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DRAMATIC AND MUSICAL NOTES FROM PARIS.

Paris, April 1889.

A MOVEMENT in favour of the revival of classical Greek dramatic performances appears to be developing itself both in England and in this country. The tendency is very superficial as yet. In England it is apparently limited to the Westminster plays, the Cambridge performances, and a few isolated attempts. In France, where the his- trionic art is carried to great perfection, several interesting and very suc- cessful attempts have been made on the public stage. The late M. Jules Lacroix's translation of Qi.dipns ReXy brought out at the Theatre Francais, under the title Edipe Roiy was a great success. M. Mounet Sully in the part of Edipe was simply admirable ; while dresses, scenery, and stage accessories were quite in keeping with the character and scene of the tragedy. M. Leconte de Lisle's Erinnyes w'as another suc- cessful attempt to initiate the Parisians into the beauties and deep philo- sophy of antique drama. The poet in this case has taken his subject and cha- racters from the Agamem- non and the Choephorx of jCschylus, but he has surpassed the original in horror, so much so that a captious critic has observed that the Erinvyes is an ' epic of the slaughter- house.' This tragedy has been revived recently at the Odeon for a limited number of performances in order to bring Madame Marie Laurent once more before the public previous tn her definite retirement from the stage after a dramatic career which has e.slended over forty-five years. The drama is divided into two parts ; in the first, entitled ' Klytaimnestra ' {I follow M. Leconte de Lisle's orthography of the character names), we assist at the return of victorious Agamemnon followed by the captive Kassandra, and their murder by the queen. In the second, ' Orestes,' the avenger has found his way back to Argos ; recognised by his sister, Elektra, he learns from her lips the tragic end of his father, and the curtain falls on the death of .-Egisthus and Klytaimnestra by the avenging hand of Orestes. The tragic effect of these scenes of horror is enhanced by the occasional apparition of the Erinnyes, the Furies, who, old, hideous, and ghastly, haunt the palace of Pelos. This adaptation is in every respect a work of the highest order ; the versification is faultless ; and M. Leconte de Lisle has never sung in more sonorous rhymes a nobler epic than this evocation of antique Greek tragedy. A few months previous to the first per- formance of the Erinnyes (1873) M. Massenet scored his first and most popular success ; his oratorio Marie Magdeleine met with an enthusiastic reception from the Parisian public, and de- servedly so, for it is the most beautiful and best written of his many exquisite musical compositions. The young composer was asked to write some incidental music to accompany certain scenes of the tragedy, and it may be said, without in any way wishing to slight the poet, that the music was a gleam of sunshine in the darkness of Hades. Three years later the Erinnyes was revived at the Gaite, then under the artistic management of M. 'izentini, who wished to give as much pomp and splendour as possible to the performance, so M. Massenet was asked to complete the original score by the addition of trium- phal marches, choruses, and a ballet. These ad- ditions, particularly the ballet, were not quite in keeping with the accepted idea of classical tragedy ; it was with some difficulty that the poet was per- suaded to allow the musi- cian to trespass to so great an extent on his domain, and the result justified in a certain measure his objec- tion. The spell worked on the audience by Massenet's beautiful music made them forget at times the splen- dour of the poem. The same result has attended the recent reprise at the Odeon, although there was no ballet, the music alone being played as an inter- lude between the first and second parts of the tragedy. The actors 'ere as usual ahnost all of them equal to their parts, though Madame Marie Laurent's voice failed her at times. Madame Tessandier in the part of Kassandra looked and played her part with

great eflect ; nothing could be more dramatic than her delivery of the following lines, in which she describes the weird Erinnyes —

' Insenses ! vous aussi vous ne m'avez pas crue!
Ecoutez ! La clameur loint.aine s'est accrue.
Oh ! les longs aboiements ! Je les vols accourir,
Les chiennes, a I'odeur de ceux qui vont mourir,
Les monstres a qui plait le cri des agonies,
Les vieilles aux yeux creux, les blemes Erinnyes,
Qui flairaient dans la nuit la route oil nous passions.
Viens, lugubre troupeau des Execrations,
Meute, qui vas, hurlant sans relache, et qui leches
Des antiques forfaits les traces toujours fraiches! '

Madame Segond Weber as Elektra was charming as she chaunted rather than declaimed the libation scene at Agamemnon's tomb, while the sweet elegy Massenet composed as an accompaniment was murmured by the violoncellos with exquisite melody. I cannot help giving the first two strophes of this piece, for they^are of themselves sweet music to the vulgarest ear:—