DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.62133#0076
60
AN ART-STUDENT IN MUNICH.
Italian pictures, that you could have declared they were the
works of Giotto and Perugino, and not living men and
women, had not the figures moved and spoken, and the
breeze stirred their richly-coloured drapery, and the sun
cast long, moving shadows behind them on the stage.
These effects of sunshine and shadow, mid of drapery
fluttered by the wind, were very striking and beautiful; one
could imagine how the Greeks must have availed themselves
of such striking effects in then’ theatres open to the sky.
Between each scene, taken from the life of Christ, was a
tableau vivant chosen from the Old Testament, and typical
of the passage which should succeed it from the New Tes-
tament. Each tableau was explained by the chorus, which
duly swept across the stage in all their grandeur. Those
pictures from the Old Testament were singularly inferior to
the rest of the spectacle, impressing you most unpleasantly
■with a sense of tinsel and trumpery, and so stiff and hard
in their outlines that I cannot even now divest my mind
of the idea that the figures were carved in wood, and were
not living people. Not a limb moved, not a fold was
stirred; there was nothing of the soft melting outlines of
nature, none of the grace of life; they were precisely like
the tawdry, hideous carved saints that one sees here in the
churches. Spite of repeated assurances to the contrary, I
cannot help still feeling as though these figures were an
offering to the play from the wood-carvers of the village.
The performance had commenced at eight o’clock, and
now it was one, and a pause therefore ensued;—the first
pause of any kind during those five long hours—for tableau,
and chorus, and acting, had succeeded each other in the
most rapid, unwearied, yet wearying routine 1 One felt
perfectly giddy and exhausted by such a ceaseless stream of
music, colour, and motion. Yet the actors, as if made of
iron, appeared untouched by fatigue, and up to the very end
AN ART-STUDENT IN MUNICH.
Italian pictures, that you could have declared they were the
works of Giotto and Perugino, and not living men and
women, had not the figures moved and spoken, and the
breeze stirred their richly-coloured drapery, and the sun
cast long, moving shadows behind them on the stage.
These effects of sunshine and shadow, mid of drapery
fluttered by the wind, were very striking and beautiful; one
could imagine how the Greeks must have availed themselves
of such striking effects in then’ theatres open to the sky.
Between each scene, taken from the life of Christ, was a
tableau vivant chosen from the Old Testament, and typical
of the passage which should succeed it from the New Tes-
tament. Each tableau was explained by the chorus, which
duly swept across the stage in all their grandeur. Those
pictures from the Old Testament were singularly inferior to
the rest of the spectacle, impressing you most unpleasantly
■with a sense of tinsel and trumpery, and so stiff and hard
in their outlines that I cannot even now divest my mind
of the idea that the figures were carved in wood, and were
not living people. Not a limb moved, not a fold was
stirred; there was nothing of the soft melting outlines of
nature, none of the grace of life; they were precisely like
the tawdry, hideous carved saints that one sees here in the
churches. Spite of repeated assurances to the contrary, I
cannot help still feeling as though these figures were an
offering to the play from the wood-carvers of the village.
The performance had commenced at eight o’clock, and
now it was one, and a pause therefore ensued;—the first
pause of any kind during those five long hours—for tableau,
and chorus, and acting, had succeeded each other in the
most rapid, unwearied, yet wearying routine 1 One felt
perfectly giddy and exhausted by such a ceaseless stream of
music, colour, and motion. Yet the actors, as if made of
iron, appeared untouched by fatigue, and up to the very end