Summary Of Monsieur Sage, The Opera Connoisser '

m o n s I e u r s a g e
“Everybody was a little afraid of Monsieur Sage, the opera connoisseur.”

Monsieur Sage sits by the stage. Today he has on a long, plum-colored overcoat. His cravat is tied neatly – c'est la – and his hat has been taken off his head and placed neatly beside him – so. Monsieur Sage is with us nearly every day. His shoes are shined by the boys who come in with their big boot-black kits and eyes like bad charcoal sketches. His waistcoats are eyed by Madame Duchamp, who thinks they are gauche. “Ah, le bon Monsieur Sage!” she says to us in the back room. “He is positively bourgeois!” But Madame Duchamp does not dare part her lips in earshot of Monsieur Sage, because we are all a little afraid of him. He is not bourgeois. …show more content…
Mondays at the opera, Monsieur Sage checks his coat and Marie The Stage Manager takes him backstage, into the curtains and ropes and surreal propland that stands behind the sets. She moves his gloved hands to show him how to lower the backdrops. She takes him up on the wooden catwalks, on the skinny scaffolding that breaks under heavy shoes and heavy bellies. She lets him move the stage lights hither, thither, and yon. Sometimes, in the shadows, I think I see their gaze brush up and down each other's faces. We say Marie The Stage Manager and Monsieur Sage are in love, but Madame Duchamp says that's tosh. On Sundays, reviews of the productions appear in the paper. Monsieur Sage's name is tagged onto the author's byline. All of the sopranos look at the reviews with fear in their eyes. Monsieur Sage bloodies and praises productions with a flaming pen: Tosca, Carmen, Aida, Faust. When the reviews are good, the sopranos buy up copies and copies to frame and kiss and give to friends. When they are bad, the sopranos faint or weep. The very worst of them weep, but they do not weep to Monsieur …show more content…
It is Wednesday at the opera, and it is night. I am on the catwalk, high above the sea of faces that has gathered in the crowd. The great statues that lean out from alcoves of great pillars and scrollwork lean their hard marble faces down with observant eyes. They are doing La Boheme tonight. Gypsies and poets and washerwomen. Eliza Duchamp dances across the stage. She is like sea foam in a robe of white, with a white face and almost white hair, pale from powder and weightless as a handkerchief hung out to dry. She speaks with her pointed toes and her raised arms, with every incline of the head and bend of the knee. The only color in her is in her eyes, velvet black with lashes like raven down. When the opera is over, I find her outside on the balcony watching the procession leave. Madame Duchamp is beside her. “Daughter, daughter of mine, how well you dance,” I hear her say. Eliza has no voice and her lips smile. Madame Duchamp has a hard face, like linen run through the wash too many times. Her hair is black and scraped back in a bun. But her eyes are soft when they fall on