Incidental Music by Mr. William Furst.
Stage decorations and accessories after designs by Mr. Wilfred Buckland.
General Manager for Mr. Belasco Mr. B. F. Roeder.
As an epigraph for the first performance given in his theatre, and also for a souvenir book then distributed,—a richly printed volume called “The Story of Du Barry,” written by James L. Ford and issued in a limited edition,—Belasco used, under the caption “Before the Curtain,” the appended fourteen lines from Francis Bret Harte’s versified address written for the dedication of the California Theatre, San Francisco, January 18, 1869, on which occasion (when Belasco was among the spectators) it was read by Lawrence Barrett:
“Brief words, when actions wait, are well;
The prompter’s hand is on his bell;
The coming heroes, lovers, kings,
Are idly lounging at the wings;
Behind the curtain’s mystic fold
The glowing future lies unrolled.
. . . . .
“One moment more: if here we raise
The oft-sung hymn of local praise,
Before the curtain facts must sway;
Here waits the moral of your play.
Glassed in the poet’s thought, you view
What money can, yet can not do;
The faith that soars, the deeds that shine,
Above the gold that builds the shrine.”