United States or Sint Maarten ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Of course they may be merely sufferers from the curious first-night mania which induces a great many people to go to what, as a rule, is the worst but one of the performances of a play.
From that moment forth the piece was saved nay, more, promised a great success. This carnival of the gods, this dragging in the mud of their Olympus, this mock at a whole religion, a whole world of poetry, appeared in the light of a royal entertainment. The fever of irreverence gained the literary first-night world: legend was trampled underfoot; ancient images were shattered.
Such a play might make a great first-night success; but the more the author relied upon the mystery for his effect, the more fatally would that effect be discounted at each successive repetition. One author of distinction, M. Hervieu, has actually made the experiment of presenting an enigma he calls the play L'Enigme and reserving the solution to the very end.
There is a first-night performance at the Panorama-Dramatique, my dear fellow; it doesn't begin till eight, so you can change your coat, come properly dressed in fact, and call for me. I am living on the fourth floor above the Cafe Servel, Rue de la Harpe. We will go to Dauriat's first of all. You still mean to go on, do you not?
The day flew past with welcome rapidity, and in the evening Katherine was swept off to a "first-night representation," which, though by no means first-rate, helped to draw Katherine out of herself, and helped her to vanquish vain regrets. "You'll make a dozen copies of those notes please, dear," said Mrs.
Fifteen hundred heads swarming under the chandeliers, erect, leaning forward, turned aside, questioning, with a great abundance of shadows and reflections; some massed in the dark corners of the pit, others brilliantly illuminated by the reflection of the white walls of the lobby shining through the open doors of the boxes; a first-night audience, always the same, that collective brigand from the theatrical columns of the newspapers, who goes everywhere and carries by assault those much-envied places when some claim to favor or the exercise of some public function does not give them to him.
I dressed myself therefore in my newest frock-coat, my finest linen, and arrived at the Place Vendome at the address indicated by the invitation. For the giving of his party, M. Noel had taken advantage of a first-night at the opera, to which all fashionable society was thronging, thus giving the servants a free rein, and putting the entire place at our disposal until midnight.
Whatever might be the subsequent verdict of the theatre-filling public the majority of the favoured first-night audience was determined to set the seal of its approval on the suggestion dances, and a steady roll of applause greeted the conclusion of each item.
For Comus this first-night performance, with its brilliant gathering of spectators, its groups and coteries of lively talkers, even its counterfoil of dull chatterers, its pervading atmosphere of stage and social movement, and its intruding undercurrent of political flutter, all this composed a tragedy in which he was the chief character.
There was even a third announcement, for the critic of the paper lovingly called The Tizer by the members of the industry whose interests it protects with the utmost vehemence of laborious alliteration stated that in the future his first-night notices would only contain an account of the plot and reception, to which presumably were to be added the words Cur adv. vult let us hope there was no misunderstanding as to the middle word whilst a day later his considered judgment was to be given.
Word Of The Day