the NachtKabarett

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An aspect of Manson's Grotesk Burlesk live performance as well as the lyrical imagery in The Golden Age Of Grotesque was that of the Absinthe laded Parisian nightlife in late Nineteenth century France. The nightlife was often depicted by the late Nineteenth Century artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec who gained his fame by designing posters for the Moulin-Rouge and the popular female club performers of the era such as Jane Avril, Yvette Guilbert and May Belfort, whom Manson adopted part of his performance from. Fascinated with the nightlife, decadence and lesbianism, he forfeited his bourgeoisie lifestyle to indulge in the Parisian nightlife, at one point living in a brothel, and used it for his artistic inspiration. Toulouse-Lautrec was himself deformed, as a dwarf, and when confronted with the often grotesque and unflattering manner he portrayed his models in he often replied that such a portrayal was a reflection from the disposition he was most familiar with, given his own.

The following is an excerpt from the book The Tragic Life Of Toulouse-Lautrec in regard to performers and aspects of the Parisian nightlife depicted by Toulouse which elements of the Grotesk Burlesk were adopted from:

"One of his two favourite café-concert was Les Décadents in his old street, the rue Fontaine. The place was well named; opened in early 1893 it was, after a series of particularly narrow escapes, closed eighteen months later when it staged a revue of such glaring indecency that even the lax censorship of the time could no longer turn its back. It opened again in 1895 and featured among other attractions the English Dancer May Milton and the Irish singer May Belfort. The English girl was heavy-faced, pale, expressionless after the manner of her kind, but her dancing, academic, restrained and graceful, seems to have won her some favor in a city which had tired of high kicking and was growing bored with serpentine wriggles; she was also a protégé of Jane Avril, then becoming a power with the café-concert managers, and was nicknamed "Missaussi" because of Jane's invariable request that she might include in a party "Miss aussi".

"May Belfort, whose portrait he painted more than once and for whom he also made a poster, was perfectly in keeping with the tone of the establishment. She was one of the few women regulars at the Irish-American Bar, where Toulouse-Lautrec sketched herwith the barman and his broken coachmen friend, Tom, and was probably the most striking of all his many models. Her "act" at Les Décadents was simple but effective; she appeared on stage dressed as a baby, wearing a yellow nightdress with wide white ruffs at the wrists, her long black ringlets falling from a large and highly ornamental white nightcap and carrying in folded arms a black kitten. She stood demurely amd motionless before her audience and mewed in half-babyish, half-kittenish lisping voice : 'I've got a little cat, I'm very fond of that', and so on in an appropriate nursery-rhyme style.

"This performance seemed never to tire the hard-bitten revelers of Les Décadents as it had seemingly never tired those of the Jardin de Paris and half a dozen other places before that; they roared with laughter, applauded, shouted the everlasting chorus of "I've got a little cat" and we altogether charmed.

"The audacity of such a turn in a sophisticated café-concert was perhaps enough to ensure its success, but the true explanation of the May Belfort rage dwelt in the contrast, known to all present, between the sight they were offered nightly - the baby clothes, the demure pose, the childish voice and words - and the private life of the singer - not very private indeed, since it began the moment she stepped from the stage and was notorious even in such company. This knowledge gave a fine spice to her masquerade - as did her occasional use of bold black eyes, the only feauture she permitted to move during her song - and it is this revelation of evil in disguise that Toulouse-Lautrec caught with uncanny skill..."