Article on French theater productions in New York

Event Information

Venue(s):

Proprietor / Lessee:
Jacob Grau
James, Jr. Fisk

Record Information

Status:
Published

Last Updated:
1 November 2019

Performance Date(s) and Time(s)

11 Jun 1869

Citations

1)
Article: Courrier des États-Unis, 11 June 1869.

“In New York, music dying music is dead! – for this season. Grau’s theater is closed; Fisk’s theater is only half-open; they say the closing will be the 20th of this month. Grau and Fisk, --two names made to go together. Good idea! if they had! How they’d do something good if they thought of a combination—and us too! That would be the salvation of the French theater. The first thing is that by this providential union, there wouldn’t be any rivalry possible, and consequently no mutual slaughter. The second . . . but bah! you can’t dream about those things, it would be too beautiful.

If they could hear us and each meet halfway! Why not!

*

“It’s competition that caused the misfortune of French theater this year. A single troupe would have worked marvels; two cut each others’s throats. Fourteen performances of opéra-bouffe each week, without counting the minstrels, the Worrell sisters, and all the accidental Grand Duchesses, Barbe-Bleues and Belle Hélènes and the second-hand Orphées and Gendarmes! What a constitution the public must have in order for such indigestion not to turn into apoplexy. And to say that with all of that, Offenbach and Hervé aren’t yet dead in America. They’re scarcely worth more, in truth, but they’ll still be good to serve as a transition and accompaniment to the opera-comique of the future. The components that remain and the components that will be coming will provide us a good season next year. The last one, in sum, was good, in spite of everything; good for everybody—for the audience which could say to itself like Carrier: ‘I’ve eaten, I’ve eaten more than I should’ – for the artists who were well-paid in spite of the not-always-satisfied cash-box; -- and even (if you’ll pardon this seeming paradox) for the directors [impresarios], who gained more in honor than they lost in money. The future is theirs by right, whoever has seen their efforts, their faithfulness to their promises, and their sacrifices of all sorts, would be quite ungrateful if they didn’t wish that they would reap abundantly what they have sown.

*         

“. . . . In sum the theater, as one sees it [now], doesn’t yet threaten to abandon us, and we testify that the French theater, whatever might be the genre that prevails after opera-bouffe, whose exceptional favor is a bit worn out, is called upon to take a most honorable place on the American stage. The press complains, not absolutely without reason, of the abasement of the dramatic art in this country, where it is represented principally by ballet, pantomime, clowns, minstrels, etc., to the exclusion of drama and all the literary genres.

“To tell the truth, we’ve never seen it much higher. Aside from Wallack’s, which is the only regular theater that exists in New York; aside from the Italian opera company, always mediocre in its general effect; aside from performances of Shakespeare given at irregular intervals by Booth or Forrest; aside from incidental appearances by some famous traveling artists, we have never seen here, unless by flashes of lightning, anything more elevated than the vulgarities that tread the boards today. The newspapers are wrong, then, to utter loud cries because it’s the season for ballerinas in tights, Humpty Dumptys and Clodoches. All of that would be excellent, here as elsewhere, if there were other things besides—excellent sauce if there were some fish, excellent potatoes if there were some not bad beefsteak around—but solidity is lacking, as it has always been lacking; there’s progress in the lower strata of the art, and not in the upper ones; that’s why the former predominate; the level hasn’t gone down, on the contrary, but doesn’t get raised except by an extremity that happens when the equilibrium is in effect ruptured to the prejudice of the noble art. Whose fault is it? Many things that it would be too long to enumerate; but over and above everything, the absence of a national [dramatic] art. When an American dramatic literature will exist, it will find an audience to applaud it and pay for it. It’s not the appetite that’s missing, it’s the food. Make good dramas and good comedies, the public taste won’t be missing. But forsooth! There would have to be a different arrangement of theaters—a different organization of all kinds of things that it’s not the place to detail here. That will be for another time.”