There is no orchestra except in those theaters in which the performance as in opéra bouffes and musical comedies requires one. During the entr’actes Frenchmen stand in their orchestra places and carefully look over the audience who have remained in their seats, with their opera-glasses, until the stage manager pounds his staff solemnly for the rising of the curtain. It is the custom, too, to use hideous drop curtains between the acts covered with advertisements of perfumery, automobiles, and of winter and summer resorts.
But if there are many little discomforts within Parisians theaters, the interiors themselves are rich in works of art. The foyers contain superb busts and rare pictures. There are ceilings, mellowed in color by time, which were painted by the best masters. If many of these auditoriums are uncomfortable, they possess a charm and a dignity which age alone can give.
Take for example the old Palais Royal. This famous old playhouse has a cozy old-fashioned auditorium and a foyer with a quaint gallery, and a rich frieze which illustrates the history of the theater since the day when Mademoiselle de Montansier in 1789 bought the Beaujolais, a little playhouse constructed as a théâtre des marionnettes. From that year the old theater existed under many names, until in 1848 it adopted the title of the “Théâtre du Palais Royal,” a name which it still retains. One feels within it that but for the modern costumes of the audience he might be living in the time of the First Empire. The windows of the foyer look out upon the dimly lighted courtyard of the palace of Richelieu.
Like the ruddy back of some old violin, the interior of the Théâtre du Palais Royal has become rich and polished by the hands of time. It has become a Parisian institution, beloved by men and women of culture because of its associations.
If you ask a Parisian at which theaters you can see the best plays, he will invariably answer: The Théâtre Antoine and the Théâtre Français. He adds the latter as a matter of habit, for the French have been brought up for generations to regard the immortal house of the great Molière as the best stage.
It is there he received his first impression of the theater when in his childhood as a reward of merit he was taken to the Français to see classical plays. He was told it was the best theater, and this impression has remained with him since infancy. For French children are taken as a matter of education to the Français and the Odéon.
True, the Comédie Française possesses finished actors; true, also, they are trying to keep up traditions there more than anywhere else; true, as well, the scenery and costumes are of the best. But it is also true that many of the good actors of the Français have in late years deserted the house of Molière for freer fields, that the managers have refused scores of good plays in late years which have been subsequent successes at other theaters, and that most of the present actors of the Français, wishing to create a “genre,” or shall we call it a mannerism, of their own, do so at the expense of the true character of the rôle which they play. Many of them who have become celebrated refuse to play small parts and, what is even more to be regretted, disdain to learn the classical repertoire which is the raison d’être of the house of Molière.
A DRESS REHEARSAL AT THE THÉÂTRE FRANÇAIS
But if the Français does not choose to present new plays and encourage modern authorship for which purposes the government gives it yearly a large subvention, other theaters do, and the public have filled them.