3-047-017 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Scene from "Babil and Bijou," at Covent Garden Theatre, 1872. London stage production of a 'fantastic music drama...the mysterious scene in the forest of Rosewood, to which Phasilis, the Prince of Lutetia, and his Minister, Auricomos, had resorted for refuge in the hut of Olaf, the goatherd. Bijou, the heroine, is visited by the gnomes, sylphs, and fairies, who light upon the hearth while she is contemplating the faces in the fire. "Amongst them...were the Gnome Queen Pragma, and her son Skepsis. Bijou saw this strange crowd descend upon her hearth, and the bewildered and astonished little maiden listened horrorstruck to Pragma, who came to inform her that she was not a mortal but a fairy; that she may not marry her human lover; and that they have come to rescue her and take her back to Fairy Land, of which she is the rightful princess"...the gnomes had taken the fugitive queen captive..."The solid Ruby rose up out of the earth. It opened at a distance from Skepsis, and out of it stepped the captive queen, whose face Bijou immediately recognised as one she had seen in the fire."...Mr. Boucicault has expended all the skill and invention at his command, together with an amount of capital never before ventured in such an experiment'. From "Illustrated London News", 1872.