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That far-off posterity, learning that all our theatres are filled every night, will never understand but we were a theatre-going people in the sense that it is the highest fashion to be seen at the play; and yet we are sensible that it is not so, and that the Boston which makes itself known in civilization–in letters, politics, reform–goes as little to the theatre as fashionable Boston.

The stage is not an Institution with us, I should say; yet it affords recreation to a very large and increasing number of persons, and while it would be easy to over-estimate its influence for good or evil even with these, there is no doubt that the stage, if not the drama, is popular. Fortunately an inquiry like this into a now waning taste in theatricals concerns the fact rather than the effect of the taste otherwise the task might become indefinitely hard alike for writer and for reader. No one can lay his hand on his heart, and declare that he is the worse for having seen “La Belle Helene,” for example, or say more than that it is a thing which ought not to be seen by any one else; yet I suppose there is no one ready to deny that “La Belle Helene” was the motive of those performances that have most pleased the most people during recent years. There was something fascinating in the circumstances and auspices under which the united Irma and Tostee troupes appeared in Boston–opera bouffe led gayly forward by finance bouffe, and suggesting Erie shares by its watered music and morals; but there is no doubt that Tostee’s grand reception was owing mainly to the personal favor which she enjoyed here and which we do not vouchsafe to every one. Ristori did not win it; we did our duty by her, following her carefully with the libretto, and in her most intense effects turning the leaves of a thousand pamphlets with a rustle that must have shattered every delicate nerve in her; but we were always cold to her greatness. It was not for Tostees singing, which was but a little thing in itself; it was not for her beauty, for that was no more than a reminiscence, if it was not always an illusion; was it because she rendered the spirit of M. Offenbach’s operas so perfectly, that we liked her so much? “Ah, that movement!” cried an enthusiast, “that swing, that–that–wriggle!” She was undoubtedly a great actress, full of subtle surprises, and with an audacious appearance of unconsciousness in those exigencies where consciousness would summon the police–or should; she was so near, yet so far from, the worst that could be intended; in tones, in gestures, in attitudes, she was to the libretto just as the music was, now making it appear insolently and unjustly coarse, now feebly inadequate in its explicit immodesty.

To see this famous lady in “La Grande Duchesse” or “La Belle Helene” was an experience never to be forgotten, and certainly not to be described. The former opera has undoubtedly its proper and blameless charm. There is something pretty and arch in the notion of the Duchess’s falling in love with the impregnably faithful and innocent Fritz; and the extravagance of the whole, with the satire upon the typical little German court, is delightful. But “La Belle Helene” is a wittier play than “La Grande Duchesse,” and it is the vividest expression of the spirit of opera bouffe. It is full of such lively mockeries as that of Helen when she gazes upon the picture of Leda and the Swan: “J’aime a me recueiller devant ce tableau de famille! Mon pere, ma mere, les voici tous les deux! O mon pere, tourne vers ton enfant un bec favorable!”–or of Paris when he represses the zeal of Calchas, who desires to present him at once to Helen: “Soit! mais sans lui dire qui je suis;–je desire garder le plus strict incognito, jusq’au moment ou la situation sera favorable a un coup de theatre.” But it must be owned that our audiences seemed not to take much pleasure in these and other witticisms, though they obliged Mademoiselle Tostee to sing “Un Mari sage” three times, with all those actions and postures which seem incredible the moment they have ceased. They possibly understood this song no better than the strokes of wit, and encored it merely for the music’s sake. The effect was, nevertheless, unfortunate, and calculated to give those French ladies but a bad opinion of our morals. How could they comprehend that the taste was, like themselves, imported, and that its indulgence here did not characterize us? It was only in appearance that, while we did not enjoy the wit we delighted in the coarseness. And how coarse this travesty of the old fable mainly is! That priest Calchas, with his unspeakable snicker his avarice, his infidelity, his hypocrisy, is alone infamy enough to provoke the destruction of a city. Then that scene interrupted by Menelaus! It is indisputably witty, and since all those people are so purely creatures of fable, and dwell so entirely in an unmoral atmosphere, it appears as absurd to blame it as the murders in a pantomime. To be sure there is something about murder, some inherent grace or refinement perhaps, that makes its actual representation upon the stage more tolerable than the most diffident suggestion of adultery. Not that “La Belle Helene” is open to the reproach of over-delicacy in this scene, or any other, for the matter of that, though there is a strain of real poetry in the conception of this whole episode of Helen’s intention to pass all Paris’s love-making off upon herself for a dream,–poetry such as might have been inspired by a muse that had taken too much nectar. There is excellent character, also, as well as caricature in the drama; not only Calchas is admirably done, but Agamemnon, and Achilles, and Helen, and Menelaus, “pas un mari ordinaire … un mari epique,”–and the burlesque is good of its kind. It is artistic, as it seems French dramatic effort must almost necessarily be. It could scarcely be called the fault of the opera bouffe that the English burlesque should have come of its success; nor could the public blame it for the great favor the burlesque won in those far-off winters, if indeed the public wishes to bestow blame for this. No one, however, could see one of these curious travesties without being reminded, in an awkward way, of the morale of the opera bouffe, and of the personnel–as I may say–of “The Black Crook,” “The White Fawn,” and the “Devil’s Auction.” There was the same intention of merriment at the cost of what may be called the marital prejudices, though it cannot be claimed that the wit was the same as in “La Belle Helene;” there was the same physical unreserve as in the ballets of a former season; while in its dramatic form the burlesque discovered very marked parental traits.