipus" was purely awe-inspiring; but to us, for whom the religious element practically has no existence, the intrinsic qualities of the plot are so repellent that the play is less awe-inspiring than horrible. And even in Grecian times, I fancy--human nature being the same then as now in its substrata--"Antigone," with its conflict between mortals, must have appealed more searchingly to human hearts than ever "Oedipus" could have appealed with its conflict between a mortal and the G.o.ds. Naturally, we are in closer sympathy with the righteous defiance of a man by a woman--both before our eyes, pa.s.sionately flaming with strong antagonistic emotions--than we are with a man's unrighteous defiance of abstract and invisible Fate.

As "Antigone" was given at Orange, the softening influences which had subdued the harshness of "Oedipus" still farther were extended, making its deep tenderness still deeper and more appealing. The inspersion of music of a curiously penetrating, moving sort--composed by Saint-Saens in an approximation to Grecian measures--added a poetic undertone to the poetry of the situations and of the lines; and a greater intensity was given to the crises of the play--an artistic reproduction of the effect caused by the accident of the night before--by extinguishing the electric lamps and so bringing the action to a focus in the mellow radiance which came from the golden footlights and richly lighted the stage.

The poetic key-note was struck in the opening scene: when _Antigone_ and _Ismene_, robed all in white, entered together by the royal doorway and stood upon the upper plane of the great stage, alone--and yet so filled it that there was no sense of emptiness nor of lack of the ordinary scenery. Again, the setting was not an imitation, but the real thing.

The palace from which the sisters had come forth rose stately behind them. Beside the stage, the branches of the fig-tree waved lightly in the breeze. In the golden glow of the footlights and against the golden background the two white-robed figures--their loose vestments, swayed by the wind, falling each moment into fresh lines of loveliness--moved with an exquisite grace. And all this visible beauty reinforced with a moving fervour the penetrating beauty of _Antigone's_ avowal of her love for her dead brother--tender, human, natural--and of her purpose, born of that love, so resolute that to accomplish it she would give her life.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SCENE FROM THE SECOND ACT OF "ANTIGONE"]

Again, the utter absence of conventional scenery was a benefit rather than a disadvantage. When _Creon_ entered upon the upper plane, attended by his gorgeous guard, and at the same moment the entrance of the chorus filled the lower plane with colour less brilliant but not less strong, the stage was full, not of things, but of people, and was wholly alive. The eye was not distracted by painted scenery--in the ordinary theatre a mechanical necessity, and partly excusable because it also supplies warmth and richness of tone--but was entirely at the service of the mind in following the dramatic action of the play. The setting being a reality, there was no need for mechanism to conceal a seamy side; and the colour-effects were produced by the actors themselves: whose draperies made a superb colour-scheme of strong hues perfectly harmonized, of gleaming white, of glittering golden embroideries--which constantly was rearranged by the shifting of the groups and single figures into fresh combinations; to which every puff of wind and every gesture gave fresh effects of light and shade; and over which the golden light shed always its warm radiance.

Of all those beautiful groupings, the one which most completely fulfilled the several requirements of a picture--subject, composition, colour, light-and-shade--was that of the fourth episode: the white-robed _Antigone_ alone upon the upper plane, an animate statue, a veritable Galatea; the chorus, a broad sweep of warm colour, on the lower plane; the electric lights turned off, leaving the auditorium in semi-obscurity, and concentrating light and thought upon the golden beauty of the stage. With the entry of _Creon_ and his guards both the dramatic and the picturesque demands of the situation were entirely satisfied. In the foreground, a ma.s.s of strong subdued colour, were the minor figures of the chorus; in the background, a ma.s.s of strong brilliant color, were the minor figures of the guards; between those groups--the subject proper--were _Creon_ and _Antigone_: their white robes, flashing with their eager gestures and in vivid relief against the rich background, making them at once the centre and the culmination of the magnificent composition. And the beauty and force of such a setting deepened the pathos and intensified the cruelty of the alternately supplicating and ferocious lines.

There was, I regret to say, an absurd anticlimax to that n.o.ble scene.

_Antigone_, being recalled and made the centre of a volley of bouquets, ceased to be _Antigone_ and became only Mademoiselle Bartet; and the Greek chorus, breaking ranks and scampering about the stage in order to pick up the leading lady's flowers, ceased to be anything serious and became only ridiculous. For the moment French gallantry rose superior to the eternal fitness of things, and in so doing partially destroyed one of the most beautiful effects ever produced upon the stage. Even in the case of minor players so complete a collapse of dignity would not easily have been forgiven. In the case of players so eminent, belonging to the first theatre in the world, it was unpardonable.

XI

But it could be, and was, for the time being forgotten--as the play went on with a smooth perfection, and with a constantly increasing dramatic force, as the action strengthened and quickened in accord always with the requirements of dramatic art.

Without any apparent effort to secure picturesque effect, with a grouping seemingly wholly unstudied and always natural, the stage presented a series of pictures ideal in their balance of ma.s.s, and in their colour and tone, while the turning off and on of the electric lights produced effects a.n.a.logous to those in music when the soft and hard pedals are used to give to the more tender pa.s.sages an added grace and delicacy, and to the stronger pa.s.sages a more brilliant force. And always, be it remembered, the play thus presented was one of the most tenderly beautiful tragedies possessed by the world, and the players--by natural fitness and by training--were perfect in their art.

Presently came the end--not a climax of action; not, in one sense, a climax at all. With a master-touch, Sophocles has made the end of "Antigone" the dead after-calm of evil action--a desolate despair.

Slowly the group upon the stage melted away. _Creon_, with his hopeless cry upon his lips, "Death! Death! Only death!" moved with a weary languor toward the palace and slowly disappeared in the darkness beyond the ruined portal. There was a pause before the chorus uttered its final solemn words. And then--not as though obeying a stage direction, but rather as though moved severally by the longing in their own b.r.e.a.s.t.s to get away from that place of sorrow--those others also departed: going slowly, in little groups and singly, until at last the stage was bare.

The audience was held bound in reality by the spell which had seemed to bind the chorus after _Creon's_ exit. Some moments pa.s.sed before that spell was broken, before the eight thousand hearts beat normally again and the eight thousand throats burst forth into noisy applause--which was less, perhaps, an expression of grat.i.tude for an artistic creation rarely equalled than of the natural rebound of the spirit after so tense a strain. In another moment the seats were emptied and the mult.i.tude was flowing down the tiers--a veritable torrent of humanity--into the pit: there to be packed for a while in a solid ma.s.s before it could work its way out through the insufficient exits and so return again to our modern world.

And then the Roman Theatre--with a fresh legend of beauty added to the roll of its centuries--was left desert beneath the bright silence of the eternal stars.

SAINT-REMY-DE-PROVENCE, _December, 1894._

THE END

FOOTNOTES