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

"To whom? to the farmer of my talent," replied the dancer.

Things were brought to a crisis by the fêtes given to celebrate the birth of Marie Antoinette's first child, December, 1778. The city of Paris proposed to spend enormous sums in festivities and illuminations; but the king and queen benevolently suggested that, instead of being wasted in useless display, the money should be given away in marriage portions to a hundred deserving young girls; and their majesties gave fifty thousand francs themselves for the same object. Losing sight of the Opera for the moment, I must relate, in as few words as possible, a charming little anecdote that is told of one of the applicants for a dowry. Lise was the name of this innocent and naïve young person, who, on being asked some question respecting her lover, replied, that she had none; and that she thought the municipality provided everything! The municipality found the necessary admirer, and could have had no difficulty in doing so, if we may judge from the graceful bust of Lise, executed in marble by the celebrated sculptor, Houdon.

The Académie, which at this time belonged to the city, determined to follow its example, and to give away at least one marriage portion. Twelve hundred francs were subscribed and placed in the hands of Mademoiselle Guimard, the treasurer elect. The nuptial banquet was to take place at the winter Vauxhall (Gallicè "Wauxhall"); and all Paris was in a state of eager excitement to be present at what promised to be a most brilliant and original entertainment. It was not allowed, however, to take place, the authorities choosing to look upon it as a parody of the fête given by the city.

AUGUSTE VESTRIS

The doors of the "Wauxhall" being closed to the subscribers, Mademoiselle Guimard invited them to meet at her palace, in the Chaussée d'Antin. The municipality again interfered; and in the middle of the banquet Vestris and Dauberval were arrested by lettres de cachet and taken to For-l'Evèque, on the ground that they had refused to dance the Tuesday previous in the divertissement of Armide.

Gaetan Vestris was present at the arrest of his son, and excited the mirth of the assembly by the pompous, though affectionate, manner in which he bade him farewell. After embracing him tenderly, he said —

"Go, Augustus; go to prison. This is the grandest day of your life! Take my carriage, and ask for the room of my friend, the King of Poland; and live magnificently – charge everything to me."

On another occasion, when Gaetan was not so well pleased with his Augustus, he said to him:

"What! the Queen of France does her duty, by requesting you to dance before the King of Sweden, and you do not do yours? You shall no longer bear my name. I will have no misunderstanding between the house of Vestris and the house of Bourbon; they have hitherto always lived on good terms."

For his refusal to dance, Augustus was this time sentenced to six months' imprisonment; but the opera goers were so eager for his re-appearance that he was set free long before the expiration of the appointed term.

He made his rentrée amid the groans and hisses of the audience, who seemed determined to give him a lesson for his impertinence.

Then Gaetan, magnificently attired, appeared on the stage, and addressed the public as follows: —

"You wish my son to go down on his knees. I do not say that he does not deserve your displeasure; but remember, that the dancer whom you have so often applauded has not studied the pose you now require of him."

"Let him speak; let him endeavour to justify himself," cried a voice from the pit.

"He shall speak; he shall justify himself," replied the father. And, turning to his son, he added: "Dance, Auguste!"

Auguste danced; and every one in the theatre applauded.

The orchestra took no part in the operatic insurrection; and we have seen that the musicians were not invited to contribute anything to the dowry, offered by the Académie to virtue in love and in distress. De Vismes proposed to reward his instrumentalists by giving up to them a third of the receipts from some special representation of Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride. The band rejected the offer, as not sufficiently liberal, and by refusing to play on the evening in question, made the performance a failure.

The Academic revolt was at last put an end to, by the city of Paris cancelling de Vismes's lease, and taking upon itself the management of the theatre, de Vismes receiving a large sum in compensation, and the appointment of director at a fixed salary.

BEAUMARCHAIS AND GLUCK

Beaumarchais, while assisting the national revolution with the Marriage of Figaro, is known to have aided in a more direct manner the revolution which was now imminent at the opera. It is said, that he was anxious to establish an operatic republic in the hope of being made president of it himself. He is known to have been a good musician. I have spoken of his having held the honourable, if not lucrative, post of music-master to the daughters of Louis XV. (by whom he was as well paid as was Piccinni by that monarch's successor);[64 - We sometimes hear complaints of the want of munificence shown by modern constitutional sovereigns, in their dealings with artists and musicians. At least, however, they pay them. Louis XV. and Louis XVI. not only did not pay their daughters' music-masters, but allowed the royal young ladies to sponge upon them for what music they required.] and a better proof of his talent is afforded, by his having composed all the music of his Barber of Seville and Marriage of Figaro, except the air of Malbrook in the latter comedy.

Beaumarchais had been much impressed by the genius of Gluck. He met him one evening in the foyer of the Opera, and spoke to him so clearly and so well about music that the great composer said to him: "You must surely be M. de Beaumarchais." They agreed to write an opera together, and some years afterwards, when Gluck had left Paris for Vienna, the poet sent the composer the libretto of Tarare. Gluck wrote to say that he was delighted with the work, but that he was now too old to undertake the task of setting it to music, and would entrust it to his favourite pupil, Salieri.

Gluck benefited French opera in two ways. He endowed the Académie with several master-pieces, and moreover, destroyed, or was the main instrument in destroying, its old répertoire, which after the works of Gluck and Piccinni was found intolerable. It was now no longer the fashion to exclude foreign composers from the first musical theatre in France, and Gluck and Piccinni were followed by Sacchini and Salieri. Strange to say, Sacchini, when he first made his appearance at the Académie with his Olympiade, was deprived of a hearing through the jealousy of Gluck, who, on being informed, at Vienna, that the work in question was in rehearsal, hurried to Paris and had influence enough to get it withdrawn. Worse than this, when the Olympiade was produced at the Comédie Italienne, with great success, Gluck and his partisans put a stop to the representation by enforcing one of the privileges of the Académie, which rendered it illegal for any other theatre to perform operas with choruses or with more than seven singers on the stage.

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 1763[65 - In chronicling the material changes that have taken place at the French Opera, I must not forgot the story of the new curtain, displayed for the first time, in 1753, or rather the admirable inscription suggested for it by Diderot —Hic Marsias Apollinem. Pergolese's Servante Maitresse (La Serva padrona) had just been "écorchée" by the orchestra of the Académie.] 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 origine
Voyez d'où dépendait votre empire naissant:
Didon n'eut pas de charme assez puissant
Pour 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 - Mémoires Secrètes, vol. xxi., page 121.]

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.