History
The drop curtain had none of the gaudy advertising people were used to seeing at vaudeville or stock company shows. Here instead, framed by trompe l'oeil drapery, was a splendid rendering of the Grand Canal in Venice, where a courtier serenaded ladies on marble palace steps as gondoliers poled slender craft past villas and gardens into a purple horizon. Half a dozen broad bands of gilded ornamental plaster radiated outward from the stage opening. The curtain rose that night on