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So I am captain, Byme-bye, ze major so I became major. Pretty damn soon ze colonel so I am colonel. I kill ze general for myself." As he spoke, he lifted the chair at the table, and brought it down on the floor with a bang. "What!" cried Gilbert, at this description of an opera-bouffe army. "But we shall not talk of me," Lopez said. "We shall spik of you. 'Ow you been since I seen you, what?"
The most French of all these styles is the opéra-comique, the work of two foreigners, but owing much more to the opéra-bouffe than is generally admitted, and, in any case, representing France very insufficiently.
A fifth, when his ideas are chased to their lair, will rhapsodize endlessly over the charms of the London Gaiety when The Geisha, The Country Girl, and The Circus Girl were in favour; a sixth, it seems, finds his pleasure in Americana, Robin Hood, Wang, The Babes in Toyland, and El Capitan; a seventh becomes maudlin to the most utter degree when you mention Les Cloches de Corneville, or La Mascotte, products of a decadent stage in the history of French opéra-bouffe.
Whenever a dictator is to be overthrown, or half a dozen chocolate-skinned generals in the Caribbean become dissatisfied with their portions of gold lace, the arms- and ammunition-dealers of South Street can give, if they choose, an advance scenario of the whole tragedy or comic opera, as the case may be. Real war or opera-bouffe, it is all grist for the mills of these close-mouthed individuals.
This was first represented in 1849, and it has always held its place on the French stage as one of the most delightful works of its class, in spite of the competition of such later outgrowths of the opera-bouffe, school as Offenbach, Lecocq, and others.
At this critical moment, with a large British military convoy expected, and the fleet, to use his impatient expression, "skulking in port," a Jacobin outbreak occurred in Toulon, and the seamen assumed the opéra-bouffe rôle of going ashore to assist in deliberations upon the measures necessary to save the country. Before they were again ready to go to sea, the convoy had arrived.
The fiction that aims merely to entertain the fiction that is to serious fiction as the opera-bouffe, the ballet, and the pantomime are to the true drama need not feel the burden of this obligation so deeply; but even such fiction will not be gay or trivial to any reader's hurt, and criticism should hold it to account if it passes from painting to teaching folly.
The burlesque Germans of the Grand Duchy of Gerolstein have vanished before the grim and earnest countrymen of grand and simple old King WILLIAM. It will be long before the French players find heart to burlesque anew the German soldiery. It will be some time, let us hope, before the German players at the Fourteenth Street theatre give way to the shameless antics of French Opera-Bouffe buffoons.
If they want Robertson, Robertson is there for them. If they desire opera-bouffe, depend upon it they will have it, and have it they do. What then do I infer?
As to my man, I dismissed him for good reasons and took another, as I was obliged to have somebody; but since I lost my Spaniard I have never felt confidence in any of my servants. I travelled with a Chevalier de Rossignan, whose acquaintance I had made, and we went by Casal to see the opera-bouffe there.
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