290 ELECTRIC LIGHTING. 



limited degree of attention. On the stage, however, this 

 light produces its full effect, and the play of the Pommes de 

 Terre Malades, in which it was used on the French stage 

 for the first time, the operas of Le Prophete, Mo'ise, Faust, 

 and Hamlet, and the ballets of La Filleule des Fees, La 

 Source, &c., have shown what admirable resources this light 

 has placed at the disposal of the scenic artist. 



Application of the Electric Light to Theatrical 

 Representations. The most striking effects that the 

 electric light has produced on the stage have been contrived 

 by Duboscq. For this purpose he has arranged in the 

 new Opera-House a room set apart for the necessary bat- 

 teries and engines. Without stopping to describe the effect 

 o the rising sun in Le Prophete, which everybody at once 

 admired, and which was produced by a mere upward move- 

 ment of the regulator a movement skilfully disguised by a 

 number of more or less transparent curtains ; without speak- 

 ing of the application of the voltaic arc for projecting a 

 bright light on certain parts of the stage, in order to make 

 groups or portions of the scenery stand out brilliantly, we 

 may state that the intense rays of the electric light have 

 served to reproduce upon the stage certain physical pheno- 

 mena in their natural aspect, such as rainbows, flashes of 

 lightning, moonlight, &c. This source of light is the only 

 one which has proved intense enough to produce on the 

 immense stage of the new Opera-House those effects of 

 light and phantasmagoria which the public find so striking. 



According to Saint-Edme, from whom we borrow these 

 details, the rainbow was produced at the Opera-House for 

 the first time by Duboscq, in 1860, in the revival of Moise. 

 The occasion of the appearance of the rainbow in the first act 

 of that opera is well known. At first, bands of coloured 

 paper in the curtain, representing the sky of Memphis, were 

 illuminated by large oil-lamps simply. Afterwards came the 

 electric light, but only the method of illumination was 



