TRAVESTIES OF THE CATHOLIC RELIGION ON THE LONDON STAGE.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume v, Issue 232, 12 October 1877, Page 13

TRAVESTIES OF THE CATHOLIC RELIGION ON THE LONDON STAGE.

A Correspondent of one or two of our Western contemporaries writes as follows :—: — I send you for re-publication a paragraph which appeared last week anonymously in the London Times. I have accidentally ascertained that it emanated from the pen of the honest and distinguished member for the county of Galway, Mr. Mitchell Henry, and I cannot but regard it as worthy of hia head and heart. The opera which forms the subject of Mr. Henry's pithy letter is one in which the sacred ceremonies of the Catholic religion are travestied on the staee for amusement and ridicule. So pained was he at seeing the solemn sacred rites of the religion professed by the vast majority of hia fellow-countrymen profaned before an English Protestant indiscrimi. nating audience, that he sent to the Thunderer the following exnres. aion of his disapproval. * The following is the letter referred to in the foregoing •— I invoke the aid of the Times to prevent a repetition of the opera ■1 Sa n*a °hiara, the composition of a royal continental personage, with which we were favored on Saturday night at Covent Garden The border line, separating what is allowable in the travesty of religious and funeral ceremonies on the stage from what is repulsive is a narrow one ; but it has, I venture to say, never before in England been so ruthlessly crossed as in the present instance. The second act of the opera is wholly occupied by the lying in state and the religious ceremonies over the body of the murdered wife of the prince The stage is converted into a chapelle ardente on a high catafalque a lady reposes, with head and shoulders raised on a pillow, in a real coffin— the wooden sides being purposely left uncovered by the crimson pall ; around are kneeling monks, and flowers and wreaths are strewn about the coffin. More to the front, at the left S there is an altar, with the Book of the Gospels, or its representativf' E' »« d !r here . tQ c P»est celebrates Mass, turning alternately to the 2£\. a ? the laaeav ?e multitude, just as to our Protestant eyes he does m the ceremonies of the Roman Church. To complete the lUusion, when the body of the princess is lifted out of the coZ Ton the discovery that she is sleeping or in a trance, the coffin-lid with 2SI USU v^ fISS Pane le V n t? the U PP er P art ' i 8 carefully pu\ over the pall. Nothing more ghastly, or, to those who remember the reahtv more painful can be conceived. The act extends over some half hS SST^ i7^ P °? t 10 > nS ° f the Mass for the De ad are sung, iucluS the well-known "Requiem seternam dona cis, Domine": ki fact" realism is carried to the highest point, and the solemnofficeTwMcn tffe >uZt m * thG tUad ™ "«^«* for the entJSn^nt