(47.) We perceive that an opera is an outline of a magnificent spectacle, of which it serves to give an idea.
I cannot understand how the opera, with such perfect music and quite a regal expenditure, has been able to tire me.[87]
There are some passages in an opera which make us long for others; it sometimes happens we wish it was all over: this is the fault of the decorations, or of a want of action or interest.
An opera is not even to this day a poem, for it contains nought but verses; nor is it a spectacle, since machinery has disappeared through the dexterous management of Amphion and his kindred;[88] it is a concert of voices assisted by instruments. We deceive ourselves and acquire a bad taste when we state, as has been done, that machinery is only an amusement fit for children and suitable for puppet-shows.[89] Machines increase and embellish poetical fiction and maintain among the spectators that gentle illusion in which the entire pleasure of a theatre consists, to which it also adds a feeling of wonder. There is no need of flights, or cars, or changes when Bérénice or Pénélope[90] are represented, but they are necessary in an opera, as the characteristic of such a spectacle is to enchant the mind as well as the ear and the eye.
(48.) Some busybodies[91] have erected a theatre and machinery, composed ballets, verses, and music; theirs is the whole spectacle, even to the room where the performance was held, from the roof to the very foundation of the four walls. Who has any doubt that the hunt on the water,[92] the delights of “La Table,”[93] the marvels of the Labyrinth[94] were also invented by them? I think so, at least, by the agitation they are in and by the self-satisfied air with which they applaud their success. Unless I am deceived, they have not contributed anything to a festival so splendid, so magnificent, and so long kept up, and which one person planned and paid for; so that I admire two things: the ease and quietness of him who directed everything, and the fuss and gesticulations of those who did nothing.[95]
(49.) The critics, or those who, thinking themselves so, decide deliberately and decisively about all public representations, group and divide themselves into different parties, each of whom admires a certain poem or a certain music and damns all others, urged on by a wholly different motive than public interest or justice. The ardour with which they defend their prejudices damages the opposite party as well as their own set. These men discourage poets and musicians by a thousand contradictions, and delay the progress of arts and sciences, by depriving them of the advantages to be obtained by that emulation and freedom which many excellent masters, each in their own way and according to their own genius, might display in the execution of some very fine works.[96]
(50.) What is the reason that we laugh so freely in a theatre but are ashamed to weep? Is it less natural to be melted by what excites pity than to burst into laughter at what is comical? Is it the alteration of our features that checks us? It is more visible in immoderate laughter than in the most passionate grief; and we avert our faces when we laugh or weep in the presence of people of rank, or of all those whom we respect. Is it because we are reluctant to let it be seen we are tender-hearted, or to show any emotion, especially at an imaginary subject, and by which it seems we are imposed upon? But without quoting those austere men, or those who do not care for the opinions of the world,[97] who think that excessive laughter or tears betray weakness, and who forbid both, what is it that we look for in tragedy? Is it to laugh? Is truth not depicted there as vividly as in comedy? And have we not to feel that those things are realities in either case before we are moved? Or is it so easily to be pleased, and is no verisimilitude needed? It is not thought odd to hear a whole theatre ring with laughter at some passage of a comedy, but, on the contrary, it implies that it was funny, and very naturally performed; therefore the extreme restraint every one puts on himself not to shed tears and the affected laughter with which one tries to disguise them, clearly prove that the natural result of lofty tragedy should be to make us all weep without concealment and publicly, and without any other hindrance than wiping our eyes; moreover, after we have agreed to indulge in our passion, it will be found there is often less room to fear we should weep in a theatre than that we should be tired out there.
(51.) Tragedy, from its very beginning, oppresses the spectatorʼs feelings, and, whilst being acted, scarcely allows him liberty to breathe and leisure to recover, or if it leaves him some respite, it is only to be plunged again into fresh abysses and new alarms. Through pity he is led to terror, or reciprocally through terror to pity; it leads him through tears, sobs, uncertainty, expectation, fear, surprises and horror to a catastrophe. It should not, therefore, be a collection of pretty sentiments, tender declarations, gallant conversations, agreeable pictures, soft words, or something comical enough to produce laughter, followed, in truth, by a final scene in which the “mutineers” do not listen to reason,[98] and in which for decencyʼs sake there is at last some blood spilled, and some unfortunate manʼs life taken.[99]
(52.) It is not sufficient for the manners of the stage not to be bad; they should be decent and instructive. Some comical subjects are so low, so mean, or even so dull and so insignificant, that a poet should not be permitted to write about them, nor could an audience by any possibility be diverted by them. A peasant or an intoxicated man may furnish some scenes for a farce writer; but they can scarcely be personages of true comedy; for how can they be the basis of the main action of a comedy? Perhaps it may be said that “such characters are natural.” Then, according to a similar rule, the attention of an entire audience may be occupied by a lackey whistling, or a sick person on his bed-chair, or by a drunken man snoring and being sick; for can anything be more natural?[100] An effeminate dandy rises late, spends part of the day at his toilet, looks at himself in the glass, perfumes himself, puts patches on his face, receives his letters and answers them. But such a character brought on the stage, made to stop for any length of time, during one or two acts, and depicted as natural and as like the original as possible, will be as dull and as tedious as it well can be.[101]
(53.) Plays and novels, in my opinion, may be made as useful as they are pernicious. They exhibit so many grand examples of constancy, virtue, tenderness and disinterestedness; so many fine and perfect characters, that when young people cast their eyes on what they see around them and find nothing but unworthy objects, very much inferior to those they just admired, it is not to be wondered at that they cannot have the least inclination for them.