Nana debuts as Venus to wild applause

Then followed a scene which seemed interminable.  Jupiter in the course of it seemed never to be going to finish assembling the Council of Gods in order to submit thereto the deceived husband's requests.  And still no Nana!  Was the management keeping Nana for the fall of the curtain then?  So long a period of expectancy had ended by annoying the public.  Their murmurings began again.

"It's going badly," said Mignon radiantly to Steiner.  "She'll get a pretty reception; you'll see!"

At that very moment the clouds at the back of the stage were cloven apart and Venus appeared.  Exceedingly tall, exceedingly strong, for her eighteen years, Nana, in her goddess's white tunic and with her light hair simply flowing unfastened over her shoulders, came down to the footlights with a quiet certainty of movement and a laugh of greeting for the public and struck up her grand ditty:

When Venus roams at eventide."

From the second verse onward people looked at each other all over the house.  Was this some jest, some wager on Bordenave's part? Never had a more tuneless voice been heard or one managed with less art.  Her manager judged of her excellently; she certainly sang like a squirt.  Nay, more, she didn't even know how to deport herself on the stage: she thrust her arms in front of her while she swayed her whole body to and fro in a manner which struck the audience as unbecoming and disagreeable.  Cries of "Oh, oh!" were already rising in the pit and the cheap places.  There was a sound of whistling, too, when a voice in the stalls, suggestive of a molting cockerel, cried out with great conviction:

"That's very smart!"

All the house looked round.  It was the cherub, the truant from the boardingschool, who sat with his fine eyes very wide open and his fair face glowing very hotly at sight of Nana.  When he saw everybody turning toward him be grew extremely red at the thought of having thus unconsciously spoken aloud.  Daguenet, his neighbor, smilingly examined him; the public laughed, as though disarmed and no longer anxious to hiss; while the young gentlemen in white gloves, fascinated in their turn by Nana's gracious contours, lolled back in their seats and applauded.

"That's it!  Well done!  Bravo!"

Nana, in the meantime, seeing the house laughing, began to laugh herself.  The gaiety of all redoubled itself.  She was an amusing creature, all the same, was that fine girl!  Her laughter made a love of a little dimple appear in her chin.  She stood there waiting, not bored in the least, familiar with her audience, falling into step with them at once, as though she herself were admitting with a wink that she had not two farthings' worth of talent but that it did not matter at all, that, in fact, she had other good points. And then after having made a sign to the conductor which plainly signified, "Go ahead, old boy!" she began her second verse:

'Tis Venus who at midnight passes--"

Still the same acidulated voice, only that now it tickled the public in the right quarter so deftly that momentarily it caused them to give a little shiver of pleasure.  Nana still smiled her smile: it lit up her little red mouth and shone in her great eyes, which were of the clearest blue.  When she came to certain rather lively verses a delicate sense of enjoyment made her tilt her nose, the rosy nostrils of which lifted and fell, while a bright flush suffused her cheeks.  She still swung herself up and down, for she only knew how to do that.  And the trick was no longer voted ugly; on the contrary, the men raised their opera glasses.  When she came to the end of a verse her voice completely failed her, and she was well aware that she never would get through with it.  Thereupon, rather than fret herself, she kicked up her leg, which forthwith was roundly outlined under her diaphanous tunic, bent sharply backward, so that her bosom was thrown upward and forward, and stretched her arms out.  Applause burst forth on all sides.  In the twinkling of an eye she had turned on her heel and was going up the stage, presenting the nape of her neck to the spectators' gaze, a neck where the red-gold hair showed like some animal's fell.  Then the plaudits became frantic.

---from Nana by Emile Zola.