Page 46 - Weiss, Jernej, ur./ed. 2021. Opereta med obema svetovnima vojnama ▪︎ Operetta between the Two World Wars. Koper/Ljubljana: Založba Univerze na Primorskem in Festival Ljubljana. Studia musicologica Labacensia, 5
P. 46
opereta med obema svetovnima vojnama
forced following an arrest. [...] Prostitutes were forbidden to solic
it or even appear in the street or other public places before seven
o’clock in the evening and after ten or eleven at night. Neither were
they supposed to draw attention to their trade by dressing or behav
ing provocatively.3
This situation makes it understandable why prostitutes, and those who
wanted to meet them, preferred to camouflage their business as ‘theater’
and move it to a safe space behind closed doors.
Zola received first-hand information about the Théâtre des Variétés
from Ludovic Halévy, Offenbach’s brilliant librettist. Halévy took Zola back-
stage and showed him the dressing-room where in 1867 Hortense Schneid er
had ceremoniously received the young Prince of Wales. That, as well as many
other ‘juicy’ stories, found their way into Nana.4
The idea of theater as brothel and actresses/actors as prostitutes is not
new. “Acting, exhibiting one’s body to the public, has been equated with pros
titution from the earliest records of performance,” writes Laurence Senelick
in his essay “Sexuality and Gender” in 2018 in The Cultural History of Thea
tre in the Age of Empire. “The performer’s physical availability may be hedged
round with religious or ritual atavisms, but he and particularly she are sub
ject to the desires and appetites of the spectator.”5
About these ‘appetites’ we read in Zola’s novel, in the context of the
first appearance of Nana as a blonde Venus:
A shiver went round the house. Nana was naked, flaunting her na
kedness with a cool audacity, sure of the sovereign power of her flesh.
[…] Her Amazon breasts, the rosy points of which stood up as stiff
and straight as spears, could be […] clearly discerned […] beneath
the filmy fabric. […] And when Nana raised her arms, the golden
hairs in her arm-pits could be seen in the glare of the footlights. […]
The men’s faces were tense and serious, their nostrils narrowed […].
All of a sudden, […] the woman stood revealed, a disturbing wo
3 Virginia Rounding, Grandes Horizontales: The Lives and Legends of Four Nine
teenth-Century Courtesans (London: Bloomsbury, 2003), 11ff.
4 Émile Zola, Nana, trans. George Holden (London: Penguin Classics 1972), 21.
5 Laurence Senelick, “Sexuality and Gender,” in The Cultural History of Theatre in
the Age of Empire, ed. Peter Marx (London, Oxford, New York, New Delhi, Sydney:
Bloomsbury, 2018), 77.
44
forced following an arrest. [...] Prostitutes were forbidden to solic
it or even appear in the street or other public places before seven
o’clock in the evening and after ten or eleven at night. Neither were
they supposed to draw attention to their trade by dressing or behav
ing provocatively.3
This situation makes it understandable why prostitutes, and those who
wanted to meet them, preferred to camouflage their business as ‘theater’
and move it to a safe space behind closed doors.
Zola received first-hand information about the Théâtre des Variétés
from Ludovic Halévy, Offenbach’s brilliant librettist. Halévy took Zola back-
stage and showed him the dressing-room where in 1867 Hortense Schneid er
had ceremoniously received the young Prince of Wales. That, as well as many
other ‘juicy’ stories, found their way into Nana.4
The idea of theater as brothel and actresses/actors as prostitutes is not
new. “Acting, exhibiting one’s body to the public, has been equated with pros
titution from the earliest records of performance,” writes Laurence Senelick
in his essay “Sexuality and Gender” in 2018 in The Cultural History of Thea
tre in the Age of Empire. “The performer’s physical availability may be hedged
round with religious or ritual atavisms, but he and particularly she are sub
ject to the desires and appetites of the spectator.”5
About these ‘appetites’ we read in Zola’s novel, in the context of the
first appearance of Nana as a blonde Venus:
A shiver went round the house. Nana was naked, flaunting her na
kedness with a cool audacity, sure of the sovereign power of her flesh.
[…] Her Amazon breasts, the rosy points of which stood up as stiff
and straight as spears, could be […] clearly discerned […] beneath
the filmy fabric. […] And when Nana raised her arms, the golden
hairs in her arm-pits could be seen in the glare of the footlights. […]
The men’s faces were tense and serious, their nostrils narrowed […].
All of a sudden, […] the woman stood revealed, a disturbing wo
3 Virginia Rounding, Grandes Horizontales: The Lives and Legends of Four Nine
teenth-Century Courtesans (London: Bloomsbury, 2003), 11ff.
4 Émile Zola, Nana, trans. George Holden (London: Penguin Classics 1972), 21.
5 Laurence Senelick, “Sexuality and Gender,” in The Cultural History of Theatre in
the Age of Empire, ed. Peter Marx (London, Oxford, New York, New Delhi, Sydney:
Bloomsbury, 2018), 77.
44
