SARAH BERNHARDT

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 6, 8 January 1916, Page 12

SARAH BERNHARDT

RETURN TO PARIS STAGE. IMPRESSIVE SCENE. I - .. Madame Sarah Bemhardt has been seen by a Paris audience for the first time since her operation, wrote the Paris correspondent of the London Daily^Telegraph on Bth November. She was welcomed with tenfold enthusiasm; the house applauded for many minutes while she stood/ and at the close of the performance flowers were showered on the stage. _ She chose for her first appearance since the war and since her ordeal what I may, call a lyric fresco, "Les Cathedrales," with verse by Eugene Morand, the former collaborator of Sardou, and music by Gabrie) Pierne.- The I performance was for the benefit of ths ambulance of Professor Denuce, the surfeon who amputated Madame Bernardt's leg in Bordeaux. , ' All Paris—or what the war hag left of all Paris—was present to welcome Madamo Sarah. The curtain rose upoii dim, darkened scenery of vague clouds. In front lay a sleeping French soldier in his light tyue uniform and dark blue Tarn o' Shanter of the Chasseurs Quiet and solemn music was played off the stage, with occasional far-off ; warlike strains. The mist rolled up from the stage and showed five statuesque women in white, seated on thrones of grey stone. They. sat sad and solemn as Fates, but they spcke and showed 'them-' selves the genii of France, the spirits of her cathedrals—Amiens, Aries, Bonrges, St. Paul de Leon, and, in the centro, Notre Dame of Paris. At night then spirits of the cathedrals of France meet round Our Lady of Paris, and each tells of the sufferings and deeds her sons, fighting to drive the enemy off the soil—all sons of France, from south eramost Aries to Amiens in Picardy, and off the stage the chorus sang the stirring old folk-song, "Picards efc Bourguignons." ' . THE WONDERFUL VOICE. The cathedral spirits mourn for their missing sister, but a further mist rolls up and shows Strasburg—Madamo Sarah Bernhardt, also statuesque in white, seated on a grey stone throne, but with mourning black over her shoulders. The black she will throw off later. It was this first appearance of Sarah that called forth many minutes' applause from j the house. She stood without apparent effort and bowed, clearly much moved. She looks wonderfully well; her face has even filled out, and we soon heard that the wonderful voice had lost none of its music. She sang—it was, indeed, singing—of France fighting for her life and for justice. The little French soldier—all this was his dream—stood up, then knelt to the ancient spirits of his country and to Strasburg, which comes back to France at last. The spirit of Strasburg then sang in louder strains, and, rising to wrath, threw the curse upon the enemy. It was a long, eloquent and furious denunciation of _tiis crimes; a long denunciation, but not as long as tho list of crimes innumerable. • , You can imagine with what avenging fury Madame Sarah's voice branded the murderous foe in tho recital of infamy, from Louvain, Tirlemont, and. Namur, to Gerbevillers, Sermaise,. Senlis, and Reims. At the mention of Reims the black curtain lifted, and displayed\ the two great towers of the Cathedral before the roof in flames, which showed through the famous rose window. All around other churches — countless churches—blazed, and the spirit of Strasburg sang of the scores of humble little churches in Lorraine, Picardy, Artois, Flanders, which are now heaps of stones, strewn over the vijlage churchyards in which they ones stood. -Flanders chimes were heard off the stage, and songs of Lorraine and Alsace. Madame Sarah Bernhardt's revengeful voice went on whipping the enemy, and reached the crowning infamy—the murder of the noble Englishwoman, "whose blood bespatters the purple mantle of . thy Emperor, Germany." > The prophetic spirit of Strasburg foretold Germany's doom, and in a stanza of fine eloquence Sarah told of the German eagle's fate. I do not know how the lines said by another would have sounded, but "German eagle, German eagle, this is thy doom,"'said by Madame Bernhardt) seemed a. very picture of the fate which will overtake the bird of prey when it is at last 'brought down. Madame Sarah, the spirit of Nemesis, seemed to see the accursed eagle hovering over her, then .winged, then at last • crashing down at' her feet, " . ■ *