“Naturalism” vs. allegory/metaphor: Or should it not be “vs.”? For all the atmosphere, the musical environment that surrounds the scenes, everything in Louise except for the Apotheosis of Light can be taken for naturalistic literalism, and played that way. In the outer acts, chez Whatever-Their-Last-Name-Is, there is no other level at work. But in the inner acts, many of the characters and events can be received for both naturalistic and metaphorical values. This is true at the macro level, with Paris itself. Always, it is simply what it is, the city where people live everyday lives and go about everyday business. That is true even during the Apotheosis, because after all anyone can stand up on the Butte on a nice night and say “What a swell view,” and that’s all there is to it. But we are also meant to sense The City as an almost metaphysical presence, the flame to which we moths are drawn if we have any poetic sensibility. Then the Butte becomes the Butte Sacrée, a Sacred Mount, and we (or at least our avatars, Louise and Julien) are transfigured. It’s the music’s job to get us there, and I think it does.

This double level also applies to individual characters, above all The Noctambulist. To be sure, in the Bohemian quarters of great cities it has been possible to encounter just such figures, performative men of a bizarre seductiveness who work a mixture of hypnotic shtick and flattery to lure pretty young girls for either their own purposes or others’, and we can take at its sleazy face value his claim to be “The Pleasure of Paris” and “The Procurer of the Great City.”  But something else is meant to work on us, too, for in his passing encounter with the Ragman is enacted, in foreshadow, precisely what The Father most fears. As the Noctambulist runs off, he jostles the Ragman, who falls. The Ragman then relates to the Junkman a long-ago meeting on this very spot with this same Noctambulist, who cajoled a pretty young thing to abandon her work and run off with him. It was the Ragman’s daughter, who in leaving brushed past him and knocked him down, as has just happened. It is a powerful narrative, accompanied by sharp thumps and tweaks, and as the Ragman breaks down, then drags himself off to work, the Junkman tells the Coal-Gatherer that he had three children himself, and could not hold one—it’s the same in every family. Later, at the end of Act 3, as the Bohemian festival has culminated with the crowning of Louise as The Muse of the Sacred Mount in the ceremony presided over by the Noctambulist as the King of the Fools (and this is not just a doubling of parts, but the same man), the Ragman makes another brief, haunting appearance. He crosses the upstage path as The Mother is concluding her plea for Louise to return to her ill father, singing of the futility of her quest, for “the great city has need of our daughters.” Louise and Julien believe they see The Father’s image as the Ragman vanishes. We have performances within performances, real stories within some larger story. We will return to “real life” at the end, but not before The City as fantasy has done its work.