A thick darkness--of crape--comes down over
the sky. Horror falls on the impious multitude, and the scene is
deserted save by the faithful.
The closing act opens with a fine effect of moon and stars. "Que linda
luna!" sighed a young woman beside me, drying her tears, comforted by
the beauty of the scene. The central cross is bathed in the full
splendor that is denied the others. Joseph of Abarimathea (as he is here
called) comes in with ladders and winding-sheets, and the dead Christ is
taken from the cross. The Descent is managed with singular skill and
genuine artistic feeling. The principal actor, who has been suspended
for an hour in a most painful and constrained posture, has a corpse-like
rigidity and numbness. There is one moment when you can almost imagine
yourself in Antwerp, looking at that sublimest work of Rubens. The
Entombment ends, and the last tableau is of the Mater Dolorosa in the
Solitude. I have rarely seen an effect so simple, and yet so
striking,--the darkened stage, the softened moonlight, the now Holy Rood
spectral and tall against the starry sky, and the Dolorous Mother, alone
in her sublime sorrow, as she will be worshipped and revered for coming
aeons.
A curious observation is made by all foreigners, of the absence of the
apostles from the drama. They appear from time to time, but merely as
supernumeraries. One would think that the character of Judas was
especially fitted for dramatic use.
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