urgently needing to be done that night, the Head of State, who was a great opera fan, wanted to hear
Pelléas et Mélisande
, which was on at the Metropolitan Opera House, with the famous Mary Garden in the leading rôle. His friend the Academician had talked a lot about this score, which was said to be very good and, although much discussed at first, had fanatical admirers in Paris, whom that eccentric homosexual Jean Lorrain described as “Pelléasts.”
They seated themselves in the front row, the conductor raised his baton, and the huge orchestra spread at his feet began to play, soundlessly. It made no sound, but emitted a murmur, a quivering, a whispering of a note here and a note there which didn’t amount to music …
“And is there no Overture?” asked the Head of State.
“It’s coming, it’s coming,” said Peralta, hoping that the sound would grow, rise, become definite and swell into a fortissimo. “
Faust
and
Aida
begin like this, almost in silence (I think they call it
a la sordina
), so as to prepare one all the more for what is to come next.” But now the curtain was going up and it was still the same. The musicians were all there, numbers of them, intent, with their eyes on their music—yet they had achieved nothing. They were testing their reeds,shaking the saliva from their horns, giving a half-turn to their instruments, making a string vibrate, sweeping their harps with their fingertips without succeeding in producing anything like a definite melody. A little stress here, an imperceptible plaint there, themes sketched, impulses still-born, and on the stage two characters gassing away but unable to make up their minds to sing. And now—a change of scene—here is a mediaeval lady reading a letter aloud in an accent from Kansas City. An old man is listening. Shaking his head like someone who didn’t want to hear, who was bored; and then came the interval.
The sight of the galleries and corridors now aroused some amusing and pungent reflections in the President’s mind, about the artificiality of the aristocracy of New York, and how pompously they showed off, compared with that of Paris. However well-cut a tailcoat might be, on the back of a Yankee it made him look like a conjurer. When he bowed in his white tie and shirtfront one expected a rabbit or a pigeon to emerge from his top hat. The matrons of the Four Hundred wore too much ermine, too many tiaras, too many of Tiffany’s wares. Behind them one glimpsed luxurious houses, with gothic fireplaces bought in Flanders, columns from Cluniac monasteries transhipped in the holds of transatlantic liners, pictures by Rubens or Rosa Bonheur and some authentic Tanagras, whose dancing movements were out of rhythm with the beat of “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” pouring in through the renaissance windows. Although some surnames from the former Dutch or British ascendancy went back to the seventeenth century, when they were heard in proximity to Central Park they absorbed an indefinable quality of being imported products—at the same time false and exotic, like those vague titles of Marqueses de la Real Proclamacion or del Merito or del Premio Real that we have in Latin America.That aristocracy was as fictitious as the atmosphere of the opera they were putting on this evening, with its floating Mediaevalism, its ogival arches all over the place, its vaguely dynastic furniture, its battlements of no special date emerging from a perpetual mist to suit the taste of the designer.
The curtain went up again and other scenes and another interval followed; the curtain went up yet again and more scenes followed, all submerged in evanescent pearly haze, with caves, shadows, serenades, an invisible chorus, doves that didn’t fly, three dead beggars, distant flocks of sheep, things seen by others but not visible to us … And when at last the final interval was reached the Head of State broke out: “No one is really singing here; there is no baritone,
Pelléas et Mélisande
, which was on at the Metropolitan Opera House, with the famous Mary Garden in the leading rôle. His friend the Academician had talked a lot about this score, which was said to be very good and, although much discussed at first, had fanatical admirers in Paris, whom that eccentric homosexual Jean Lorrain described as “Pelléasts.”
They seated themselves in the front row, the conductor raised his baton, and the huge orchestra spread at his feet began to play, soundlessly. It made no sound, but emitted a murmur, a quivering, a whispering of a note here and a note there which didn’t amount to music …
“And is there no Overture?” asked the Head of State.
“It’s coming, it’s coming,” said Peralta, hoping that the sound would grow, rise, become definite and swell into a fortissimo. “
Faust
and
Aida
begin like this, almost in silence (I think they call it
a la sordina
), so as to prepare one all the more for what is to come next.” But now the curtain was going up and it was still the same. The musicians were all there, numbers of them, intent, with their eyes on their music—yet they had achieved nothing. They were testing their reeds,shaking the saliva from their horns, giving a half-turn to their instruments, making a string vibrate, sweeping their harps with their fingertips without succeeding in producing anything like a definite melody. A little stress here, an imperceptible plaint there, themes sketched, impulses still-born, and on the stage two characters gassing away but unable to make up their minds to sing. And now—a change of scene—here is a mediaeval lady reading a letter aloud in an accent from Kansas City. An old man is listening. Shaking his head like someone who didn’t want to hear, who was bored; and then came the interval.
The sight of the galleries and corridors now aroused some amusing and pungent reflections in the President’s mind, about the artificiality of the aristocracy of New York, and how pompously they showed off, compared with that of Paris. However well-cut a tailcoat might be, on the back of a Yankee it made him look like a conjurer. When he bowed in his white tie and shirtfront one expected a rabbit or a pigeon to emerge from his top hat. The matrons of the Four Hundred wore too much ermine, too many tiaras, too many of Tiffany’s wares. Behind them one glimpsed luxurious houses, with gothic fireplaces bought in Flanders, columns from Cluniac monasteries transhipped in the holds of transatlantic liners, pictures by Rubens or Rosa Bonheur and some authentic Tanagras, whose dancing movements were out of rhythm with the beat of “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” pouring in through the renaissance windows. Although some surnames from the former Dutch or British ascendancy went back to the seventeenth century, when they were heard in proximity to Central Park they absorbed an indefinable quality of being imported products—at the same time false and exotic, like those vague titles of Marqueses de la Real Proclamacion or del Merito or del Premio Real that we have in Latin America.That aristocracy was as fictitious as the atmosphere of the opera they were putting on this evening, with its floating Mediaevalism, its ogival arches all over the place, its vaguely dynastic furniture, its battlements of no special date emerging from a perpetual mist to suit the taste of the designer.
The curtain went up again and other scenes and another interval followed; the curtain went up yet again and more scenes followed, all submerged in evanescent pearly haze, with caves, shadows, serenades, an invisible chorus, doves that didn’t fly, three dead beggars, distant flocks of sheep, things seen by others but not visible to us … And when at last the final interval was reached the Head of State broke out: “No one is really singing here; there is no baritone,
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