The time
of year at which he was able to come to Paris was unluckily the season
at which all the large theaters were closed. Nevertheless, by some happy
chance, I saw one performance at the Grand Opera of that great dancer
and actress, Bigottini, in the ballet of the "Folle par Amour;" and I
shall never forget the wonderful pathos of her acting and the grace and
dignity of her dancing. Several years after, I saw Madame Pasta in
Paesiello's pretty opera of the "Nina Pazza," on the same subject, and
hardly know to which of the two great artists to assign the palm in
their different expression of the love-crazed girl's despair.
I also saw several times, at this period of his celebrity, the
inimitable comic actor, Poitier, in a farce called "Les Danaides" that
was making a furor--a burlesque upon a magnificent mythological ballet,
produced with extraordinary splendor of decoration, at the Academie
Royale de Musique, and of which this travesty drew all Paris in crowds;
and certainly any thing more ludicrous than Poitier, as the wicked old
King Danaus, with his fifty daughters, it is impossible to imagine.
The piece was the broadest and most grotesque quiz of the "grand genre
classique et heroique," and was almost the first of an order of
entertainments which have gone on increasing in favor up to the present
day of universally triumphant parody and burlesque, by no means as
laughable and by no means as unobjectionable.
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