A PEN-AND-INK SKETCH FROM OBER- A MMRRGAII. PROSPECTIVE AND RETROSPECTIVE.
FORMERLY there was a drive of six hours or more from the nearest railway-station to Ober-Ammergan. Now there is but a distance of six miles. The approach to the village is very picturesque, through a line of chalets, pink, green, blue, and yellow, with deep eaves and rustic balconies, the wooded mountain-slopes and pasture-lands beyond.
The sun is setting red and ruddy ; the cows and gpats come slowly home, making as they go sweet music with their tinkling bells. It is the eve of a performance of the Passion-Play. Strangers and visitors have been flocking in all day, and since yesterday by Stell-wagen, carriages, and on foot. Towards sundown long lines of rustic pilgrims in bright and picturesque costumes are seen entering the village, singing and saying the angelus, and a little later the place is filled with bevies of peasants set free from their work. At 7 o'clock p.m. the village band makes the round with drums and trumpets, followed by all the country-folk. When dusk sets in, these have all settled down for the night, where, no one seems rightly able to say, but certainly not in or about the theatre. As we pass on the way to our several lodgings, all is silent. A solemn stillness pervades the precincts ; only the poplars wave their tall beads gently to and fro beneath the starlit heavens, and the fire-flies flit athwart the shadowy gloom. The night- watch cry in warning tones as we pass,—" Wer geht da P" (" Who goes there P") " Das Theater muss frei sein bei der Nacht." All are glad to retire early,—the foreign visitors that they may be up for a hasty breakfast, the natives and pilgrims to attend the masses in the church, which begin with the dawn. All the actors receive the sacrament before each performance. At 3 a.m. the cannons go off, and soon afterwards the festival is ushered in with music throughout the village. At 8 o'clock three cannonades announce the commencement of the Passion- Play. The humming of voices of the many thousands of spectators becomes gradually subdued, and as the overture draws to a close, universal silence prevails.
When the music ceases the leader of the chorus and the eighteen Genien, male and female, in classic drapery, appear from the side-scenes right and left. With hands crossed solemnly over the breast, they incline with simple dignity to the audience, and the leader begins the Prologue :—" In holy wonder cast thee down, 0 race, bowed low 'neath God's own curse ! Peace visits thee ! From Sion mercy ! He angers not for ever!" The curse thus commemorated was, as every one knows, a terrible plague which ravaged Ober-Ammergau and the district in 1633; the merciful deliverance—so runs the pious story—dates from the hour when the members of the commune, seeking help from the Almighty, recorded a solemn vow that they would every ten years give a public representa- tion of the Saviour's Passion, " in grateful adoration on their own part, and for the general edification of others." In 1634 the first performance took place. Taking the best pictures of the old masters for their models, religions reverence for their guide, Holy Scripture for their study, and its unaltered story for their plot, the peasant-actors have, in their untutored simplicity, succeeded in giving to the world a play which must rank before any other ever performed.
As the great German actor, Devrient, has said, " it is as if the sacred pictures of the Middle Ages had become endued with life." Not a note or bar of the sweet music is permitted to be. copied ; only the words of the chorus songs are put into print. The text of the play has never been published ; it is committed to memory from writing by the performers. Each
scene is preceded by an Old Testament type, or more than one. These tableaux-vivants are of the most perfect statuesque beauty, got up by a people who are sculptors by inherited taste from generations past. The subject-matter is given by the chorus, as in the Greek plays. The Passion-Play is divided into three parts, with seventeen scenes, besides the introduction and conclusion. During the singing of the last stanzas of the Prologue, the curtain rises upon two tableaux, Adam and Eve being driven out of Paradise, and Abraham preparing to offer up Isaac. The chorus divides right and left, sinking in the attitude of prayer, as a lofty cross is revealed in the background. From this point, all appear con- strained to look on, and listen, if not devoutly, at least with becoming seriousness.
The play itself is wonderfully given. One cannot say too much for the artistic effect of the scenes,—dress, colouring, and pose copied from some of the best-known pictures : Leonardo da Vinci's " Last Supper," Paul Veronese's " Christ Bearing the Cross," Rubens' "Descent from the Cross," Raphaers " Entombment," and others. The dialogues are carried out effectively, because naturally. The Sanhedrim reminds one of an Oriental durbar,—the Eastern dress and grouping, the colouring and action, all given to the life. Amongst the Vorbilder the gathering of manna in the wilderness is one of the best. And one of the most beautiful scenes is Christ's entry into Jerusalem riding upon an ass, amidst the multitude crying : " Hosanna to the Son of David !" Some three hundred persons—men, women, and children—appear in the procession, strewing palms and casting their garments in the way. One's attention is rivetted : one fears to lose anything. One can scarcely realise that all these are simple peasants, the chief portion of whose lives is spent in field-work, or other labour.
The scene in the Sanhedrim, ending in the excited cry of Priests and Pharisees, " We vote for his death," and the decision that Judas shall betray him, is moving in the extreme. So, too, the Passover Supper, strictly in accordance with the narrative in Holy Scripture, without any attempt at dramatic effect. After the Council, when Judas receives and counts with greedy avarice the thirty pieces of silver, and the betrayal in the garden, which immediately follows, an inter- lude of an hour occurs. All go to their several homes or lodgings for dinner. It is pretty to see the children running off across the grass from behind the scenes, with their little garments of many colours in their arms,—their reward, a bright new kreutzer apiece, as soon as the act is over.
The second act includes the leading away captive from the Garden of Gethsemane, and the judgment of Pilate. The raging of the bloodthirsty multitude, the denial of Peter, Judas in remorse going out and hanging himself, the scourging and crowning with thorns, create a painful tension in the minds of the spectators. The third act begins, and presently the chores appear draped in black, with black-starred diadems on their brows, in place of the golden circlets they have worn. The singing changes to a sad declamation, and one's heart stands still with expectation when the curtain rises in deepest silence,—and three crosses are seen in front of the stage. The Crucifixion itself seemed to the present writer the least impressive part of the whole Passion-Play.* One knows that the figure is a living one, and when the side is pierced before one's eyes, and there comes forth blood and water, it seems terribly real. But one has been told before- hand that this is managed by the insertion of a bladder beneath the fleshings. The taking down from the cross is a solemn moment ; quite twenty minutes have elapsed from the beginning of the Crucifixion scene. Every eye is fixed upon the stage. When the stillness of death pervading the whole area is broken by the words, "It is finished !" it is impossible to give any conception of the thrilling effect.
The brilliant day had begun to cloud over, and the sky was dark at the time of the Crucifixion, so that when the mock- thunder reverberated in the hills, one was not quite sure whether it were not real. A sharp shower broke ; but th.. heavens were again bright and blue during the Resurrection. and Ascension scenes, and the sun's rays fell warm on the dripping mantles of the chorus while they sang, again draped in their rainbow-tinted garb, a joyful " Hallelujah ! fiber- wunden hat der Held !" When they ended in triumphant unison with " Praise and glory to the Highest, to the Lamb that was slain, Hallelujah !" the whole audience in the stalls,
which had until now been wrapped in the silence of awestruck attention, broke forth into loud clapping of applause. This somewhat jarred. Scarcely two minutes had passed, when the theatre was empty. People were already hastening to their carriages, and preparing to leave this quaint village in the mountains, where they had seen strange things, such as on the face of the wide earth they could never see again, and where, even could they not wholly approve the method, they had found much to instruct, and, at all events, some food for earnest contemplation.
It is easier now to reach this picturesque spot in the Bavarian Highlands than it was two decades ago, or even one. On leaving the train at Oberau, only six miles distant, Stell- wagen and carriages are in readiness, and every arrangement is made in the village itself to provide strangers with bed and board, if they announce themselves beforehand in writing to the Burgomaster. The burghers have in their collec- tive houses as many beds as there are seats in the theatre, and each one has as many tickets as there are beds in his house, so that any one bespeaking a lodging is secure also of a ticket for the play. The lodging may be a tiny cottage-room, very bare of furniture, at the top of a ladder; or it may be an unexpectedly well-appointed apart- ment in a superior chalet. One is thankful for anything. The ever-increasing influx of guests, since Dean Stanley's historical visit forty years ago, has occasioned a gradual enlargement of the theatre, which this year will contain five thousand spectators; it has also occasioned a corresponding increase of charge for everything. Beds, which were a gulden formerly, are now five or six marks a night. Seats, which cost five marks, are now ten,—the best rise in tiers in front of the stage, at a certain distance from it. It is better not to be too near. A large portion of the theatre is covered in, but the peasants sit in the area, under the open sky. The stage is uncovered, except just at the back, where the set-scenes are arranged; and the effect of the mimic streets and houses, mingling with the realities of the view, is very good. The brown roof and blue gable of a hay chalet peep above the streets of Jerusalem. The representations of this year commence on May 25th, and will be continued until September 28th—five-and-twenty in all— without including the repetition on the following day of per- formances at which all the visitors assembled may not have been able to find seats.
The inhabitants of Ober-Ammergau are most anxious to protect the devotional character of their Passion-Play from the irreverent curiosity of the mere sightseer or tourist.
1* This is not, we venture to say, the general impression of eye-witnesses of the play. Of course, if the mind is fixed on the means by which the results are produced, it might be so ; but in most spectators, the scene simply helps them to conceive with altogether overwhelming force, the real scene from which the redemption of mankind must be dated.—En. Spectator.]
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