Article on the delay in construction of the French Theatre

     “It was promised that the new French theatre would be finished about the first week in April, and now we are in the third week and it is not yet completed. However, the construction of theatres, like all other human affairs, is liable to uncertainty and disappointment. At all events, the new theatre will be ready by the fall, and then we may look for a revolution, to a certain extent, in our metropolitan enjoyments. We will be relieved from the nightmare of dull and heavy old operas. We will have some place of amusement to go to where the attraction will be found in the performance rather than in the audience, where people will gladly visit, not for fashion’s sake nor at the bidding of custom, but for the real pleasure to be obtained there. In short, we are to have at the new French theatre a series of those light and delightful operas which render the Opera Comique in Paris always charming, and the Academié de Musique always enjoyable. The French composers, such as Auber and Gounod, and others whom we might mention, are infinitely more fertile than the Italians, and even those of the former school who have attempted the gravest compositions are willing at times to devote their talents to the lighter and more sparkling class of operas which harmonize so well with the French mind and character. Thus, while we have to wait for three or four years until the work of an Italian composer is completed, and must content ourselves with this one opera from that master probably for ten years before he puts forth another, the supply of light French opera is always abundant for the popular want. In this respect the French opera writers have a decided advantage over the Italians, and are more suitable to the present taste.

     Our people want variety, and they want amusement. When one tragedy drags its slow course through a season in one of our metropolitan theatres, there are a dozen or more other houses playing light pieces with twice the profit. No one who has visited the Academy of Music of late could have failed to observe that the audience did not go there to hear the music, but simply to meet each other and talk together in little coteries. What passed on the stage was little heeded; therefore indifferent music and wornout artists did just as well as the best. People had boxes which they must occupy and season tickets which they must use, and hence they went to the opera, not for the love of art, but in submission to prevailing custom. Country folks went there to see the fashionables of the city.

     In the Opera Comique, of Paris, how different. There every one is intent upon the performance. There can be no mistaking the object of the audience. They come seeking for pleasure and they get it.

     In former times, when dramatic writers were scarce, the public had to be content with a few plays, which were presented again and again until all interest in them was exhausted; but there is no necessity in this age of fertile brains and vivid imagination, when so many literary men are dramatists and so many musicians are composers, for being compelled to sit out old wornout plays and hackneyed operas. We expect to see this corrected when the French theatre is opened. With brilliant new operas and fresh dramas put upon the stage with judicious management, we trust there will be no cause to complain of the stupidity or the demoralization which have for some time past characterized so many of our places of amusement. It is true that the French theatre is not as well located as it might be. It should be further up town and nearer to Broadway; but then this disadvantage will be counterbalanced by the elegance and comfort of its construction, for it will be arranged on the plan of the Opera Comique—divided off principally into private boxes, where social intercourse of the most delightful kind can be made to harmonize with the pleasure of the performances. This may be only the beginning of an entire revolution in the plan of our theatres, and we hope it will prove so, for it is a revolution very much needed.

     There is an advantage allied to the character of performances to be introduced at the new theatre which we have not alluded to, and that is, that the operas and dramas played there will be in a language which it is most desirable to cultivate, because it is essential to the everyday life of this community. Italian is of little value; French is almost indispensable. We all wish that our children should become French scholars, and there is no better way of acquiring proficiency in the language than by following a good drama through in that tongue. One good French theatre, where the interest felt in the performance stimulates the ambition to acquire a knowledge of the language employed, will make more proficients than a dozen teachers. For these reasons, therefore, the French theatre cannot be put in working order too soon.”