Crowing roosters, Gaumont's new technique
The programme started off with an introduction by one of the brothers. After that, the other brother appeared on the screen and spoke clearly to the audience. This was followed by the screening of a number of ‘talking films’: a crowing rooster, a banjo player, a drunken Parisian, and so on. Generally speaking, the sound quality was good; it was only the spoken parts that were occasionally problematic.
For the reproduction of image and sound, Alberts Frères used a system developed by the French company Gaumont whereby a film was played synchronously with accompanying sound from a gramophone record. This technique was not new, and was used in a number of shows during the previous decades. The Mullens brothers had already used it in 1904 and 1908 in their shows – advertising it as the ‘Phono-Bio’, and Alex Benner used a similar technique for his Benner’s Sprekende Bioscope.
In 1904 they used a combination of film and gramophone developed by the Lumière brothers. On this occasion, they also shot a few of their own films with synchronised soundtracks that included well-known operetta melodies and folksy popular songs such as Drinken we nog een dropske and Bertha van de schiettent. The live music during their shows was provided by then-famous comedian and couplet singer Maurice Dumas.
A review of the performance in the Paleis voor Volksvlijt wrote that the sound quality during these earlier shows was less than optimal; in any case, it wasn’t as good as the new technique developed by Gaumont, which substantially improved the synchronisation and the volume.
