| Show I I PATIENCE FROM THE REAR Peeping at the Opern Through a Hole in the Scenery The Conductor I have just had a sight of a performance of Patience from the rear It did not seem to me that the timeworn opera could afford any entertainment to a person per-son in the auditorium but I was mistaken as to that for the Casinofull of people were almost as demonstrative as though they had never seen the piece before It was their facial aspect that first struck me on peeping at them through a hole in the scenery Somebody ought to photograph photo-graph an audience by an instantaneous process in the midst of general laughter The picture would be immensely funny If a mirror could be flashed in front of you at the instant that the comedian of a farce does something to make you roar it isnt likely that you would recognize yourself in the horribly grimacing reflection Imagine a thousand persons with similarly sim-ilarly distorted faces That was what BuntLorne and I saw when he was sing ing some new tropical verses interpolated into Gilberts work and I was squinting through the peephole Still more astounding astound-ing was the spectacle when the lovesick maidens trooped upon the scene To me they presented merely a goodly variety of back hair and artistic outlines as they lopped the poses of exaggerated restheti cism j but to the spectator in front upon whom their pretty faces beamed I inferred in-ferred that they were entrancing This conclusion was based upon row after row of countenances which were idiotically rapt if they belonged to men and calmly critical if they belonged to women The dudes in the nearest chairs were very Romeos for their facial oxnression of fond yearning callow admiration The strangest face however was one that could be seen only from the stagefor it i was that of the conductor The waving baton and agitated back of this official may be familiar to you as a part of comic operas figures but you ought really to see his countenance It is a mistake to suppose that he employs his arms only in keeping the singers in harmony if this particular specimen was illustrative of his class He beat all the disciples of Valentine Vox for mobility and meaning I of countenance His features were like I bits of glass in a kaleidosocope for form ingat every shakea new combination He winked with his right eye at Patience as signal for her to begin and simultaneously with his left at Grosvenor to stop He frowned with one side of his face at the I chorus girls because they were out of time and smiled with the other side at the chorus fellows as an approval of their better vocalism He sang bars of the music himself He dropped from the exaltation of delight to the depth of acute torture with a suddenness which threatened threat-ened to break him into bits and then rose again with skyrocket celerity Every twitch of a nerve or jerk of a muscle apparently ap-parently meant some particular thing to the performers but to me the display was a marvel and I wondered whether after years of that sort of thing the man could let his face settle down into a state of rest without the aid of a portrait taken at the outset of his wry careerN Y Cor JntcrOccan I |
