as in the first Belasco Theatre, there is a handsome screen of carved wood and crystal glass at the rear of the orchestra, which protects the audience from drafts of air. The orchestra and balcony chairs are of heavy wood, upholstered in rich, dark brown leather, the back of each chair being embossed with the emblematic bee. The decoration of the interior is opulent and dark in tone,—deep browns, blues, and greens with dull amber and orange being the prevailing colors. There is a large painting above the proscenium opening and on either side are several mural paintings, of various sizes, with here and there a rich tapestry hanging. The groups and figures in these paintings are symbolical,—Music, Grief, Tranquillity, Allurement, Blind Love, Poetry, and the like being depicted. The ceiling is raftered into twenty-two panels, which are set with rich-colored stained glass and illumined from above. Each panel contains two shields, with heraldic mantling,—among the coats-of-arms displayed being those of Shakespeare, Goethe, Schiller, Racine, Molière, Goldsmith, Sheridan, and Tennyson. The seating capacity of the theatre is now (1917) about 1,000 persons,—430 on the orchestra floor, 320 in the balcony, and 240 in the gallery. There are no supporting pillars in the auditorium, the balcony and gallery being constructed on cantilevers, so that an unobstructed view of the stage is afforded from every part of it.
The stage was carefully designed with the purpose of facilitating in every possible way the setting and shifting of scenery. It is eighty feet wide and twenty-seven feet from the curtain-line to the back-wall. The proscenium opening is thirty-two feet wide and thirty feet high. The “gridiron” is seventy-six feet above the stage; the fly galleries, of which there are two, one on each side of the stage and thirty feet above it, have forty-five feet of clear space between them. In recent years an adjustable apron, five feet wide, has been constructed in front of the curtain-line, covering the musicians’ pit. The stage can be opened at any desired spot, and the centre of it is an elevator-trap, ten feet from front to back and twenty feet long. Upon this trap the paraphernalia of an entire scene can be lowered to, or raised from, the level of a cellar floor, thirty feet below the stage.
The original cost of this theatre, including the land upon which it stands, was more than $750,000, and various alterations and improvements made in it down to the present time (1917) have increased the total investment to nearly $1,000,000. In the summer of 1909 a one-story and mezzanine addition was built upon the roof of the Stuyvesant, in which Belasco has made his studio,—a strange, romantic place in which he has assembled priceless objects of art and antiquarianism. That studio (an adequate description of which would necessitate weeks of examination and would, alone, fill a large volume, and which, here, can be given only passing notice) is entered by a narrow, low, heavy-latticed door from the business offices of the Belasco Company. The first room is a small, low-roofed one, in itself somewhat suggestive of an old cathedral crypt. Along the walls are ranged shelved cases containing a wondrous collection of specimens of precious glass, the most recently made piece of which is more than eighty years old. A sort of alcove opens from this room, at the right side, which is stored with scores of relics associated with that arch-villain the great Napoleon,—a collection which includes a lock of his hair, cut from his head after death, and in which Belasco takes special pride and joy. Beyond the entrance room is a larger one; beyond that are low, dim passages; a library with stairs to a gallery; a dining-room; an odd little bedroom, exquisitely furnished in Japanese style,—with a miniature Japanese garden built outside its window,—and luxurious facilities for bathing. These passages, rooms, and stairs,—ceilinged with multi-colored banners, carpeted with soft, rich rugs, and almost everywhere lined with shelf on shelf of books,—are somewhat maze-like to a stranger, and in them is gathered a vast, confusing medley of collectors’ treasures: here, a sinister, black-steel armor; there, a stand of French halberds; beneath that old table, an unmatchable set of rapiers; upon this one, nearly twoscore different styles of dagger; yonder, a huge carved wooden chest, blackened with age and stuffed with antique velours; against it, a great two-handed sword,—“such a blade as old Charles Martel might have wielded, when he drove the Saracen from France”; across that opening, an antique wooden window-lattice, with heavy shutters, taken from an English house built more than 700 years ago; beside it, a chair once used by England’s King Henry the Eighth; against this wall, a stone mantel brought from Italy, with a hearth made of tiles stolen by slaves from the Alhambra. In the walls are many odd nooks and hidden cupboards, which open by the release of secret springs,—in which, when illumined by small, concealed lamps, are revealed collections of jewelled rosaries; or of crucifixes wrought in ivory, ebony, and iron; or of specimens of the potter’s art; or of trinkets once worn or owned by members of the gentle Borgia Family. The stranger, wandering through this reclusive domain,—into which few strangers ever are permitted to penetrate,—opening low Gothic doors, will blunder into angular hutches or long, low tunnels filled with shelves and cases of rare pamphlets and old books; will pause with awe before a superb window of purple stained glass; or gaze with wonder on a massive globe suspended in a well over which a translucent canopy is so arranged that it takes and intensifies all the changing colors of the covering heavens; or will come with startled delight upon a grot in which a small fountain of crystal water flings its spray over a little pool half-filled with violets, sweetpeas, and full-blown roses.
Belasco, unlike many other collectors, has an intimate personal knowledge of every article in his collection; can recall at once where, when, and how each was acquired; and, notwithstanding the number and seeming confusion of the different pieces, knows exactly where each one is placed and instantly perceives and vituperatively denounces any disarrangement of them such as occasionally is caused by members of that pestiferous sisterhood which plies the duster and the brush without sense of the sacredness of an antiquarian’s sweet disorder,—a sisterhood which has stirred up consternation and wrath since long before Mr. Oldbuck’s time. His writing is done there among his treasured collections, now in one corner, now in another, upon a small, battered, baize-covered cutting-table, such as ladies use for sewing, which he carries about from place to place as the fancy suits him. And there, also, his principal recreation is found when, wearied by labor or oppressed by care, he turns to contemplation and enjoyment of the heaped-up beauty which he has gathered about him.
IN THE MATTER OF STAGE LIGHTING.
A much needed addition to the technical literature of the Theatre is a comprehensive, authoritative, and just account of the origin and development of modern stage mechanism and of the art of stage lighting. The pioneer achievements of Edwin Booth, at Booth’s Theatre (opened, February, 1869), and of James Steele Mackaye and Augustin Daly are, as a rule, blandly ignored in writing on those subjects, and the movement for “Stage Reform” which began in Austria in 1879-’80 is taken as the starting-point. If ever such an account is written, laborious experiments and fine achievements by David Belasco, especially in the latter field, will, of necessity, occupy a conspicuous place in it. His active practical interest in the problems of stage lighting began as early as 1876 and it has not abated. The first attempt in America to use electric light for stage illumination,—at least, the first attempt of which I have found a record,—was made at the California Theatre, San Francisco, February 21 to 28, 1879. Belasco was there at that time and carefully observed the experiment, which was not notably successful.[3] From 1879 to 1902 he closely studied all methods of lighting and experimented much: since 1902, when he opened his first theatre and obtained satisfactory facilities for the work, his experimentation in that field has been incessant. The lighting system at the Stuyvesant Theatre was designed by Belasco in collaboration with his chief electrician, Mr. Louis Hartman, and was installed under their supervision. When that theatre was opened, the lamps of the footlights on the stage, and also those in each of the overhead “border light strips,” were arranged in seven sections, each section connected upon separate resistance, in order that any desired part of the stage or any figure or group of figures might be illumined or shadowed as desired. There were five sets of the border lights, with 270 lamps in each; there were eighty-eight connection pockets in the fly galleries and upon the stage through which large or small “bunch lights” could be connected as required; the switchboard (one of the largest, if not the largest, then in use in an American theatre) was equipped with seventy-five dimmers, in order that the lights should be under perfect control. Since the opening, in 1907, the lighting system has repeatedly been altered and improved. The most radical change is one made about two years ago [1917], whereby footlights are entirely dispensed with. The objection to footlights is, of course, an upward thrown shadow: this, however, can be satisfactorily dealt with, and, in my judgment, it is seldom if ever advantageous wholly to discard them. Belasco, however, thinks otherwise: his productions are the only ones made without footlights, which I have seen, in which the absence of those lights is adequately compensated. In his present theatre there is a contrivance, placed in the front of the first balcony, which, while the curtain is down, appears to be an ornamental glass panel about six feet long. When the curtain is raised, however, shutters in the front of that panel are opened by an electrical device operated at the switchboard on the stage, and a singular bright light, which is transmitted without casting perceptible rays, is diffused upon the stage, bringing the
Photograph by White. Belasco’s Collection.
SWITCHBOARD OF THE SECOND BELASCO THEATRE, NEW YORK