The Sun.
London, England, 1868-03-13 00:00:00

TIIE PARIS THEATRES.

The Paris theatres are never more resorted to than
during Lent, and I do not remember any cereme inure pro-
fitable to impressarii than the current one. On the night
of last Saturday dillettantes, hunters of strongly sensa-
tional dramas, amateurs of Mariraudages, all had their
way ; the first besieged the Opera to witness the general
rehearsal of Hamlet ; the second had stormed the doors of
the Chatelet Theatre from daybreak to witness an histori-

cal drama, entitled Le Vengeur ; the latter strutted in large
array at the Theatre Frangais a good while before the
curtain rose to enjoy Un Baiser Anonyme, a comedy in one
act, by Alberic Second and Jules Blerzy. The pink and
silky threads of the plot roll during nearly an hour around
that Sybilian kiss, according to the fagon of Marivaux,
with a touch after Watteau. The Sybil turns out to be
Madame de Marsac ; at a bal masque, and under cover of a
domino, she gave that baieer to Gaston de Marsac, her own
husband, to try his constancy. Gaston fancies that he
received it from Madame de Chailly ; you will easily guess
the development of the intrigue. Still, the bluette has
had un reussite of esteem, as they say in France—in Eng-
land we would say a quiet success.
And while Le Vengeur was being engulfed at the Cha-
telet Theatre to the frantic cries of " Vice le Republique,'
Mdlle. Nilsson, humming the sweet notes of Opholia, was
throwing herself into the traditional river in which she
met with death. Of Hamlet I will speak to you anon-
Let us first dispose of Le Vengeur, a drama in five acts and
ten tableaux, or pictures.
A few words about the more or less historical episode of
Le Vengeur. On the Ist of June, 1794, Admiral Villaret-
Joyeuse was attacked by Howe, who, taking advantage of
a thick mist, and also of a wrong manoeuvre of the ship
La Montagne, broke through the French line, cut off its
flank, and overwhelmed it with all his forces. The battle
was long and desperate, and the French version of the
affair has it that the conventional Joan-Bon-Saint-Andre
had himself tied up to the foot of the mainmast, there en-
couraging the crew by word and gesture. It was in the
midst of that infuriated action that the ship Le Vengeur,
dismasted and half destroyed, refused to haul down her
colours, and, after having hoisted the French flag and
fired her lower battery, already on a level with the sea,
she went down to the cries of " Vice la Republique!"
Alas ! I am afraid that history repeated itself last Satur-
day, and that the modern Vengeur foundered again at the
Chatelet Theatre. The authors, MM. Brisebarre and Blum,
had achieved an immensesuccess in writing such pieces
as Blue Beard and the Duchess of Gerolstein; but their
efforts in the heroic line are saturated with parodies. The
Vengeur is but a pretext for a profuseness of scenery; there
is jut a bit of plot to connect the parts; all the rest is a
succession of costumes, official fetes, details of manners
and customs, ballets, fights, detonations, picturesque epi-
sodes charming the eye without trying the mind. Politics
are eschewed from the enormous fiasco ; every shade of
party has in it afiche de consolation. The Republicans have
applauded the episode of a Royalist chansonnier, whom the
people castigate in the way the merry wives of Windsor
treated Falstaff; the Bonapartists extolled the episode of
Sergeant Junot, who is advised to seek a powerful and
illustrious protection ; the Legitimists were all joy at the
sight of the conspirator de Lussan, very brave and very
loyal ; the Clericals were all smiles at the appearance of
the sworn priest, whose devout attitudes can but delight
the Christian souls. Withal, Chauvinisme is paramount
from the rise to the fall of the curtain.
Albeit, I do not remember having seen such a tumult,
or heard such hissings and hootings. For instance, there
is a tableau said to represent a cortege of the fete of the
Supreme Being returning from the Champ do Mars ; a ball
of fish-fags and market porters ; and then an agricultural
cart, with a Ceres pouring lazzis from her throne of sheaves.
Egad ! She interrupts her Billingsgate dialect to ask for
her pocket-handkerchief ! That bacchanalia has not been
relished by the public, and the spectators were still less de-
lighted with the apostrophes of Mother Barthelemy distri-
buting to the populace sausages seasoned with a pinch of this
Attic salt—"l am not sure the meat is of good quality, but it
comes from the heart." A dreadful storm of indignation
burst over the ballet in the third act; the nerves of the first
danseme received such a shock that she fainted, and then
vanished, and the voice et Madame Desclanzas, when
singing a love song to Captain Richard, was completely
drowned by thousands of cocoricos, uttered from all parts
of the house in every sort of diapason. You know the
cocorico is an imitation of the cries of animals of both
zones, and at that moment one would have fancied being
in the Zoological Gardens. As to the foundering of Le
Vengeur, the scenic effect was far from being marvellous.
But the cries of "Viva la Republique" accompanying its
disappearance were rather Stentorian. I suppose you know
that Dame Censure wished to expunge those ominous
words, or, at least, to replace them by more palatable
ones, and that they were retained at the special request of
an august personage. When the matter was referred to
him he answered, "By cutting out the First Republic
you would cut out the most glorious pages of the history
of my house."
From the Chatelet to the Opera the transition is simply
delicious; from a nightmare you pass into Shakespeare's
"Midsummer Night's Dream." And while these Echoes
are in the compositor's hand the Opera in Paris will give
the first representation of Hamlet, put into music by
Maestro Ambroise Thomas, and translated, or, rather ar-
ranged, by Michel Cerro' and Jules Barbier. Hamlet
operatised in French is most certainly a grande hardiesse,
a veritable tour de force. Yet the libretta is passable, and the
music excellent. I even think that the Prince de Dane-
mark will be the great musical hit of the season.
"How do you know," say you, "since Hamlet has not
been given when you wrote your lncubrations ?" Rever-
berations, if you please. Well, in the French theatres the
last rehearsal of a new lyrical or dramatic piece of any
worth is a solemn affair ; and as rumour had spread about
on its thousand wings that Hamlet would turn out a tre-
mendous success, la fleur des pois of the high life in Paris
has flirted for weeks around the lessee of the Opera to
obtain admission to the general rehearsal. But the elect
were few, and the rejected ones consoled themselves by
telling their friends, "You could not gain entrance either
for love or money." In Paris a general rehearsal may be
called a private but a first representation; wi.h all it has
something of the forbidden and much of the early fruit,
and the only difference between a general rehearsal and a
public performance is, that the players do not wear their
theatrical drosses.
The general rehearsal of Hamlet took place last Saturday
night. The house had a very peculiar aspect. I repeat that
the cream of the crea►n of the Faubourg and of the Chausee
was there, without speaking of the political ana" artistic
accompaniments, as M. Rouhor and his family, Count
Walewski and Countess Walewski, Secretary and Madame
Pinard, Prince and Princess Metternich, Prince Ponia-
towsky, Rossini, &c. The unanimous impression was ex-
ceedingly favourable to Ambrose Thomas, and amongst
the artists who interpreted the maestro, two names shine
as stars of the first magnitude—Mdlles. Nilsson and
Favre, whose exquisite singing and acting will propitiate
the mlogrora of Shakespeare fvr thq,ttudttbity of haying

noted in French music the untranslateable parts of
Ophelia, Hamlet, and the rest. Madame Gueymard is the
Queen ; Behal acts Claudius ; Colin, Laertes ; Ponsard,
Polonius ; Castelmary, Horatio; David, the Ghost. The
Gravediggers are there, but they do not come up to Comp-
ton's style. _

Many parts were applauded, but methinks the most deli-
cious jewel of that precious casket is the ballad—

" Pale et blonde
Dort sous I'eau profonde,"

which Ophelia sings in an unspeakable way at the moment
of throwing herself into the water—by a delegate.
As to scenery, it is splendid, gorgeous ; and I am told
that the musical oditors, Hengel, gave £4,000 for the copy-
right of "Hamlet." This is the fairest criterion, and the
most practical too. Nous rerrons.—Standard.