"It was Voltaire that taught the French to despise Shakespeare. He called him a barbarian, and the French believe that saying true to the present time. Yet he did not hesitate to steal Othello when he wanted to write Zaïre, or, rather, he went out on the boulevards, picked out the first good-looking barber he could find, dressed him up in Eastern garments, and then fancied that he had created a French Othello."
"I saw Mounet-Sully at one of the performances of your Othello" I remarked. "I wonder what he thought of his own personation of Orosmane when he witnessed the real tragedy?"
"Had Mounet-Sully been able to appreciate Othello" answered Rossi, "he never could have brought himself to personate Orosmane."
Some one then asked Rossi what he thought of the Comédie Frarçaise.
"The Comédie Française," said Rossi, "like every school of acting that is founded on art, and not on Nature, is falling into decadence. It is ruled by tradition, not by the realities of life and passion. One incident that I beheld at a rehearsal at that theatre in 1855 revealed the usual process by which their great performers study their art. I was then fulfilling an engagement in Paris with Ristori, and, though only twenty-two years of age, I was her leading man and stage-manager as well. The Italian troupe was requested to perform at the Comédie Française on the occasion of the benefit of which I have spoken, and we were to give one act of Maria Stuart, When we arrived at the theatre to commence our rehearsal the company was in the act of rehearsing a scene from Tartuffe which was to form part of the programme on the same occasion. M. Bressant was the Tartuffe, and Madeleine Brohan was to personate Elmire. They came to the point where Tartuffe lays his hand on the knee of Elmire. Thereupon, Mademoiselle Brohan turned to the stage-manager and asked, 'What am I to do now?' 'Well,' said that functionary, 'Madame X—— used to bite her lips and look sideways at the offending hand; Madame Z—— used to blush and frown, etc.' But neither of them said, What would a woman like Elmire—a virtuous woman—do if so insulted by a sneaking hypocrite? They took counsel of tradition, not of Nature. In fact, the French stage is given over to sensation dramas and the opéra bouffe, and such theatres as the Comédie Française and the Odéon have but a forced and artificial existence."
"Not a word against the opéra bouffe!" remarked one of the lady-guests, laughing. "Did I not see you enjoying yourself immensely at the second representation of La Boulangère a des Écus?"
Whereupon Rossi assumed an air of conscious guilt most comical to see.
Some one then asked him at what age and in what character he had made his début. His reply was: "I was just fourteen, and I played the soubrette characters in an amateur company—a line that I could hardly assume with any degree of vraisemblance now." And he put his head on one side, thrust his hands into a pair of imaginary apron-pockets and looked around with a pert, chambermaid-like air so absurdly unsuited to his noble features and intellectual brow—to say nothing of his stalwart physique—that all present shrieked with laughter.
The evening was now drawing to a close, and the guests began to take their departure. When Rossi came to say farewell his hostess asked him if he would do her the favor of writing his autograph in her copy of Shakespeare. He assented at once, and taking up the pen, he wrote in Italian these lines: "O Master! would that I could comprehend thee even as I love thee!" and then appended his name.
A peculiar brightness and geniality of temperament, a childlike simplicity of manner, united to a keen and cultivated intellect and to a thorough knowledge of social conventionalities,—such was the impression left by Signor Rossi on the minds of those present. There was a total absence of conceit or of self-assertion that was very remarkable in a member of his profession, and one, too, of such wide-spread celebrity. The general verdict of Europe is that he is as great an actor as Salvini, while his répertoire is far more important and varied: it remains to be seen whether the United States will endorse the verdict of Italy and of Paris.