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| Walter Sickert The Old Bedford ca. 1895 oil on canvas Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool |
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| Walter Sickert Gaieté Montparnasse, dernière galerie de gauche 1906 oil on canvas Ashmolean Museum, Oxford |
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| Walter Sickert La Gaieté Rochechouart 1906 oil on canvas Aberdeen Art Gallery, Scotland |
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| Thérèse Lessore Euston Theatre of Varieties ca. 1920 oil on canvas Islington Museum, London |
Ovation
I try to make myself afraid,
the way you must have been afraid,
stepping out onto this stage –
but with a fear so pure, so
perfectly informed that you strode
out shouting. Here, where
the neon yellow arrows painted
on the floor shoot forward underfoot
in blackness – beneath the hanging
sequence of tinted skies – out toward
that mindless immortalizing light, now
dark. Now I think I feel the heat you
must have felt rising from the front rows.
A gaping fire door, a furnace:
your single body standing here
with no shadow, swinging on itself.
Had you been a fool, you might have thought
that they loved you. They never love you,
you said. They are hungry for the god
in his gold eclipse, the pure you on fire.
John and I move quickly, each with a handful
of ash, scattering. The sound of no sound falling
into the cracks in the boards, the footlights,
the first row. A small personal snow: a prince
of dust, a villain of dust. Each part you played
drifting up again, recomposing. I open my hand,
I let you go – back into the lines you learned,
back into the body and the body's beauty –
back into the standing ovation: bow after bow after bow.
– Carol Muske-Dukes (2003)
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| Adrian Allinson Scene from Jardin des Amoureux 1911 oil on canvas Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
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| Adrian Allinson Sir Henry Wood in the Queen's Hall ca. 1920 oil on board Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
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| Edgar Degas Two Dancers on a Stage 1874 oil on canvas Courtauld Gallery, London |
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| Jean-Louis Forain Seated Dancer ca. 1900-1910 oil on canvas Ashmolean Museum, Oxford |
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| Laura Knight Les Sylphides ca. 1922 oil on canvas Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, West Midlands |
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| Laura Knight Ballet 1936 oil on canvas Lady Lever Art Gallery, Liverpool |
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| Laura Knight Carnaval (Ballets Russes on stage before curtain-up) 1920 oil on canvas Manchester Art Gallery |
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| Laura Knight The Trick Act ca. 1938 oil on canvas Touchstones Rochdale, Lancashire |
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| Henry George Hoyland Interval 1938 oil on canvas Manchester Art Gallery |
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| John Armstrong Stage-set with Classical Buildings and Sculpture ca. 1930-35 oil on canvas Bristol Museum and Art Gallery |
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| Anonymous Italian Artist The Duet (Scene from an Opera) 17th century oil on canvas Salford Museum and Art Gallery, Manchester |
After the Opera
The curtain parts one last time
and the ones who killed
and were killed,
who loved inordinately,
who went berserk, were flayed alive,
descended to Hades,
raged, wept, schemed –
victims and victimizers alike –
smile and nod and graciously bow.
So glad it's finally over,
they stride off
suddenly a bit ridiculous
in their overwrought costumes.
And the crowd – still dark,
like God beyond the footlights of the world –
rises to its feet
and roars like the sea.
– Richard Schiffman (2017)