Open from May 1st to October 18, 1896, for the Swiss National Exhibition in Geneva, the Sapajou (Capuchin Monkey) shadow theatre scheduled a dozen shadow plays very much reminiscent of the Parisian shows put on at the Chat Noir (1885-1896). The artists who collaborated on the plays (painters, musicians, poets) were however anxious to add a national element to their repertoire and to assert their singular critical positioning; they did so mostly through their weekly review Le Sapajou. Saying they missed the “child’s plays” of primitive monkeys, they derided the ambient Darwinian discourse: “the fin-de-siècle capuchin moneys […] have better things to do; the necessities of life and the “struggle for life” impose social duties on them and force them to choose a career”. During the daily performances of the theatre, the pianist Gustave Ferrari played the musical accompaniment, and H. Bertilliot narrated the play. The composer and educator Émile Jaques-Dalcroze often attended the gala events and sometimes improvised tunes on the piano.

Performed for the first time during a gala event in August 1896, Le Saint-Bernard is one of the Sapajou theatre’s signature plays: it was largely promoted in the review of the theatre, and it is the only play to have been published. Le Saint-Bernard is an ode to the Canton of Valais and Alpine landscapes, as well as a celebration of Christian charity; it alternates epic scenes, painted by the military painter Henri Forestier, and picturesque scenes, made by the landscape painter Henri van Muyden.

Addressing the Great Saint Bernard Pass directly, the narrator tells the story of the region, from the first hunters to the passage of Bonaparte’s armies. The silence in the peaks of the mountains is broken by the arrival of the first nomadic people, then by the clamour of the wars which have shaped the history of Europe (Hannibal, the Roman emperor; Attila; Marignano). Saint Bernard founded a refuge and a monastic order in the Pass, to rescue lost travellers. The retreat of the Swiss army against Bonaparte’s troops introduces the final tableau, which celebrates Peace and Charity.