Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 61, No. 376, February, 1847

Less than a century ago Paris contained but four theatres. These were, the French Comedy, the Royal Academy of Music or Grand Opera, the Italian Comedy, where vaudevilles and comic operas were performed, and the Theatre de la Foire. The two last named were the ancestors of the present Opera Comique. "Up to 1593," says Mr. Hervey, "the actors of the Théatres de la Foire St. Germain and St. Laurent consisted of dogs, cats, monkeys, and even rats, some of the latter animals being so admirably trained as to dance a grand ballet on a table, whilst one in particular, a white rat from Lapland, executed a saraband with surpassing grace." In 1716 the manager of one of these theatres obtained leave to give musical performances. This was the origin of the Opera Comique, which, forty years later, was amalgamated with the Italian comedy at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, whence, in 1783, the united companies transferred themselves to the Salle Favart. To the four theatres above enumerated, a few others were added during the reigns of Louis XV. and his successor, but they were of little note, and the increase in the number of theatrical establishments was unimportant until the revolution. Then license was universal, and no special one was required to open theatres. In 1791 a prodigious number were established, and, for some years afterwards, nearly fifty, large and small, existed in Paris. In the time of the empire twenty-eight of these remained, until Napoleon issued an edict reducing them to ten. At the present day the French capital contains twenty-two theatres, including the new Théatre Montpensier, the privilege for which was conceded to Alexandre Dumas at the request of the prince whose name it bears. Besides these there are a number of petty playhouses outside the barriers, at Batignolles, Belleville, and similar places, and Mr. Hervey informs us that a license has just been granted for a third French opera-house. Play-loving as the population of Paris undoubtedly is, it must be admitted that ample provision is made for its gratification.

The natural classification of the more important of the Parisian theatres, about fifteen in number, is under four heads: opera—tragedy, comedy, and drama—vaudeville—melodrama. The first division includes the French opera, the Italians, the Opera Comique; the second, the Français and the Odeon; at the Porte St. Martin and Ambigu Comique, melodrama is the staple commodity, varied, however, with performances of a lighter kind; whilst vaudevilles, broad farces, and short comedies constitute the chief stock in trade of the remainder. At many of the theatres an entire change in the style of the performances is of no unfrequent occurrence. We have known the Gaité in the dolefuls, and the Porte St. Martin abandoning its scaffolds, trap-doors, and other melodramatic horrors, for fun, farce, and ballet. As a regular thing, dancing is only to be seen at the Grand Opera. The license of each theatre specifies the nature of the performances allowed it, but this is a matter difficult exactly to define, and the rule is easy of evasion. A better check, perhaps, is the jealousy with which one theatre beholds another infringing on its attributes. Thus, some years ago, at the Français, where the performances should be confined to tragedy, high comedy, and drama, a play interspersed with songs was brought out. The Vaudeville viewed this as a usurpation of its privileges, and forthwith produced a piece called "La Tragédie au Vaudeville," saying that if the Français sang vaudevilles, the Vaudeville was justified in singing tragedy.

There are in Paris four Theatres Royal, subsidised by the French government to the extent of about twelve hundred thousand francs, or nearly £50,000. Rather more than the half of this sum goes to the Grand Opera, nor is it too much, if we consider the enormous salaries paid to the singers and dancers at that theatre, and the low prices of admission; the best place in the house costing less than a pit-ticket at the Italian opera in London. The Opera Comique receives nearly ten thousand pounds a-year, the Français eight, the Odeon four. The other theatres do as well as they can without subsidies, and, as in this country, are losing or profitable concerns according to the skill of the manager, to the merits of the actors and plays produced; and, oftener still, according to the caprice and good pleasure of the public. Their prices of admission are generally higher in proportion than those of the larger theatres. It must be admitted that their performances are often more amusing.

Although one or two attempts were made at earlier periods, the permanent establishment of the opera in France cannot be traced further back than the reign of Louis XIV., when Cardinal Mazarine had the happy idea of introducing it, in hopes of amusing that most unamuseable of monarchs. The novelty found great favour, both with sovereign and courtiers. Performances took place in the king's private apartments; the Marquis of Sourdeac, a man of immense wealth and considerable mechanical skill, constructed a theatre in his Norman castle, and brought out the "Toison d'Or," with words by Corneille. At last an opera company was regularly installed in a building in the Rue Vaugirard, and here, upon one occasion, when the King was present, the Prince of Condé, and other great nobles, danced upon the stage amongst the actors. "The first opera in which female dancers were introduced was the Triumph of Love, played at St. Germains before Louis XIV. On the occasion of this brilliant fête, several ladies of the court were amongst the performers, and it was resolved that they should in future be replaced by professional danseuses, the female characters in the ballet having previously been sustained by men." Lully, the celebrated composer, was manager of the opera house, where he amassed a very large fortune. He made himself greatly dreaded by his orchestra, whom he used to belabour over the head with his fiddle. In this manner he is said to have broken scores of violins, and one unlucky clarionet-player, in particular, who was never either in time or tune, cost him a vast number of instruments. They shivered like glass upon the obdurate noddle of the faulty Orpheus, and Lully swore he had never met with so vile a musician, or so hard a head. After a time it was discovered that the offender wore a leaden lining to his periwig. Louis XIV. never ceased to take a most paternal interest in his opera company. He went so far as to regulate and write out with his own hand, the salaries allowed to the performers. Those were not days when a singer was better paid than the general of an army, or a minister of state; when each note of a tenor's voice was worth a corresponding one, and of no small figure, issued from the Bank of France. The salary of a first rate tenor or barytone, was then less than is now given to a chorister or walking gentleman. Sixty pounds were the highest yearly sum granted by Louis XIV. to the best opera singer. The first female dancer received thirty-six pounds! We are quite sure, that the waiting maid of an Elssler or a Taglioni, would turn up her nose at such a pittance. Louis XIV. was gathered to his fathers, and soon after his death matters improved a little. Still the pay was poor enough. But what of that? Those were the palmy days of the heroes and heroines of the foot lamps. For the disciples of Thespis, Paris was a paradise. True, when dead they were refused Christian burial, but they cared little about that, sinners that they were, for, whilst living, courted, flattered, and cherished, they amassed, or more often spent, princely fortunes. During the dissolute half century preceding the revolution, they were at the summit of their prosperity. High born dames, even princesses of blood royal, culled their favourites from amongst the knights of the buskin; actresses, dancers, mere figurantes, saw the wealthiest and proudest languishing at their feet, and contending for their smiles. That was the time when Vestris, the God of Dance, as he called himself, said publicly, and with the most perfect conviction, that there were only three great men in Europe, the King of Prussia, M. de Voltaire, and himself! "There are roses as well as thorns in my profession," said he to a friend who expatiated on the happiness of being a public favourite. "I assure you, sometimes I think I would rather be a mere captain of cavalry than what I am." "Old chronicles," says Albert Cler, in a spirited sketch of the French opera, "tell us of the extraordinary luxury, in carriages, liveries, furniture, and jewels, displayed by the goddesses of the opera. The Prince d'Henin passed a contract with Sophie Arnould, by a clause of which he engaged to supply her with a new equipage every month. A nymph who flourished in the time of the Directory, the celebrated Clotilde, enjoyed, thanks to the munificence of an Italian prince and of a Spanish admiral, an income of two millions, and managed, notwithstanding this royal revenue, to get into debt to the tune of some five hundred thousand francs yearly." Earlier than this, by fifty years, the Camargo and the Sallé were all the rage. The latter, Mr. Hervey tells us, paid a visit to London, and there, at one of her performances, gold and bank-notes were showered upon the stage, to the amount of £800. Her annual salary at the French opera was less than £150. The suppers of Mademoiselle Guimard, another of the fairy-footed sisterhood, whose bust, bequeathed by her to the opera, is still the principal ornament of the dancers' green-room, were renowned throughout Europe. They occurred thrice in the week; the first was attended by the most distinguished courtiers and nobles, the second by artists and by men of letters and learning, the third, which deserved the name of an orgie, by the prettiest women she could collect.

Few of the amateurs, who, armed with double-barrelled telescopes, contemplate from box or stall the agile bounds and graceful evolutions of the houris of the ballet, have any conception of the amount of labour and torture gone through, before even an approach to perfection in the Terpsichorean art is accomplished. Alberic Second, the very witty author of a very amusing book (albeit in thorough French taste) "Les Petits Mysteres de l'Opera," to whose pages Mr. Hervey confesses himself largely indebted, gives many curious details on this subject. An immense amount of courage, patience, resignation, and toil, is necessary, to become even a middling dancer. The poor children—for dancing, above all things, must be learnt young—commence with the stocks, heel to heel and knees outwards. Half an hour of this, and another species of martyrdom begins. One foot is placed upon a bar which is grasped by the contrary hand. This is called se casser, to break one's self. After this agreeable process come the thousand and one steps, essential to an opera dancer. "Such," says an imaginary danseuse from whom M. Second professes to receive his information, "are the agreeable elements of the art of dancing. And do not suppose that these rude fatigues are of short duration. They are perpetual, and on that condition only does a dancer retain her activity and suppleness. A week's idleness must be atoned for by two months' double labour. The opera-dancer realises the fable of Sisyphus and his rock. She resembles the horse, who pays with his repose, his flesh and his liberty, the rapid victories of the racecourse. I have seen Mademoiselle Taglioni, after receiving a two hours' lesson from her father, fall helpless upon the floor, and allow herself to be undressed, spunged, and again attired, without the least consciousness of what passed. The agility and wonderful bounds with which she, that same evening, delighted the public, were at this price." Besides these terrible fatigues, dancers often run serious personal risks. So, at least, says the author of the "Petits Mysteres" who, as a journalist and frequenter of the coulisses, is excellent authority. He cannot resist a joke, but it is easy to sift the facts from their admixture of burlesque exaggerations. "By dint of incurring simulated dangers, the dancer accustoms herself to real peril, as a soldier in war time becomes habituated to murder and pillage. She suspends herself from wires, sits upon pasteboard clouds, disappears through trap doors, comes in by the chimney and goes out by the window. In the first act of the Peri there is so dangerous a leap, that I consider Carlotta Grisi risks her life every time she takes it. Let M. Petipa be once awkward, or even absent, and Carlotta will break her head upon the boards. I know an Englishman who attends every performance of this ballet. He is persuaded it will be fatal to Carlotta, and would not for the world miss the catastrophe. It is the same man who, for three years, followed Carter and Van Amburgh, always hoping that a day would come when the animals would sup with their masters, and upon their masters." Considering the preparatory ordeal and frequent perils of their profession, dancers fairly earn the money and honours paid to them. Crowned heads have condescended to treat them as equals. At Stuttgart, we are told, Taglioni, towards the commencement of her career, won the affections of the Queen of Wurtemberg, who shed tears at her departure. At Munich, the King of Bavaria introduced her to his Queen, with the words, "Mademoiselle, je vous présente ma femme." "At Vienna she was once called before the curtain twenty-two times in one evening, and was drawn to her hotel, in her own carriage, by forty young men of the first Austrian families." Every one remembers the enthusiasm excited by Fanny Elssler amongst the matter-of-fact Yankees. During her last engagement at the French opera her salary was eighty thousand francs a-year. Taglioni and Elssler personify the two styles into which the present school of dancing is divided, the ballonné and the tacqueté. The former is lightness combined with grace, when the dancer seems to float upon air. The tacqueté is vivacity and rapidity; little quick steps on the points of the feet.

The principal singers now engaged at the French opera are Duprez and Gardoni, tenors; Baroilhet, the barytone; Brémond and Serda, who have succeeded, if they could not replace, the celebrated bass, Levasseur; and Madame Stoltz. Duprez is well known in England as a singer of great energy and admirable method, but whose powers have grievously suffered from over-exertion. Halevy and Meyerbeer should be indicted as the assassins of his once beautiful voice. The five tremendous acts of Robert le Diable, and the stunning accompaniments of the author of the Juive, are destructive to any tenor. In Paris, Duprez is still a favourite, especially in Guillaume Tell, considered his crack part. Gardoni, who has now been two years on the opera boards, has replaced him in some of his characters. This young singer has a very fresh and melodious voice, great taste and feeling, but lacks power, and, it is to be feared, will share the fate of most of his predecessors, and soon succumb to the thundering orchestra of the Academie Royale.14 As Mr. Hervey very justly observes, there is no medium for a tenor at the French opera. He must either scream, in order to be heard above the music, or be wholly inaudible. Baroilhet is unquestionably the best of the present opera company. His acting and singing are alike good, and his voice, of a less delicate texture than a tenor, has preserved its vigour and freshness. It would be unfair to estimate his abilities by his performance, some two years ago, at the London Opera-house. He was then in ill health, and was heard to great disadvantage. He has been fifteen years on the stage, but only the last five of them have been passed at Paris. He previously sang at various Italian theatres, chiefly at the San Carlo. Donizetti's Roberto Devereux and Belisario were composed expressly for him. Madame Rosine Stoltz, whose portrait, a very fair resemblance, is prefixed to Mr. Hervey's sketch of her operatic career, is a highly dramatic singer and an excellent actress, but her voice, of unusually extensive range, has a metallic sharpness which to our ear is not pleasant. She possesses a good stage face and figure, and her performance is most effective both in tragic and comic parts, although she is usually preferred in the former. We believe she has never sung in England, perhaps on account of the short respite allowed her by the French opera—but one month in the year. She is said to be a god-daughter of the Duchess of Berri. Various notices of her life have been published, but there is little agreement between them. It is generally understood that her early years were unprosperous, and that she endured much suffering and misfortune. If so, she learned mercy from persecution, for she is now noted for her benevolence, and for the generous assistance she affords to the needy amongst her comrades.

Notwithstanding the efforts and merits of these three or four singers, the French opera is in a declining state. A numerous company is not always synonymous with a strong one. The present manager, M. Léon Pillet, has been accused of disgusting, dismissing, or omitting to engage, some of the best singers of the day. Poultier, the Rouen cooper, a tenor of the Duprez school, is cited as an instance. He was engaged by a former management at a thousand francs a-month for eight months in the year, but, although much liked by the public, he was kept in the background, owing partly, it was reported, to his own unassuming character, and partly to certain green-room intrigues and jealousies. During his vacation he starred in the provinces, earning four or five times the amount of his Paris salary. In his native town he was carried in triumph, and treated to an interminable serenade, whose performers, according to the deposition of our friend, M. Second, relieved each other every two hours, and kept up their harmony for a whole day and night. Roger, of the Opera Comique, is another singer whose proper place is at the Grand Opera, he is young, handsome, a good actor, and since Duprez' decline, the best French tenor extant.

At Paris theatres, and especially at the opera, the next best thing to having a good company is to have a good claque. Such, at least, is the theory of the actors and managers of the present day. The more rusty the tenor, the more wrinkled the prima donna, the greater the need of an army of iron-fisted, brazen-visaged hirelings to get artificial applause, and inoculate the public with their factitious enthusiasm. In this latter respect they now rarely succeed. The device is stale, the trick detected, and yet the practice is maintained. It takes in no one. Even raw provincials and newly imported foreigners are up to the stratagem before they have been a week in Paris. The press inveighs against it; audiences, far from being duped, often remain silent when most pleased, lest they should be confounded with the claqueurs. But no manager dares to strike the first blow at this troublesome abuse. There is a regular contractor for the opera claque, receiving so much a month from each actor. Duprez has always refused to submit to this extortion, but he is, or was, the only exception to the rule. The contractor has an organised regiment under his orders, mustering sixty strong. Every opera night, before the opening of the doors, they assemble at a low coffee-house in the Rue Favart, to receive his orders for the evening, and thence follow him to the theatre, into which they are admitted through a private entrance. Some of them are paid for applauding—these are the chiefs, the veteran clappers; others applaud for a free admission, whilst a third class are content to do their best for the good of the house, and to pay half-price for their tickets. The distribution of these bravo-battalions, these knights of the chandelier, as they are called, from the post of their main body being in the centre of the pit, requires much skill and judgment. The captain of the claque is an important personage, respected by his subordinates, courted by the actors, and skilled in the strategy of his profession, which yields him a handsome income. A tap of his cane on the ground is the signal for applause. The chatouilleur, or tickler, a variety of the genus claqueur, is in vogue chiefly at the smaller theatres. His duty is to laugh, and, if possible, infect his neighbours with his mirth. He stands upon a lower grade of the social step-ladder than the claqueur; very unjustly, as it appears to us, his scope for the display of original genius being decidedly larger. How delicately may he modulate his merriment, and control his cachinnations, establishing a regular gamut, rising from the titter to the guffaw, abating from the irrepressible horse-laugh to the gratified snigger. He may himself be a better actor than those for whose benefit his mirth is feigned. And when, with aching ribs and a moist pocket-handkerchief—for an accomplished chatouilleur must be able to laugh till he cries—he retires from the scene enlivened by his efforts, it is with the proud consciousness that his contagious chuckle, as much as author's jokes or buffo's comicalities, has contributed to set the theatre in a roar.

Boileau said that

Le Français, né malin, créa le vaudeville,

and Boileau was right, although, when he wrote the line, he referred to a particular style of satirical song, and not to the farces and comedies, intermixed with couplets and snatches of music, that have since borne the name. The Frenchman not only created the vaudeville, but he reserved to himself its monopoly. Essentially French, it is inimitable on any other stage. Of the many attempts made, none have succeeded in catching its peculiar spirit. The Englishman has his farce, the German his possenspiel, the Spaniard his saynete, but the vaudeville will only flourish on French soil, or, at least, in the hands of French authors and actors. Piron and Lesage were its fathers; their mantle has been handed down through succeeding generations, worn alternately by a Piis and a Barré, by a Panard, whom Marmontel called the La Fontaine of the vaudeville, and a Desaugiers, until, in the present day, it rests upon the shoulders of Scribe, and his legion of rivals and imitators. With the exception of the four theatres royal and the Italian opera, there is not a playhouse in Paris where it is not performed, although in each it takes a different tone, to which the actors, as they change from one stage to another, insensibly adapt themselves. Thus the four principal vaudeville theatres have each their own style. There is an immeasurable distance between the vaudeville grivois, the laxity, not to say the positive indecency, of the Palais Royal—supported by the double-entendres of Ravel and Madame Lemenil, and the buffoonery of Alcide Tousez—and the neat and correct little comedies of the Gymnase, so admirably enacted by a Ferville, a Numa, and a Rose Chéri. To the latter theatre, the Parisian matrons conduct their daughters; the former they themselves hesitate to visit. The substance is not invariably more praiseworthy at the one than at the other, but the form is always more decorous.

In discussing the vaudeville, the theatre bearing that name naturally claims the precedence, to which the excellence of its present company also gives it some title. Until the year 1792, there existed at Paris no theatre specially appropriated to this style of performance, which was given at the Comédie Italienne. It attracted crowds; and Sedaine, the composer, vexed to see it preferred to his comic operas, wrote a couplet against it, exhibiting more spleen than poetical merit. The attack, however, together with the refusal of a small pension which he had claimed from the Italian Comedy, to whose treasury he had brought millions of francs, irritated Piis, the vaudevilliste then in vogue, the Scribe of his day. In conjunction with Barré and a few actors, he opened a theatre in the Rue de Chartres. The enterprise was crowned with complete success, and an able company was soon assembled. Mr. Hervey has collected some droll anecdotes of the actors who flourished under this management, although they lose part of their point by translation. Chapelle, a short stout man, "with eyes that were continually opening and shutting, thick black eyebrows, a mouth always half open, and a pair of legs resembling in shape the feet of an elephant," was remarkable for his credulity, and his comrades took particular delight in mystifying him. "Seveste, who had just returned from fulfilling an engagement at Rouen, told the unfortunate dupe that, during his stay in that town, he had succeeded in taming a carp so perfectly, that it followed him about like a dog; adding, that he was much grieved at having lost it. 'How did that happen?' said Chapelle, greatly interested. 'Why,' replied Seveste, 'one evening I took it to my dressing-room at the theatre; as I was going home after the performance, a terrible storm came on, and my poor carp, in trying to leap a gutter, fell in and was drowned.'—'How very unlucky!' cried Chapelle; 'I always thought a carp could swim like a fish!' As he grew older, however, Chapelle, weary of being continually hoaxed, made up his mind to believe nothing, and carried his scepticism so far as to reply to a friend's anxious inquiries after his health, 'Ask somebody else that question, my fine fellow; you can't take me in now.'" Another of the company, Carpentier, drank away his memory, forgot his old parts, and could learn no new ones. For a long time he did not act, but at last ventured to appear in a procession, as a barber who had nothing to say. The audience immediately recognised their old favourite, and applauded him for several minutes after he left the stage. Once more behind the scenes, he exclaimed, "Ils m'ont reconnu! Ils m'ont reconnu!" and burst into tears. "In one of his parts, Carpentier had some couplets to sing, of which the first ran as follows:—