The Opera

Beside the opera, to those that understand its spirit and love its exaltations, the spoken drama is something infinitely petty; the mask and the cothurn seem then to belong only to the region into which song lifts them. For the opera is, after all, little else than the old Greek play perfected in the matter of its representation, and with the eloquence of language translated more thoroughly into music. There is the chorus and there are the instruments, both of them far transcending the old simple idea; all the appliances of modern illumination and machinery take the place of the ancients' open roof of the blue in those theatres that were

"clean scooped

Out of a hill-side, with the sky above,

And sea before our seats in marble row;"

and after all that, all passion and suffering and joy being crowded into the action now as then, tone and tune lift it on their mighty wings, and love and sorrow are heightened and deepened into the universal sympathy by the magic of modulated numbers, the ineffable power of music.

But in old times all Greece attended the representations of the drama. The merits of the new play were discussed by the populace as freely as the price of provisions. Balaustion and her listeners were not the only ordinary Greeks who knew Euripides and Sophocles by heart ; their verses belonged to the people, and they had their roots in the common soil.

But with us, on the contrary, the opera is as costly as all other exotics are; it is designed only for the rich the boys who sang the women's part to the Greeks did not dream of being able to melt pearls in their drink in the way our prime-donne can do if they will and by force of circumstances the poor have little part in it. Nevertheless, among those who do frequent it here there are several perfectly distinct classes of patrons: there are those who go because it is the fashion, as they would stay away if it were the fashion, who go because opera hats and cloaks are becoming, who go because they are invited, because all their friends are there, because they want to say they went, want to be seen, want to be excited; then there are those who go as a matter of curiosity, because it is a novelty to them, because they want to educate themselves in all those things that touch the finer senses; and lastly, there are those who go to intoxicate soul and sense in a luxury of sound, to revel in the beauty of motion and light and color, the eagerness of dramatic interpretation, the satisfaction of song who go because to them the opera is a real thing, a thing they love, and that repays them with an affluence of pleasure humming over sweets, and only retires from the work at last when not only she herself, but all her friends as well, have no money left.

And what a throng it is of which these shoppers make a part the haughty urbans stepping from their satin-lined carriages; the satchel-bearing suburbans; the young country school-mistress who thinks the firm would possibly become embarrassed if she did not buy her new black silk there, and, the article once bought, feels a happy consciousness of benefits conferred, and a proud sense of having enlarged the trade of the place in all the markets of the world; then there is the penniless companion of the shopper, who has no purse to open, and before whose indifferent eyes all these things the people, the noise, the bustle, the confusion pass like disordered phantasms; there is the woman who never lets her purchase out of her sight after the money has passed, and laughs to scorn the parcel delivery, and the woman who wears a circular cloak and is afraid to go near the counters for fear she shall be accused of stealing, and the woman who wears a circular and takes precious good care to keep near the counters and watch her chance for stealing; there is the professional shopper who buys for others on commission, and who knows what there is in the place better than the clerks themselves know; the young bride who never thinks of blushing as she adds treasure after treasure to her trousseau; the young mother who is nothing but a blush as she chooses her nainsooks and long lawns and edgings and insertings; there is the wretched gentleman who accompanies some shoppers as purse-bearer, and in all the crowd of women never felt so exquisitely uncomfortable in his life; and there are the shoppers who have no idea of buying at all, but who have come only to see what it is that the rest of the world is buying.

And what beautiful things they are that the world is buying! One would say ingenuity in design and beauty of fabric and prodigality of undreamed of colors never reached before the point they touch to-day; for although stuffs have been made more barbarously rich, we doubt if they have ever been more artistically beautiful. The shopper whose check-book is not unlimited needs to pause bewildered among all the brocades and damasks, to beg for patterns, and then to go home and ponder and balance and decide in peace, where her fancy will not be disturbed by rival claims, where the jostling of the crowd will not have made her nervous and cross and difficult to please, and where the elation of the recently given largess for her shopping will not have so turned her head that she is pleased too easily and buys too soon.

And, after all, the whole business is much like a lottery. One starts out in the morning quite ignorant whether one is to draw prize or blank; whether the bargain will prove a bargain or otherwise; whether what looked precisely right in the shop will not look precisely wrong at home, away from its accesseries, and face to face with the necessities of its future companion pieces of dress; whether the silk will not wear shiny, the basket cloth wear satiny, the damasse rub up fluffy. One's ideas, too, are apt to build such charming pictures of unattainable shapes and colors that the result may be heart breaking. One marvels that out of all that wilderness of beauty and lustre in the shops, to which the four quarters of the globe have contributed muslins from Farther India, shawls from Cathay, gold-wrought wefts from Egypt, silks from France, furs from the North Pole one has contrived to reach only such a beggarly and unbecoming end. And then to the disappointed young shopper, who has not been broken in by a long series of disappointments, there seems to be little more to live for, until some rival shopper, when all is over, says how perfectly that plume falls along the brim! what a lovely contrast that color is with the skin! with what grace that stuff takes folds and falls! groans for such a knack of making herself picturesque, and begs for her company when next she rides abroad, and knows well that neither theatre, nor dance, nor drive, nor sail has any such swift and sweet excitement as shopping has for the skillful shopper.