Article on the relative success of French theater productions

“ . . . . Last Monday, June 7, the theater at Fourteenth Street finished a campaign that began on October 5, 1868.

The time for critiquing and for appreciating details is now past; it’s statistics that have their turn to speak today.

In this eight-month campaign, from which we have to deduct the Easter vacation and six weeks of travel into the interior, four big works were performed with diverse outcomes.

Geneviève de Brabant, by Offenbach, was played 100 times in a row, always with the same success. We can only repeat here what we’ve written numerous times about the charming artists Rose Bell and Desclauzas, as well as what we think of MM. Carrier, Beckers, Gabel, Bourgoin, Génot and others.

M. Grau, on the advice of many people, interrupted the success of this piece too soon; he was afraid of wearing out the audience and believed he’d do well by mounting Hervé’s L’Oeil crevé. That was an unfortunate idea; this eccentricity that had no value either in the book or in the score, except perhaps for two or three lucky numbers, didn’t wear out the audience; it bored them.

At the end of two weeks, he had to replace the poster and they gave us Fleur de Thé, an operetta in three acts, music by Charles Lecoq. This piece, amusing enough, the music of which has a stamp of gracefulness and distinction that one rarely finds in the bouffe repertoire, didn’t have an enormous success, notwithstanding that it was better received than L’Oeil crevé. Mmes Rose Bell and Desclauzas played, by turns, Césarine, each with her own disposition and both of them with skill. Carrier made a good Pinsonnet and Beckers a matchless Tien-tien.

In the meantime, they had to [re]consider and change direction to La Vie Parisienne: return to Offenbach! A strange thing, this buffoonery in which nobody had confidence succeeds beyond measure. We’ve already said it, the success was due in great part to the talent of the artists. Carrier as the major, Beckers as the Swedish baron, and the German Tyrolean of Mme Rose Bell, provoked unanimous laughs and bravos from the audience.

So, then, to sum up, Geneviéve de Brabant, big hit, l’Oeil crevé, semi-flop, Fleur de Thé, very honorable indifferent success, and la Vie Parisienne, a real hit, but the departure of the troupe interrupted it too soon.

We haven’t said anything yet about Chilpéric, and for good reason. In good conscience we wouldn’t know how to affirm whether this insane and ludicrous thing was or wasn’t a hit, because they played it only three or four times and, over and above the market, everyone produces this ease, this likeable freedom (let’s be lenient), that signals the end of the season when everything goes helter-skelter and everyone seems to say: ‘Let’s hurry up real quick and finish!’ Played in the middle of winter, with expenses paid by M. Grau, the conscientiousness that the artists of his company generally bring to the interpretation of their roles and the good disposition of an audience fond of spectacles, it could be able to crawl along for two or three weeks, but that’s just about all.

We haven’t analyzed the piece, for it doesn’t deserve more than the few lines we’ve already dedicated to it the day after the first performance.

The authors have taken a historical title, that’s all that the story has furnished them. In the words of M. Hervé, Chilpéric, king of the Francs, following the counsel of his brother Sigebert and sister-in-law Brunehaut, dismisses Frédegonde, his favorite, in order to marry Galsuinthe. There’s the whole thing.

As for the proceedings, the audience knows: it’s always the same claptrap. They pile Pelion upon Ossa, fantasy upon anachronism, vulgarity upon platitude, schtick upon anti-schtick, and from this jumble they claim to extract comic results. It’s possible that it could be very funny to see the haughty barons play tennis with long-handled frying-pans and hatboxes on their heads, to hear them, in the sixth century, talk about steam and electricity, to hear them argue, in the throne-room, over a laundress’s bill with an error of five centimes, to contemplate the daughter of the king of the Visigoths dancing the cachucha to recover from the fatigue of travel, but that drollery, I confess, doesn’t make me laugh. They’ve worn it out too much. I forgot to say that there are also a horse, a donkey and a cat, very much alive, in this piece, a real menagerie! At first, to stimulate audience sentiment, they created pieces with women, are they now going to create pieces with animals?

M. Hervé’s music doesn’t displease his admirers (for this maestro has his enthusiasts, without counting the roistering blades of the Faubourg [St.-] Antoine who make him a democratic success in a spirit of opposition to the fast young aristocratic fellows who acclaim Offenbach in the Boulevard des Italiens), Hervé’s music is monotonous and, if one could explain it thus, incomplete. You find at moments some ideas that seem promising, but it doesn’t develop. And, a bizarre fact, this Homer of stunts, this Shakespeare of senselessness, doesn’t have a cheerful muse. He would have succeeded probably in a pastel genre, sweet and graceful; his romances, his choruses are generally melodious; in [the] disorder [of bouffe], he achieves and goes beyond the object and produces only clamor. He has neither the verve, nor the color, nor the suppleness, nor the variety of tone of Offenbach.

Leaving aside for a moment all absolute appreciation for the value of the genre that these two composers work in, you have to declare this because it’s the truth: at home and abroad, Offenbach succeeds everywhere; everywhere, Hervé fails.

If we pass from M. Grau’s theater to the one that M. Bateman was in charge of at the beginning, and that MM. Benedict and Colonne (after the short reign of the little-regretted Bergfeld) administer today on M. Fisk’s behalf, we’ll again have a balance-sheet that’s easy to draw up.

This troupe, that counts in its ranks artists of high value, has also had its mishaps. It hasn’t burned down, but it has moved three times, which, according to the old fellow Franklin, comes back to the same thing.

There, the stars were named Tostée, Irma Marié, Aujac. One saw above all revivals, or to put it better, piece from the repertoire fashioned over the past two years: La Grande Duchesse and La Belle Hélène, two tremendous hits for Tostée, hits to which the famous trio Duchesne-Lagriffoul-Leduc and Decré were constantly joined, Barbe-Bleue, the triumph of Mme Irma Marié and Aujac.

Let’s pass silently over an unfortunate revival of Orphée aux Enfers.

The innovations worth declaring were the Chanson de Fortunio, immense hit for Mme Irma Marié; Les Bavards, admirably played by Tostée who was marvelously seconded by Leduc, Lagriffoul and Mme Duclos; then, La Périchole, a mediocre piece—we aren’t going to yield on this—which owed its incontestable success (and even the returns were good) to the talent of the two partners reunited again, Irma Marié and Aujac.

Finally, as a crowning of the edifice (it appears that all the same there are edifices here and there that they succeed in crowning) and to expiate the eccentricities of Boulotte, Les Dragons de Villars! Our valuation of this masterpiece is too recent for us to tire our readers with repetition. If the monetary success wasn’t all that it should have been, that doesn’t nullify the value of [its] artistic success. Mmes Irma Marié and Duclos, MM Aujac first of all, then Decré, Lagriffoul and Tholer, were applauded enough to be convinced that if the public were brought back to a healthy diet, it would know very well how to appreciate it. But this good public was completely in disarray; it had long ago lost the practice of good taste! The man who has been on the point of being asphyxiated in a sewer doesn’t pass suddenly into free and pure air without being a bit dazzled and stupefied.

We have the appearance, in this necrology, of celebrating some funerals in advance; but, as you know well, that pretty little theater still has a whole week to live and, I hope, to live well, for the administrators have found an excellent combination to enliven its last moments. It’s our lovely Desclauzas, posthumous fugitive, who carries the last sacrament.

In two words, they’ve revived la Périchole. (Eh, my God, yes! Again and always La Périchole, if you don’t mind!) with Desclauzas in the role of Piquillo created by Aujac. From a purely artistic point of view, the value of this transposition of a role written for a man’s voice is strongly disputable. In the ensembles, the composer wouldn’t recognize the expression of his ideas as he would have conceived it; but from the point of view of fantasy it’s altogether original and charming. And then Desclauzas wears the masculine costume so capitally that you can’t help admiring her, above all in the second act. The audience took the side of the good and applauded with all its forces; it did more, for it called back three times, that’s to say after each act, the pretty Piquillo and the unruly Périchole, thus associating Desclauzas and Irma Marié in the same ovation.

Now Rabelais’s quarter-hour sounds [i.e., the reckoning]. Did the directors earn money? Probably not.

Just considerations of the rivalry and its effects have already appeared here, so we won’t come back to this [already] judged point and we’ll only ask: what are they going to do?

That’s without doubt the secret of the gods, but they haven’t yet deigned to reveal it to anybody. It’s the moment for the chronicler, at his wit’s end, to cast a glance over the situation and to search the past for some lessons for the future.

We only wish to consider here the sole aspect that interests us directly: from the point of view of a French theater in New York.

The question thus brought back to its most simple expression can be formulated in this manner: 1. Is it desirable that there should be a French theater in New York? 2. What would be the likely resources of the said theater? 3. What genre must be preferably cultivated to have some chance of success?

To pose the first of these questions is to resolve it. It can’t come into anyone’s mind to argue about that point. The French in New York are numerous. Perhaps it would be desirable that, in imitation of other citizens of foreign origin, they would be at a high degree of esprit de corps, that they would feel their elbows, as they say vulgarly. But, other than that a great advancement be accomplished day by day in this sense by the normal development of diverse organizations such as: Masonic lodges, political societies, circles, etc., whose goal is to group our compatriots and to replace individual isolation by a type of solidarity that attracts the tastes and tendencies of each one, besides these nuclei, let’s say, there is always in the French, even if they’re more isolated than St. Simon Stylite on his column, a venerable ferment of patriotic spirit that prevents them from ever letting national glories fall into oblivion or abandonment. So, is there anything more pure, more brilliant than our literary and artistic glories?

The Frenchman, is he as difficult to serve as they claim? Come on then! He doesn’t sell his bravos; he warmly welcomes works and artists for whatever [little] merit they may have. One could even reproach him for having sometimes pushed compliance a bit too far.

We firmly believe, then, that they should have a French theater in New York: the time of Puritanical objurgations is past; today sensible people shrug their shoulders and don’t even discuss the splenetic and surly anthemas of the blind supporters of intolerance any more. Not displeasing to Jesuits with long or short robes, Catholics or Protestants, the theater is a healthy and intelligent distraction, preferable to many others; it’s the best pleasure for honest families. But [it’s] on that account that the intelligence and honesty of the spectator should not be at all offended.

This altogether naturally leads [me] to respond to the second and third questions which it’s very difficult, in view of their connectedness, to isolate from one another.

The likely resources of a French theater are within the French population and nowhere else. One should be convinced now that this chimera, so long caressed, of leading the Americans to become, by taste, habitués of our French theater is a soap-bubble that burst a long time ago. By accident, some Americans who understand French will go to the theater, but that’s a very hypothetical contingency.

When they object that Americans have alone, or almost alone, nourished the bouffe theaters of MM. Grau and Bateman, we are going to respond and prove, in addressing the third question, that it wasn’t because, but although it was French that operetta attracted the Americans.

Whether you love it, hate it or simply have a superb indifference to it, you will agree that operetta bouffe is an essentially transitory genre. This genre has had its hour, its day, its apogee; but like everything that doesn’t have a life of its own, it has to fail. Made fashionable by several artistic personalities, it’s neither opera-comique, nor vaudeville; it’s a mongrel. You want to make them laugh,  . . .right!   --Is it for the music or the lyrics? –For both, you say.—Well! Where are your lyricists? . . . where are your composers? You gravitate from Offenbach to Hervé and from Hervé to Offenbach. Afterwards?

Is it a genre, this bastard form which couldn’t assimilate, in a country like France, more than two men . . . one of whom is crazy, and the other a German?

No! You can’t make operetta a permanent genre. You believe that this absurdity of a convention will still amuse us for a long time, that they’ll be enraptured at seeing Jupiter take a pinch of snuff, Agamemnon smoke a cigar, Charles Martel get into a railway car? . . . You’ll say that the people don’t want honest works, beautiful style, that they have to have buffoonery [puns, jokes], tricks, disjointed acrobats, electric light effects and bunches of grapes from more or less undressed nymphs? . . .nymphs by reason of a dollar an evening? The ones who don’t have ability want you to believe that; there are some misled and depreciated artists, some hoarse or limited-voiced singers who can’t attempt the true lyric genre, opera or opera-comique, who make themselves apostles of this schism. They fall back upon operetta where the composer permits them to replace their voice with an ugly or idiotic grimace.

Make us laugh with merry vaudevilles as foolish as you like, but which don’t have musical pretentions; and if we demand music, search, to be of use to us, in the repertoire of opera-comique, [which is] so splendidly rich: there’s the genre that will endure in France. To your two caryatids supporting a burlesque pediment, MM. Offenbach and Hervé, we put in opposition an endless list: Hérold, Boieldieu, Auber, Halévy, Adam, Ambroise Thomas, Maillart, Clapisson, Massé, Gounod, Félicien David, Poise, Grisar, Bazin, Gevaert . . . do you have to have more?

But don’t say that you have the audience on your side. In this last campaign, in Paris, eight operettas out of nine have failed and the real theater has counted only successes: Les Inutiles, Les Sceptiques, Miss Malton, L’Abîme, Séraphine, Les Faux Ménages, Patrie! Decidedly, the most intelligent nation on earth isn’t already so stupid!

We come back here naturally to the question: Which genre should they cultivate by preference?

Let’s speak bluntly. It’s not about making poetry any more, of deluding yourself with old warmed-over illusions, nor taking your wishes for realities. You have to face practical facts coldly.

Now, here are the facts described in simple prose.

Let’s dismiss grand opera and we’ll remain in the presence of three very distinct genres, each of which requires completely different personnel. These three genres are opéra-comique, operetta and comedy (drama and vaudeville understood).

Let’s first eliminate operetta by virtue of the principle that they apply to jugged hares—that’s to say that we defy all the impresarios in the world to find operettas: Tulipatan, failed; le Château à Toto, failed; le Petit Poucet, failed; La Diva, quasi-failed. There is Le Petit Faust which, they say, succeeded. Well and good: one month of operetta on the boards, and then?  . . . They’ll revive La Grande-Duchesse and Barbe-Bleue. It’s true: there is a resource and we never dreamed of it!

Let’s pass on to opéra-comique . The smallest third-rate town, in France, gives tremendous subventions to impresarios to support opera-comique . . . and few of those directors make a fortune. In New York, an Opera Comique [theater] would only be possible with a subvention of at least twenty thousand dollars.

The expenses never end. You must have scores, costumes in stock for a repertoire of thirty or more works, a full orchestra and chorus who are paid, chorus-members and musicians, 4 or 5 times more here than in France. Lastly you have to have artists; not only the principals, but also some understudies, so that the repertoire isn’t stopped by possible, probable, [or] definite illnesses.

Then, for these third-class artists there must be first-class salaries. That’s sometimes scandalous. A tenor from a small provincial town earns just as much as sixteen schoolmasters! Yet they’re not talking about hiring top-drawer artists, the stars; for them, there aren’t any fixed salaries, these are civil service lists.

And do you believe that the American public, since there’s always an objective for scheming men there, will come constantly to comic opera? Not here, for the past ten years. Americans who like, or feign to like, music, go to the Academy; it’s Verdi who has given them their education; they like music with grand effects and singers with great lungs. They’ll find our music from La Dame Blanche too insipid over time, our Capoul and Achard too quaint. Not to mention that the libretto that amuses us will put them, in brief, to sleep.

Let’s eliminate, then, comic opera besides, not without regrets, alas! but it’s worth more to cut off illusions at the root than to let them increase until the day when they torment your heart!

There remains, completely legitimately, the theater of comedy, drama and vaudeville; that which we’ve had for three or four years.

If they asked us under which conditions this genre would be possible, armed with past experience, we’d respond: There has to be a troupe of fifteen or sixteen at most, of which four or five would be artists of outstanding skill; it has to perform twice a week, Friday and Saturday; more often, and they’d repeat the same repertoire over and over again or overwork the artists’s memories; two bad things.

And we’ll add, to conclude, that the impresario who is charged with this enterprise should have the hall rent-free.

It would rest on him to pay the gas, the general expenses, and the artists, that’s enough.

Under these conditions, you could have a French theater, and still you’d need an impresario who is competent, professional, intelligent and super- industrious.

Without that, any contrivance will end in disaster. Opéra-comique, operetta; chimera, utopia!

A theater is a commercial business—but you can’t compare it to a shop, where you have the ability to limit the profits in hopes of recovering them [by selling] in quantity. The storekeeper who has sold only a hundred pairs of gloves one season, can sell ten thousand the following season. In the theater, the maximum of receipts is fixed; the prices themselves can’t be greatly modified.

It is found on certain documents that we confirm: with the high salaries they have to pay here, the costs of the trip and the difficulty of foreseeing a defection [from the troupe], the French theater, always full, wouldn’t pay its expenses.

Let everyone reflect on this question if it interests them. It’s summer; it’s so good to go and dream by the side of murmuring waters, in the shade of great trees, in fishing or in gaping in the evening at the beautiful blue clouds and the golden stars; it’s so good to forget the dusty streets and scorching sidewalks of New York. It’s the true moment to dedicate a few minutes to the study of this question that returns to be posed every year and never is resolved. In the city, business absorbs you, devours you. In the country, your spirits are more disengaged from daily preoccupations and you can give yourself the pleasure of building your little theater in Spain according to your taste. And seeing that such good friends never part with each other, I’ll say ‘au revoir’ to my readers until theater or music give signs of life again.

To those who have very much wished to follow my weekly travail with interest, I’ll say again, like Edmond About: If I were rich, I would give a stipend to all my readers; not being so, I wish them well and thank them for their fellow-feeling. I never had a claim to being amusing, my mission being to relate and debate, not to juggle with words or turn somersaults; I’ve simply endeavored to be always true and impartial.

On that [note], I end like the Spanish comedies, in saying: Pardon the faults of the author . . . in favor of his good intentions."