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 mass; and in certain of the strange sharp combinations of light and shade gave an eerie suggestion of such a bodiless assemblage as might have come together in the time of the Terror at midnight in the Place du Grêve. 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 Félibres. 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 space 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 abutting 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 god—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 Bréval, in flowing white draperies, who sang the "Hymn to Pallas Athene," by Croze, set to music by Saint-Saëns—the composer himself, hidden away with his musicians beneath the branches of the fig-tree, directing the orchestra.
The subduing effect produced by Mademoiselle Bréval'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 Frédéric 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 Bréval, standing solitary in that great open space, with the play of golden light upon her, became also heroic. With the characters in "Œdipus" 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.