The stage was set for the introduction to the first act of Rigoletto,
the curtain was down, the lights were already up in the house and a
good many people were in their seats or standing about and chatting
quietly. It was a hot afternoon in July, and high up in the gallery the
summer sunshine streamed through an open window full upon the blazing
lights of the central chandelier, a straight, square beam of yellow
gold thrown across a white fire, and clearly seen through it.
It was still afternoon when the dress rehearsal began, but the night
would have come when it ended. There is always a pleasant latitude
about dress rehearsals, even when the piece is old and there is no new
stage machinery to be tried. While the play or the opera is actually
going on, everything works quickly as in a real performance, but
between the acts, or even between one scene and another, there is a
tendency on the part of the actors and the invited public to treat the
whole affair as a party of pleasure.
Doors of communication are opened
which would otherwise be shut, people wander about the house, looking
for their friends, and if there is plenty of room they change seats now
and then. Many of the people are extremely shabby, others are
preternaturally smart; if it is in the daytime everybody wears street
clothes and the women rarely take off their hats. It is only at the
evening dress rehearsals of important new pieces at the great Paris
theatres that the house presents its usual appearance, but then there
have been already three or four real dress rehearsals at which the
necessary work has been done.
The theatre at which Margaret was making her début was a large one in
a Belgian city, a big modern house, to all appearance, and really
fitted with the usual modern machinery which has completely changed the
working of the stage since electricity was introduced. But the building
itself was old and was full of queer nooks at the back, and passages
and shafts long disused; and it had two stage entrances, one of which
was now kept locked, while the other had the usual swinging doors
guarded by a sharp-eyed doorkeeper who knew and remembered several
thousand faces of actors, singers, authors, painters, and carpenters,
and of other privileged persons from princes and bankers to
dressmakers' girls who had, or had once had, the right to enter by the
stage door. The two entrances were on opposite sides of the building.
The one no longer in use led out to a dark, vaulted passage or alley
wide enough for a carriage to enter; and formerly the carriages of the
leading singers had driven up by that way, entering at one end and
going out at the other, but the side that had formerly led to the
square before the theatre was now built up, and contained a small shop
having a back door in the dark alley, and only the other exit remained,
and it opened upon an unfrequented street behind the theatre.