Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 28, 2025
"I walked along slowly amid these streets of tombs, where the neighbors do not visit each other, do not sleep together and do not read the newspapers. And I began to read the epitaphs. That is the most amusing thing in the world. Never did Labiche or Meilhac make me laugh as I have laughed at the comical inscriptions on tombstones.
When her breakfast was finished, she turned slowly to the window, and, while her eyes did not refill, a slight twitching of the upper lids made him believe that she was going over the whole scene again in her mind; whereupon he began to move briskly about the room with a busy air, picking up her napkin, dusting a chair with his hand, exchanging the position of the andirons in the fireplace; and, apparently discovering that the por-trait of Georges Meilhac was out of line, he set it awry, then straight again, the while he hummed an old "spiritual" of which only the words "Chain de Lion Down" were allowed to be quite audible.
We have seen such kinds of co-partnerships, for instance, in Beaumont and Fletcher; more recently in the beautiful French tales of Erckmann-Chatrian, and still later in the English novels of Besant and Rice. Some say it was a fortunate event for Meilhac; others assert that Halevy reaped a great profit by the union.
Here it was a bazaar where they sold cotton materials of alternate colors called "al adjas," handkerchiefs as fine as spider webs, leather marvelously worked, silks the rustle of which is called "tchakhtchukh," in Bokhariot, a name that Meilhac and Halevy did wisely in not adopting for their celebrated heroine.
Be this as it may, a great number of plays-drama, comedy, farce, opera, operetta and ballet were jointly produced, as is shown by the title-pages of two score or more of their pieces. When Ludovic Halevy was a candidate for L'Academie he entered that glorious body in 1884 the question was ventilated by Pailleron: "What was the author's literary relation in his union with Meilhac?"
"Carmen," an opera in four acts, words by Meilhac and Halevy, adapted from Prosper Merimée's romance of "Carmen," was first produced at the Opera Comique, Paris, March 3, 1875, with Mme. Galli-Marie in the title-rôle and Mlle. Chapuy as Michaela. The scene is laid in Seville, time 1820.
It was answered by M. Sarcey, who criticised the character and quality of the work achieved. Public opinion has a long time since brought in quite another verdict in the case. Halevy's cooperation endowed the plays of Meilhac with a fuller ethical richness tempered them, so to speak, and made them real, for it can not be denied that Meilhac was inclined to extravagance.
She had a rightful property-interest in the Revolution, her own great-uncle having been one of those who "suffered;" not, however, under the guillotine; for to Georges Meilhac appertained the rare distinction of death by accident on the day when the business-like young Bonaparte played upon the mob with his cannon.
At this moment the actor and actress, who had retired during dessert, made their entry, one in a coachman's overcoat, the other in a nurse's jacket, and they gave us the Sonnettes with an energy, a go, a dash well, it would only be fair to them if Claretie, on the recommendation of Meilhac and Halevy, offers to put them on the pension list of the Comédie Française.
When we remember that, in France alone, Augier and Dumas fils and Hugo, Halévy and Meilhac and Labiche, were all of them alive, the compliment, though a sound, was a vivid one. Sooner or later, everything that was said about Ibsen, though it were whispered in Choctaw behind the altar of a Burmese temple, came round to Ibsen's ears, and this handsome tribute from the rival produced its effect.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking