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

GLUCK

No work by Sacchini or Salieri was produced at the Académie until after the theatre in the Palais Royal was burnt down, in 1781. In this fire, which took place about eighteen months after Gluck had retired from Paris, and five months after the production of Piccinni's Iphigenia in Tauris, the old répertoire would seem to have been consumed, for no opera by Lulli was afterwards played in France, and only one by Rameau, —Castor and Pollux, which, revived in 1791, was not favourably received.

It was in June, 1781, after a representation of Gluck's Orphée, that the Académie Royale was burnt to the ground. Coronis (music by Rey, the conductor of the orchestra) was the last piece of the evening, and before it was finished, during the divertissement, one of the scenes caught fire. Dauberval, the principal dancer, had enough presence of mind to order the curtain down at once. The public wanted no more of Coronis, and went quietly away without calling for the conclusion of Rey's opera, and without having the least idea of what was taking place behind the curtain. In the meanwhile the fire had spread on the stage beyond the possibility of extinction. Singers, dancers, musicians, and scene-shifters, rushed in terror from the theatre, and about a dozen persons, who were unable to escape, perished in the conflagration. Madeleine Guimard was nearly burnt to death in her dressing-room, which was surrounded by flames. One of the carpenters, however, penetrated into her loge, wrapped her up in a counterpane (she was entirely undressed), and bore her triumphantly through the fire to a place of safety.

"Save my child! save my child!" cried Rey, in despair; and as soon as he saw the score of Coronis out of danger he went away, giving the flames full permission to burn everything else. All the manuscripts were saved, thanks to the courageous exertions of Lefebrvre, the librarian, who remained below in the music room even while the stage was burning, until the last sheet had been removed.

"The Opera is burnt down," said a Parisian to a Parisian the next morning.

"So much the better," was the reply. "It had been there such a time!"

This remark was ingenious but not true, for the Académie Royale de Musique had only been standing eighteen years. It was burnt down before, in 1768, on which occasion Voltaire, in a letter to M. d'Argental, wrote as follows: "on dit que ce spectacle était si mauvais qu'il fallait tôt ou tard que la vengeance divine éclatât." The theatre destroyed by fire in 176365 was in the Palais Royal, and it was reconstructed on the same spot. After the fire of 1781, the Porte St. Martin theatre was built, and the Opera was carried on there ten years, after which it was removed to the opera-house in the Rue Richelieu, which was pulled down after the assassination of the Duc de Berri. But we are advancing beyond the limits of the present chapter.

THE NEW OPERA HOUSE

The new Opera House was built in eighty-six days. The members of the company received orders not to leave Paris, and during the interval were paid their salaries regularly as if for performing. The work began on the 2nd of August, and was finished on the 27th of October. Lenoir, the architect, had told Marie Antoinette that the theatre could be completed in time for the first performance to take place on the 30th of October.

"Say the 31st," replied the queen; "and if on that day I receive the key of my box, I promise you the Order of St. Michael in exchange."

The key was sent to her majesty on the 26th, who not only decorated Lenoir with the cordon of St. Michael, but also conferred on him a pension of six thousand francs; and on the 27th the theatre was opened to the public.

In 1784, Sacchini's Chimène, adapted from Il Gran Cid, an opera he had written for the King's Theatre in 1778, was produced at the Académie with great success. The principal part in this work was sustained by Huberti, a singer much admired by Piccinni, who wrote some airs in the cantabile style specially for her, and said that, without her, his opera of Dido, in which she played the principal part, was "without Dido." M. Castil Blaze tells us that she was the first true singer who appeared at the Académie. Grimm declares, that she sang like Todi and acted like Clairon. Finally, when Madame de Saint Huberti was performing at Strasburgh, in 1787, a young officer of artillery, named Napoleon Bonaparte, addressed the following witty and complimentary verses to her: —

"Romains qui vous vantez d'une illustre origineVoyez d'où dépendait votre empire naissant:Didon n'eut pas de charme assez puissantPour arrêter la fuite où son amant s'obstine;Mais si l'autre Didon, ornement de ces lieux,Eût été reine de Carthage,Il eût, pour la servir, abandonné ces dieux,Et votre beau pays serait encore sauvage."

Sacchini's first opera, Œdipe à Colosse, was not produced at the Académie until 1787, a few months after his death. It was now no question, of whether he was a worthy successor of Gluck or a formidable opponent to Piccinni. His opera was admired for itself, and the public applauded it with genuine enthusiasm.

SALIERI

In the meanwhile, Salieri, the direct inheritor of Gluck's mantle (as far as that poetic garment could be transferred by the mere will of the original possessor) had brought out his Danaides– announced at first as the work of Gluck himself and composed under his auspices. Salieri had also set Tarare to music. "This is the first libretto of modern times," says M. Castil Blaze, "in which the author has ventured to join buffoonery to tragedy – a happy alliance, which permits the musician to vary his colours and display all the resources of genius and art." The routine-lovers of the French Académie, the pedants, the blunderers, were indignant with the new work; and its author entrusted Figaro with the task of defending it.

"Either you must write nothing interesting," said Figaro, "or fools will run you down."

The same author then notices, as a remarkable coincidence, that "Beaumarchais and Da Ponte, at four hundred leagues distance from one another, invented, at the same time, the class of opera since known as "romantic." Beaumarchais's Tarare had been intended for Gluck; Da Ponte's Don Giovanni, as every one knows, found its true composer in Mozart.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE FRENCH OPERA BEFORE AND AFTER THE REVOLUTION

THE OPERA DURING THE CONVENTION

A COMPLETE history of the French Opera would include something like a history of French society, if not of France generally. It would, at least, show the effect of the great political changes which the country has undergone, and would remind us here and there of her celebrated victories, and occasionally even of her reverses. Under the despotism, we have seen how a simple lettre de cachet sufficed to condemn an abbé with a good voice, or a young girl with a pretty face, to the Opera, just as a person obnoxious to the state or to any very influential personage was sent to the Bastille. During the Regency, half the audience at the Opera went there drunk; and almost until the period of the Revolution the abbés, the mousquetaires, and the grands seigneurs, quarrelled, fought, and behaved in many respects as if the theatre were, not their own private house, but their own particular tap-room. Music profited by the Revolution, in so far that the privileges of the Académie were abolished, and, as a natural consequence, a number of new musical works produced at a variety of theatres which would otherwise never have seen the light; but the position of singers and dancers was by no means a pleasant one under the Convention, and the tyranny of the republican chiefs was far more oppressive, and of a more brutal kind, than any that had been exercised at the Académie in the days of the monarchy. The disobedient daughters, whose admirers got them "inscribed" on the books of the Opera so as to free them from parental control, would, under another system, have run away from home. No one, in practice, was injured very much by the regulation, scandalous and immoral as it undoubtedly was; for, before the name was put down, all the harm, in most cases, was already done. Sophie Arnould, it is true, is said to have been registered at the Opera without the consent of her mother, and, what seems very extraordinary – not at the suggestion of a lover; but Madame Arnould was quite reconciled to her daughter's being upon the stage before she eloped with the Count de Lauragais. To put the case briefly: the académiciens (and above all, the académiciennes) in the immoral atmosphere of the court, were fêted, flattered, and grew rich, though, owing to their boundless extravagance, they often died poor: whereas, during the republic, they met with neither sympathy nor respect, and in the worst days of the Convention lived, in a more literal sense than would be readily imagined, almost beneath the shadow of the guillotine.

In favour of the old French society, when it was at its very worst, that is to say, during the reign of Louis XV., it may be mentioned that the king's mistresses did not venture to brave general opinion, so far as to present themselves publicly at the Opera. Madame Dubarry announced more than once that she intended to visit the Académie, and went so far as to take boxes for herself and suite, but at the last moment her courage (if courage and not shamelessness be the proper word) failed her, and she stayed away. On the other hand, towards the end of this reign, the licentiousness of the court had become so great, that brevets, conferring the rights and privileges of married ladies on ladies unmarried, were introduced. Any young girl who held a "brevet de dame" could present herself at the Opera, which etiquette would otherwise have rendered impossible. "The number of these brevets," says Bachaumont, "increased prodigiously under Louis XVI., and very young persons have been known to obtain them. Freed thus from the modesty, simplicity, and retirement of the virginal state, they give themselves up with impunity to all sorts of scandals. * * * Such disorder has opened the eyes of the government; and this prince, the friend of decency and morality, has at last shown himself very particular on the subject. It is now only by the greatest favour that one of these brevets can be obtained."66

OPERATIC AND RELIGIOUS FETES

No brevets were required of the fishwomen and charcoal men of Paris, who, on certain fêtes, such as the Sovereign's birth day, were always present at the gratuitous performances given at the Opera. On these occasions the balcony was always reserved for them, the charbonniers being placed on the king's side, the poissardes on the queen's. At the close of the representation the performers invited their favoured guests on to the stage, the orchestra played the airs from some popular ballet, and a grand ball took place, in which the charbonniers chose their partners from among the operatic danseuses, while the poissardes gave their hands to Vestris, Dauberval, &c.

During Passion week and Easter, the Opera was shut, but the great operatic vocalists could be heard elsewhere, either at the Jesuits' church or at the Abbaye of Longchamp, to which latter establishment it is generally imagined that the Parisian public used to be attracted by the singing of the nuns. What is far more extraordinary is, that the Parisians always laboured under that delusion themselves. "The Parisians," says M. Castil Blaze, in his "History of the Grand Opera," "always such fine connoisseurs in music, never penetrated the mystery of this incognito. The railing and the green curtain, behind which the voices were concealed, sufficed to render the singers unrecognisable to the dilettanti who heard them constantly at the opera."

Adjoining the Jesuits' church was a theatre, also belonging to the Jesuits, for which, between the years 1659 and 1761, eighty pieces of various kinds, including tragedies, operas and ballets, were written. Some of these productions were in Latin, some in French, some in Latin and French together. The virtuosi of the Académie used to perform in them and afterwards proceed to the church to sing motets. "This church is so much the church of the Opera," says Freneuse, "that those who do not go to one console themselves by attending vespers at the other, where they find the same thing at less cost." He adds, that "an actor newly engaged, would not think himself fully recognised unless asked to sing for the Jesuits." As for the actresses, "in their honor the price which would be given at the door of the opera is given for a chair in the church. People look out for Urgande, Arcabonne, Armide, and applaud them. (I have seen them applaud la Moreau and la Chérat, at the midnight mass.) These performances replace those which are suspended at the opera."

BEHIND THE SCENES

There would be no end to this chapter (and many persons would think it better not written) if I were to enter into details on the subject of the relations between the singers and dancers of the Académie, and the Grands Seigneurs of the period. I may observe, however, that the latter appear to have been far more generous, without being more vicious, and that they seem to have lived in better taste than their modern imitators, who usually ruin themselves by means of race-horses, or, in France, on the Stock Exchange. The Count de Lauragais paid an immense sum to the directors of the Académie, to compensate them for abolishing the seats on the stage (probably impertinent visitors used to annoy him by staring at Sophie Arnould); the Duke de Bouillon spent nine hundred thousand livres on Mademoiselle la Guerre (Gluck's Iphigénie); the Prince de Soubise nearly as much on Mademoiselle Guimard – who at least gave a portion of it away in charity, and who, as we have seen, was an intelligent patroness of David, the painter.

When the Prince de Guéméné became insolvent, the Prince de Soubise, his father-in-law, ceased to attend the Opera. There were three thousand creditors, and the debts amounted to forty million livres. The heads of the family felt called upon to make a sacrifice, and the Prince de Soubise was no longer in a position to give petits soupers to his protégées at the Académie. Under these circumstances, the "ladies of the ballet" assembled in the dressing-room of Mademoiselle Guimard, their chief, and prepared the following touching, and really very becoming letter, to their embarrassed patron: —

"Monseigneur,

"Accustomed to see you amongst us at the representations at the Lyrical Theatre, we have observed with the most bitter regret that you not only tear yourself away from the pleasures of the performance, but also that none of us are now invited to the little suppers you used so frequently to give, in which we had turn by turn the happiness of interesting you. Report has only too well informed us of the cause of your seclusion, and of your just grief. Hitherto we have feared to importune you, allowing sensibility to give way to respect. We should not dare, even now, to break silence, without the pressing motive to which our delicacy is unable any longer to resist.

"We had flattered ourselves, Monseigneur, that the Prince de Guéméné's bankruptcy, to employ an expression which is re-echoed in the foyers, the clubs, the newspapers of France, and all Europe, would not be so considerable, so enormous, as was announced; and, above all, that the wise precautions taken by the King to assure the claimants the amount of their debts, and to avoid expenses and depredations more fatal even than the insolvency itself, would not disappoint the general expectation. But affairs are doubtless in such disorder, that there is now no hope. We judge of it by the generous sacrifices to which the heads of your illustrious house, following your example, have resigned themselves. We should think ourselves guilty of ingratitude, Monseigneur, if we were not to imitate you in seconding your humanity, and if we were not to return you the pensions which your munificence has lavished upon us. Apply these revenues, Monseigneur, to the consolation of so many retired officers, so many poor men of letters, so many unfortunate servants whom M. le Prince de Guéméné drags into ruin with him.

"As for us, we have other resources: and we shall have lost nothing, Monseigneur, if we preserve your esteem. We shall even have gained, if, by refusing your gifts now, we force our detractors to agree that we were not unworthy of them.

"We are, with profound respect,"Monseigneur,"Your most Serene Highness's very humble and"devoted Servants,"Guimard, Heinel," &c.

With twenty other names.

GENEROSITY OF THE BALLET

Auguste Vestris spent and owed a great deal of money; the father honoured the engagements of the young dancer, but threatened him with imprisonment if he did not alter his conduct, and concluded by saying: – "Understand, Sir, that I will have no Guéméné in my family."

Although ballet dancers were important persons in those days, they were as nothing compared to the institution to which they belonged. Figaro, in his celebrated soliloquy, observes, with reference to the great liberty of the press accorded by the government, that provided he does not speak of a great many very different things, among which the Opera is included, he is at liberty to publish whatever he likes "under the inspection of three or four censors." Beaumarchais was more serious than would be generally supposed, in including the Opera among the subjects which a writer dared not touch upon, or, if so, only with the greatest respect. Rousseau tells us in more than one place, that it was considered dangerous to say anything against the Opera; and Mademoiselle Théodore (the interesting danseuse before-mentioned, who consulted the fantastic moralist on the conduct she ought to pursue as a member of the ballet), was actually imprisoned, and exiled from Paris for eighteen days, because she had ventured to ridicule the management of the Académie, in some letters addressed to a private friend. The author of the Nouvelle Héloise should have warned her to be more careful.

OPERA AND REVOLUTION

On the 12th July, 1789, the bills were torn down from the doors of the Opera. The Parisians were about to take the Bastille. Having taken it, they allowed the Académie to continue its performance, and it re-opened on the 21st of the same month. In Warsaw, during the "demonstrations" of last March, the Opera was closed. It remains closed now67 (end of November), and will re-open – neither Russians nor Poles can say when! No one tears the bills down, because no one thinks of putting them up; it being perfectly understood by the administration, (which is a department of the Government), that the Warsaw public are not disposed at present for amusement of any kind.

In 1789, the revolutionary spirit manifested itself among the company engaged at the French Opera. An anonymous letter – or rather a letter in the name of all the company, printed, but not signed – was addressed to the administration of the theatre. It pointed out a number of abuses, and bore this epigraph, strongly redolent of the period: "Tu dors Brutus, et Rome est dans les fers!"

In 1790 the city of Paris assumed once more the management of the Académie, the artistic direction being entrusted to a committee composed of the chiefs of the various departments, and of the principal singers and dancers. One of the novelties produced was a "melodrama founded on passages from the Scriptures," called "The Taking of the Bastille," written specially for Notre Dame, where it was performed for the first time, and where it was followed by a grand Te Deum. In this Te Deum few of the lovers of the Opera could have joined, for one of the first effects of the revolution was naturally to drive the best singers and dancers away from Paris. Lord Mount Edgcumbe tells us that Mademoiselle Guimard was dancing in London in 1789. Madame Huberti, who was, by all accounts, the best singer the French had ever heard at the Académie, left Paris early in 1790.

We know how injurious a distant war, a dissolution of parliament, a death in the royal family are to the fortunes of an operatic season in London. Fancy what must have been the effect of the French revolution on the Académie after 1789! The subscription list for boxes showed, in a few years, a diminution of from 475,000 livres to 000,000! Some of the subscribers had gone into exile, more or less voluntary, some had been banished, others had been guillotined. M. Castil Blaze, from whose interesting works I have obtained a great number of particulars concerning the French Opera at the time of the revolution, tells us that the Queen used to pay 7,000 livres for her box. The Duke d'Orléans paid 7,000 for his own private box, and joined the Duke de Choiseul and Necker in a subscription of 3,200 francs for another. The Princess de Lamballe and Madame de Genlis gave 3,600 francs for a "post chaise;" (there were other boxes, called "spittoons" – the baignoires of the present day – "cymbals," &c.; names which they evidently owed to their position and form). On the other hand, there were 288 free admissions, of which, thirty-two were given to authors, and eight to newspapers —La Gazette de France, Le Journal de Paris, and Le Mercure. The remaining 248 were reserved for the Hôtel de Ville, the King's Household, the actors of the Comédie Française, and the singers and dancers of the Opera itself.

OPERA AND REVOLUTION

The howling of the ça ira put an end for ever to the Concert Spirituel, where the Parisians for nearly eighty years had been in the habit of hearing excellent instrumental soloists, and some of the best of the Italian singers, when there was as yet no Italian Opera in Paris. The last concert spirituel took place at the theatre of the Tuileries in 1791.

Louis XVI. and his family fled from Paris on the 28th June, 1791. The next day, and before the king was brought back to the Tuileries, the title of the chief lyric theatre was changed, and from the "Académie Royale" became simply the "Opera." At the same time the custom was introduced of announcing the performers' names, which was evidently an advantage for the public, and which was also not without its benefit, for the inferior singers and dancers who, when they unexpectedly made their appearance to replace their betters, used often to get hissed in a manner which their own simple want of merit scarcely justified. "Est ce que je savais qu'on làcherait le Ponthieu?" exclaimed an unhappy ticket-seller one evening, when an indignant amateur rushed out of the theatre and began to cane the recipient of his ill-spent money. We may fancy how Ponthieu himself must have been received inside the house.

MARIE ANTOINETTE

By an order of the Committee of Public Safety, dated the 16th of the September following, the title of the Opera was again changed to Académie Royale de Musique. This was intended as a compliment to the king, who had signed the Constitution on the 14th, and who was to go to the Opera six days afterwards. On the 20th the royal visit took place. "Castor and Pollux was played," says M. Castil Blaze, "and not Iphigénie en Aulide, as is asserted by some ill-informed historians, who even go so far as to pretend that the chorus Chantons, célébrons notre reine was, as on another occasion, hailed with transports of enthusiasm, and that the public called for it a second time. The house was well filled, but not crammed68 (comble), as is proved by the amount of the receipts – 6,686 livres, 15 sous. The same opera of Rameau's, vamped by Candeille, had produced 6,857 livres on the 14th of the preceding June. The representation of Castor and Pollux in presence of the royal family took place on Tuesday the 20th September, and not on the 21st, the Wednesday, at that time, not being an opera night. On the 19th, Monday, the people had assisted at a special performance of the same work given, gratuitously, in honour of the Constitution. The Royalists were present in great numbers at the representation of the 20th September, and some lines which could be applied to the Queen were loudly applauded. Marie-Antoinette was delighted, and said to the ladies who accompanied her, "You see that the people is really good, and wishes only to love us." Encouraged by so flattering a reception, she determined to go the next night to the Opéra Comique, but the king refused to accompany her. The piece performed was Les Evénements imprévus. In the duet of the second act, before singing the words "Ah comme j'aime ma maitresse" Madame Dugazon looked towards the Queen, when a number of voices cried out from the pit, Plus de maitresse! Plus de maitre! Vive la liberté! This cry was answered from the boxes with Vive la reine! Vive le roi! Sabres and sword-sticks were drawn, and a battle began.