History of the Opera from its Origin in Italy to the present Time

Having seen Rousseau's views of the Opera as it might be, let us now turn to his description of the Opera of Paris as it actually was; a description put into the mouth of St. Preux, the hero of his Nouvelle Héloise.

"Before I tell you what I think of this famous theatre, I will tell you what is said here about it; the judgment of connoisseurs may correct mine, if I am wrong.

"The Opera of Paris passes at Paris for the most pompous, the most voluptuous, the most admirable spectacle that human art has ever invented. It is, say its admirers, the most superb monument of the magnificence of Louis XIV.; and one is not so free as you may think to express an opinion on so important a subject. Here you may dispute about everything except music and the Opera; on these topics alone it is dangerous not to dissemble. French music is defended, too, by a very rigorous inquisition, and the first thing intimated as a warning, to strangers who visit this country, is that all foreigners admit, there is nothing in this world so fine as the Opera of Paris. The fact is, discreet people hold their tongues, and dare only laugh in their sleeves.

"It must, however, be conceded, that not only all the marvels of nature, but many other marvels, much greater, which no one has ever seen, are represented, at great cost, at this theatre; and certainly Pope48 must have alluded to it when he describes one on which was seen gods, hobgoblins, monsters, kings, shepherds, fairies, fury, joy, fire, a jig, a battle, and a ball.

OPERATIC INCONGRUITY

"This magnificent assemblage, so well organized, is in fact regarded as though it contained all the things it represents. When a temple appears, the spectators are seized with a holy respect, and if the goddess be at all pretty, they become at once half pagan. They are not so difficult here as they are at the Comédie Francaise. There the audience cannot indue a comedian with his part: at the Opera, they cannot separate the actor from his. They revolt against a reasonable illusion, and yield to others in proportion as they are absurd and clumsy. Or, perhaps, they find it easier to form an idea of gods than of heroes. Jupiter having a different nature from ours, we may think about him just as we please: but Cato was a man; and how many men are they who have any right to believe that Cato could have existed?

"The Opera is not then here as elsewhere, a company of comedians paid to entertain the public; its members are, it is true, people whom the public pay, and who exhibit themselves before it; but all this changes its nature and name, for these dramatists form a Royal Academy of Music,49 a species of sovereign court, which judges without appeal in its own cause, and is otherwise by no means particular about justice or truth…

"Having now told you what others say of this brilliant spectacle, I will tell you at present what I have seen myself.

"Imagine an enclosure fifteen feet broad, and long in proportion; this enclosure is the theatre. On its two sides are placed at intervals screens, on which are grossly painted the objects which the scene is about to represent. At the back of the enclosure hangs a great curtain, painted in like manner and nearly always pierced and torn that it may represent at a little distance gulfs on the earth or holes in the sky. Every one who passes behind this stage, or touches the curtain, produces a sort of earthquake, which has a double effect. The sky is made of certain blueish rags suspended from poles or from cords, as linen may be seen hung out to dry in any washerwoman's yard. The sun, for it is seen here sometimes, is a lighted torch in a lantern. The cars of the gods and goddesses are composed of four rafters, squared and hung on a thick rope in the form of a swing or see-saw; between the rafters is a cross-plank on which the god sits down, and in front hangs a piece of coarse cloth well dirtied, which acts the part of clouds for the magnificent car. One may see towards the bottom of the machine, two or three stinking candles, badly snuffed, which, whilst the great personage dementedly presents himself swinging in his see-saw, fumigate him with an incense worthy of his dignity. The agitated sea is composed of long angular lanterns of cloth and blue pasteboard, strung on parallel spits, which are turned by little blackguard boys. The thunder is a heavy cart rolled over an arch, and is not the least agreeable instrument one hears. The flashes of lightning are made of pinches of resin thrown on a flame; and the thunder is a cracker at the end of a fusee.

SCENERY AND DECORATIONS

"The theatre is moreover furnished with little square traps, which, opening at need, announce that the demons are about to issue from their cave. When they have to rise into the air, little demons of stuffed brown cloth are substituted for them, or sometimes real chimney sweeps, who swing about suspended on ropes till they are majestically lost in the rags of which I have spoken. The accidents, however, which not unfrequently happen are sometimes as tragic as farcical. When the ropes break, then infernal spirits and immortal gods fall together, and lame and occasionally kill one another. Add to all this, the monsters, which render some scenes very pathetic, such as dragons, lizards, tortoises, crocodiles and large toads, who promenade the theatre with a menacing air, and display at the Opera all the temptations of St. Anthony. Each of these figures is animated by a lout of a Savoyard, who has not even intelligence enough to play the beast.

"Such, my cousin, is the august machinery of the Opera, as I have observed it from the pit with the aid of my glass; for you must not imagine that all this apparatus is hidden, and produces an imposing effect. I have only described what I have seen myself, and what any other spectator may see. I am assured, however, that there are a prodigious number of machines employed to put the whole spectacle in motion, and I have been invited several times to examine them; but I have never been curious to learn how little things are performed by great means.

"I will not speak to you of the music; you know it. But you can form no idea of the frightful cries, the long bellowings with which the theatre resounds daring the representation. One sees actresses nearly in convulsions, tearing yelps and howls violently out of their lungs, closed hands pressed on their breasts, heads thrown back, faces inflamed, veins swollen, and stomachs panting. I know not which of the two, the eye or the ear, is most agreeably affected by this ugly display; and, what is really inconceivable, it is these shriekings alone that the audience applaud. By the clapping of their hands they might be taken for deaf people delighted at catching some shrill piercing sound. For my part, I am convinced that they applaud the outcries of an actress at the Opera as they would the feats of a tumbler or a rope-dancer at a fair. The sensation produced by this screaming is both revolting and painful; one actually suffers whilst it lasts, but is so glad to see it all over without accident as willingly to testify joy. Imagine this style of singing employed to express the delicate gallantry and tenderness of Quinault! Imagine the muses, the graces, the loves, Venus herself, expressing themselves in this way, and judge the effect! As for devils, it might pass, for this music has something infernal in it, and is not ill-adapted to such beings.

THE AUDIENCE

"To these exquisite sounds those of the orchestra are most worthily married. Conceive an endless charivari of instruments without melody, a drawling and perpetual rumble of basses, the most lugubrious and fatiguing I have ever heard, and which I have never been able to support for half an hour without a violent headache. All this forms a species of psalmody in which there is generally neither melody nor measure. But should a lively air spring up, oh, then, the sensation is universal; you then hear the whole pit in movement, painfully following, and with great noise, some certain performer in the orchestra. Charmed to feel for a moment a cadence, which they understand so little, their ears, voices, arms, feet, their entire bodies, agitated all over, run after the measure always about to escape them; while the Italians and Germans, who are deeply affected by music, follow it without effort, and never need beat the time. But in this country the musical organ is extremely hard; voices have no softness, their inflections are sharp and strong, and their tones all reluctant and forced; and there is no cadence, no melodious accent in the airs of the people; their military instruments, their regimental fifes, their horns, and hautbois, their street singers, and guinguette violins, are all so false as to shock the least delicate ear. Talents are not given indiscriminately to all men, and the French seem to me of all people to have the least aptitude for music. My Lord Edward says that the English are not better gifted in this respect; but the difference is, that they know it, and do not care about it; whilst the French would relinquish a thousand just titles to praise, rather than confess, that they are not the first musicians in the world. There are even those here who would willingly regard music as a state interest, because, perhaps, the cutting of two chords of the lyre of Timotheus was so regarded at Sparta. – But to return to my description.

"I have yet to speak of the ballets, the most brilliant part of the opera. Considered separately, they form agreeable, magnificent, and truly theatrical spectacles; but it is as constituent parts of operatic pieces that I now allude to them. You know the operas of Quinault. You know how this sort of diversion is there introduced. His successors, in imitating, have surpassed him in absurdity. In every act the action is generally interrupted at the most interesting moment, by a dance given to the actors who are seated, while the public stand up to look on. It thus happens that the dramatis personæ are absolutely forgotten. The way in which these fêtes are brought about is very simple: Is the prince joyous? his courtiers participate in his joy, and dance. Is he sad? he must be cheered up, and they dance again. I do not know whether it is the fashion at our court to give balls to kings when they are out of humour; but I know that one cannot too much admire the stoicism of the monarchs of the buskin who listen to songs, and enjoy entrechats, and pirouettes, while their crowns are in danger, their lives in peril, and their fate is being decided behind the curtain. But there are many other occasions for dances: the gravest actions in life are performed in dancing.

THE BALLET

"Priests dance, soldiers dance, gods dance, devils dance; there is dancing even at interments, – dancing àpropos of everything.

"Dancing is there the fourth of the fine arts constituting the lyrical scene. The three others are imitative; but what does this imitate? Nothing. It is then quite extraneous when employed in this manner, for what have minuets and rigadoons to do in a tragedy? I will say more. It would not be less misplaced, even if it imitated something, because of all the unities that of language is the most indispensable; and an action or an opera performed, half in singing and half in dancing, would be even more ridiculous than one written half in French and half in Italian.

"Not content with introducing dancing as an essential part of the lyrical scene, the Academicians have sometimes even made it its principal subject; and they have operas, called ballets, which so ill respond to their title, that dancing is just as much out of its place in them as in the others. Most of these ballets form as many separate subjects as there are acts, and these subjects are linked together by certain metaphysical relations, which the spectator could never conceive, if the author did not take care to explain them to him in the prologue. The seasons, the ages, the senses, the elements, what connexion have these things with dancing? and what can they offer, through such a medium, to the imagination? Some of the pieces referred to are even purely allegorical, as the Carnival, and Folly; and these are the most insupportable of all, because, with much cleverness and piquancy they have neither sentiments nor pictures, nor situations, nor warmth, nor interest, nor anything that music can take hold of, to flatter the heart or to produce illusion. In these pretended ballets, the action always passes in singing, whilst dancing always interrupts the action. But as these performances have still less interest than the tragedies, the interruptions are less remarked. Thus defect serves to hide defect, and the great art of the author is, in order to make his ballet endurable, to make his piece as dull as possible…

"After all, perhaps, the French ought not to have a better operatic drama than they have, at least, with respect to execution; not that they are not capable of appreciating what is good, but because the bad amuses them more. They feel more gratification in satirising than in applauding; the pleasure of criticising more than compensates them for the ennui of witnessing a stupid composition, and they would rather mockingly pelt a performance after they have left the theatre, than enjoy themselves while there."

LE DEVIN DU VILLAGE

I have already remarked that, although in his Lettre sur la Musique Française, Rousseau had praised the melody of the Italians as much as he had condemned the dreary psalmody of the French, he expressed the highest admiration for the genius of Gluck. He never missed a representation of Orphée, and said, in allusion to the gratification that work had afforded him, that "after all there was something in life worth living for, since in two hours so much genuine pleasure could be obtained." He observed that Gluck seemed to have come to France in order to give the lie to his proposition that good music could never be set to French words. At another time he observed that every one complained of Gluck's want of melody, but that for his part he thought it issued from all his pores.

Now let us turn to the Devin du Village, of which both words and music are generally attributed to Jean Jacques Rousseau; that Rousseau who, in the Confessions, reproaches himself so bitterly with having stolen a ribbon (it is true he had accused an innocent young girl of the theft, and, by implication, of something more), who passes complacently over a hundred mean and disgusting acts which he acknowledges to have committed, and who ends by declaring that any one who may come to the conclusion that he, Rousseau, is, "un malhonnête homme," is himself "a man to be smothered," (un homme à étouffer).

Le Devin du Village is undoubtedly the work of Jean Jacques Rousseau, as far as the libretto is concerned; but M. Castil Blaze has shown, on what appears to me very good evidence,50 that the music was the production of Granet, a composer residing at Lyons.

One day in the year 1751, Pierre Rousseau, called Rousseau of Toulouse, to distinguish him from the numerous other Rousseaus living in Paris, and known as the director of the Journal Encyclopédique, received a parcel containing a quantity of manuscript music, which, on examination, turned out to be the score of an opera. It was accompanied by a letter addressed, like the parcel itself, to "M. Rousseau, homme de lettres, demeurant à Paris," in which a person signing himself Granet, and writing from Lyons, expressed a hope that his music would be found worthy of the illustrious author's words; that he had given appropriate expression to the tender sentiments of Colette and Colin, &c. Pierre Rousseau, though a journalist, understood music. He knew that Granet's letter was intended for Jean Jacques, and that he ought to return it, with the music, to the post-office, but the score of the Devin du Village, from the little he had seen of it, interested him, and he not only kept it until he had made himself familiar with it from beginning to end, but even showed it to a friend, M. de Belissent, one of the conservators of the Royal Library, and a man of great musical acquirements. As soon as Pierre Rousseau and De Belissent had quite finished with the Devin du Village, they sent it back to the post-office, whence it was forwarded to its true destination.

LE DEVIN DU VILLAGE

Jean Jacques had been expecting Granet's music, and, on receiving the opera in a complete form, took it to La Vaubalière, the farmer-general, and offered it to him, directly or indirectly, as a suitable piece for Madame de Pompadour's theatre at Versailles, where several operettas had already been produced. La Vaubalière was anxious to maintain himself in the good graces of the favourite, and purchased for her entertainment the right of representing the Devin du Village. This handsome present cost the gallant financier the sum of six thousand francs. However, the opera was performed, was wonderfully successful, and was afterwards produced at the Académie, when Rousseau received four thousand francs more; so at least says M. Castil Blaze, who appears to have derived his information from the books of the theatre, though according to Rousseau's own statement in the Confessions, the Opera sent him only fifty louis, which he declares he never asked for, but which he does not pretend to have returned.

Rousseau "confesses," with studied detail, how the music of each piece in the Devin du Village occurred to him; how he at one time thought of burning the whole affair (a conceit, by the way, which has since been rendered common-place by amateur authors in their prefaces); how his friends succeeded in persuading him to do nothing of the kind; and how, at last, he wrote the drama and sketched out the whole of the music in six days, so that when he arrived with his work in Paris, he had nothing to add but the recitative and the "remplissage" by which he probably meant the orchestral parts. In the next page he tells us that he would have given anything in the world if he could only have had the Devin du Village performed for himself alone, and have listened to it with closed doors, as Lulli is reported to have listened to his Armide, executed for his sole gratification. This pleasure might, perhaps, have been enjoyed by Rousseau if he had really composed the music himself, for when the Académie produced his second Devin du Village, of which the music was undoubtedly his own, the public positively refused to listen to it, and hissed it until it was withdrawn. If the director had persisted in representing the piece the theatre would doubtless have been deserted by every one but the composer.

LE DEVIN DU VILLAGE

But to return to the original score which, as Rousseau himself informs us, wanted nothing when he arrived in Paris except what he calls the "remplissage" and the recitative. He had intended, he says, to have Le Devin performed at the Opera, but M. de Cury, the intendant of the Menus Plaisirs, was determined it should first be brought out at the Court. A duel was very nearly taking place between the two directors, when it was at last decided by Rousseau himself, that Fontainebleau, Madame de Pompadour, and La Vaubalière should have the preference. Whether Granet had omitted to write recitative or not, it is a remarkable fact that recitative was wanted when the piece came to be rehearsed, and that Rousseau allowed Jéliotte, the singer, to supply it. This he mentions himself, as also that he was not present at any of the rehearsals – for it is at rehearsals above all, that a sham composer runs the chance of being detected. It is an easy thing for any man to say that he has composed an opera, but it may be difficult for him to correct a very simple error made by the copyist in transcribing the parts. However, Rousseau admits that he attended no rehearsals except the last, and that he did not compose the recitative, which, be it observed, the singers required forthwith, and which had to be written almost beneath their eyes.

But what was Granet doing in the meanwhile? it will be asked. In the meanwhile Granet had died. And Pierre Rousseau and his friend M. de Bellissent? Rousseau, of Toulouse, supported by the Conservator of the Royal Library, accused Jean Jacques openly of fraud in the columns of the Journal Encyclopédique. These accusations were repeated on all sides, until at last Rousseau undertook to reply to them by composing new music to the Devin du Village. This new music the Opera refused to perform, and with some reason, for it appears (as the reader has seen) to have been detestable. It was not executed until after Rousseau's death, and at the special request of his widow, when, in the words of Grimm, "all the new airs were hooted without the slightest regard for the memory of the author."

It is this utter failure of the second edition of the Devin du Village which convinces me more than anything else that the first was not from the hand of Rousseau. But let us not say that he was "un malhonnête homme." Probably the conscientious author of the Contrat Social adopted the children of others by way of compensation for having sent his own to the Enfants Trouvés.

CHAPTER X.

GLUCK AND PICCINNI IN PARIS

Gluck at Vienna. – Iphigenia in Aulis. – A rehearsal at Sophie Arnould's. – Gluck and Vestris. – Piccinni in Italy. – Piccinni in Paris. – The two Iphigenias. – Iphigenia in Champagne. – Madeleine Guimard, Vestris, and the Ballet.

FIFTEEN years before the French Revolution, of which, in the present day, every one can trace the gradual approach, the important question that occupied the capital of France was not the emancipation of the peasants, nor the reorganisation of the judicial system, nor the equalisation of the taxes all over the country; it was simply the merit of Gluck as compared with Piccinni, and of Piccinni as compared with Gluck. Paris was divided into two camps, each of which had its own special music. The German master was declared by the partisans of the Italian to be severe, unmelodious and heavy: by his own friends he was considered profound, full of inspiration and eminently dramatic. Piccinni, on the other hand, was accused by his enemies of frivolity and insipidity, while his supporters maintained that his melodies touched the heart, and that it was not the province of music to appeal to the intellect. Fundamentally, the dispute was that which still exists as to the superiority of German or Italian music. Severe classicists continue to despise modern Italian composers as unintellectual, and the Italians still sneer at the music of Germany as the "music of mathematics." Rossini, Donizetti, and Verdi have been undervalued in succession by the critics of Germany, France and England; and although there can be no question as to the inferiority of the last to the first-named of these composers, Signor Verdi, if he pays any attention to the attacks of which he is so constantly the object, can always console himself by reflecting that, after all, not half so much has been said against his operas as it was once the fashion to say against Rossini's. The Italians, on the other hand, can be fairly reproached with this, that, to the present day, they have never appreciated Don Giovanni. They consent to play it in London, Paris and St. Petersburgh because the musical public of the capitals know the work and are convinced that nothing finer has ever been written; (this is, however, less in Paris than in the other two capitals of the Italian Opera), but the singers themselves do not in their hearts like Mozart. They are kind enough to execute his music, because they are well paid for it, but that is all.

GERMAN AND ITALIAN MUSIC

In the present century, which is above all an age of eclecticism, we find the natural descendants of Piccinni going over to the Gluckists, while the legitimate inheritors of Gluck abandon their succession to adopt the facile forms and sometimes unmeaning if melodious phrases of the Piccinnists. Certainly there are no traces of the grand old German school in the light popular music of Herr Flotow (who, if not a German, is a Germanised Russian); and, on the other hand, Signor Verdi in his emphatic moments quite belies his Italian origin; indeed, there are passages in several of this composer's operas which may be traced directly not to Rossini, but to Meyerbeer.

The history of the quarrels between the Gluckists and Piccinnists has no importance in connection with art. These disputes led to no sound criticism, nor have the attacks and replies on either side added anything to what was already known on the subject of music as applied to the expression and illustration of human passion. As for deciding between Gluckism and Piccinnism (I say nothing about the men, who certainly were not equal in point of genius), that is impossible. It is almost a question of organisation. It may be remarked, however, that no composer ever began as a Gluckist (so to speak) and ended as a Piccinnist, whereas Rossini, in his last and greatest work, approaches the German style, and even Donizetti, in his latest and most dramatic operas, exhibits somewhat of the same tendency. It will be remembered, too, that the great Mozart, and in our own day Meyerbeer, wrote their earlier operas in the Italian mode, and abandoned it when they recognised its insufficiency for dramatic purposes. Indeed, Gluck's own style, as we shall presently see, underwent a similar change. But it would be rash to conclude from these instances, that Italians, writing in the Italian style, have produced no great dramatic music. Rossini's Otello and Bellini's Norma at once suggest themselves as convincing proofs of the contrary.