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

FACTS AND COINCIDENCES

The Queen escaped from the theatre in the midst of the tumult. Cries of à bas la reine! followed her to her carriage, which went off at a gallop, with mud and stones thrown after it. Marie Antoinette returned to the Tuileries in despair. On the first of October, fourteen days afterwards, the title of Opéra National was substituted for that of Académie Royale de Musique. The Constitution being signed, there was no longer any reason for being civil to Louis XVI. This was the third change of title in less than four months. The majority of the buffoons, (M. Castil Blaze still speaks), "who now write histories more or less Girondist, or romantic of the French Revolution, do not take the trouble to verify their facts and dates. I have told you simply that the dauphiness Marie Antoinette made her first appearance at the Opera on the 16th June, 1773, in company with her husband. Others, more ingenious no doubt, substitute the 21st January for the 16th June, in order to establish a sort of fatality by connecting days, months and years. To prophecy after the event is only too easy, above all, if you take the liberty of advancing by five months, the day which it is desired to render fatal. These same buffoons, (says M. Castil Blaze), who now go to the Opera on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, sometimes on Sunday, think people have done the same for the last two centuries. As they have not the slightest suspicion that the evenings of performance at the Académie Royale were changed in 1817, we find them maundering, paddling, splashing about, and finally altering figures and days, in order to make the events of the last century accord with the dates of our own epoch. That is why we are told that the Royal Family went for the last time to this theatre on Wednesday, the 21st September, 1791, instead of Tuesday, the 20th. Indeed how is it possible to go to the Opera on a Tuesday? That is why it is stated with the most laughable aplomb, that on the 21st October, 1793, Roland was performed, and on the 16th of October following, the Siege of Thionville, the Offering to Liberty, and the ballet of Telemachus. Each of these history-writing novelists fills or empties the house according to his political opinions; applauds the French people or deplores its blindness; but all the liberalism or sentiment manufactured by them is thrown away. Monday, the 21st of January, Wednesday the 16th of October, 1793, not being opera nights at that time, the Opera did not on those evenings throw open its doors to the public. On Tuesday, the 22nd of January, the day after the death of Louie XVI., Roland was represented; the amount of the receipts, 492 livres, 8 sous, proves that the house was empty. No free admissions were given then. On Tuesday, October the 15th, 1793, the eve of the execution of Marie Antoinette, the Siege of Thionville, the Offering to Liberty, Telemachus, in which "la Citoyenne Perignon" was to appear – a forced performance – only produced 3,251 livres. On Friday, the 18th of October, the next day but one after this horrible catastrophe, Armide and the Offering to Liberty– a forced performance and something more – produced 2,641 livres, which would have filled about a third of the house."69

The 10th August, 1792, was the last day of the French monarchy. On the Sunday previous, during the Vespers said at the Chapel of the Tuileries in presence of the king, the singers with one accord tripled the sound of their voices when they came to the following verse in the Magnificat: Deposuit potentes de sede, et exaltavit humiles. Indignant at their audacity, the royalists thundered forth the Domine salvum fac regem, adding these words with increased energy and enthusiasm, et reginam! The greatest excitement and agitation prevailed in the Chapel during the rest of the service.

To conclude the list of musical performances which have derived a gloomy celebrity from their connexion with the last days of Louis XVI., I may reproduce the programme issued by the directors of the Opéra National, on the first anniversary of his execution, 21st January, 1794.

IN BEHALF OF AND FOR THE PEOPLE,GRATIS,In joyful commemoration of the Death of the Tyrant,THE NATIONAL OPERAWILL GIVE TO DAY, 6 PLUVIOSE, YEAR II., OF THE REPUBLIC,MILTIADES AT MARATHON,THE SIEGE OF THIONVILLE,THE OFFERING TO LIBERTYREPUBLICAN CELEBRITIES

The Opera under the Republic was directed, until 1792, by four distinguished sans culottes– Henriot, Chaumette, Le Rouxand Hébert, the last named of whom had once been check-taker at the Académie! The others know nothing whatever of operatic affairs. The management of the theatre was afterwards transferred to Francœur, one of the former directors, associated with Cellérier, an architect; but the dethroned impresarii, accompanied by Danton and other republican amateurs, constantly made their appearance behind the scenes, and very frequently did the chief members of the company the honour of supping with them. In these cases the invitations, as under the ancient régime, proceeded, not from the artists, but from the artists' patrons; with this difference, however, that under the republic, the latter never paid the bill. There was no Duke de Bouillon now testifying his admiration of the vocal art to the tune of 900,000 francs;70 there was no Prince de Soubise, to receive from the united ballet letters of condolence, thanks, and proposed pecuniary assistance; and if there had been such an impossible phenomenon as a Count de Lauragais, what, I wonder, would he not have given to have been able to clear the coulisses of such abominable intruders as the before named republican chiefs? "The chiefs of the republic, one and indivisible," says M. Castil Blaze, "were very fond of moistening their throats. Henriot, Danton, Hébert, Le Roux, Chaumette, had hardly taken a turn in the coulisses or in the foyer, before they said to such an actor or actress: We are going to your room, see that we are received properly." A superb collation was brought in. When the repast was finished and the bottles were empty, the national convention, the commune of Paris beat a retreat without troubling itself about the expense. You think, perhaps, that the dancer or the singer paid for the representatives of the people? Not at all; honest Mangin, who kept the refreshment room of the theatre, knew perfectly well that the actors of the Opera were not paid, that they had no sort of money, not even a rag of an assignat; he made a sacrifice; from delicacy he did not ask from the artists what he would not have dared to claim from the sans culottes for fear of the guillotine."

Sometimes the executioner, who, as a public official, had a right to his entrées, made his appearance behind the scenes, and it is said that in a facetious mood, he would sometimes express his opinion about the "execution" of the music. So, I am told, the London hangman went one night to the pit of Her Majesty's Theatre to hear Jenny Lind, and on seeing the Swedish nightingale, exclaimed, breathless with admiration and excitement, "What a throat to scrag!"

AGREEABLE CRITICS

Operatic kings and queens were suppressed by the republic. Not only were they forbidden to appear on the stage, but even their names were not to be pronounced behind the scenes, and the expressions côté du roi, côté de la reine, were changed into côté jardin, côté cour, which at the theatre of the Tuileries indicated respectively the left and right of the stage, from the stage point of view. At first all pieces in which kings and queens appeared, were prohibited, but the dramas of sans culottes origin were so stupid and disgusting, that the republic was absolutely obliged to return to the old monarchical répertoire. The kings, however, were turned into chiefs; princes and dukes became representatives of the people; seigneurs subsided into mayors; and substitutes more or less synonymous, were found for such offensive words as crown, throne, sceptre, &c. In a new republican version of a lyrical work represented at the Opera Comique, le roi in one well known line was replaced by la loi, and the vocalist had to declaim La loi passait, et le tambour battait aux champs. A certain voluble executant, however, is said to have preferred the following emendation: Le pouvoir exécutif passait, et le tambour battait aux champs.

The scenes of most of the new operas were laid in Italy, Prussia, Portugal, – anywhere but in France, where it would have been indispensable, from a political, and impossible from a poetical, point of view to make the lovers address one another as citoyen, citoyenne.

On the 19th of June, 1793, the directors of the Opera having objected to give a gratuitous performance of The Siege of Thionville, the commune of Paris issued the following edict:

"Considering that for a long time past the aristocracy has taken refuge in the administration of various theatres;

"Considering that these gentlemen corrupt the public mind by the pieces they represent;

"Considering that they exercise a fatal influence on the revolution;

It is decreed that the Siege of Thionville shall be represented gratis and solely for the amusement of the sans culottes, who, to this moment have been the true defenders of liberty and supporters of democracy."

Soon afterwards it was proposed to shut up the Opera, but Hébert, the ferocious Hébert, better known as le père Duchèsne, undertook its defence on the ground that it procured subsistence for a number of families, and "caused the agreeable arts to flourish."

It was thereupon resolved "that the Opera should be encouraged and defended against its enemies." At the same time the managers Cellérier and Francœur were arrested as suspects. Neither of them was executed.

THE "MARATISTES" AGAIN

The Opera was now once more placed under the direction of a committee chosen from among the singers and dancers, who were selected this time, not by reason of their artistic merit, but solely with reference to their political principles. Lays, one of the chief managers, was a furious democrat, and on one occasion insisted on Mademoiselle Maillard (Gluck's "Armida!") appearing in a procession as the Goddess of Reason.

Mademoiselle Maillard having refused, Chaumette was appealed to. The arguments he employed were simple but convincing. "Well, citoyenne," he said, "since you refuse to be a divinity, you must not be astonished if we treat you as a mortal." Fortunately for the poor prima donna, Mormoro, a member of the Commune of Paris, and a raging "Maratiste" (which has not quite the same meaning now as in the days of the "Todistes") claimed the obnoxious part for his unhappy wife. The beautiful Madame Mormoro was forced to appear in the streets of Paris in the light and airy costume of an antique Goddess, with the thermometer at twenty degrees below freezing point! "Reason" not unreasonably wept with annoyance throughout the ceremony.

Léonard Bourdon, called by those who knew him Léopard Bourdon, used all his influence, as a distinguished member of the Mountain, to get a work he had prepared for the Opera produced. His piece was called the Tomb of the Impostors, or the Inauguration of the Temple of Truth. It was printed at the expense of the Republic, but never brought out. In the first scene the stage represents a church, built with human skulls. In the sanctuary there is to be a fountain of blood. A woman enters to confess, the priest behaves atrociously in the confessional, &c., &c. The scenes and incidents throughout the drama are all in the same style, and the whole is dedicated in an uncomplimentary epistle to the Pope. Léopard tormented the directors actors, and actresses, night and day, to produce his master-piece, and threatened, that if they were not quick about it, he would have a guillotine erected on the stage.

This threat was not quite so vain as it might seem. A list of twenty-two persons engaged at the Opera (twenty-two – the fatal number during the Reign of Terror), had been already drawn up by Hébert, as a sort of executioner's memorandum. When he was in a good humour he would show it to the singers and dancers, and say to them with easy familiarity; "I shall have to send you all to the guillotine some day. Two reasons have prevented me hitherto; in the first place you are not worth the trouble, in the second I want you for my amusement." These reasons were not considered quite satisfactory by the proscribed artists, and Beaupré, a comic dancer of great talent, contrived by various humorous stratagems (one of which, and doubtless the most readily forgiven, consisted in intoxicating Hébert), to gain possession of the fatal list; but the day afterwards the republican dilettante was always sufficiently recovered from the effects of his excessive potations to draw up another one exactly like it.

DANGEROUS MELODIES

At the head of the catalogue of suspected ones figured the name of Lainez, whom the republicans could not pardon for the energy and expression with which he had sung the air Chantez, célébrez votre reine, at the last performances of Iphigénie en Aulide; and that of Mademoiselle Maillard, whose crime has been already mentioned. At this period it was dangerous not only to sing the words, but even to hum or whistle the music of such airs as the aforesaid Chantez, célébrez votre reine, O Richard o mon roi! Charmante Gabrielle, and many others, among which may be mentioned Pauvre Jacques– an adaptation of Dibdin's Poor Jack, in which allusions had been discovered to the fate of Louis XVI. Indeed, to perform any kind of music might be fatal to the executant, and thus Mesdemoiselles de Saint Léger, two young ladies living in Arras, were executed for having played the piano the day that Valenciennes fell into the hands of the enemy.

Mademoiselle Maillard, much as she detested the republicans, was forced, on one occasion, to sing a republican hymn. When Lainez complimented her on the warmth of her expression, the vigour of her execution, she replied, "I was burning with rage at having to sing to such monsters."

Vestris, the Prince de Guéméné of the Vestris family, he who had been accused by his father of wishing to produce a misunderstanding between the Vestrises and the Bourbons, had to dance in a pas de trois as a sans culottes, between two nuns!

Sophie Arnould, accused (and not quite unreasonably), of aristocratic sympathies, pointed indignantly to a bust of Gluck in her room, and asked the intelligent agents of the Republic, if it was likely she would keep the bust of Marat were she not a true republican?

The vocalists of a revolutionary turn of mind would have succeeded better if they had possessed more talent; but the Parisian public, even in 1793, was not prepared to accept correctness in politics as an excuse for inaccuracy in singing. Lefèvre, a sixth tenor, but a bloodthirsty republican, insisted on being promoted to first characters, and threatened those whom he wished to replace with denunciations and the guillotine, if they kept him in a subordinate position any longer. Lefèvre had his wish gratified in part, but not altogether. He appeared as primo tenore, but was violently hissed by his friends, the sans culottes. He then came out as first bass, and was hissed again. In his rage he attributed his fiasco to the machinations of the counter-revolution, and wanted the soldiers to come into the theatre, and fire upon the infamous accomplices of "Pitt and Coburg."

AN ATROCIOUS TENOR

This bad singer, and worse man, was one of the twelve chiefs of the National Guard of Paris, and on certain days had the command of the city. As his military rule was most oppressive, the Parisians used to punish him for his tyranny as a soldier, by ridiculing his monstrous defects as a vocalist.

Though the Reign of Terror was a fearful time for artists and art, the number of playhouses in Paris increased enormously. There were sixty-three theatres open, and in spite of war, famine, and the guillotine, they were always full.

In 1794, the opera was transferred to the Rue de la Loi (afterwards Rue de Richelieu), immediately opposite the National Library. With regard to this change of locality, let us hear what M. Castil Blaze has to say, in his own words.

"How was it that the opera was moved to a building exactly opposite the National Library, so precious and so combustible a repository of human knowledge? The two establishments were only separated by a street, very much too narrow: if the theatre caught fire, was it not sure to burn the library? That is what a great many persons still ask; this question has been re-produced a hundred times in our journals. Go back to the time when the house was built by Mademoiselle Montansier; read the Moniteur Universel, and you will see that it was precisely in order to expose this same library to the happy chances of a fire, that the great lyrical entertainment was transferred to its neighbourhood. The opera hung over it, and threatened it constantly. At this time enlightenment abounded to such a point, that the judicious Henriot, convinced in his innermost conscience that all reading was henceforth useless, had made a motion to burn the library. To move the opera to the Rue Richelieu – the opera, which twice in eighteen years had been a prey to the flames – to place it exactly opposite our literary treasures, was to multiply to infinity the chances of their being burnt.'

Mercier, in reference to the literary views of the Committee of Public Safety, writes in the Nouveau Paris, as follows: —

"The language of Omar about the Koran was not more terrible than those uttered by the members of the committee of public safety when they expressed their intentions formally, as follows: – 'Yes, we will burn all the libraries, for nothing will be needed but the history of the Revolution and its laws.'" If the motion of Henriot had been carried, David, the great Conventional painter was ready to propose that the same service should be rendered to the masterpieces in the Louvre, as to the literary wealth of the National Library. Republican subjects, according to David, were alone worthy of being represented.

THE OPERA AND THE NATIONAL LIBRARY

At one of the sittings of the very council in which Henriot had already brought forward his motion for burning the Library, Mademoiselle Montansier was accused of having built the theatre in the Rue Richelieu with that very design. On the 14th of November, 1793, Chaumette at the sitting of the Commune of Paris, said —

"I denounce the Citoyenne Montansier. The money of the Englishman71 has been largely employed in raising this edifice, and the former queen gave fifty thousand crowns towards it. I demand that this theatre be closed on account of the dangers which would result from its catching fire." Adopted.

Hébert. "I denounce la demoiselle Montansier, personally; I have information against her. She offered me a box at her new theatre to procure my silence. I demand that la Montansier be arrested as a suspicious person." Adopted.

Chaumette. "I demand, moreover, that the actors, actresses and directors of the Parisian theatres be subjected to the censorship of the council." Adopted.

After deciding that the theatre in the Rue de la Loi could not be kept open without imperilling the existence of the National Library, and after imprisoning Mademoiselle Montansier for having built it, the Commune of Paris deliberately opened it as an opera house! Mademoiselle Montansier was, nevertheless, still kept in prison, and remained there ten months, until after the death of Robespierre.

Mademoiselle Montansier's nocturnal assemblies in the Palais Royal were equally renowned before and after her arrest. Actors and actresses, gamblers, poets, representatives of the people, republican generals, retired aristocrats, conspicuous sans culottes, and celebrities of all kinds congregated there. Art, pleasure, politics, the new opera, the last execution were alike discussed by Dugazon and Barras, le père Duchesne and the Duke de Lauzun, Robespierre and Mademoiselle Maillard, the Chevalier de Saint Georges and Danton, Martainville and the Marquis de Chanvelin, Lays and Marat, Volange and the Duke of Orleans. From the names just mentioned, it will be understood that some members of this interesting society were from time to time found wanting. Their absence was not much remarked, and fresh notorieties constantly came forward to fill the places of those claimed by the guillotine.

After Mademoiselle Montansier's liberation from prison, Napoleon Bonaparte was introduced to her by Dugazon and Barras. His ambition had not yet been excited, and Barras – who may, nevertheless, have looked upon him as a possible rival, and one to be dreaded – wished to get up a marriage between him and the fashionable but now somewhat antiquated syren of the Palais Royal. Everything went on well for some time. Then a magnificent dinner was given with the view of bringing the affair to a conclusion; but Bonaparte was very reserved, and Barras now saw that his project was not likely to succeed. At a banquet given by Mademoiselle Montansier, to celebrate the success of the thirteenth Vendémiaire, Bonaparte proposed a toast in honour of his venerable "intended," and soon afterwards she married Neuville.

MADEMOISELLE MONTANSIER

Mademoiselle Montansier who had been shamefully cheated, indeed robbed, by the Convention, hoped to have her claims recognised by the Directory. Barras offered her one million, six hundred thousand francs. She refused it, the indemnity she demanded for the losses which she had sustained by the seizure of her theatre at the hands of the Convention amounting to seven millions. Napoleon, when first consul, caused the theatre to be estimated, when its value was fixed at one million three hundred thousand francs. After various delays, Mademoiselle Montansier received a partial recognition of her claim, accompanied by an order for payment, signed by the Emperor at Moscow.

Some readers have, probably, been unable to reconcile two facts mentioned above with respect to the Opera under the Convention: – 1. That the performers were not paid; and 2. That the public attended the representations in immense numbers. The explanation is very simple. The money was stolen by the Commune of Paris. Gardel, the ballet-master, required fifty thousand francs for the production of a work composed by himself, on the subject of William Tell. Twice was the sum amassed from the receipts and professedly set apart for the unfortunate William Tell, and twice the money disappeared. It had been devoted to the requirements of patriots in real life.

Danton, Hébert, Chaumette, Henriot, Robespierre, all administrators of the Opera; Dubuisson, Fabre d'Eglantine, librettists writing for the Opera, and both republicans had been executed during the Reign of Terror. Chamfort, a republican, killed himself to avoid the same fate.

Coquéau, architect, musician, and writer, the author of a number of musical articles produced during the Gluck and Piccinni contests, was guillotined in the year II. of the republic.

The musician, Edelman, after bringing a number of persons to the scaffold, including his patron and benefactor, the Baron de Diétrich, arrived there himself in 1794, accompanied by his brother.

In the same year Despréaux, leader of the first violins at the opera in 1782, and member of the Revolutionary Tribunal in 1793, killed himself from remorse.

Altogether, sixteen persons belonging to the opera in various ways killed themselves, or were executed in 1792, '93, and '94.

After the fall of Robespierre, the royalists for a time ruled the theatres, and avenged themselves on all actors who had made themselves conspicuous as revolutionists. Trial, a comic tenor, who had made a very serious accusation against Mademoiselle Buret, of the Comédie Italienne, which led to her execution, was forced to sing the Réveil du Peuple on his knees, amid the execrations of the audience. He sang it, but was thrown into such a state of agitation that he died from the effects.

Lays, whose favourite part was that of "Oreste," in Iphigénie en Tauride, had, in the course of the opera, to declaim these verses: —