On the part of the Imperial family, as we have already said, everything has been done for the Russian stage that could possibly be done, and is done no where else. The extremest liberality favors the artists, schools are provided in order to raise them from the domain of gross buffoonery to that of true art, the most magnificent premiums are given to the best, actors are made equal in rank to officers of state, they are held only to twenty-five years' service, reckoning from their debut,—and finally, they receive for the rest of their lives a pension equal to their full salaries. High rewards are given to Russian star-actors, in order if possible to draw talent of every sort forth from the dry steppes of native art. The Russian actors are compelled on pain of punishment to go regularly to the German theater, with a view to their improvement, and in order to make this as effective as may be, enormous compensations attract the best German stars to St. Petersburg. And yet all this is useless, and the Russian theater is not raised above the dignity of a workshop. Only the comic side of the national character, a burlesque and droll simplicity, is admirably represented by actors whose skill and the scope of whose talents may he reckoned equal to the Germans in the same line. But in the higher walks of the drama they are worthless. The people have neither cultivation nor sentiment for serious works, while the poets to produce them, and the actors to represent them, are alike wanting.
Immediately after the submission of Poland in 1831, the theaters, permanent and itinerant, were closed. The plan was conceived of not allowing them to be reöpened until they could be occupied by Russian performers. But as the Government recovered from its first rage, this was found to be impracticable. The officers of the garrisons in Poland, however numerous, could never support Russian theaters, and besides, where were the performers to come from? In Warsaw, however, it was determined to force a theater into existence, and a Russian newspaper was already established there. The power of the Muscovites has done great things, built vast fortresses and destroyed vaster, but it could not accomplish a Russian theater at Warsaw. Even the paper died before it had attained a regular life, although it cost a great deal of money.
Finally came the permission to reöpen the Polish theater, and indeed the caprice which was before violent against it, was now exceedingly favorable, but of course not without collateral purposes. The scanty theater on the Krasinski place, which was alone in Warsaw, except the remote circus and the little theater of King Stanislaus Augustus, was given up, and the sum of four millions of florins ($1,600,000) devoted to the erection of two large and magnificent theaters. The superintendence of the work of building and the management of the performances was, according to the Russian system, intrusted to one General Rautenstrauch, a man seventy years old, and worn out both in mind and body. The two theaters were erected under one roof, and arranged on the grandest and most splendid scale. The edifice is opposite the City Hall, occupies a whole side of the main public place, and is above 750 feet in length. The pit in each is supported by a series of immense, stupid, square pilasters, such as architecture has seldom witnessed out of Russia. Over these pilasters stands the first row of boxes supported by beautifully wrought Corinthian columns, and above these rise three additional rows. The edifice is about 160 feet high and is the most colossal building in Warsaw. As it was designed to treat the actors in military fashion and according to Russian style, the building was laid out like barracks and about seven hundred persons live in it, most of them employed about the theater. The two stages were built by a German architect under the inspection of the General whose peremptory suggestions were frequent and injurious. Both the great theater as it is called, which has four rows of boxes, and can contain six thousand auditors, and the Varieté theater which is very much smaller, are fitted out with all sorts of apparatus that ever belonged to a stage. In fact, new machinery has in many cases been invented for them and proved totally useless. The Russian often hits upon queer notions when he tries to show his gifts.
On one side a very large and strong bridge has been erected leading from the street to the stage, to be used whenever the piece requires large bodies of cavalry to make their appearance, and there are machines that can convey persons with the swiftness of lightning down from the sky above the stage, a distance of 56 feet. A machine for which a ballet has been composed surpasses everything I ever saw in its size; it serves to transport eighty persons together on a seeming cloud from the roof to the foot-lights. I was astonished by it when I first beheld it although I had seen the machines of the grand opera at Paris: the second time I reflected that it alone cost 40,000 florins [$16,000].
Under the management of two Russian Generals, who have hitherto been at the head of the establishment, a vast deal has in this way been accomplished for mere external show.
The great Russian theatre of St. Petersburg has served for a model, and accordingly nothing has really been improved except that part of the performance which is farthest removed from genuine art, namely the ballet. That fact is that out of Paris the ballet is nowhere so splendid as in the great theater at Warsaw, not even at St. Petersburg, for the reason that the Russian is inferior to the Pole in physical beauty and grace. Heretofore the corps of the St. Petersburg ballet has twice been composed of Poles, but this arrangement has been abandoned as derogatory to the national honor. The sensual attractions of the ballet render it the most important thing in the theater. A great school for dancers has been established, where pupils may be found from three to eighteen years old. It is painful to see the little creatures, hardly weaned from their mothers' breasts—twisted and tortured for the purposes of so doubtful an occupation as dancing. The school contains about two hundred pupils, all of whom occasionally appear together on the boards, in the ballet of Charis and Flora, for instance, when they receive a trifling compensation. For the rest the whole ballet corps are bound to daily practice.
The taste of the Russians has made prominent in the ballet exactly those peculiarities which are least to its credit. It must be pronounced exaggerated and lascivious. Aside from these faults, which may be overlooked as the custom of the country, we must admit that the dancing is uncommonly good.
The greater the care of the management for the ballet, the more injurious is its treatment of the drama. This is melancholy for the artists and especially those who have come to the imperial theater from the provinces, who are truly respectable and are equally good in comedy and tragedy. The former has been less shackled than the latter for the reason that it turns upon domestic life. But tragedy is most frightfully treated by the political censorship, so that a Polish poet can hardly expect to see his pieces performed on the stage of his native country. Hundreds of words and phrases such as freedom, avenging sword, slave, oppression, father-land, cannot be permitted and are stricken out. Accordingly nothing but the trumpery of mere penny-a-liners is brought forward, though this sometimes assumes an appearance of originality. These abortions remain on the stage only through the talent of the artists, the habit of the public to expect nothing beyond dullness and stupidity in the drama, and finally, the severe regulation which forbids any mark of disapprobation under pain of imprisonment. The best plays are translated from the French, but they are never the best of their kind. To please the Russians only those founded on civic life are chosen, and historical subjects are excluded. Princely personages are not allowed to be introduced on the stage, nor even high officers of state, such as ministers and generals. In former times the Emperor of China was once allowed to pass, but more recently the Bey of Tunis was struck out and converted into an African nobleman. A tragedy is inadmissible in any case, and should one be found with nothing objectionable but its name, it is called drama.
In such circumstances we would suppose that the actors would lose all interest in their profession. But this is not the case. At least the cultivated portion of the public at Warsaw never go to the theater to see a poetic work of art, but only to see and enjoy the skill of the performers. Of course there is no such thing as theatrical criticism at Warsaw; but everybody rejoices when the actors succeed in causing the wretchedness of the piece to be forgotten. The universal regret for the wretched little theater on the Krasinski place, where Suczkowska, afterward Mad. Halpert, founded her reputation in the character of the Maid of Orleans, is the best criticism on the present state of the drama.
The Russians take great delight in the most trivial pieces. Even Prince Paskiewich sometimes stays till the close of the last act. To judge by the direction of his opera-glass, which is never out of his hand, he has the fortune to discover poetry elsewhere than on the stage. In truth the Warsaw boxes are adorned by beautiful faces. Even the young princess Jablonowska is not the most lovely.