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PROPERTY OF
* here to
I
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:.. godine
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1817
*W
ronthate me
ART ES SCIENTI VERITAS
Music
60
ERG
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS
FAMOUS
FIRST REPRESENTATIONS
34164
BY
H. SUTHERLAND EDWARDS
LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL
LIMITED
1886
RICHARD CLAY & SONS,
BREAD STREET HILL, LONDON,
Bungay, Sujolk.
Jumturrah
Denklere he sensoring
8.14-45
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
“THE ENGLISH MONSIEUR”................
1
CHAPTER II.
MOLIÈRE'S “ TARTUFE"..................
25
CHAPTER III.
THE “BEGGAR’S OPERA” ........
....
35
CHAPTER IV.
TEE - MESSIAH"
47
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER V.
PAGE
BEAUMARCHAIS'S “MARRIAGE OF FIGARO"..
......
60
CHAPTER VI.
MOZART'S “NOZZE DI FIGARO”.............
89
CHAPTER VII.
MOZART'S “ DON GIOVANNI ” ............... 100
CHAPTER VIII.
ROSSINI'S 56 BARBER OF SEVILLE
.
.
.
116
. . .
CHAPTER IX.
IRELAND'S "VORTIGERN” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
CHAPTER X.
WEBER'S “ DER FREYSCHÜTZ"............... 143
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XI.
PAGE
MEYERBEER's “ ROBERT LE DIABLE"
. . . . . . . . . . .
156
CHAPTER XII.
VICTOR HUGO's “HERNANI”
............... 178
CHAPTER XIII.
DUMAS THE YOUNGER'S "DAME AUX CAMÉLIAS"
..... 211
CHAPTER XIV.
"TANNHÄUSER" AT THE PARIS OPERA, 1861 : ........ 223
CHAPTER XV.
Y
THE “BALLET COMIQUE DE LA REINE,” AND THE ORIGIN OF
OPERA ........................
239
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
CHAPTER I.
" THE ENGLISH MONSIEUR."
THE English Monsieur is not a very well-known work.
in the present day, but its first representation derives
interest from the fact of its having served to introduce
Nell Gwyn to the stage. The young orange-girl was
already known to habitual playgoers, and there is
probably no more familiar passage in Pepys's Diary
than the one in which he speaks of his first interview
with “ pretty, witty Nell," as he calls her. The early
life of this earliest of popular actresses does not bear
examination. The death of her mother," Mrs. Eleanor
Gwyn the elder," in a horse-pond was made the subject
of a ribald poem, which may be read in a collection of
pamphlets and broad sheets preserved at the British
for the one
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
inquiries into Nell Gwyn's ancestry, could only discover,
in reference to the mother, that she was fat and drank
brandy. The father is variously reported to have been
a captain in the army and a fruiterer in Covent Garden
Market. It was, in any case, as a vendor of fruit that
little Nell first came before the world; and as she was
very young at the time, it may be charitably assumed
that the selling of oranges was in her case a genuine
occupation, and not, as often happened, a mere pre-
text for appearing in the theatre and entering into
conversation with the "gilded youth” among the
audience.
When, on the 3rd of April, 1665, Mr. Pepys had the
happiness of sitting next Nell Gwyn at the Duke's
Theatre in Lincoln's Inn, she was fifteen years of age,
and had but recently joined the company, not of the
Duke's, but of the King's Theatre, which two years before
had been opened for the first time since the restoration
of the monarchy and the revival of the drama. It was
apparently during this period of two years that the young
girl, who, in the words of a too laudatory biographer
“rose from the low degree of an orange-wench to be the
mistress of a monarch,” plied the calling by which she
“ THE ENGLISH MONSIEUR."
was afterwards to be as well known as by her perform-
ances on the stage. The King's Theatre, on the site
now occupied by Drury Lane, was managed in a very
different fashion from that in which Drury Lane is
at present conducted by Mr. Augustus Harris. The
performances began at three, and though the stage was
illuminated by wax candles, the audience department
was lighted by the simple expedient of leaving the pit
open to the sky. As, however, a shower of rain had
the natural effect of clearing the greater part of the
theatre it was soon found necessary to cover the
pit with a sort of velarium.
A tendency towards late hours was already showing
itself in connection with theatrical performances. In
Shakespeare's time the play began at one. It has been
said that under Charles II. three was the hour, and at
the end of the seventeenth century the ordinary time
for opening had been postponed until four. The pit,
under the Restoration, was attended both by ladies and
gentlemen, but the ladies wore masks. The upper
gallery, to which the price of admission was, as in modern
times, one shilling, used to be frequented by the lowest
class of playgoers; and when the last act had begun,
servants were admitted without payment. The custom
B 2
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
of letting in servants for nothing was continued until a
comparatively recent date, and the youthful Arne used,
as Dr. Burney tells us, to enter the opera in the garb of
a footman when, in the character of a musical student,
he would have been unable to pay for his place.
The orange-girls stood in the pit, with their backs to
the stage, under the direction of a matron familiarly
known as “ Orange Moll.” This lady is said to have held
the same office in connection with the orange-girls that
was held at court in connection with the maids of honour
by the so-called "mother of the maids.” That the
orange-girls were sometimes in need of being restrained
by a superior authority is shown clearly enough by the
writings of the time. To the vivacity of the modern
barmaid, they added the rapacity of the modern cabman.
So at least it would appear from a passage in the diary
of Mr. Pepys, who tells how, on one occasion, he was
called upon by " the orange-woman” to pay for twelve
oranges which she said he owed for, but which he had
never had. He did not, however, feel equal to a dispute
on the subject, but, "for quiet bought four shillings-
worth of oranges from her at sixpence apiece."
The author of the Memoirs of the Life of Eleanor
Gwyn, a Celebrated Courtezan in the Reign of King
“THE ENGLISH MONSIEUR.”
Charles II., and Mistress to the Monarch, while ignoring
poor Nell's dramatic performances, gives many par-
ticulars respecting her life as an orange-girl. According
to this anonymous writer, who lived half a century later
than the subject of his work, and who never troubles
himself to cite an authority, Nell resolved, when
she was but a child, to appear on the stage, partly for
the sake of a subsistence, but cbiefly with a view to
distinction. Her father, who was still living when his
precocious daughter conceived this project, wished her
to retire with him into the country. But she replied
that “he might abandon her if he pleased, but that
she, for her part, was firmly resolved never to abandon
the town.” In this dilemma she cast her eye upon the
stage ; and “as her person was admirably calculated
to inspire passion, she imagined, if she was arrayed in
the pomp of tragedy heroines, her figure alone, without
any theatrical requisites, would make her pass upon the
town; or at least, if she could not wear the buskin
of success, she could see no objection to her appearance
as a lady-in-waiting or one of the maids of the bed-
chamber to the queens of the stage.”
Nell now, in the words of the anonymous biographer
of the year 1751, “conceived one of the boldest schemes
6
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
a girl of her education could possibly imagine.” She
left her father's house, took a private lodging, and
wrote to Mr. Betterton, the famous actor, begging him
to give her an engagement. Mr. Betterton told the
applicant plainly, as so many other managers have
told other applicants under like circumstances, that
she was not fitted for the stage; and he advised
her to prosecute some other scheme of livelihood. In
this difficulty she gave up all immediate thought of
appearing on the stage, and “rigged herself in the
habit of those girls who attend the playhouse and sell
oranges.” Nell Gwyn had, according to her eighteenth
century biographer, a propensity, rather than a genius,
for acting. Whether this writer ever saw her may well
be doubted, for she died in 1687, and it has been seen
that the so-called memoirs of her life were not published
until 1751. “Miss Gwyn," he says, “was never re-
markable for a fine actress. Her great power lay in
speaking an epilogue and exposing any characters of
vanity with a striking air of coquettishness and levity.”.
One of the most remarkable of the epilogues just
referred to was written expressly for Nell Gwyn by
Dryden, who seems to have been on the best terms
with her, and who understood perfectly how to turn
“THE ENGLISH MONSIEUR."
her talent to effect. She had on one occasion just
expired in a tragedy, and was being carried from
the stage, when suddenly starting up and addressing
the personage who was supposed to be bearing away
her lifeless body, she exclaimed-
“Hold ! let me stay, you damned, confounded dog !
I am to rise and speak the epilogue.”
Roscius Anglicanus, in his Historical Reriew of the
Stage from the Restoration until 1706, speaks of Nell
Gwyn from personal knowledge. The writer, Downes,
was indeed a member of the company to which she
belonged ; and after stating that she was “a plebeian
of the lowest rank, and sold oranges in the theatre,” he
declares that, thanks to the instructions of Hart and Lacy,
both actors of eminence, she, in a short time, became
eminent herself in the same profession. “She acted,"
he says, “ the most spirited and fantastic parts, and spoke
a prologue or epilogue with admirable address. The
pert and vivacious prattle of the orange-wench was by
degrees refined into such wit as could please Charles II.
Indeed, it was sometimes carried to extravagance, but
even her highest flights were so natural, that they rather
provoked laughter than excited disgust.” It is recorded
by Curll that the humorous way in which Nell Gwyn
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
introduced Dryden's epilogue, under the circumstances
above set forth, so captivated the king, “ that when she
had done, he went behind the scenes and carried her off
that night." This anecdote, though repeated by more
than one writer of the time, does not agree with an ac-
count given in a lampoon of the year 1686 of the manner
in which definite relations were established between the
merry monarch and Nell Gwyn. Lord Buckhurst
had earlier claims upon her regard, and he declined,
according to the lampoonist, to part with her “till he
was reimbursed the expenses he had lavished upon her,
the King at length creating him Earl of Middlesex for
his compliance.” But this, again, is in disaccord with
an entry in the diary of Mr. Pepys, who, already in
1667, two years before the delivery of the introduction
to the epilogue, declares (on the authority of Orange
Moll) that “ Nell has already left my Lord Buckhurst,"
and that “he makes sport of her, and swears she hath
had all she could get of him; and Hart, her old
admirer, now hates her," and that “she is very poor, and
hath lost my Lady Castlemaine, who was her great
friend.”
Under what circumstances Nell Gwyn became
acquainted with Charles II. it is not important to know,
« THE ENGLISH MONSIEUR.”
and it would perhaps be better to remain ignorant. The
fact, however, is worth observing that her mere histrionic
talent was, according to good judges, including the
sagacious and experienced Pepys himself, neither great
in itself nor greatly appreciated. “To the King's,” he
writes under date of October 5, 1667," and there, going
in, met Knipp [an actress with whom Mr. Pepys was
only too well acquainted], and she took us up into the
tiring-rooms, and in the women's shift, where Nell was
dressing herself, and was all unready, and is very pretty,
prettier than I thought. And into the scene room and
there sat down, and she gave us fruit. . . . But, Lord !
to see how they were both painted would make a man
mad, and did make me loathe them; and what base
company of men comes among them, and how lewdly
they talk ! And how poor the men are in clothes and yet
what a show they make on the stage by candle light
is very observable. But to see how Nell cursed for
having so few people in the pit was pretty, the other
house carrying away all the people at the new play, and
is said nowadays to have generally most company, as
being better players.”
On December 26th, 1667, Pepys writes : “With my
wife to the King's playhouse, and there saw the Surprisal,
10
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
.
which did not please me to-day, the actors not pleasing
me, and especially Nell's acting of a serious part, which
she spoils,” and again under date of December 28th,
1667 : “To the King's house, and there saw the Mad
Couple, which is but an ordinary play, and only Nell's
and Hart's mad parts are excellent done, but especially
hers, which makes it a miracle to me to think how ill
she do in serious parts, in mad parts doing beyond
imitation almost.” From all this evidence, contemporary
and traditional, it seems certain that Nell Gwyn's success
was limited to comic parts. She herself declared in one
of her epilogues-
"I knor you in your hearts
Hate serious plays, as I hate serious parts."
Pepys was certainly more impressed by the grace and
beauty of Nell Gwyn than by her talent as an actress.
When he saw her as Celia in Beaumont and Fletcher's
Humorous Lieutenant, he declared the play to be" silly”;
and all he could say of Nell,“ a most pretty woman, who
acted the great part of Celia," is that she did it “ pretty
well.” “I kissed her,” he adds, “and so did my wife, and
a mighty pretty soul she is.” Once more in his summary
of the day's proceedings he recalls with satisfaction many
things, but “specially kissing of Nell.”. “It is just as
“ THE ENGLISH MONSIEUR.”
11
well,” remarks Sir Walter Scott in reference to this
memorable incident, “ that Mrs. Pepys was present on
the occasion."
In the days of the Restoration it was quite a new thing
in England to see women on the stage, and the first
women who appeared publicly at our theatres were hissed
for their pains. They came from France, and, it may be,
were in some measure detested for their nationality.
The English public, however, soon grew reconciled to
actresses, then became infatuated with them, and before
long applauded them with enthusiasm when, not content
with playing female parts, they assumed the characters
of men. Nell Gwyn was content, however, to represent
personages of her own sex, and though she identified
herself with no character known to the playgoers of the
present day, she seems to have charmed her audience in
all her impersonations except those of a tragic kind.
That she should ever have assumed parts which she her-
self, equally with the public, felt to be unsuited to her
talent, seens strange; and one can scarcely account for
it by the supposition advanced by Mr. Peter Cunningham
that Hart, the principal actor at the theatre, forced her
to play serious characters because, hating her with the
hatred of a forsaken lover, he wished her to fail in them.
12
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
The sufferings of Mr. Hart under the pangs of jealousy
are thus eloquently painted by Nell Gwyn's anonymous
biographer of the year 1751. “During the absence of
Miss Gwyn the reader who has been in love may," we
are told, “ imagine the distraction of the player's mind.
He was plunged in the fiery lake of jealousy; that tor-
menting fury took possession of his soul, tore his bosom
to pieces, preyed on his vitals, and sunk him in inex-
pressible wretchedness, for sure there is no pain on earth
so emblematical of those racks which Divine vengeance
has decreed to fall upon the guilty in another life, than
this insufferable, this overwhelming anguish. ... Though
he loved her with a most doting fondness, his rage poured
a thousand curses on her head, and those hands with
which he had so often clasped her waist and pressed her
bosom with all the thrillings of desire would have now
torn her false heart out, and deformed that enchanting
face which had bewitched him to his undoing.”
To come at last to that first representation which was
to introduce Nell Gywn to the theatrical public, the work,
as before mentioned, was called the English Monsieur,
and it was written by the Hon. James Howard, son of
the Earl of Berkshire, brother-in-law of Dryden and
brother of Philip Howard, an officer in the King's Guards,
“ THE ENGLISH MONSIEUR.”
13
wer
and of Robert and Edward Howard, both of whom
were writers for the stage. There is not much story in
the English Monsieur. But some of the situations are
effective; and the part of Lady Wealthy, said to have
been written specially for Nell Gwyn, is sufficiently
vivacious. Lady Wealthy is a rich, worldly, witty, kind-
hearted widow, of a type that has since become familiar
to the stage; and after teasing her lover, who has some
faults, she first reforms him, and ultimately accepts him
as her husband. Pepys, who saw the piece on the 8th
September, 1666, speaks highly of it. “To the King's
house," he writes, “and there did see a good part of the
English Monsieur, which is a mighty pretty play, very
witty and pleasant. And the women do very well, but
above all little Nell, so that I am mightily pleased with
the play and much with the house, the women doing
better than I expected, and very fair women.”
King Charles II. saw Nell Gwyn on the stage (as we
are told on the indisputable authority of Downes the
prompter) without interruption from 1667 until about
1671. But he did not fall in love with her until in the
latter year he heard her deliver the startling epilogue
written for her by Dryden. “For many years," says
Downes, “ Dryden had given her the most showy and
14
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
fantastic parts in his comedies. It looks as if he played
her at the monarch for a considerable time, since, not to
mention the epilogue last spoken of, he wrote on purpose
for her an equally whimsical and spirited prologue,
prefixed, I think, to Aurengzebe. At the other house
Nokes had appeared in a hat larger than Pistol's,
which gave the town wonderful delight, and supported
a bad play by its pure effect. Dryden, piqued at this,
caused a hat to be made the circumference of a hinder
coach wheel, and as Nelly was of low stature, and what
the French call mignonne and piquante, he made her
speak under the umbrella of that hat, the brims thereof
being spread out horizontally to their full extension.
The whole theatre was in a convulsion of applause ; nay,
the very actors giggled, a circumstance none had observed
before. Judge, therefore, what a condition the 'merriest
prince alive' was in at such a conjuncture. 'Twas beyond
odso' and 'odsfish,' for he wanted little of being
suffocated with laughter."
Downes declares, like every one else, that “Madam
Ellen," as Nell Gwyn was called, had no great talent for
tragedy, and that Dryden gave her the part of Valeria
in his Tyrannic Love partly through “partiality” and
partly because it was necessary for her to die in that
« THE ENGLISH MONSIEUR.”
15
1
play in order to rise and speak the epilogue [the one
quoted above], in which the actress suddenly wakes up
from her coffin and begins to curse the man who is
carrying her from the stage. Many were the works
dedicated to Madam Ellen Gwyn after her preferment
by the King; and Duffet, in placing the Spanish Rogue
beneath her patronage, observes that he is “ the first who
has taken the boldness to tell her in print that next to
her beauty, her virtues are the greatest miracle of
the age.”
This, even in the way of boldness, was a little advanced.
We may agree, however, with the simple-minded Downes
when he hazards the supposition that “Madam Ellen
might have made a more decent figure in life had her
birth been fortunate, and her education good. A semi-
nary like the streets and cellars of London," he adds,
“is infinitely worse than crawling in woods and con-
versing with savages. We make this remark because
she possessed many good qualities which no human
disadvantages could quite destroy. She had no avarice,
and when her power increased, she served all her
theatrical friends. She showed particular gratitude to
Dryden, and valued eminent writers like Lee, Otway,
etc. She was almost the only mistress of the King who
16
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
was guilty of no infidelity towards him; nor did she
relapse after his decease. Endowed with natural
sagacity and wit, she made no ill use of them at court,
paid no attention to ministers, nor ever acted as their
creature. Her charities were remarkable; and what
was singular, she piqued herself on a regard for the
Church, contrary to the genius of the then court."
On one occasion, Nell Gwyn, driving up Ludgate Hill
in a superb coach, saw some bailiffs hurrying a clergyman
to prison, on which, after asking the unfortunate
ecclesiastic for references and finding them satisfactory,
she not only paid his debt, but obtained for him a
preferment.
She was as popular in that light-hearted and profligate
time with the English people as, in the days of Henri
Quatre, Gabrielle d'Estrées—" La belle Gabrielle"-was
with the French. “An eminent goldsmith, who died
about fifteen years ago," told Nell's biographer of 1751
a curious anecdote about Louise de Quérouaille, Duchess
of Portsmouth, who was hated as a foreigner and a papist,
and Nell Gwyn, who used facetiously to boast that she
was not the Catholic but the Protestant mistress of the
King. When the goldsmith was an apprentice, his master
had to make, at the King's orders, a most expensive.
7
CU UL
“THE ENGLISH MONSIEUR."
17
service of plate for the Duchess of Portsmouth, and he
well remembered that "an infinite concourse of people
crowded to the shop out of mere curiosity, that they
threw out a thousand ill wishes against the Duchess
and wished the silver was melted and poured down her
throat, but said it was ten thousand pities the King
had not bestowed this bounty on Madam Ellen.”
Mademoiselle de Quérouaille is known to have been
instrumental in making Charles II. sign the disgraceful
secret treaty with France by which he became a pensioner
of Louis XIV. ; and for this reason alone the Duchess
of Portsmouth, as she was created (according to the
custom by which King Charles reserved for his mis-
tresses the highest nobiliary honours), deserved to be
hated. Nell Gwyn, whose son was created Duke of
St. Albans, and who herself was to have been created
Countess of Greenwich but that the King died before
carrying out his intention, is nevertheless habitually
represented by the lampoonists of the day as attacking
her aristocratic rival from a plebeian standpoint.
Mademoiselle de Quérouaille, or “Madam Curwell,”
as she was popularly called, though the satirical poetasters
of the time described her more often as the “ Duchess
of P ," was charged, in addition to the crimes of
18
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
being a Frenchwoman and a papist, with shameless
extravagance; whereas Nell Gwyn is represented as
saying:
“I neither run in court nor city's store ;
I pay my debts, distribute to the poor.”
The difference between the two women is admirably
brought out, as if in accordance with Nell Gwyn's own
view, by Madame de Sévigné. “Mademoiselle de
Quérouaille amasses treasure," says the charming letter-
writer, “ and makes herself feared and respected by as
many as she can; but she did not foresee that she would
find a young actress in her way whom the King dotes
on, and she has it not in her power to withdraw him
from her. He divides his care, his time, and his wealth
between these two. The actress is as haughty as
Mademoiselle ; she insults her, she makes grimaces at
her, and boasts whenever he gives her the preference.
She is young, indiscreet, confident, wild, and of an
agreeable humour. She sings, dances, acts her part with
good grace, has a son by the King, and hopes to have
him acknowledged. In reference to Mademoiselle she
reasons thus: 'This lady,' says she,' pretends to be a
" THE ENGLISH MONSIEUR."
19
person of quality. She says she is related to the best
families in France. Whenever any person of distinction
dies, she puts herself into mourning. If she is a lady
of such quality, why does she demean herself to be a
courtezan? She ought to die with shame. As for me,
it is my profession. I do not pretend to be anything
better. He has a son by me. I contend that he ought
to acknowledge him, and I am assured he will, for he
loves me as well as Mademoiselle.”
All kinds of stories are told of the success with which
Nell Gwyn threw ridicule on her aristocratic rival.
Mlle. de Quérouaille pretended to be related (as, con-
sidering that she came to England in the suite of the
Duchess of Orleans, was probably the case) to the best
families in France; and whenever one of their members
died she went into mourning. Suddenly news reached
England that the Khan of Tartary was no more. A
French prince had just before died, for whom the
Duchess of Portsmouth had gone into mourning, and
Nell Gwyn now went to court dressed entirely in black.
She took up her position ostentatiously by Her Grace's
side, and being asked why she was in mourning,
“Have you not heard,” she replied, “ of my loss in the
Khan of Tartary ?”
CE
02
20
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
"And what relation,” continued the inquirer," was the
Khan of Tartary to you ? ”
"Exactly the same," she answered, “ that the French
prince was to Malle. de Quérouaille.”
Douglas Jerrold, in his delightful comedy of Nell Gwyn,
does not introduce Louise de Quérouaille, who, however,
might well have been contrasted with Nell Gwyn even
as in Scribe's Adrienne Lecouvreur the actress of that
name is contrasted with the Duchess of Bouillon.
The birthplace of Nell Gwyn is as uncertain as that
of Homer. According to one authority, it was Oxford,
according to another Hereford, while the favourite story
on the subject is that she was born in a cellar near
Drury Lane. The particulars given respecting her
early life even by contemporary writers, such as the
Count de Grammont in his Memoirs, and Downes, the
prompter of the company to which she belonged, in his
Roscius Anglicanus, are often contradictory. She is
reported to have called Charles II.—greatly to his
amusement—« Charles III.," on the ground that
her first lover was Charles Hart, celebrated actor
and great-nephew of Shakespeare, and her second
Charles Sackville, Lord Buckhurst; His Majesty
holding only the third place in the list. It must be
"THE ENGLISH MONSIEUR.”
remembered, however, that in her computation Nell
Gwyn was reckoning those only of her lovers whose
Christian name was Charles. Her first and most
disinterested lover was, according to Basil Montague
(who tells the story in his manuscript notes to Downes's
Roscius Anglicanus, preserved in the British Museum)
a link-boy; and he remembered to have somewhere
read “that Nell Gwyn acknowledged this herself.
“My first love,” he makes her say, “was a link-boy,
and a very good soul he was, too, poor Dick, and had
the heart of a gentleman. God knows what has.
become of him, but when I last saw him, he said he
would humbly love me to his dying day. He used to
say that I must have been a lord's daughter for my
beauty, and that I ought to ride in my carriage, and
behaved to me as if I did. He, poor boy, would light
me and my mother home, when we had sold our oranges,
to our lodgings in Tewkener's Lane as if we had been
ladies of the land. He said he never felt easy for the
evening till he had asked me how I did. Then he went
gaily about his work, and if he saw us housed at night,
he slept like a prince. I shall never forget when he
came flushing and stammering and drew out of his
pocket a pair of worsted stockings which he brought
CULU
22
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
for my naked feet. It was bitter cold weather, and I
had chilblains which made me hobble about till I cried,
and what does poor Richard do but work hard like a
horse and buy me these worsted stockings. My mother
bade him put them on, and so he did, and his warm
tears fell on my chilblains, and he said he should be
the happiest lad on earth if the stockings did me
any good.”
That Nell Gwyn did not possess what (in the case
of women) is specifically called “virtue” cannot of
course be denied. But Duffett, the author of the
Spanish Rogue, was right, as was also the popular voice,
in attributing to her numerous “ virtues.” She was
kind-hearted and charitable. It was at the recom-
mendation of the soldier's daughter, as she is sometimes
said to have been, that Chelsea Hospital was founded;
and she left in her will twenty pounds a year for
distribution among poor debtors. In a codicil
addressed to her son, the Duke of St. Albans, who
formally accepted it and executed its provisions, the
following clauses occur:-
“That he [the Duke] would give one hundred pounds
for the use of the poor of the said St. Martin's and St.
James's, Westminster, to be given into the hands of
“THE ENGLISH MONSIEUR."
the said Dr. Tennison to be disposed of at his
discretion for taking any poor debtors of the said
parish out of prison, and for clothes this winter and
“That for showing my charity to those who differ
from me in religion, I desire that fifty pounds may be
put into the hands of Dr. Tennison and Mr. Warner,
who, taking to them any two persons of the Roman
religion, may dispose of it for the use of the poor of
that religion inhabiting the parish of St. James's
aforesaid.”
Nell Gwyn left legacies to numbers of private friends,
to all her servants, and to the nurses who attended her
in her last illness ; and she expressed a desire that
Dr. Tennison, her chosen almoner in connection with
the poor debtors, would preach her funeral sermon.
Dr. Tennison had the kindness and the courage to do
so, though what he said, except that it was “much to
her praise,” has not been recorded. A sham sermon
attributed to the worthy Doctor was hawked about
the streets, and he was obliged to advertise that
“Whereas there has been a paper cried by some
hawkers as a sermon preached by Dr. Tennison at the
funeral of M. E. Gwyn, this may certify that that paper
IT
24
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
is the forgery of some mercenary people.” Some
years afterwards there seemed to be a chance of his
suffering severely for his loyalty in fulfilling poor Nell's
dying request. In 1691 he was about to be appointed
to the see of Lincoln, when, in the interest of a rival
candidate, Lord Villiers represented to Queen Mary,
that Dr. Tennison had preached a “notable funeral
sermon in praise of Ellen Gwyn.”
"I have heard as much,” replied the good Queen
Mary, “and this is a sign that the poor unfortunate
woman died penitent; for, if I have read a man's heart
through his looks, had she not made a truly pious
end, the Doctor could never have been induced to
speak well of her.”
en
CHAPTER II.)
MOLIÈRE'S "TARTUFE.”
on
THE first representation of Molière's great satirical
comedy is chiefly remarkable, not for anything which
took place during the performance of the piece, but for
the trouble experienced by the author in getting
permission to have it produced. No sooner had
it been acted, than important personages, who con-
sidered themselves injured by the severity with which
hypocrisy was treated, procured an injunction against
its being played again; and this veto was not removed
until two years afterwards. But Molière's first
difficulty was with the preventive censorship which
forbade the representation of his work. Thereupon
he addressed to Louis XIV., a placet in the following
terms :
“Sire, the object of comedy being to correct men
while diverting them, it seemed to me that in the post
26
1
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
V
I occupied [Molière was chief of the King's company
of actors] I had nothing better to do than to attack
through satirical pictures the vices of my century; and
as hypocrisy is without doubt one of those most in
fashion, most unbecoming and most dangerous, I
thought, Sire, that I should be rendering no small
service to all honest people in your kingdom, if I
composed a comedy which should decry hypocrites, and
place in a proper light all the studied grimaces of
these outrageously good people, all the hidden rogueries
of these coiners in religion who try to take men in
with cunning zeal and sophisticated charity.
“I composed this comedy, Sire, with all the care, I
believe, and all the circumspection demanded by the
delicate nature of the subject; and the better to
preserve the esteem and respect which are due to the
truly pious, I kept as distinct from them as possible,
the character I had to trace. I have left nothing
equivocal. I have taken out whatever might cause
confusion between good and evil, and I have only used
in this picture the express colours, and the essential
features which cause a true, genuine hypocrite to be
recognised from the first,
“But all my precautions have been useless. The
MOLIÈRE'S “ TARTUFE.”
27
delicacy, Sire, of your soul in matters of religion has
been turned to account, and you have been assailed
in the only place where you were assailable; through
your respect, I mean, for sacred things. The tartufes
in an underhand manner have had the skill to find
grace with your Majesty ; and the originals have in
short procured the suppression of the copy, innocent
as it was, and full of resemblance as they found it.
“Although the suppression of this work was to me
a cruel blow, my misfortune was nevertheless mitigated
by the manner in which your Majesty entered into
explanations on the subject; and it seems to me, Sire,
that you took from me all cause of complaint, when
you had the kindness to declare that you found
nothing to object to in this comedy, which you forbade
me to produce in public.
"But notwithstanding this glorious declaration
from the greatest and most enlightened King in the
world, notwithstanding the further approbation of the
legate and of the greater part of our prelates, all of
whom, after I had read them my work in private, found
themselves at one with the sentiments of your
Majesty; notwithstanding all that, I say, a book has
appeared, composed by the Cure of — , which gives
28
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
the direct lie to these august testimonies. Your
Majesty may say what you will, and the legate and the
prelates may judge as they think fit. My comedy,
though the writer has not seen it, is diabolical, and
diabolical my brain; I am a demon clothed with flesh,
and dressed like a man, a libertine, an impious person
worthy of exemplary punishment. My offence would
public. The charitable zeal of this excellent man cannot
stop there. He denies me the mercy of God; he has
resolved that I shall be damned ; this point is settled.
This book, Sire, has been presented to your Majesty,
0
YI
ful it must be for me to find myself exposed daily to
the insults of these gentlemen; and what injury they
do me in the world with such calumnies if it is
necessary that they should be tolerated ; and, finally,
what interest I have in relieving myself of their
impostures, and in showing to the public that my
comedy is anything but what they pretend it to be.
I will not say, Sire, what I might have to ask for my
reputation, and, to justify before every one, the
innocence of my work. Enlightened Kings like you,
do not need that what is desired should be pointed
MOLIÈRE'S “TARTUFE."
29
out to them. They see, like God, what is wanted, and
know better than we ourselves what to grant to us.
“It is enough for me to place my interests in the
hands of your Majesty, and I await with respect
whatever it may please your Majesty to order in the
matter."
The effect of Molière's placet was to get the veto
which had been pronounced against the representa-
tion of the Tartufe, withdrawn or set at naught; and
in 1667 the work was represented to the delight of
nany, but to the intense disgust of a few. The
minority, however, in this case prevailed, and on the
6th of August the performance was forbidden, “ until
fresh orders from his Majesty.” The King personally
did not share the views of the cabal which had
procured the suppression of Molière's comedy; and
a week after its withdrawal he said as much to the
Prince de Condé as he was coming out of the Court
Theatre after the performance of a piece called
Scaramouch, a Hermit. “I wonder," said his Majesty,
“why people who are so scandalised by Molière's
comedy have not a word to say against the Scara-
mouch ;” to which the Prince replied, “The reason is
that Scaramouch laughs at Heaven and religion about
30
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
which these gentlemen care nothing, while that of
Molière ridicules these gentlemen themselves, which
they cannot endure." This conversation is cited by
Molière in his preface to the first edition of Tartufe,
published in 1669, a few months after the second
representation of the work and more than two years
after the first.
Receiving official notice after the first representation
of Tartufe not to perform the work again, Molière
commissioned two members of his company, La
Thorillière, and La Grange to go to “ Lille in Flan-
ders," before which city his Majesty was encamped
with the army, and to present to him this second
placet :
“Sire, It was a very rash thing on my part to go
and importune a great monarch in the midst of his
glorious victories. But in my present situation,
where, Sire, am I to find protection, but in the place
where I am seeking it, and what aid can I solicit
against the authority, and the power which weighs
me down, except the source of power and authority, of
the chief dispensator of absolute orders, the sovereign
judge and master of all things.
“My comedy, Sire, has not hitherto been able to
MOLIÈRE'S “ TARTUFE.”
31
profit by the kindness of your Majesty. In vain did
I produce it under the title of the Impostor, disguising
the personage under the costume of a man of the
world: in vain I gave him a little hat, long hair, a
great collar, a sword, and lace all over his coat; in
vain did I introduce modifications in many places, and
cut out with great care whatever I thought capable
of furnishing the shadow of a pretext to the celebrated
originals of the portrait I wished to paint; all this
served for nothing. The cabal was brought to life
again by the simplest conjectures as to what the thing
could mean. They found means for surprising minds,
which in all other matters prided themselves on not
allowing themselves to be surprised. My comedy had
no sooner appeared than it was struck down by the
blow of a power which must impose respect; and all
I have been able to do in this difficulty to save myself
from the effect of this tempest, was to say that your
Majesty had been gracious enough to permit the
representation, and that I did not think it necessary
to ask this permission from others, since it belonged
to your Majesty alone to forbid it.
“I do not doubt, Sire, that the people whom I have
painted in my comedy will move many springs near
32
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
your Majesty, and drag into their party, as they have
already done, some truly good men, who are the more
prompt to let themselves be deceived inasmuch as they
judge of others by themselves. They possess the
art of giving fine colours to all their motives. But
whatever face they may present it is not by the interest
of God that they are to be moved; they have shown
that well enough in the comedies which they have
permitted so many times to be played in public without
saying the least word against them. Those works
attacked only piety and religion, about which they care
very little; but this one attacks them and turns them
into ridicule, which is more than they can bear. They
cannot forgive me for unveiling their impostures before
the eyes of every one; doubtless your Majesty will be
told that every one was scandalised by my comedy.
But the real truth, Sir, is that all Paris was scandalised
only by its being forbidden; that even the most
scrupulous regarded the representation as beneficial ;
the astonishing thing being that persons of such well-
known probity should have shown such a great defer-
ence for people who ought to be the horror of every one,
and who are so opposed to the genuine piety which
they profess.
MOLIÈRE'S “ TARTUFE.”
33
“I wait with respect the judgment which your Majesty
will deign to pronounce in this matter; but it is very
certain, sire, that I must no longer think of composing
comedies if the tartufes are to have the advantage,
and they would profit by that to persecute me more
than ever, finding matter of complaint in the most
innocent things which could proceed from my
pen.
“May you in your graciousness, sire, lend me pro-
tection against their venomous rage, and may I, on your
return from so glorious a campaign, solace your Majesty
for the fatigues of your conquests, give him innocent
pleasures after such noble labours, and make the
monarch laugh who makes all Europe tremble.”
In reply to Molière's second placet the king granted
him full permission to perform Tartufe. Thereupon
the great comic dramatist addressed to Louis XIV. a
third placet, partly to express his gratitude, partly also
to ask a favour for one of his friends, a doctor named
Mauvilain whom, in spite of his severe attacks on the
medical profession, Molière seems to have held in
great regard.
“A very bonest doctor," ran the third placet, “whose
patient I have the honour to be, promises, and is ready
X
34
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
to bind himself thereto before notary, to make me live
thirty years more if I can obtain for him a favour from
your Majesty. I told him in reply that I did not
require so much and that I should be satisfied if he
would bind himself not to kill me. This favour, sire,
is a canonry in your chapel royal of Vincennes, which
stands vacant by the death of -. Might I venture
to ask this further favour of your Majesty the very day
of the great resurrection of Tartufe, resuscitated by your
kindness? I am by this first favour reconciled with the
saints; and I should be by the second with the doctors.
It would be for me, no doubt, too many favours at once,
but perhaps not for your Majesty, and I wait with some
degree of respectful hope an answer to my placet.”
The king gave Molière the canonry he had requested
for the son of his doctor. But he was anxious to know
how it had come to pass that so determined an enemy
of medicine had a doctor.
"So you have a doctor," he said to him some time
afterwards. “What does he do to you?”
“Sire,” replied Molière, “we talk together; he
prescribes remedies; I do not take them, and I get
well.”
CHAPTER III.
THE “BEGGAR'S OPERA."
OF the first representation of the Beggar's Operu no
very detailed account has been preserved., and perhaps
the main facts in connection with it are already
generally known. Every one, too, who takes interest
in such matters must have heard that the piece is
supposed to have been written as a satire on the Italian
in the Haymarket-on the site now occupied by the
building known as Her Majesty's Theatre. The forms,
however, of Italian Opera are nowhere in Gay's work
spite of Dr. Johnson's positive assertion that the play
was written in ridicule of the “musical Italian drama”
it may well be that the author had no intention but
D 2
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
to produce a comedy interspersed and enlivened with
popular songs.
The original idea of the Beggar's Opera seems to
have belonged to Swift, who said one day to Gay:
“ What an odd, pretty sort of thing a Newgate
pastoral might make."
“Gay,' ” as Spence has related the story on Pope's
authority and in Pope's own words, “. was inclined to
try at such a thing for some time, but afterwards thought
it would be better to write a comedy on the same plan.
This was what gave rise to the. Beggar's Opera.”
When Gay had written a portion of the work he
showed it to Swift, who, displeased, perhaps, at his
suggestion not having been adopted in the form in
which he had made it, did not approve of what had
been done. As he went on with it, Gay submitted his
manuscript both to Swift and to Pope, who now and
then gave a correction or a word or two of advice,
“ But it was wholly," says Spence, on Pope's
authority, “ of his writing.” When it was done,
neither of Gay's counsellers thought it would succeed,
and they showed it to Congreve, who, after reading it
over, said it would “ either take greatly or be damned
confoundedly.” This oracular saying, from the wittiest
THE “BEGGAR'S OPERA."
of our coinic dramatists, was scarcely worthy of him.
It really meant little more than that the piece would
either fail or succeed.
Pope and Swift and all Gay's intimate friends were
present at the first representation; and, very uncertain
as to how the piece would be received, were much
encouraged by hearing the Duke of Argyll, who sat in
the next box, say aloud : “It will domit must do; I
see it in the eyes of them.” This was long before the
first act came to an end; “and,” says Pope, as cited
by Spence, “this gave us ease, for that duke, besides his
own good taste, has a particular knack as any one
now living in discovering the taste of the public.
He was quite right in this as usual; the good-nature
of the audience grew stronger and stronger every act,
and ended in a clamour of applause.”
In one of the notes to the Dunciad we read: “The
piece was received with greater applause than was ever
known. Besides being acted in London sixty-three
days without interruption, and renewed next season
with equal applause, it spread to all the great towns
of England; was played in many places to the
thirtieth and fortieth time; at Bath and Bristol,
fifty. It made its progress into Wales, Scotland, and
38
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
Ireland, where it was performed twenty-four days
successively. The ladies carried about with them the
favourite songs of it in fans, and houses were furnished
with it in screens. The fame of it was not confined
to the author only. The person who acted Polly,
till then obscure, became all at once the favourite of
the town; her pictures were engraved and sold in
great numbers, her life written, books of letters and
verses to her published, and pamphlets made even of
her sayings and jests. Furthermore, it drove out of
England, for that season, the Italian opera, which
had carried all before it for ten years."
The Beggar's Opera, like many other works which
were destined to obtain enormous success, did not
please the first manager to whom it was submitted.
It was originally offered to Cibber, at Drury Lane,
who rejected it. It was afterwards accepted by Rich,
the manager of the Theatre Royal in Lincoln's Inn
Fields, who produced it the 29th of January, 1727-8.
It was wittily said—or “ludicrously," as Dr. Johnson
puts it—that the success of the piece “made Gay rich
and Rich gay.” Two years after its first production
it was still the rage of the town; and so many ballad
operas in imitation of it were brought out, that for
THE “BEGGAR'S OPERA.”
39
wa
several years afterwards scarcely any other kind of
drama was represented. “Even for the booths in Bar-
tholomew Fair,” says Mr. William Chappell, in his
Popular Music of the Olden Time, “ballad operas
were written and subsequently published with the
tunes. In many the music was printed in type with
the book; for others it was engraved and sold
separately.” The success of the Beggar's Opera was
looked upon as a national triumph; and it was
celebrated with patriotic fervour in many a ballad of
the day. A poem published in 1730 on the success
of the Beggar's Opercl, and entitled Old England's
Garland, or the Italian Opera's Downfall, begins as
follows :-
“I sing of sad discords that liappened of late,
Of strange revolutions but not in the State ;
How old England grew fond of old tunes of her own
And her ballads went up and our operas down.
Derry down, down, hey, derry down.”
It is thus referred to in the epilogue to Love in a
Riddle :
“Poor English mouths for twenty years
Have been shut up from music;
But, thank our stars, outlandish airs
At last have made you all sick.
40
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
Where warbling dames were all in flames
And for precedence wrangled,
One English play cut short the fray
And home again they dangled.
“ Sweet sound on languid sense bestowed
Is like a beauty married
To the empty fop who talks aloud,
And all her charms are buried.
But late experience plainly shows
That common sense and a ditty
Have ravished all the belles and beaux,
And charmed the chaunting city.”
That the Beggar's Opera had the effect of destroy-
ing in England, at least for a time, the taste for
Italian opera is an assertion frequently made, but
which could scarcely be proved. In the year 1728,
the year of the Beggar's Opera, Italian opera did
indeed come to grief in London. It failed simply
because the fifty thousand pounds subscribed for its
maintenance eight years before had now been spent.
In 1720 Handel established at the King's Theatre the
so-called Royal Academy of Music, on the basis of
a pecuniary subvention from a number of distinguished
amateurs who among them had raised, with a view to
the permanent maintenance of Italian opera in
England, a sum of fifty thousand pounds. This
liberal grant, placed without reserve at Handel's
THE “BEGGAR’S OPERA."
41
disposal, enabled him to carry on the theatre for
seven years, but no longer. Accordingly, in 1728, he
had nothing to depend upon in the way of money
but the ordinary receipts of the theatre; and though
these may have been, and doubtless were, diminished
by the attractions of the Beggar's Opera, we may be
quite sure that the Royal Academy of Music would
not in that year have been closed, but for the fact
that the reserve fund of fifty thousand pounds had
all been spent. The failure was attributed by some
to the disputes as to the merits of Handel and
Buononcini, the composers, and of Faustina and
Cuzzoni, the singers; though the natural effect of
such contests must have been to keep up an interest
in the performances. Probably the numbers were but
few in London of those who really cared for Italian
music; and, however that may have been, it has
already been said that the money out of which the
losses of previous seasons had been made good, had
now been exhausted.
The Beggar's Operce, however, was, in some measure,
responsible for the collapse ; and many of the writers
of the time approve or bewail the influence of that
work according as they like or dislike Italian opera.
42
TO
LU
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
.
Dr. Arbuthnot, one of the few literary men of the
day who seems really to have appreciated good music,
wrote as follows in the London Journal, under date
of March 22nd, 1728, as to the effect on the
fortunes of Italian opera of the striking success
achieved by the Beggar's Opera.
"As there is nothing which surprises all true
lovers of music more than the neglect into which
the Italian operas are at present falling, so I cannot
but think it a very extraordinary instance of the
fickle and inconstant temper of the English nation,
a failing which they have always been endeavouring
to cast upon their neighbours in France, but to
which they themselves have just as good a title, as
will appear to any one who will take the trouble to
consult our historians. After adopting Italian opera
with eagerness, we began as soon as we had
obtained it in perfection, to make it a pretext for
disputes instead of enjoying it; and it was supported
among us for a time, not from genuine liking, but
simply from fashion. The Beggar's Opera is a
touchstone to try British taste on; and it has
proved effective in discovering our true incli-
nations, which, however artfully they may have
THE “ BEGGAR'S OPERA."
43
been disguised for a while, will, one time or
another, start up and disclose themselves. Æsop's
story of the cat who, at the petition of her lover, was
changed into a fine woman, is pretty well known,
notwithstanding which alteration we find that upon
the appearance of a mouse she could not resist the
temptation of springing out of her husband's arms to
pursue it, though it was on the very wedding night.
Our English audiences have been for some time re-
turning to their cattish nature, of which some
particular sounds from the gallery have given us
sufficient warning. And since they have so openly
declared themselves, I must only desire that they
will not think they can put on the fine woman again
just when they please, but content themselves with
their skill in caterwauling. For my own part, I cannot
think it would be any loss to refined lovers of music
if all those false friends who have made pretensions to
it only in compliance with the fashion, would separate
themselves from them; provided our Italian operas
could be brought under, such regulations as to go on
without them. In short, my comfort is, that so great
a desertion may force us so to contract the expenses of
our operas as would put an end to our having them
44
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
L'son
in as great perfection as at present, yet we shall be
able at least to hear them without interruption."
Probably no one profited so much by the success
of the Beggar's Opera as the charming Lavinia Fenton,
curtly described by Pope as “the person who acted
Polly, but who,” he adds, " became all at once the
favourite of the town.” She ended her brief and
brilliant career by marrying the Duke of Bolton.
Not, however, all at once. "The Duke of Bolton,"
says Swift in one of his letters, “has run away with
Polly Peachum, having settled four hundred a year
on her during pleasure, and upon disagreement two
hundred more.” The disagreement anticipated, at
least as a possibility, never took place. Twenty-three
years after the elopement the Duke's wife died, and
Lavinia Fenton became Duchess of Bolton. She was,
according to the account given of her by Dr. Joseph
Wharton, “a very accomplisbed and most agreeable
companion; had much wit, good strong sense, and a
just taste in polite literature. Her person was
agreeable and well made,” continues Dr. Wharton,
“though, I think, she never could be called a beauty.
I have had the pleasure of being at table with her,
when her conversation was much admired by the first
THE “BEGGAR'S OPERA.”
45
characters of the age, particularly by the old Lord
Bathurst and Lord Granville."
Like most works, the Beggar's Opera was variously
judged by critics, though the public applauded it
with one voice. Fifty years after its first production
Sir John Fielding, the magistrate, sent letters to the
managers of Drury Lane and Covent Garden, advis-
ing them not to perform the Beggar's Opera, “as it
tended to increase the number of thieves.” Garrick
approved of Sir John's advice, and declared himself
determined to follow it because, as was uncharitably
suggested, he had only one good singer in his
company. Coleman, however, declined to accept the
proffered counsel. “Mr. Coleman's compliments to
Sir John Fielding,” he wrote, “and he does not think
his the only house in Bow Street where thieves are
tinuing the representation of that admirable satire
the Beggar's Opera." Swift's friendship for the author
carried him so far as to make him praise its
morality; for the piece, he said, “placed all kinds
of vice in the strongest and most odious light.” It -
was censured, however, on the high authority of
Dr. Herring, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury,
46
46
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
as, "giving encouragement, not only to vice, but to
crime, by making a highwayman the hero, and dis-
missing him at last unpunished.”
It was said, too, that after the production of
the Beggar's Opera new gangs of robbers were
formed.
In dealing with the two conflicting views put
forward as to the moral effect of Gay's amusing
piece, Johnson condemns both, and with his usual
acuteness, adds : “The play, like many others, was
plainly written only to divert, without any moral
purpose, and is therefore not likely to do good; nor
can it be conceived, without more speculation than
life requires or admits, to be productive of much
evil. Highwaymen and housebreakers seldom frequent
the playhouse or mingle in any elegant diversion;
nor is it possible for any one to imagine that he may
rob with safety because he sees Macheath reprieved
upon the stage.”
CHAPTER IV.
THE “MESSIAH."
WHEN Handel's Italian operas no longer attracted
the public, or rather when the money subscribed to
enable him to produce them on a befitting scale of
splendour bad, after a certain number of years, been
spent, he took to composing oratorios, of which the
interest has never diminished from that time until
now. Italian opera has once more broken down, and
with such a collapse as has not been known since
Handel's time. But the sacred compositions of Handel
and oratorio music generally are more popular than
ever; and four Handel Festival performances at the
Crystal Palace draw more people and more money
than could be attracted by a series of Italian oper-
atic performances extending over an entire season.
The Handel Festival is now an historical institution
48
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
DU
in England; and it has been repeated so often that
it has now fallen, one cannot say into a groove, but
into a certain set form. It consists, as a matter of
course, of a performance of the Messiah on the first
day; of a miscellaneous selection from Handel's works,
sacred and secular, on the second; and of Israel in
Egypt on the third. Israel in Egypt exhibits Handel
at his best as a great choral writer, the miscellaneous
selection serves to give an idea of the great variety
of his talent, while the Messiah, though containing
some of the finest choruses ever written, is particularly
esteemed for the number and beauty of its solo pieces.
Handel had written thirty-eight operas in Italian.
besides minor work in cantata shape, and performed
without dramatic action, when, in 1741, after an
operatic career of thirty-six years, he devoted him-
self exclusively to the composition of oratorios with
English words. Neither in Esther, nor Deborah, nor
Athaliah, his earliest sacred works to English texts,
did he attain such excellence as he was afterwards
to reach. The first oratorio in which he rose to his
own proper level was Saul, and the second Israel in
Egypt, which, however, did not, when first performed,
before Handel had yet broken finally with Italian
THE “MESSIAH."
49
opera, make any great impression on the public-not
yet sufficiently educated to appreciate it. The Messiah
however, achieved from the first such success that
its composer, already leaning less to the opera and
more to the oratorio than in his earlier days, resolved
for ever afterwards to cultivate sacred music exclusively.
He began the Messiah some months after the completion
of Deidamia, his last Italian opera; and the composition
of his greatest work in the religious style occupied
him just twenty-four days.
The first performance of the Messiah at Dublin
was on a very different scale froin that to which the
frequenters of our Handel Festivals are accustomed.
The Music Hall, in which it was given, might have
accommodated a Crystal Palace Festival orchestra,
with its 500 players, but could not have held one-half
or one-quarter of the 3,500 singers composing the
Festival chorus. In Handel's own account of the
first performance the number of the executants is
not given. But it is known that the chorus was
formed by the union of two ordinary cathedral choirs.
The orchestra would, of course, have been in proportion
to the number of choristers; and the entire number
of persons present at the performance in the character
50
.
Famous FIRST REPRESENTATIONSRESENTATIONS.
an
wa
of audience was, as before suggested, not much larger
than that of the musicians composing the orchestra
at one of our Handel Festivals. Thus, when the
oratorio was about to be given for the second time,
an advertisement was published, begging ladies tó
come without hoops and gentlemen without swords,
which condescension on their part would, it was
declared, “ enable the Stewards to seat seven hundred
persons in the room instead of six.” The principal
Dublin newspaper of that time, Faulkner's Journal,
described the Messiah as, in the opinion of the greatest
judges, “the finest composition of music that was
ever heard.”
A letter from Handel to Mr. Charles Jennens,
compiler of the words, giving him an account of the
first performance of the Messiah, exhibits the modesty
of the composer as much as a letter on the same
subject from Mr. Jennens to some person, or persons
unknown, displays the conceit of the librettist. Handel
speaks to the gentleman who had simply put together
for him so many biblical texts, of “Your Oratorio,
Messiah, which I set to music before I left England ;”
and he adds that the public "are very much taken
with the poetry.”
THE “ MESSIAH."
51
"It was with the greatest pleasure," wrote Handel,
on 29th December, 1741, “ that I saw the Continuation
of your kindness by the Lines You were pleased to
send me, in order to be prefixed to your Oratorio,
Messiah, which I set to music before I left England.
I am emboldened, Sir, by the general Concern you
please to take in relation to my affairs to give you
an account of the Success I have met here. The
Nobility did me the honour to make amongst them-
selves a Subscription for 6 nights, which did fill a
room of 600 Persons, so that I needed not sell one
single ticket at the Door, and without vanity the
performance was received with a general approbation.
Sigra. Avolio, which I brought with me from London,
pleases extraordinary. I have formed another Tenor
Voice, which gives great satisfaction, the Basses and
Counter Tenors are very good, and the rest of the
Chorus Singers (by my Direction) do exceedingly well;
as for the Instruments, they are really excellent, Mr.
Dubourgh being at the head of them, and the music
sounds delightfully in this charming room, which puts
me in good spirits (and my Health being so good),
that I exert myself on my Organ with more than
usual success.
E 2
52
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
“I open’d with the Allegro Penseroso and Moderato,
and I assure you that the words of the Moderato are
vastly admired. The audience being composed (besides
the Flower of Ladies of Distinction and other People
of the greatest Quality) of so many Bishops, Deans,
Heads of the Colledge, the most eminent People in
the Law, as the Chancellor, Auditor General, &c., &c.,
all which are very much taken with the Poetry, so
that I am desired to perform it again the next time.
I cannot sufficiently express the kind treatment I
received here, but the politeness of this generous nation
cannot be unknown to you, so I let you judge of the
satisfaction I enjoy, passing my time with Honnour,
profit, and pleasure. They propose already to have
some more Performances, when the six nights of the
subscription are over, and My Lord Duke, the Lord-
Lieutenant (who is allways present with all his Family
on those Nights) will easily obtain a longer Permission
for me by His Majesty, so that I shall be obliged to
stay here longer than I thought. One request I must
make to you, which is that you would intimate my
most devoted Respects to My Lord and My Lady
Shaftesbury; you know how much their kind Protection
is precious to me. Sir William Knatchbull will find
7
THE “MESSIAH."
53
here my respectfull Compliments. You will Encrease
my Obligations if, by occasion, you will present my
humble services to some other patrons and friends of
mine. I expect with impatience the Favour of your
News concerning your Health and Welfare, of which
I take a real share. As for the news of your Operas
I need not trouble you, for all the Town is full of
their ill success by a number of Letters from Four
quarters to the People of Quality here, and I can't
help saying it furnishes great Diversion and laughter.
The first Opera I heard myself before I left London,
and it made me very merry all along my journey,
and of the second Opera, called Pénélope, a certain
nobleman writes very jocosely—Il faut que je dise
avec Harlequin, Notre Pénélope n'est qu'une sallope,
-but I think I have trespassed too much on your
Patience.
“I beg you to be persuaded of the sincere veneration
and Esteem with which I have the Honnour to be,
Sr., your most obliged and most humble servant,
“GEORG FRIDERIC HANDEL."
Mr. Jennens, on his side, speaks to some corre-
spondent of “a collection I gave Handel called Messiah
which I value highly;” and he adds that Handel
54
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
“has made a fine entertainment of it, though not near
so good as he might and ought to have done.” Mr.
Jennens had evidently persuaded himself that the
finest passages in the book of the Messiah were due,
not to the prophets and the evangelists, but to his
own unaided imagination. When, many years ago,
the beautiful air, “I know that my Redeemer liveth,"
was sung at a Paris concert, the programme attributed
the words neither to Job nor Jennens, but to Milton;
and it appears from the letter to Jennens that
Handel himself had somehow. got to look upon the
"poetry” of the Messiah as the work of that vain
pretender..
some of the “grossest faults in the composition;"
though Handel, in spite of Jennens's remonstrances,
“retained his overture obstinately.” The overture
passes in the present day, and with reason, for a
most appropriate introduction to the opening recitative
which, with equal felicity, prepares the hearer for the
opening air.
almost as much attention as the first public perfor-
mance; and it was noticed at length by the Dublin
THE “MESSIAH.”
55
journals. Partial rehearsals of the work seem to have
been made on the journey from London to Dublin.
We learn, at least, from a well-known passage in
Burney's History of Music, that when Handel was
passing through Chester he had some of the choruses
tried at the Golden Falcon, where he was stopping.
“When Handel went through Chester on his way, this
year, 1741, I was,” says Burney, “at the Public School
in that city, and very well remember seeing him
smoking a pipe, over a dish of coffee, at the Exchange
Coffee-house; for, being extremely anxious to see so
extraordinary a man, I watched him narrowly, as long
as he remained in Chester; which, on account of the
wind being unfavourable for his embarking at Park-
gate, was several days. During this time, he applied
to Mr. Baker, the organist, my first music-master, to
know whether there were any choirmen in the
Cathedral who could sing at sight, as he wished to
prove some books that had been hastily transcribed
by trying the choruses which he intended to perform
in Ireland. Mr. Baker mentioned some of the most
likely singers then in Chester, and, among the rest,
a printer of the name of Janson, who had a good bass
voice, and was one of the best musicians in the choir.
56
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
At this time, Harry Alcock, a good player, was the
first violin at Chester, which was then a very musical
place; for besides public performances, Mr. Prebendary
Prescott had a weekly concert, at which he was
able to muster eighteen or twenty performers,
gentlemen and professors. A time was fixed for
the private rehearsal at the Golden Falcon, where
Handel was quartered; but, alas! on trial of the
chorus in the Messiah, “And with His stripes we are
healed," poor Janson, after repeated attempts, failed
so egregiously that Handel let loose his great bear
upon him, and, after swearing in four or five differ-
ent languages, cried out, in broken English, “ You
scoundrel ! did not you tell me that you could sing
at sight?” “Yes, sir,” says the printer, “and so I
can, but not at first sight.”
After being delayed by contrary winds at Holyhead,
Handel reached Dublin by the packet-boat on the
18th of November. He was followed on the 24th
by his leading soprano, Signora Avolio. Mrs. Cibber
and the rest of the singers came some days later;
and on the 8th of December, a series of six " Handel
Concerts," as they would now be called, was announced
as follows, in Faulkner's Journal :-“On: Monday Next,
THE “ MESSIAH."
57
being the 14th of December (and every Day following),
Attendance will be given, at Mr. Handel's house, in
Abbey-street near Lyffey-street, from 9 o'clock in
the Morning till 2 in the Afternoon, in order to
receive the Subscription Money for his Six Musical
Entertainments in the New Musick Hall in Fishamble-
street, at which Time each Subscriber will have a
ticket delivered to bim which entitles him to three
Tickets each night, either for Ladies or Gentlemen.”
The amount of the subscription is not mentioned ;
but Mr. Rockstro, in his interesting and carefully-
prepared Life of Handel, sees reason for believing
that, though no single tickets were sold, the price of
each place was half-a-guinea. The success of these
performances, which included L'Allegro, Acis and
Galatea, the Ode for St. Cecilia's Day, Esther, and a
number of concertos for various instruments, was so
great that Handel was asked to give a second series,
which comprised Alexander's Feast, L'Allegro, Hymen,
the Serenata of Imeneo, and Esther, with, as before,
a certain number of concertos. Handel, indeed, had
been no less than three months in Dublin when
arrangements were begun for producing the great
work which he had brought with him from London.
1
58
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
The first performance of the Messiah was announced
in Faulkner's Journal and the Dublin Newsletter, in
the following advertisement :-“For the Relief of the
Prisoners in the several Gaols, and for the Support
of Mercers' Hospital, in Stephen’s-street, and of the
Charitable Infirmary on the Inn's Quay, on Monday
the 12 of April, will be performed at the Musick
Hall at Fishamble-street, Mr. Handell's new Grand
Oratorio, called the Messiah, in which the Gentlemen
of the Choirs of both Cathedrals will assist, with some
Concertos on the organ by Mr. Handell."
It is interesting to know that the great work which
has since been so frequently performed for charitable
purposes was, on its first production, given for the
benefit of the sick, the infirm and the imprisoned. A
sum of £400 was realised, and this was equally divided
among the three classes of sufferers to whom the
work had been dedicated. The orchestra was led by
· Dubourgh, who had arrived with Handel from London.
The principal female parts, as we have already seen,
were assigned to Signora Avolio and Mrs. Cibber, while
the leading male parts ware undertaken by Messrs.
Church and Rossingrave.
The Messiah was not produced in London until
THE “MESSIAH."
5.9
the 23rd of March, 1743, when it was performed at
Covent Garden, where it does not in the first instance
seem to have been so warmly received as it had been
at Dublin. It soon however got to be appreciated :
and before many years it became, as it has ever
since remained, the most admired and the most
popular of all musical works known in England. Handel
used to direct a performance of the Messiah several
times every year; and he gave it once and sometimes
twice a year in the chapel of the Foundling Hospital
for the benefit of the institution to which he left by
his will a copy of the score.
CHAPTER V.
BEAUMARCHAIS'S “MARRIAGE OF FIGARO.”
CUI
“Et tout finira par des rires,” exclaims Figaro in
the comedy originally produced under the title of
La Folle Journée. “Et tout finira par des canons !”
exclaimed a man in the pit when the work was
performed for the first time in presence of the general
public; and the man in the pit was right.
The first performance of the Marriage of Figaro
is one of the striking events of the pre-revolutionary
period in France. From the point of view of the
present day, Beaumarchais's celebrated comedy seems
to foreshadow and provoke the outburst so close at
hand. The revolutionary intentions of the author
have probably, however, been exaggerated. He ap-
plies the dissolvent of irony to a society which was
already breaking up. But when he combined in a
BEAUMARCHAIS'S “MARRIAGE OF FIGARO.”
61
single piece attacks on abuses which in a great
variety of pieces from Molière to Lesage, had often
been attacked separately, he scarcely could have
imagined that he was helping to prepare a general
overthrow. He was far from believing that, in the
words of M. de Loménie,1 “Society had reached such
a degree of weakness that a comedy which was itself
not very healthy but which, like all comedies, assumed
the power of curing, would become an additional
evil and would help to carry off the patient.” What
is known of Beaumarchais proves superabundantly
that he was not a very fierce revolutionist. “Dis-
posed to censure vanities, privileges and abuses from
which he had suffered more than once, he was at
the same time far from being disposed to push
things to extremities, and to welcome with enthu-
siasm a social convulsion which was destined soon to
go far beyond his ideas, and to overturn and ruin
him at the very moment when he was approaching
the age of rest and only aspired to enjoy in peace
the opulence which he had acquired so laboriously.”
The author of the Marriage of Figaro wrote his
comedy “with sentiments of a much less subversive
i Beaumarchais et son Temps. Par Louis de Loménie.
62
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
S
some-
character than is generally supposed by those persons
who are unaware that he possessed at this epoch a
fortune of several millions. He wrote with his eyes
closed to the future, thinking only of the pleasure
of enjoying a new dramatic success, taking his
revenge for the humiliations and acts of injustice
from which neither his wit nor his riches had been
able to secure him; of continuing with greater bold-.
ness the mission of Molière; of making the small
laugh at the expense of the great and amusing the
great themselves, while interesting their self-love so
that they should not recognise themselves in a some-
what exaggerated picture of the abuses of rank and
fortune."
Nor did official society in 1783 consider itself in
danger of death. In spite of some prophecies of a
more or less sinister nature, the like of which have
not been absent from any period, it lived a joyous
existence and reckoned on a morrow with much
more confidence than the official society of the
present day. It troubled itself no more about the
formidable pleasantry of Figaro than (to borrow
once more from M. de Loménie) "a noble of the
middle ages troubled himself about the insolent
BEAUMARCHAIS'S “MARRIAGE OF FIGARO.”
63
enun
remarks of the fool commissioned to amuse his leisure."
Strangely enough the only man who attacked the
sallies of Figaro in a serious manner and accused
Beaumarchais, with indignation, of “lacerating, in-
sulting, outraging, every order of the state, every
law, every rule,” was Mirabeau; who was destined
soon afterwards to do with a sledge-hammer what
Beaumarchais had done only with pins. The Marriage
of Figaro was brought out in 1784, five years before
the destruction of the Bastile; and three years after-
wards, in 1787, we find Lafayette writing a letter
to Washington, in which, after enumerating all the
symptoms of the movement in preparation he con-
cludes by saying: "All these elements mixed to-
gether will bring us little by little, without any
great convulsion, to an independent representation,
and consequently to a diminution of the royal
authority. But it is an affair of time and it will
go on the more slowly from the fact that the
interests of powerful men will be involved in the
movement."
Louis XVI., however, whether from his exalted
position or from his supreme interest in the preser-
vation of what was threatened, saw farther than any
64
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
lanı
of his subjects. He determined at the beginning of
1782 that the Marriage of Figaro should never be
acted. M. de Miromesnil, the keeper of the seals,
had warned the King against the tendencies of the
piece. But, on the other hand, he had been over-
whelmed with solicitations in favour of the comedy.
Wishing to decide the question for himself he had
the manuscript brought to him; and Mme. Campan
has preserved for us in her memoirs a picture of
the scene in which Louis XVI., alone with Marie
Antoinette, has the Marriage of Figaro read to him.
After the famous monologue in the fifth act the
King exclaimed : “It is detestable. It shall never
be played.” Then he added these remarkable words:
“It would be necessary to destroy the Bastile in
order to prevent the representation of this piece
from being a dangerous anomaly."
“It will not be played then ?" said the Queen,
whom the piece had pleased rather than shocked.
“No, certainly,” replied his Majesty; "you may
be sure of that."
After interesting as many great persons as possible
in the piece, and reading it to those who seemed
worthy of such a favour, Beaumarchais profited by
4
BEAUMARCHAIS'S “MARRIAGE OF FIGARO."
65
the arrival at Paris of the Grand Duke of Russia,
afterwards Paul I., and the Grand Duchess, to in-
spire these illustrious visitors with a desire which
had now become fashionable in the highest ranks
of French society. Baron de Grimm, well known
by his correspondence with the Prussian and Russian
courts, and by his remarks on subjects of the day in
various forms, undertook to let Beaumarchais know
that the illustrious visitors (who were travelling
under the name of the Count and Countess du
Nord) were very anxious to hear the piece now so
much talked of in Paris.
was
se
“It is necessary that you should know, sir," wrote
Grimm to Beaumarchais, “that to-day, at dinner,
there was a great deal of conversation at the house
of the Count du Nord concerning the Marriage
of Figaro ; that the Count and the Countess showed
a great desire to know this piece, and that it
has been agreed that they should propose to the
author to come on Sunday about seven o'clock in the
evening and to have the goodness to bring his piece
with him and read it. Prince Yousoupoff undertook
this proposition as having long been an acquaintance
66
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
of the author's. I think that this reading ought not
to be refused and that far from prejudicing the in-
tended representation it may considerably advance it;
because if, as I do not doubt, the piece produces the
effect which it is accustomed to do, the editors will
only be the more encouraged to take some proceed-
ings in favour of the representation. I think it my
duty to inform you of the state of things; but I
entreat you very earnestly, sir, not to compromise
me, for I have been but a witness in repeating my
intelligence. No duty has been entrusted to me;
and it is only the interest that we both take in the
thing which requires that you should be acquainted
with what passes. I beg you to accept my homage,” &c.
Friday, May 24th, 1782.
Beaumarchais hastened to call on the Grand Duke,
and read him the comedy. Then having gained the
goodwill of the Russian heir to the throne, he called
on the keeper of the seals, M. de Miromesnil (who,
as already mentioned, had advised the King not to
allow the Marriage of Figaro to be represented), but
failing to gain admittance fell back on the lieuten-
ant of police, and wrote him a letter setting forth
BEAUMARCHAIS'S “MARRIAGE OF FIGARO.”
67
that the Count du Nord had asked for a copy of the
Marriage of Figaro that he might take it to the
Empress. “It is impossible for me," he added, "to
send it until the piece has been played, for a comedy
is not truly finished until after its first representation.”
The Empress, Catherine II., who had offered to
publish those of Voltaire's works which had been for-
bidden in France, and who, when the publication of
the Encyclopédie was stopped at Paris, begged the editors
to continue it at St. Petersburg, was ready also to have
performed in Russia the comedy which in France had
been interdicted. Beaumarchais's argument that he
could not with civility send to the Empress Catherine
a copy of a comedy which was incomplete, inasmuch
as it had never been represented, was not only in-
genious but effective. “I beg you,” he wrote to the
lieutenant, “ to have the goodness in your capacity of
magistrate to inform me what answer I am to make to
the Grand Duke, who well knows that my piece is not
immoral, and to his august mother, who wishes to have
it promptly.” Soon after the despatch of this letter,
though not until after the Grand Duke had left Paris,
the actors suddenly received orders to study the piece
for the service of Versailles.
F 2
. 68
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
It was afterwards decided that it should be acted
at Paris in the theatre of the Hotel of the Menus-
Plaisirs. Tickets were distributed to all the court.
Carriages already thronged the entrance to the theatre
when, at the very moment that the performance was about
to begin, an express order arrived from the King for-
bidding the performance of the piece in any theatre
or in any place whatsoever. “This prohibition of the
King," says Mme. Campan, "seemed an attack upon
the public liberty. So many disappointed hopes
excited dissatisfaction to such a point that the words
oppression' and 'tyranny' were never pronounced
with more passion and vehemence than then, in the
days which immediately preceded the downfall of the
throne.”
After the counter-order against the representation
of the piece, given at the last moment, Beaumarchais
went to England on commercial business, when the
Duke de Fronsac, who had previously been on bad terms
with him, called at his house in Paris, and not finding
him at home left the following letter :-
“ Paris, Sept. 4th 1783. I hope, sir, you will not
find it amiss that I should have undertaken to obtain
BEAUMARCHAIS'S “MARRIAGE OF FIGARO.”
69
your consent to the Marriage of Figaro being played
at Gennevilliers, but it is true that when I undertook
this commission I believed you to be still in Paris.
The fact is as follows: you must know that I have let
for a few years my land and house at Gennevilliers to
M. de Vaudreuil. The Count d'Artois is coming to
hunt there about the 18th, and the Duchess de Polignac
with her party are coming to sup there. Vaudreuil
has consulted me about giving them a play, for they
have rather a nice room, and I told him he could not
find a more charming one than the Marriage of Figaro,
but that the King's consent must be obtained. We
obtained it, and I hastened off to your house and was
very sorry and astonished to find you so far away. The
piece is well known, as you are aware ; will you give
your consent to its being performed ? I promise to take
the greatest care that it shall be properly arranged.
Count d’Artois and all his friends look forward to see-
ing it as a great treat, and it would be a great step
towards getting it played at Fontainbleau and at Paris
See if you can do us this favour. As for myself
individually, I wish it most earnestly, and beg you
to send an answer as soon as possible. Let it be a
favourable one, I beg, and do not doubt either my
LUUL
ee-
70
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
gratitude or the feelings of esteem and friendship
with which I shall always be, Sir, Your very humble
and obedient servant,
"THE DUKE DE FRONSAC.”
The same day he wrote to the intendant of the
Menus-Plaisirs, M. de la Ferté, saying that he had
heard from the Queen that the King consented to the
Marriage of Figaro being played at Gennevilliers.
Thereupon he begged him to make all the arrange-
ments necessary. Beaumarchais learned, then, in
England, that the play which the King had pro-
hibited a few months before was to be acted before
the court, and that nothing but the author's permission
was now waited for. He returned immediately to
Paris, and, profiting by the circumstances of the case,
made his own conditions. He had the piece, that is
to say, submitted once more to the censorship in order
to get a formal approval, so that no further objection
might be made to the work being represented
in public.
In September, 1783, the entire court attended the
performance of a piece which the King had declared
some time before should never be acted. The King
UU
BEAUMARCHAIS'S “MARRIAGE OF FIGARO."
71
was not present, but it was said that the Queen would
have been at Gennevilliers had she not been prevented
by indisposition. Mme. Le Brun relates that during
the representation the ladies complained of the heat
and that Beaumarchais broke the panes of glass with
his cane, which caused some one to observe, “Qu'il
avait doublement cassé les vitres.” Beaumarchais had
now virtually secured for himself the right of pre-
senting his comedy to the general public, whose
curiosity had been excited to the greatest height by
the representation before the court. The very day
after the performance at Gennevilliers Beaumarchais
applied to the lieutenant of police for permission to
have his comedy publicly represented. The lieutenant
replied that the King's prohibition given on the day
fixed for the performance at the Menus-Plaisirs was
still in force and that he must refer the matter to
his Majesty. Begged to pronounce on the subject,
the King replied that “he was told there were still
some things which ought not to remain in the work,
that one or two new censors must be named, and that
the author would be able to make the corrections
more easily as the piece was long.” This answer was
looked upon as countermanding the prohibition of
72
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
the piece, and in March, 1784, Beaumarchais at last
obtained the royal consent.
“My dear old friend," he wrote, March 31st, 1784,
to Préville of the Théâtre Français, “I have the
consent of the King, that of the minister, and that of
the lieutenant of police. I now only want yours to
make a nice disturbance when we commence. Come,
my dear friend, my piece is but a trifle; but to see
it on the stage will be the result of a contest of
four years. This is what makes me think so much
of it."
The piece was played in public for the first time
April 27th, 1784. “The description of the first
performance is," says M. de Loménie, “in every history
of the period;" for which insufficient reason M. de
Loménié omits it in his own history of Beaumarchais
and his Times.
For at least two years before the Marriage of
Figaro was played in public the work must have
been known to most of the aristocratic and literary
circles in Paris. The Marriage of Figaro which
was not to be brought out until the 27th April, 1784,
had been accepted at the Théâtre Français in October,
1781. “As soon as the actors," writes Beaumarchais,
BEAUMARCHAIS'S “MARRIAGE OF FIGARO.”
73
“had accepted by acclamation my poor Marriage;
which has since had so many opponents, I begged
M. Lenoir (the lieutenant of police) to appoint a
censor; at the same time asking him, as a special
favour, that the piece might be read by no other
person, which he readily promised ; assuring me that
neither secretary nor clerk should touch the manu-
script, and that the piece should be read in his own
cabinet. It was so read by M. Coqueley, advocate;
and I begged M. Lenoir to place before you what he
retrenches, what he objects to and what he approves.
Six weeks afterwards I learnt in society that my
piece had been read at all the soirées of Versailles,
and I was in despair at the complaisance, perhaps
forced, of the magistrate, in regard to a work which
still belonged to ine; for such was certainly not the
austere, discreet, and loyal course, which belongs to
the serious duty of the censor. Well or ill read, or
maliciously criticised, the piece was pronounced de-
testable, and without my knowing in what I had
sinned (for nothing was specified according to the
custom) I saw myself before the inquisition, and
obliged to guess my crimes, while considering myself
tacitly proscribed. But as this proscription by the
74
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
court only irritated the curiosity of the town, I was
condemned to readings without number. Whenever one
At the beginning of 1782, it soon became a
question who could obtain the favour of hearing
Beaumarchais, whether at his own house or in the
most brilliant saloons, giving these readings of his
piece which, we are assured, he executed with
considerable talent. “Every day," writes Madame
Campan, "persons were heard to say: 'I was present
or I shall be present at a reading of Beaumarchais's
piece.'"
M. de Loménie describes de visu the manuscript
which served for these readings. “It is more
elegant than that of the Comédie Française. The
leaves are carefully tied together with pink ribbons,
and the whole covered with a wrapper of cardboard,
upon which Beaumarchais had written, in tasteful
letters, in imitation of printing, this title : Opuscule
comique. Singular title for a voluminous comedy
in five acts, a sort of lever which contributed to
overthrow the ancient régime. On the first leaf of '
this manuscript is a sort of preface never published
and entitled “Introduction to the reading;” that is
BEAUMARCHAIS'S “MARRIAGE OF FIGARO."
75
to say, that before reading his piece, Beaumarchais
began by reading a page which we should certainly
not quote--for it is somewhat free and of question-
able taste-did we not know (as the reader will
speedily learn) that the greatest and even the most
virtuous ladies, the Princess de Lamballe, for example,
or the Grand Duchess of Russia afterwards Empress,
and also-Heaven forgive me !-bishops and arch-
bishops permitted Beaumarchais deliberately to read
to them this strange preface :-
“Before commencing this reading, ladies, I wish to
narrate to you a circumstance which has come under
my observation.
"A young author, supping once at a certain house,
was requested to read one of his works, which was
much spoken of in society; and even cajolery was
employed to persuade him, but he resisted. Some
one became angry and said to him, “You resemble,
sir, an accomplished coquette, refusing to each what
you would gladly accord to all.'
" Apart from the coquette,' replied the author,
your comparison is more just than you imagine-
the fair and ourselves having often the same fate,
of being forgotten after the sacrifice.'
17
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
“The lively and urgent curiosity excited by the
announcement of a new work, resembles somewhat
the ardent desires of love; and when you have once
obtained the object of your wishes, you force us to
blush for having had too few attractions to retain you.
“Be more just or ask nothing. Our fate is the
labour, while you have only the enjoyment, and
nothing can disarm you. And when your injustice
breaks forth, what a melancholy similarity between
us and the fair. Everywhere the criminal is timid;
here it is the injured one who dares not lift his eyes;
but, added the young author, 'that nothing may
be wanting to the parallel, after having foreseen the
consequence of my proceeding, inconsequent and feeble
like the fair, I yield to your prayers, and am about to
read my work.
“He read it, they criticised it; I am about to do
the same, and you also.'”
The first performance of the Marriage of Figaro
was thus described by a competent judge. “Never,"
says Grimm, in one of the letters addressed by him
and by Diderot to the Grand Duke of Saxe-Gotha,
“never did a piece attract such crowds to the
Théâtre Français. All Paris wished to see this
BEAUMARCHAIS'S “MARRIAGE OF FIGARO."
77
famous Marriage, and the house was crammed almost
at the moment when the doors were opened to the
public. Scarcely half of those who had besieged
them since eight in the morning succeeded in find-
ing places. Most persons got in by force, and by
throwing money to the porters. It is impossible to
be more humble, more audacious, more eager to
obtain a favour from the court than were all our
young lords to ensure themselves a place at the first
representation of Figaro. More than one Duchess
considered herself too bappy that day to find in the
balconies, where ladies are seldom seen, a wretched
stool side by side with Madame Duthé, Carline and
company."
Ladies of the highest rank dined in the actresses'
rooms in order to be sure of places. “ Cordons
bleus," says Bachaumont, “mixed up in the crowd,
elbowing with Savoyards—the guard dispersed, the
doors knocked in, the iron gates broken by the
efforts of the assailants.” La Harpe, in one of his
series of letters to the Grand Duke Paul of Russia
and Count Shouvaloff, declares that three porters
were killed; being “one more than were killed at the
production of Scudéry's last piece.” “On the stage
78
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
when the curtain was raised there was seen,” says
Loménie, “perhaps the most splendid assemblage of
talent that was ever contained within the walls of
the Théâtre Français, employed in promoting the
success of a comedy which sparkled with wit and
carried the audience along by its dramatic move-
ment and audacity, and which, if it shocked or
startled some of the private boxes, enchanted and
excited, inflamed and electrified the pit.”
All the parts were entrusted to performers of the
first merit. Mademoiselle Sainval, who was the
tragic actress then in vogue, at the urgent request of
Beaumarchais, had accepted the part of the Countess
Almaviva, in which she displayed a talent which was
the more striking from being unexpected. Made-
moiselle Contat enchanted the public in the char-
acter of Susanna, by her grace, the refinement of
her acting, and the charms of her appearance and
voice. A very young and very pretty actress who
was soon afterwards carried off by death in her
eighteenth year—Mademoiselle Olivier, whose talent,
says a contemporary, “was as naïve and fresh as her
face," lent her naïveté and her freshness to the
somewhat warm part of Cherubino. Molé acted the
BEAUMARCHAIS'S “MARRIAGE OF FIGARO.”
79
part of Count Almaviva with the elegance and dig-
nity which distinguished him. Dagincourt repre-
sented Figaro with all his wit and relieved the
character from any appearance of vulgarity. Old
Préville, who was not less successful in the part
of Bridoison, gave it up after a few days to
Dugazon, who interpreted it with more power and
equal intelligence. Desessarts, with his rich humour,
gave relief to the personage of Bartholo, which is
thrown somewhat into the background. The secondary
parts of Basil and Antonio were equally well played by
Vanhove and Bellemont. Finally, through a singular
caprice, a somewhat celebrated tragedian, Larive,
not wishing tragedy to be represented in the piece
by Mademoiselle Sainval alone, asked for the insig-
nificant little part of Grippe-soleil.
“The success of this Aristophanic comedy," writes
Loménie, “ while it filled some persons with anxiety
and alarm, naturally roused the curious crowd who
are never wanting, particularly when a successful
person takes a pleasure in spreading his fame abroad”
-and Beaumarchais's foible is well known. It was
in the midst of a fire of satires, in prose and verse,
that the author of the Marriage of Figaro pursued
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FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
his career, pouring out on his “blasphemers” not
torrents of fire and light, but torrents of liveliness
and fun.
Beaumarchais meanwhile was in a loge grilléema
private box, that is to say, with lattice-work in
front-between two abbés, with whom he had been
dining, and whose presence seemed indispensable to
him, in order, he said, that they might administer to
him "des secours très spirituels” in case of death.
The Marriage of Figaro was represented sixty-
eight times in succession, and each time with the
greatest possible success. In eight months from
April 27th, 1784, till January 10th, 1785, the piece
brought the Théâtre Français, without counting the
fiftieth representation (which, at Beaumarchais's
suggestion, was given to the poor) the sum of
346,197 livresman immense sum for the period.
After all expenses had been paid there remained
a clear profit of 293,755 livres for the actors, from
which had to be deducted Beaumarchais's share as
author, amounting to 41,469 livres.
All sorts of anecdotes were told in connection
with the success of the work. A gentleman-whom
gossip transformed into a duke-wrote to Beau-
BEAUMARCHAIS'S "MARRIAGE OF FIGARO.”
81
marchais asking for a loge grillée for himself and
two ladies, who wished to see the piece without
being seen. Beaumarchais replied that he had no
sympathy with persons who wished to combine “the
honours of virtue with the pleasures of vice," and
moreover that his comedy was not a work which,
honourable persons need be ashamed to see.
The piece was severely criticised in several quarters,
and Suard worried the author incessantly with attacks
in his Journal de Paris, some of which are said to
have been written by the Count de Provence (after-
wards Louis XVIII.) not from hatred to Beaumarchais
but in order to draw from him amusing replies.
When he was asked what had become of Figaro's
little girl, who is mentioned in the Barber of Seville
but of whom nothing more is heard in the Marriage
of Figaro, he declared that the child had only been
adopted by Figaro and that she had married a work-
man recently killed in an accident, whom he named,
and for whose widow he declared himself ready to
receive subscriptions. The story, so far as regarded
the widow in distress, was true. But Suard was
seriously annoyed at finding his attacks answered by
appeals for charitable gifts, and he at last published
82
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
an article which so irritated Beaumarchais that he
wrote to the editor of the Journal de Paris the
following letter which was duly printed. “When
I have had to conquer lions and tigers in order to
get a comedy acted, do you think that after its
success you will reduce me to the level of a Dutch
housemaid, to hunt every morning the vile insect of
the night?” The Count de Provence called the atten-
tion of Louis XVI. to the words “lions and tigers,"
which he said meant evidently the king and queen.
“Vile insect of the night” was undoubtedly meant
for Suard. But it was only for the sake of the
XVI., that Beaumarchais had spoken of “lions and
wonderful success of a piece which he had emphati-
cally declared should “never be played,” thought
that the audacity of its author deserved punishment.
He was playing at cards when the words “lions and
tigers” were brought to his notice; and taking up a
seven of spades he wrote upon it an order for
Beaumarchais's arrest. To make the matter worse
the victim of the king's anger was to be consigned
to the prison of St. Lazare, where juvenile offenders
BEAUMARCHAIS'S “MARRIAGE OF FIGARO.”
83
and unruly persons of the worst kind were taken
care of. M. de Loménie cites this story on the
authority of M. Arnault, telling it long afterwards
in his Souvenirs d'un Sexagénaire. It is also to
be found in the contemporary letters of Grimm.
Beaumarchais wrote from prison to the king a
sensible and at the same time very eloquent letter,
pointing out the absurdity of supposing that he had
employed the words “lions and tigers” otherwise
than for the sake of contrast with “the vile insect
of the night.” It was as though he had said that
after contending with giants he did not care to fight
a pigmy.
Whether convinced by Beaumarchais's reasoning, or
because public opinion had pronounced itself strongly
against the king's despotic and contemptuous act,
Louis XVI. ordered his victim to be released. He
had spent four days in prison, and on the night of
his liberation the Marriage of Figaro was played
before almost as brilliant an audience as the one
that had assembled to witness its first production.
Grimm tells us that nearly all the ministers assisted
at the representation. It is not stated whether they
joined in the applause when, on hearing Figaro
G 2
84
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
remark in his famous monologue that "not being
able to degrade intellect they avenge themselves by
persecuting it," a general clapping of hands took
place. M. de Calonne wrote to Beaumarchais to say
that the king considered he had justified himself
and would be happy to take every opportunity of
testifying his good will towards him. Soon after-
wards Louis XVI. ordered the Barber of Seville to
be acted in the little theatre of Trianon, when
the Queen took the part of Rosina and the
Count of Artois (afterwards Charles X.) that of
Figaro.
: A hundred years ago, as now, it was impossible
for a piece to be brought out very successfully at
Paris without finding its way soon afterwards to
London; and the English dramatist, Thomas Holcroft,
author of The Road to Ruin, no sooner heard of the
reception Beaumarchais's comedy had met with than
he resolved to go at once to France and procure a
copy of it with the view of translating it for the
English stage. He arrived at Paris at the end of
September, 1784, and went at once to the lodging
of his friend Bonneville, who, he knew, would assist
him in his enterprise. It was attended, however,
LL
BEAUMARCHAIS'S “MARRIAGE OF FIGARO."
85
with more difficulty than had been anticipated. The
comedy had not been printed, and it was impossible
to obtain a manuscript copy; “from the jealousy,"
says Hazlitt, in his continuation of Holcroft's Memoirs,
“with which the managers of the French theatre
prevented any copies from getting abroad.” The
only resource' now left was to commit the piece to
memory; and for this purpose both Holcroft and his
friend went to the theatre every night for a week
or ten days successively, till they brought away the
whole with perfect exactness. At night, when they
got home, each of them set down as much as he could
recollect of a scene, and they then compared notes.
If any difficulty occurred, it was determined the
ollowing evening. Another scene was brought away
from the next representation, and the entire play was
at length transcribed.
It was necessary to proceed in this deliberate
and cautious manner, as if they had attempted to
take notes, their design would probably have been
suspected, and defeated by the interference of the
police.
Mr. Holcroft was not, it seems, quite confident of
success, till he had his manuscript safely deposited
86
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
in his portmanteau with which he immediately set
out on his return home. No time was lost, and the
acquisition Mr. Holcroft had made was, the day
after his arrival, communicated to Mr. Harris, the
manager. A meeting was appointed, and it was
agreed that Figaro should, with all possible expedi-
tion, make his appearance in an English dress. The
necessary metamorphosis was completed in a few
weeks, and Figaro was acted at Covent Garden
Theatre, under the title of The Follies of a Day, a
little before the Christmas holidays. “The reception
of the new piece was equal to the sanguine expecta-
tions Mr. Holcroft had formed, and the pains he had
taken to bring it forward. It continued to be acted
without intermission for a considerable length of
time, and is still one of our most popular entertain-
ments. It is needless here to give any account, or
to speak of the merits of a piece so well known to
the public, and for which we are indebted more to
Mr. Holcroft's industry and enterprise than to his
genius as an author. It would be unjust, however,
to suppose that it is a mere literal translation. Many
alterations were necessary to adapt it exactly to the
taste of an English audience, and these were executed
BEAUMARCHAIS'S “MARRIAGE OF FIGARO.”
87
with much skill and felicity. Of all the pieces
brought out by the author, this and The Road to
Ruin have been the most successful. He received
6001. for it at the theatre, besides a considerable
sum for the copyright, which was bought in at
the time.”
Mr. Holcroft himself played the part of Figaro the
first night, in the absence of another actor.
The origin of the name of “Figaro” has been as
much discussed as that of “Tartufe," and with as
little result. No one in Beaumarchais's time seems
to have troubled himself about the matter, and a
Spanish critic, Huerta, who pointed out the anomalies
and absurdities in which, from a Spanish point of
view, the Marriage of Figaro abounds, and who
objected to some of the names, passes over the
name of “Figaro." M. Philarète Chasles would
Picaresque romances. M. de Loménie suggests
“Figura," a dramatic personage, as the probable origin
of the word; while a writer in Larousse's dictionary
mentions an old French piece Les aventures de
Figuereau, by J. Viallanes, produced at Bordeaux in
1762, as having furnished to Beaumarchais the name
88 FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
of his witty and ingenious barber. This too, is borne
out by the fact that Beaumarchais in his draft of
“ Figuaro."
CHAPTER VI.
MOZART'S “NOZZE DI FIGARO.
BEAUMARCHAIS's Marriage of Figaro was not nearly
so well adapted for musical setting as his Barber of
Seville, and it may be partly for this reason that while
the latter has been made the basis of no fewer than
seven different operas, the former has been treated in
lyrical form only once. To be sure, the first composer
so to treat it was Mozart, in whose steps it would have
been risk indeed to follow.
One cannot but think of Beaumarchais's Marriage of
Figaro as for the most part a political pamphlet in
dramatic form. It was, as the first Napoleon put it,
“la révolution déjà en action.” Cut out the political
allusions and the direct attacks on persons in power,
and a very dull intrigue remains, enlivened only by
the graceful utterances of the amorous Cherubino. The
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FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
piece, however, had made a prodigious sensation in
France; and it was being talked about all over Europe
just as Mozart happened to be seeking a fit subject for
a comic opera. At least one character, moreover, in
Beaumarchais's comedy presented a distinct musical
personality; and though, viewed after the event, the work
seems to have been nothing less than a revolutionary
call to arms, it must be remembered that no one at the
time, with the single exception of the unhappy king-
enlightened beforehand as to the fate that awaited him
-perceived what it really portended. Otherwise,
Mozart's choice of a subject would certainly not have
been sanctioned by the emperor. Joseph II. had already
forbidden the representation of Beaumarchais's comedy
at Vienna ; but only on account (as Otto Jahn puts it) of
its "freedom of tone.” The comedy inspired him with
no particular aversion, or he would not have allowed
plot, character and title to be used in the version pre-
pared by Da Ponte for Mozart. What, indeed, had
been tolerated in France, the country actually threat-
ened, might well be allowed to pass in Austria,
especially when, as in Da Ponte’s libretto, the offensive
political matter had been all removed.
As a matter of fact Da Ponte and Mozart set to work
MOZART'S “NOZZE DI FIGARO."
on their new opera in 1785, a year after the comedy on
which it was founded had been produced at Paris; and
if Da Ponte can be believed it was all finished in six
weeks—almost as rapid a piece of improvisation, all
things considered, as the composition of the Barber of
Seville by Rossini in a fortnight. But we have
accounts from Rossini himself and from the singers who
took part in the first representation as to the circum-
stances under which Il Barbière was composed, and the
time which the work of composition occupied; whereas
in the case of Le Nozze we have no evidence but that of
Da Ponte, as given in his memoirs—which does not
entirely agree with the entries in Mozart's note-book.
No one seems to have questioned Da Ponte on the
subject; though this might have been easily done-at
least through correspondence-by more than one bio-
grapher of Mozart. Da Ponte passed the last years of
his life in America, where Mr. Gallenga met him in
1836 or 1837, a year or so before his death. But
Mr. Gallenga seems to have had no conversation with
him on the subject of Mozart. He was indeed under
the strange impression (see his very interesting volumes
of memoirs) that Da Ponte had furnished not Mozart
but Rossini with libretti.
92
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
Otto Jahn's extracts from Mozart's note-book show
that Mozart lingered for some time over his opera
before going to work upon it in real earnest; also that
while it was occupying much of his attention he still
found time for producing a number of independent
compositions.
When Mozart had made enough progress with Le
Nozze to be able to give some idea of it as a whole, he
informed the emperor of the fact, and was summoned to
court in order to play over portions of it. Joseph II.,
though not previously a believer in Mozart's dramatic
genius, was delighted with the work, and ordered that
it should at once be put in rehearsal. This caused
much vexation to Mozart's numerous enemies, including
Count Rosenberg, the manager, “a sworn enemy," says
Otto Jahn, quoting from a musical journal of the period,
“to everything German."
Whether or not Mozart produced the greater part of
the Marriage of Figaro in six weeks (and Da Ponte
would have us believe that during that brief space of
time he composed the whole of it), certain it is that
he began it in November, 1785, six months before it.
was produced. “At last, after six weeks' silence,"
wrote his father to Marianne, the composer's sister,
MOZART'S “ NOZZE DI FIGARO."
93
November, 11, 1785, “I have received a letter from
your brother, of November 2, containing quite twelve
lines. His excuse for not writing is that he has
been over head and ears at work on his opera,
Le Nozze di Figaro. He has put off all his pupils
to tbe afternoon, so that he may have his mornings
free. I have no fear as to the music. But there
will no doubt be much discussion and annoyance
before he can get the libretto arranged to his wish; and
having procrastinated and let the time slip after his
usual fashion, he is obliged now to set to work in
earnest, because Count Rosenberg insists upon it.”
There were other difficulties to overcome before the
work could be produced : difficulties more formidable
by far than any connected with the libretto. Indeed,
when once the Imperial sanction had been obtained,
Mozart and Da Ponte seem to have agreed easily as
to how, in a dramatic sense, the piece should be treated.
“ There were three operas,” says Kelly, “now on the
tapis; one by Righini (Il Demogorgone), another by
Salieri (La Grotia di Trofonio), and one by Mozart, by
special command of the emperor. Mozart chose to
have Beaumarchais's French comedy, Le Mariage de
Figaro, made into an Italian opera, which was done with
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FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
great ability by Da Ponte. These three pieces were
nearly ready for representation at the same time; and
each composer claimed the right of producing his opera
first. The contest raised much discord and parties were
formed. The characters of the three men were all very
different. Mozart was as touchy as gunpowder and
swore that he would put the score of his opera into the
fire if it was not produced first. His claim was backed
by a strong party. Righini, on the contrary, was
working like a mole in the dark to get precedence.
The third candidate was Maestro di Capella to the court,
a clever, shrewd man possessed of what Brun called
crooked wisdom;' and his claims were backed by
three of the principal performers, who formed a
cabal not easily put down. Every one of the opera
company took part in the contest. I alone was a
stickler for Mozart and naturally enough, for he had
a claim on my warmest wishes from my admiration of
his powerful genius and the debt of gratitude I owed
him for many personal favours. The mighty contest
was put an end to by His Majesty issuing a mandate
for Mozart's Nozze di Figaro to be instantly put into
rehearsal.”
But whether or not the imperial mandate spoken of
MOZART'S “NOZZE DI FIGARO.”.
95
by Kelly was really issued, Salieri's opera, as a matter of
fact, was first brought out. On the 18th of April, 1786,
Mozart's father wrote to Marianne: “On the 28th, Le
Nozze di Figaro is to be put on the stage for the first
time. It will shame numbers if it succeeds, for I
know that there has been a surprisingly strong cabal
against it. Salieri and all his adherents will move
heaven and earth against it. Dussek told me lately
that my son met with such violent opposition because
of his extraordinary talent."
According to Niemetschek, a Bohemian writer, who
published the Reminiscences of Mozart soon after the
great composer's death, the Italian singers did all they
could to ruin the opera by intentional mistakes, so that
they had to be sternly reminded of their duty by the
emperor, to whom Mozart is said to have appealed in
despair at the end of the first act. This story seems
however to rest on no better foundation than those, so
freely circulated soon after Mozart's death, of his having
died through the effects of poison administered to him
by the jealous Salieri. Niemetschek was from Prague,
which at that time supported Germans against Italians,
as now it supports Bohemian s against German, and
against all the world. Mozart, too, was an especial
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FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
favourite at Prague, and in their enthusiasm for him
the Bohemians may have been disposed to exaggerate
the coldness and jealousy from which he had too often
had to suffer at Vienna.
Kelly, who was not only present at the first perform-
ance, but in the characters of Basilio and of Don Curzio,
and under the name of “Ochelly” took part in it, tells
us, in direct opposition to Niemetschek, that the first
representation was admirable, and that it was attended
with the greatest possible success.
The following was the cast :-
Il Comte Almaviva ...... SIGNOR MANDINI.
La Contessa ......... SIGNORA LASCHI.
Susanna .... ..... SIGNORA STORACE.
Figaro ..... .... SIGNOR BENUCCI.
Cherubino ..... .... SIGNORA BUSSANI.
Marcellinc ......... SIGNORA MANDINI.
Basilio
..:. . . SIGNOR OCHELLY.
Don Curzio
Bartolo
........ SIGNOR BUSSANI.
Antonio I
Barberina ......... SIGNORA NANINA GOTTLIEB.
"All the original performers," writes Kelly," had the
advantage of the composer's instruction, who transfused
into their minds his inspired meaning. I shall never
forget the little animated countenance when lighted up
MOZARTS “ NOZZE DI FIGARO.”
97
with the glowing rays of genius. It is as impossible
to describe it as it would be to paint sunbeams. I
remember that at the first rehearsal of the full band
Mozart was on the stage with his crimson pelisse
and gold-banded cocked hat, giving the time of the
music to the orchestra. Figaro's song, Non più andrai,
Benucci gave with the greatest animation and power
of voice. I was standing close to Mozart, who, sotto voce,
was repeating : 'Bravo, bravo, Benucci ?' and when
Benucci came to the fine passage, Cherubino alla
vittoria, alla gloria militar, which he gave out with
stentorian lungs, the effect was electricity itself; for the
whole of the performers on the stage, and those in the
orchestra, as if actuated by one feeling of delight,
vociferated, ' Bravo, bravo, Maestro ! Vivci, viva, grande
Mozart!' These in the orchestra I thought would
never have ceased applauding by beating the bows of
their violins against the music-desks. The little man
acknowledged by repeated obeisances his thanks for
these distinguishing marks of enthusiastic applause
bestowed upon him.”
Far from being badly sung, as Niemetschek has so
strangely set forth, the principal numbers in the opera
were sung so effectively as to be in almost every case
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
redemanded. So numerous, indeed, were the encores
that the performance lasted nearly twice the time that
had been calculated upon. The success, too, of the first
night was maintained at subsequent representations.
“At the second performance of your brother's opera,"
wrote Mozart's father to Marianne, “five pieces were
encored, and at the third, seven. One little duet
(probably the melodious 'Sullaria' for Susanna and
the Countess] had to be sung three times.”
So trying were the encores to some persons (among
whom Mozart's rivals and their partisans were probably
included), that after the first night the Emperor
thought it desirable to forbid repetitions. Kelly, in his
memoirs, tells us how Joseph II., after issuing this
order, spoke to Storace, Mandini, and Benucci on the
subject. “I dare say,” he observed, “that you are well
pleased at my having put a stop to encores. It must
be fatiguing and distressing to you to repeat so many
songs.” Storace declared in reply, that it was indeed
distressing; and the two other vocalists bowed, as if
in support of their comrade's more than doubtful
declaration. Kelly, however, who was present at the
time, said boldly to the Emperor: “Do not believe
them, sire, they all like to be encored. At least
MOZART'S “NOZZE DI FIGARO."
99
I am sure I always do;” whereupon the Emperor
laughed.
Kelly's remark was more or less true. Singers all
like the compliment of an encore. But they do not
all like the labour of singing a second time.
H 2
CHAPTER VII.
MOZART'S “DON GIOVANNI."
OF operatic first nights the most famous on record
is that of the 29th of October, 1787, when Mozart's
masterpiece-masterpiece among masterpieces as it
may well be considered—was brought out. Prague,
the capital of Bohemia, at that time the centre of
musical life in Germany, was the scene of the repre-
sentation; and it is already sufficiently well known
that Mozart composed Don Giovanni for Prague, be-
of Figaro, had not been quite appreciated at Vienna.
To this, humorous allusion is made in the supper
cene of Don Giovanni, where Leporello recognises
and names the airs from the operas of the day as
they are played by Don Giovanni's private band.
“ This one I know only too well,” exclaims the cunning
· MOZART'S “DON GIOVANNI.”
101
servant when the musicians strike up Non più andrai;
for Non più andrai had been received upon the first
performance of the Marriage of Figaro with expressions
of disfavour. So at least runs the legend; and though
Michael Kelly, the original Figaro, denies it in his
memoirs, the musical reference made to the supposed
fact by Mozart himself seems to support it.
Josepha Dussek, known as the “Bohemian nightin-
gale," and wife of Dussek the famous pianist, was one
of the leading spirits in the musical society of Prague ;
and she was foremost among the musicians of the
Bohemian capital to solicit the presence of young
Mozart in a city where he was sure to be received
with the homage due to his genius. The theatre-
the German Landes-theater of the present day—at
which Mozart's new opera was to be produced had
been recently built by Count Nostiz; and it was
occupied by an operatic company under the direction
of the celebrated impresario Pasquale Bondini. The
Italian singers of Vienna had thrown all kinds of
obstacles in the way of Mozart's success. But no
jealousy of the German maestro was evinced by
Pasquale's Italian company at Prague. They had, on
the contrary, shown themselves enthusiastic in their
.
102
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
admiration of Mozart's Marriage of Figaro. In
December, 1786, Le Nozze, thanks to competent and
sympathetic interpretation, had been received at
Prague with tumultuous applause. Laudatory verses
were addressed to the composer, and also to the
singers--especially Ponziani, the representative of
Figaro. The printed accounts of Mozart's triumph
were, together with the complimentary poems, for-
warded to him at Vienna; and he was at the same
time invited in the most pressing manner to come
to Prague, that he might himself be a witness of the
delight caused by his work. Count Thun, one of
those aristocratic patrons of art, to whom music at
Vienna and at Prague was so much indebted towards
the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nine-
teenth century, begged the composer to become his
guest, and did so in such terms that Mozart, under
all the circumstances, could not but accept.
Mozart arrived at Prague on the 11th of January,
1787, and was everywhere received with the most
gratifying cordiality. Being of a robust mental, moral,
and ästhetic constitution he was not shocked, but, on
the contrary, was much pleased when he found that
his Figaro music had been cut up into dance tunes.
MOZART'S “DON GIOVANNI."
103
At the balls of the high nobility, and in the wineshops
and beer-cellars of the lower-classes, he heard nothing
but his music performed. It was played everywhere;
and the girls and boys he met with in the streets
seemed always to be singing or whistling it as they
passed him by. .
"Figaro," writes Niemetschek, in his memoir of
Mozart, published soon after the composer's death,
“was placed on the stage in 1786 by the Bendini
Company, and was received with an applause which
can only be compared with that which was afterwards
bestowed on the Zauberflöte. It is a literal truth
that this opera was played almost uninterruptedly
during the whole winter, and that it completely
restored the failing fortunes of the manager. The
enthusiasm which it excited among the public was
unprecedented; they were insatiable in their demands
for it. It was soon arranged for the pianoforte, for
wind instruments, as a quintet for chamber-music,
and as German dance music; songs from Figaro were
heard in the streets and in the public gardens; even
the wandering harpist at the tavern-door was obliged
to strum out Non più andrai if he wanted to gain
any audience at all.”
104
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
.
Although, during the composition of Don Giovanni,
Mozart spent much of his time at the Dusseks, he
took up his abode, on arriving at Prague, in the house
of the hospitable Count Thun. “Immediately upon
our arrival,” he wrote to his friend Gottfried von
Jacquin, January, 15, 1787, “at noon (Thursday, the
11th), we had enough to do to be ready for dinner
at one. After dinner, old Count Thun regaled us
with music performed by his own people (the do-
mestic servants of Count Thun, as of many of the
Bohemian magnates of that time, were all musicians),
and lasting about an hour and a-half. I can enjoy
this true entertainment daily. At six o'clock I
drove with Count Canal to the so-called Breitfeld
ball, where the cream of the beauty of Prague
may be met with. That would have been some-
thing for you, my friend. I think I see you after
all the lovely women, not running —80 — limping
after them. I did not dance, and did not make
love; the first because I was too tired, and the last
from my native bashfulness; but I was quite
pleased to see alt these people hopping about to
the music of my Figaro turned into waltzes and
dances. Nothing is talked of here but Figaro ; no
MOZART'S "DON GIOVANNI."
105
i
opera is cared for but Figaro. Truly a great honour
for me."
Two days after his arrival, Mozart conducted in
person a performance of Le Nozze, when the apprecia-
tive and excitable audience went into new ecstasies
and applauded the work as they had never applauded
it before. A few days afterwards he gave a concert,
at which he cleared the immense sum, for the period,
of 1,000 florins; and so delighted was he with his
success that Prague, he declared, should have his
next opera. The manager, Bondini, lost no time in
coming to an arrangement with the master. The
modest sum of 100 ducats was to be paid for the
work. It was sent in at the time specified, and
its title was Don Giovanni.
The story of the origin of Don Giovanni is sur-
rounded by a number of traditions more or less
credible, but also more or less contradictory. One
thing meanwhile is certain : that in the autumn of
1787 Mozart revisited Prague in company with his
librettist, the Abbate Lorenzo da Ponte, an ecclesiastic
whose occupations were quite apart from the church.
Librettist and composer lodged near one another;
and it may fairly be assumed that neither of the two
106
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
had completed his work. It is known in any case
that Mozart had still much to compose : indeed that
many important pieces in Don Giovanni, including
the overture, were not written until the last moment.
Mozart, though the guest of Count Thun, spent much
of his time at the Bertramka Villa, near Kosir, in the
society of his charming friend, Josepha Dussek. This
young artist, like so many of Mozart's admirers, was
determined, even while he was at work on Don
Giovanni, that he should compose something for
her; and she is said to have locked him up in her
summer-house, refusing to release him until he had
complied with her request. The result was the
grand air Bella mia Fiamma; of which it is just to
add, she showed her appreciation by singing it the
same night in the most perfect manner. The house
is at the present day in the possession of the family
of the merchant Popelka, who, regarding it as one
of the holy places of art, keeps it up in its old con- .
dition. The summer-house and table are still shown
where Mozart used to sit writing his score with lively
conversation and bowls going on freely all the time.
Here in fact Mozart gathered around him or rather
attracted involuntarily the music-loving aristocracy
MOZART'S “ DON GIOVANNI.”
107
C
of Prague, the artists of both sexes and the ama-
teurs of all ranks. Here, too, he brought together
the first Don Giovanni, Luigi Bassi, who, before as-
suming parts proper to his sex, had achieved triumphs
in the character of a boy prima donna; the first
Leporello, Signor Felice Ponziani; the first Ottavio,
Antonio Baglioni; the first Commander and Masetto,
Giuseppe Lolli (the two parts were assigned to one
singer); and the three fascinating “first ladies.”
of the company, Signore. Micelli (Donna Elvira),
Teresa Bondini (Zerlina), and Teresa Saporiti (Donna
Anna). The prime donne are said to have been
jealous of every note that was given to one of the
three at the expense, as they considered it, of the
two others : and Mozart was on the best terms with
all of them until Teresa Saporiti piqued him by
committing the unpardonable mistake of praising his
genius at the expense of his person.
“ Mozart of stature small. What then ?
Great heroes may be little men,”
was what she virtually said; and this flattery, so sadly
incomplete, seems to have cut him, more sensitive as a
man than as a composer, to the heart. The anecdote is,
it must be added, received with mistrust, though at the
108
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
same time reproduced by Otto Jahn in his excellent
biography; and this author assures us that “such
stories as those of the delicate diplomacy with which
Mozart apportioned the several parts to the satisfaction
of the performers; of his having been obliged to appease
Luigi Bassi, indignant at Don Giovanni having no
proper grand air to sing; of his having composed La ci
darem la mano five times before he could satisfy the
singers; repose on the same foundation as those of his
love-making with the female performers." These are
regarded by Jahn as “ fables.”
It is said that in the finale to the first act, Teresa
Bondini, as Zerlina, failed to utter her cry for help in a
sufficiently spontaneous manner; on which Mozart went
on to the stage, had the scene repeated and at the
right moment gave the singer a pinch, so that she
he exclaimed; " that is the way to shriek.” Another
story of the same kind is to the effect that the words of
the Commander in the churchyard scene were origin-
ally accompanied only by trombones. The trombone
players failing to execute the passage, Mozart went to
their desk and explained to them how it might be done;
whereupon one of them said: “It cannot be played in
MOZART'S “DON GIOVANNI."
that way, nor can even you teach us how to do it.”
Mozart replied, with a laugh, “God forbid that I should
teach you to play the trombone. Give me the parts
and I will alter them.” He did so, and at the same
time added parts for the wood-wind.
Numbers of anecdotes have been published of the
activity, haste, and even recklessness, with which, ac-
cording to some writers—and contemporary ones-
Mozart composed Don Giovanni. But most of them
give way beneath the examination of the critical
historian. Some of Mozart's scientific biographers are
perhaps too severe in their dissection of the pleasant
tales recorded of his life at Prague, while completing his
work; for the fact that an anecdote on the subject of
a man's conduct has obtained universal currency during
his lifetime is to some extent evidence towards its
virtual truth. In an absolute sense, however, Otto Jahn
is doubtless right, when, in his admirable Life of Mozart,
he declares that “the degree of industry with which
Mozart worked at Don Giovanni is unknown to us.”
We may conclude that, if he followed his usual habits
he plunged eagerly into his new libretto at first, and
afterwards procrastinated over the actual expression of
the ideas which it had suggested to him. The received
110 Famous TOU
.
RESENT TATIONSFIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
tradition represents him as bringing the unfinished
opera to Prague in September, 1787, and completing
it, “incited by intercourse with the intended performers
and the stimulating society of his enthusiastic friends
and admirers.” The manager, who was bound to pro-
vide accommodation for the composer until after the
performance, lodged him at the “Three Lions,” an inn
on the market-place, on which a memorial tablet has
since been placed. It has already, however, been
mentioned that he passed most of his time at the
summer-house of his friend Dussek.
When the work was finished, with the exception of
the overture, a misgiving seems to have come upon the
composer as to the true value of the music at which he
had worked with so much ardour; and, after the first
rehearsal, he asked the orchestral conductor, Kucharz,
to tell him in confidence what he thought of the opera,
and whether it was likely to meet with as much success
as Figaro. Kucharz replied that such fine, original
music must certainly succeed, and that anything coming
from Mozart was sure to be appreciated at Prague.
Mozart declared that after such an opinion from such
an authority he felt reassured, adding that he considered
no labour too great which could enable him to produce
CL
MOZART'S “DON GIOVANNI.”
111
a work worthy of Prague. "It would be a great mis-
take,” he went on to say, "to imagine that my art is an
easy matter to me. I assure you, my dear friend, that
no one has applied himself more to the study of com-
position than myself. It would not be easy to find a
celebrated musician whose works I have not often and
laboriously studied.”
October 29th, 1787, was the day fixed for the first
performance; and on the previous evening Mozart's
assembled friends learned, to their consternation, that
the overture was still unwritten. The well-known
anecdote as to the circumstances under which the
overture was composed, and, so to say-like all rapid
composition-improvised, rests on the authority not
only of the contemporary Bohemian chronicler,
Niemetschek, but also of Mozart's wife. “It was not,"
says Niemetschek, “ until the night before the per-
formance, after spending the merriest evening, that he
went to his room towards midnight, began to write, and
completed the admirable masterpiece in a few hours.”
"The evening before the production of Don Giovanni
at Prague," writes Nissen, who married Mozart's widow,1
1 An eminent and trustworthy German musician, now living, once
told me that, possessing as a boy something of that enthusiastic
112
JA
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
"the dress rehearsal having already taken place, he said
to his wife that he would write the overture during the
night if she would sit with him and make him some
punch to keep his spirits up. This she did, and told
him tales about Aladdin's lamp, Cinderella, &c., which
made him. laugh till the tears came. But the punch
made him sleepy, so that he dozed when she left off, and
only worked as long as she told tales. At last the ex-
citement, the sleepiness, and his frequent efforts not to
doze off were too much for him, and his wife persuaded
him to go to sleep on the sofa, promising to wake him
in an hour. But he slept so soundly that she could not
find it in her heart to wake him until two hours had
passed. It was then five o'clock. At seven o'clock the
overture was finished and in the hands of the copyist.”
This anecdote will seem more credible if one sup-
poses that Mozart had already the overture in his head
before he began to write it down on paper. The actor,
curiosity in regard to Mozart which led Nissen, a member of the
Danish legation at Vienna, to marry Mozart's widow, he asked Frau
Nissen, some time after her second husband's death, which of the two
she had liked best, Nissen or Mozart. She replied that Mozart was of
course a man of the highest genius, but that he was sometimes a try.
ing man to live with. The pecuniary circumstances of the admirable
composer must often, indeed, have been “trying ;” and more so, no
doubt, to his wife than to himself.-H. S. E.
MOZART'S “DON GIOVANNI."
113
Genast, claiming to have been present during the
composition of the overture to Don Giovanni, begins by
declaring that he and a friend had to carry Mozart
home in an unconscious condition from a convivial
party, after which they laid him senseless on his
bed, while they themselves went to sleep on the sofa.
Then suddenly waking up they heard Mozart singing
in a loud voice as he was composing his overture, and
“ listened in reverential silence as the immortal ideas
developed themselves.” Carl Maria Von Weber has
spoken from his own experience of the “ill result
upon the youthful student's mind of these marvellous
anecdotes concerning the masters whom he reveres
and strives to follow.” Otto Jahn declares, from
actual examination of the manuscript, that the over-
ture seems to have been written hastily, but with
scarcely any alterations. There was hardly time for
ning of the opera, which, indeed, was somewhat delayed
on this account.
The cast, as copied from the original playbill, was as
follows :-
114
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
I
Don Giovanni (Giôvane cavaliere,
estremamente licenzioso) . . . SIGNOR LUIGI BASSI.
Donna Anna (Dama promessa sposa
di) ............ SIGNORA TERESA SAPORITI.
Don Ottavio . .......... SIGNOR ANTONIO.
Commendatore ......... SIGNOR P. GUISEPPE LOLLI.
Donna Elvira (Dama di Burgos
abbandonata di Don Giovanni). SIGNORA CATARINA MARCELLI.
Leporello (Servo di Don Giovanni). SIGNOR FELICE PONZIANI.
Masetto (Amante di). ...... SIGNOR GUISEPPE LOLLI.
Zerlina (Contadina) ....... SIGNORA TERESA BONDINI.
The orchestra played the overture at sight so well
that during the opening scene Mozart whispered to the
musicians near him: “Some of the notes fell under the
desks, but the overture went capitally on the whole.”
Mozart's appearance as conductor at the piano had been
the signal for enthusiastic applause; and this applause
was renewed with increased enthusiasm at the end of
the overture. “Musicians and connoisseurs," wrote a
contributor to the Wiener Zeitung," are agreed in de-
claring that such a performance has never before been
witnessed in Prague. Herr Mozart himself conducted;
and his appearance in the orchestra was the signal for
cheers which were renewed when he left. The opera is
exceedingly difficult of execution; and the excellence
of the representation, in spite of the short time allowed
for studying the work, was the subject of general
MOZART'S “DON GIOVANNI.”
115
remark. The whole powers, both of singers and
orchestra, were put forward to do honour to Mozart.
Considerable expense was incurred for additional chorus
and scenery, which has been generously defrayed by
Herr Guardason."
The enormous audience was sufficient evidence of
public favour. Signor Guardason was Bondini's part-
ner in the management of the theatre. In a letter
to Da Ponte, the librettist, who had been obliged to
return to Vienna, he informed him of the great success
which Don Giovanni had achieved ; and six days after
the first performance Mozart wrote to his friend,
Gottfried von Jacquin, telling him that the work had
been represented “with the most unqualified success.
Perhaps,” he adds, “it will be performed in Vienna.
I hope so. They are trying all they can to persuade
me to remain two months longer and write another
opera. But, flattering as the proposal is, I cannot
accept it.”
CHAPTER VIII.
ROSSINI'S “BARBER OF SEVILLE.”
BEAUMARCHAIS'S Barber of Seville had been set to
music by Paisiello before Rossini took it in hand; and
what is far more extraordinary, some half a dozen
operatic versions of the Barber of Seville have been
produced since the comedy found its most appro-.
priate musical expression in Rossini's masterpiece.
Beaumarchais, who, besides being a writer of comedies,
a political agent, and several other things, was a good
musician in proof of which it may be mentioned that
he was music master to Louis XV's daughters, and that
he composed incidental music to several of his own
dramas), wrote Le Barbier de Séville originally as a
libretto. But he entertained doubts in regard to the
form and general treatment of opera, which ought, he
considered, to the neglect of the melodic portion of the
ROSSINI'S “ BARBER OF SEVILLE.”
117
I
C
work, to be assimilated as much as possible to the spoken
drama of real life. The subject of Le Barbier de Séville
is substantially the same as that of Molière's Sicilien.
But Beaumarchais points out in his preface to the
comedy that the plot is common to innumerable works.
"An old man," he writes, “is in love with his ward,
and proposes to marry her. A young man succeeds in
forestalling him, and the same day makes her his wife
under the very nose, and in the house of the guardian.
That is the subject of the Barber of Seville, capable of
being made with equal success into a tragedy, a comedy,
a drama, or an opera. What but that is Molière's
Avare—what but that is Mithridate? The class to
which a piece belongs depends less upon the funda-
mental nature of the subject than upon the details and
the manner in which it is presented.”
It has been said that Beaumarchais had in the first
instance proposed to treat the work as an opera. But
apart from the other reasons proceeding from himself he
met with no encouragement from the manager of the
Italian Theatre—the name still given in Beaumarchais's
time to an establishment which had become the home
of French comic opera. “How polite of you,” some
lady, as he himself tells us, said to him, “ to take your
118
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
II
piece to the Théâtre Français, when I have no box
except at the Italian Theatre! Why did you not make
an opera of it? They say it was your first idea; the
piece is well suited to music.”
In the year 1780, five years after the production of
Beaumarchais's Barbier de Séville at the Théâtre
Français, Paisiello showed practically how well the work
was fitted for operatic treatment. Rossini, not much
given to writing prefaces, departed from his custom in
connection with the Barber ; and in an introduction to
the libretto, as first published, he explained the circum-
stances under which it had occurred to him to set to
music a play which Paisiello had made into an opera
thirty-five years before. Paisiello's Barbiere di Siviglia
had been represented everywhere in Europe; and out of
the not very numerous musical pieces contained in the
score seven were considered particularly interesting :-
Almaviva's opening air; Don Basilio's musical re-
flections on the efficacy of calumny; a solo for Bartholo;
a comic trio, in which two of Beaumarchais's episodical
characters, omitted by Rossini - La Jeunesse and
L'Éveillé irritate Bartholo; a trio founded on the
letter incident; a duet in which Almaviva, disguised
as a music-master, is received by Bartholo; and a
ROSSINI'S “ BARBER OF SEVILLE.”
119
quintet in which Don Basilio, declared to be danger-
ously ill, is hurried off to bed. Not to follow too
closely in the footsteps of his predecessor, Rossini
avoided several of the situations which Paisiello had
especially laid hold of, though the leading ones had of
course to be retained. When, however, Rossini dealt
with precisely the same situations as Paisiello he in
every case treated them differently. There was no rule
to prevent Rossini from setting to music a work on
11 hich another composer had already put his stamp.
Metastasio's libretti had been set over and over again
by numbers of composers. But the Barbiere of Paisiello
was famous throughout Italy; and Rossini thought it
only polite, as a young composer of twenty-three years
of age, to write to the venerable maestro, who was
seventy-four, before audaciously venturing into com-
petition with him. In a very respectful letter he
asked to be allowed to reset Il Barbiere, and Paisiello
gave him full permission to turn Beaumarchais's
comedy once more into an opera. He could not well
have refused it; and Rossini's friends pretended at the
time that in his seeming generosity the old master,
not over pleased at his young rival's success, wished
to expose him to the chance of failing. Rossini had
120
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.'
bound himself to furnish two operas for Rome, both to
be performed during the carnival season of 1816. The
first, Torvaldo é Dorliska, was ready for production on
the first day of the carnival, December 26th, 1815,
and that very day the composer signed an agreement.
in respect to the second work.
It was Signor Puca Sforza Cesarini, manager of
the Argentina Theatre, who had engaged Rossini
to produce two works during the carnival season
of 1816; and Rossini, having already furnished one
of them, now promised and bound himself to
compose and produce a second “comic drama” on
terms to be set forth, "and to the libretto which shall
be given to him by the said manager, whether this
libretto be old or new.” The score was to be delivered
“in the middle of January," and the first act was to be
in the hands of the copyist quite complete on the 20th
of January. The opera was to be produced on the 5th
of February, and the second act (the work was to be in two
acts) was to be given to the director sufficiently early
for it to receive the proper number of rehearsals.
“The Maestro Rossini," runs the agreement, “shall
act, so that there may be time to make arrangements
ROSSINI'S “ BARBER OF SEVILLE.”
121
CC
and to terminate the rehearsals soon enough to go
before the public on the evening mentioned above;
otherwise the Maestro Rossini will expose himself to
all losses, because so it must be and not otherwise."
Rossini bound himself moreover to direct the re-
hearsals and to conduct at the piano (according to the
fashion of the time) the three first public performances;
while "in reward for his fatigues” the director engaged
to pay him “ the sum and quantity of 400 Roman scudi
as soon as the three first representations, which he is
to direct at the piano, shall be terminated.” An apart-
ment was assigned to Rossini in the house of Signor
Zamboni, who was to play the part of Figaro; and the
cost of his board and lodging was to be defrayed by the
manager. The money payment was equivalent to
about £80; and as it was not the custom at that time
to publish operatic scores, the composer received
nothing whatever (neither then nor afterwards) for the
copyright. He did not even care to have his opera
engraved; and two of the pieces, the scene of the
music lesson (treated originally as a trio for Rosina,
the sham musicmaster, and Don Bartolo) and
the overture were lost. What is now known as the
overture to the Barber of Seville belonged originally
122
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
to Aureliano in Palmira. Rossini enjoyed, by the
custom of the theatre, the right to take back his
original score after the work had been performed for
one year. But this, in the case of the Barber, Rossini,
with characteristic neglect, seems to have omitted to
do, or two of the pieces could scarcely have gone astray.
Il Barbiere, like all Rossini's successful works (and
very few indeed of them failed), found its way in time
to the music-shops; but never from the Italian inusic-
sellers did Rossini, as long as he remained in Italy,
receive the smallest sum. Rossini, when he signed his
agreement with the manager of the Argentina Theatre,
knew no more than Cesarini himself seems to have
done what the subject of the libretto. would be. The
manager had to come to an understanding on that
point with the censor; and when neither the censor
nor the manager could from their different points of
view see anything to object to in the Barber of Seville,
it was for Rossini, before attacking the subject, to make
his peace with Paisiello. He could not by the terms
of his agreement have refused the subject even if he
had desired to do so. On the 26th of December, 1815,
Rossini, before undertaking his new work, had to
superintend the production of Torvaldo é Dorliska. It.
ROSSINI'S “BARBER OF SEVILLE.”
123
was brought out the same evening; and Rossini had
to conduct in person the three first representations.
He was scarcely free, then, until December 29th.
Then some days were lost in selecting the subject;
and when at last it had been found, Rossini, declining
to work on Paisiello's old lines, insisted on having an
entirely new libretto. Sterbini, the librettist of
Torvaldo é Dorliska, was charged with this work, and
that everything might go on as quickly as possible
it was arranged that the librettist should take up his
quarters with the composer in the house of the future
Figaro. Rossini began by asking Sterbini to read to
him Beaumarchais's comedy from beginning to end.
Then, avoiding as much as possible Paisiello's distribu-
tion of scenes, he determined, in the situations where
his predecessor had employed recitative, to substitute
dialogue sustained by orchestral melody. Recitative
was not altogether abandoned; but the melodic current
which runs almost continuously through the opera was
transferred here and there from the voices to the
instruments. There are more musical pieces in the
new than in the old Barbiere, and these pieces more-
over are developed at greater length; so that altogether
Rossini's score contains nearly three times as much
124
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
1
IVI
music as the score of Paisiello. Rossini composed so
rapidly that his poet found it difficult to keep up with
him; and he had often to suggest verses for the music
which had already occurred to him as appropriate to
the dramatic situation. Sometimes, too, Sterbini
himself went rapidly ahead; and he was under the
impression, when he had finished the words for Figaro's
famous air, that he had written too much. He handed
the verses to Rossini, telling him to take what suited
him, and treat the rest as non-existent. Rossini,
however, became inspired by the gay, rattling character
of Sterbini’s rhymes; and, without, rejecting any, made
them the basis of that light-hearted" Largo al factotum"
which paints so perfectly the character of the Barber.
Poet and composer laboured without cessation at
the work on which they were engaged; and they had
in the room with them several copyists to whom the
sheets of music paper were thrown one by one as they
were finished. From time to time Zamboni looked in
to see how his fellow-lodgers were getting on, and
doubtless he lost no time in trying over the admir-
able air which they had prepared for him. Mean-
while the joint authors did not leave the house; and
Rossini's biographers declare that they scarcely gave
ROSSINI'S “ BARBER OF SEVILLE.”
120
was
themselves time to eat, while as for sleeping, they
contented themselves when they could no longer
keep their eyes open with reposing on the sofa. One
can scarcely believe that their artistic rage was
carried to such lengths as these. But it is certain
that they worked at the Barber after the fashion
adopted by Balzac in composing his novels. Having
once begun, that is to say, they did not leave off until
they had brought it to an end. Rossini himself told
a friend that during his labour of thirteen days he
did not get shaved. “Strange," the friend is said to
have exclaimed, “ that the Barber should have pre-
vented you from shaving !” “If I had shaved,” replied
Rossini, “I should have gone out, and if I had gone
out there is no saying when I should have got back.”
The story of Rossini's writing to Paisiello for
permission to reset the Barber rests on the authority
of Stendhal, whose Vie de Rossini is borrowed
substantially from the Abbé Carpani. M. Azevedo
denies that Rossini wrote to Paisiello for the per-
mission which, apart from all question of courtesy,
was as a matter of fact not required. It is certain
in any case that Rossini prefaced his libretto with
the following “ Advertisement to the Public :"
126
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
CC
“ Beaumarchais's comedy, entitled the Barber of
Seville ; or, The Useless Precaution, is now presented in
the form of a musical drama, under the new title of
Almaviva ; or, The Useless Precaution, in order that the
public may be fully convinced of the feelings of
respect and veneration by which the author of the
music of this drama is animated with regard to the
çelebrated Paisiello, who has already treated the
subject under its original title.
“Invited to undertake this difficult task, the Maestro
Gioachino Rossini, in order to avoid the reproach of
entering rashly into rivalry with the immortal author
who has preceded him, required expressly that the
Barber of Seville should be throughout versified
anew, and also that new situations should be added
for the musical pieces; which is required, moreover,
by modern theatrical taste, entirely changed since
- the time when the renowned Paiesello wrote his
work.
“Certain other differences between the arrange-
ment of the present drama, and that of the French
comedy above cited, were caused by the necessity of
introducing choruses, both for conformity with modern
usage and because they are indispensable for musical
ROSSINI'S " BARBER OF SEVILLE."
127
CY
effect in so vast a theatre. The courteous public is
informed of this beforehand, that it may excuse the
author of the new drama, who, unless compelled by
these imperious circumstances, would never have
ventured to introduce the least change into the
French work, already consecrated by the applause of
all the theatres in Europe."
The work was described in a sub-title as “a comedy
by Beaumarchais, newly versified and arranged for
the use of the modern Italian musical theatre by
Cesare Sterbini of Rome.” The permission on the
part of the censorship bears the signature of J. Della
Porta (nominal) Patriarch of Constantinople. If, as
has been said, first representations are the composer's
battles with the public, Rossini had certainly a hard
fight on that agitated evening when the Barber of
Seville was produced. Paisiello's work had already
grown old—which Rossini's work even now has not
done ; though we are separated from its first per-
formance by an interval of seventy years, whereas
the first performance of Rossini's Barber was separated
from the first performance of Paisiello's Barber by
only thirty-five years. But Paisiello's work lived still
by its reputation; and it was considered very audacious
..
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS. :
128
on the part of a young composer like Rossini to place
hiniself in competition with such a composer as the
venerable Paisiello. He was therefore hissed, not
only when his work was being heard, but before one
note of it had been played, and, according to some
authorities, before the theatre doors were opened.
His rashness was taken as proved, without reference
to the style in which he might have executed his
self-assigned task.
Two original and independent accounts of the first
representation of the Barber have been published: one
in an Italian newspaper by Zanolini, the other in a
letter from Madame Giorgi Righetti, who created the
part of Rosina. The part of Almaviva was under-
taken by the celebrated tenor Garcia, father of Madame
Malibran, Madame Viardot Garcia, and Signor Manuel
Garcia, the celebrated professor of singing. Figaro
was the before-mentioned Luigi Zamboni, fellow-lodger
with Rossini and Sterbini during the composition
of the opera; who after his first success appeared
as Figaro amid general applause at every opera-
house in Europe. Vitarelli was the original Don
Basilio, Botticelli the original Bartholo. The overture,
written expressely for Il Barbiere, but afterwards lost,
ROSSINI'S “ BARBER OF SEVILLE."
129
was not listened to, but was played in the midst of
a general murmuring such as is heard on the approach
of a procession. The introductory chorus made no
impression. Nor did the appearance of Garcia,
favourite singer as he was, change the attitude of the
public. “The composer," says Madame Giorgi Righetti,
“was weak enough to allow Garcia to sing beneath
Rosina's balcony a Spanish melody of his own arrange-
ment.” Worse than that, Garcia had forgotten to tune
his guitar for the accompaniment, and when he began
the operation in presence of the audience a string
broke. It was necessary to replace it; but before the
singer could do so, laughter and hisses were heard from
all parts of the theatre. At last, when Garcia was
ready to sing, the air was not liked; and many
persons in the pit gave burlesque imitations of it.
The introduction to Figaro's air was listened to in
peace; but when Zamboni came on, carrying in his
turn a guitar, the audience burst into a laugh, and
not a note of “Largo al Factotum” was heard. Rosina
appeared in the balcony, and the public thought that
Madame Giorgi Righetti, whether from the balcony
or not, would in any case sing an air. When, how-
ever, she uttered only a few passages which led to
130
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
was
vere
nothing, and then disappeared, general disapprobation
was expressed. The duet for Almaviva and Figaro
was accompanied throughout by hissing and shouting.
At last Rosina made her formal entry on the stage,
and sang the long-looked-for cavatina. “Una voce"
was followed by three long rounds of applause, and
hopes were now entertained that the opera might yet
be saved. The composer, who was in the orchestra
presiding at the piano, bowed to the public, and then
turning towards the singer exclaimed in a whisper,
" Oh, natura !” Thanks to one of those accidents
which follow one another so persistently on unfortunate
first nights, the entry of Don Basilio was a total failure.
A small trap had been left open, at which Vitarelli
stumbled and fell. When he rose and began his
highly dramatic air, he found it necessary to hold his
handkerchief to his nose. This, besides spoiling the
effects of the music, suggested to the audience that
the fall, with all its consequences, including in particular
the application of the handkerchief to the nose, was
in the part, and not liking such buffoonery they hissed
it with great energy. The letter duet suffered from the
introduction of some unnecessary incidents, which, says
Madame Giorgi Righetti, “were afterwards omitted ;"
ROSSINI'S “BARBER OF SEVILLE.”
131
and at the beginning of the great concerted finale a
cat appeared on the stage, to be driven in one direction
by Figaro, in another by Bartolo, until at last, in
seeking to escape Basilio, it became entangled in the
dress of Rosina.
The first movement of the finale was not heard at
all; and the continuation and conclusion—the audience
having now lost all power of concentrating its atten
tion on the work-were received with cries of derision.
The hubbub went on increasing until the fall of the
curtain, when Rossini turned towards the public,
shrugged his shoulders, and clapped his hands. The
audience took offence at this openly expressed contempt
for its opinion, and when the curtain rose for the
second act it would not allow a note of the music to be
heard. Nothing like it had ever been witnessed at
any theatre. Rossini meanwhile remained calm in
his conductor's place, and he went home as careless
about the reception of the opera as if it had been
the work of some other composer. The principal
singers, with Madame Giorgi Righetti, meanwhile went
to his house in order to offer him some words of
consolation. But when they got there he was in
bed and asleep. The next morning Rossini replaced
K 2
132
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
Garcia's Spanish song by the beautiful air “Ecco ridente
il cielo," borrowing the melody of the new solo from
the opening chorus of Aureliano in Palmira, written for
Milan the year before and represented without success.
The said chorus had previously figured in Rossini's
Ciro in Babilonia, which had also failed. The beautiful
melody had at last found its proper place; and since
its first presentation as a serenade sung by Count
Almaviva to Rosina it has been recognised even to
this day as one of the most charming pieces in the
Barber of Seville. Rossini having now made the only
alteration he thought necessary, went back to bed, and
declared himself indisposed, so that he might not have
to take his place in the evening at the conductor's
piano. At the second performance the audience showed
themselves disposed to listen to a work which at the
first they could not be said to have heard. This
was all that was necessary to ensure success. Many
of the pieces were applauded; but, probably by
reason of the novelty of the style, no enthusiasm
seemed to be felt.
With each succeeding representation, the music
was more and more admired, until at last the climax
was reached when Il Barbiere was received at Rome
ROSSINI'S “BARBER OF SEVILLE.”
133
with the same transports of admiration which it was
afterwards to excite at every Italian theatre, and ulti-
mately at every open house in Europe. The Barber,
however, was a long time crossing the Alps, and it
was not until the year 1836 that from Paris it
reached London, where it was produced at Covent
Garden with Grisi, Rubini, Tamburini, and Lablache
in the principal characters.
CHAPTER IX.
IRELAND'S “VORTIGERN.”
THE first representation of Vortigern served to test
the genuineness of a play which its author, a boy of
eighteen, had, with remarkable confidence in his own
abilities and in the stupidity of the public, attributed
to Shakespeare. The imposture practised by young
Ireland does not seem to have deceived for a moment
any really good judges; and as the fraudulent poet
did not publish his work until after the performance,
it was impossible for any large number of persons to
form an independent opinion beforehand as to whether
or not it was the creation of Shakespeare. A fussy
old pedant, Dr. Parr, who was tolerably sure to be
in the wrong, declared his belief in its authenticity.
The keen-sighted Porson, however, saw from the
first that Vortigern was a forgery; and the author
IRELAND'S “ VORTIGERN.”
135
took care not to show it to Malone, who only
became acquainted with it when it was produced
on the stage.
The fact of Sheridan's having given the piece a
hearing does not by any means prove that he believed it
to be Shakespeare's. He knew that the public were
eager to see it, and hoped that it would bring him
more than one crowded house.
This, however, is what his friend and biographer,
Thomas Moore, says on the subject: “The few
occasions on which Mr. Sheridan was again connected
with literature after the final investment of his genius
in political speculations, were such as his fame might
have easily dispensed with. . . . Whether it was that
he looked over these manuscripts with the eyes more
of a manager than of a critic, and considered rather
to what account the belief in their authenticity might
be turned than how far it was founded upon internal
evidence; or whether, as Mr. Ireland asserts, the
standard at which he rated the genius of Shake-
speare was not so high as to inspire him with a
very watchful fastidiousness of judgment; certain
it is that he was in some degree the dupe of
this remarkable imposture, which, as a lesson to
U
.
e
T
136
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
the self-confidence of criticism and an exposure of
the fallibility of taste, ought never to be forgotten
in literary history
“The immediate payment of £300 and a moiety
of the profits of the first sixty nights, were the terms
upon which Mr. Sheridan purchased the play of
Vortigern from the Irelands. The latter part of
the conditions was voided the first night; and though
it is more than probable that a tragedy of Shakespeare,
if presented under similar circumstances, would have
shared the same fate, the public enjoyed the credit
of detecting and condemning a counterfeit which had
passed current through some of the most learned
and tasteful hands of the day. It is but justice to
Mr. Sheridan to add that according to the account
of Ireland himself, he was not altogether without
misgivings during his perusal of the manuscripts, and
that his name does not appear among the signatures
to that attestation of their authenticity which his
friend, Dr. Parr, drew up, and was himself the first
to sign."
John Kemble looked upon the new tragedy as
what it really was; and if he accepted the principal
part in it he may well have done so in order to
IRELAND'S “ VORTIGERN.”
137
have the satisfaction of assisting at the exposure;
though it would have been difficult for him in any
case to refuse a leading character formally assigned
to him by the manager. Looking at the names of
the thirteen persons who signed the declaration of
belief in the authenticity of the so-called Shakespeare
manuscripts, one finds none that ought to have
carried the least weight. Isaac Heard, Garter-King at
Arms, Francis Townsend, Windsor Herald, and John
Hewlett, translator of old records, Common Pleas,
signed, no doubt, as experts in identification of
handwriting; and the same was probably the case
with Messrs. Webb, Wallis, Troward, Byng, Wyatt,
Valpy, Glover, and Newton-all in the present day
perfectly unknown.
Before deceiving a few inferior critics and a good
many experts in handwriting, Mr. Samuel Ireland
had taken in several private friends and his own
father, who, in a preface to the alleged Shakespearian
remains, announced that all the scholars, all the men
of taste, antiquaries, and heralds, who had viewed them
previously to their publication, had “unanimously
testified in favour of their authenticity, and declared
that where there was such a mass of evidence internal
138
Famous FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
and external it was impossible, amidst such various
sources of detection, for the art of imitation to have
hazarded so much without betraying itself, and con-
sequently that these papers can be no other than the
production of Shakespeare himself." The only external
evidence, however, that had been produced was, as
Malone pointed out, the statement that the newly-
discovered treasures had been found in a nameless
place, in the custody of a nameless person.
“If, continued Malone, “these scholars, anti-
quaries, and heralds, are' satisfied with the account,
I can only say that they are very easily satisfied;
and that if the handwriting is also to be considered
as external evidence, their credulity on that head is
perfectly consistent with the satisfaction they feel in
the manner in which these papers have been ushered
to the public.” The editor had declared that "it
was impossible that so much could be hazarded
without betraying itself.” Accepting this view,
Malone declared on his side that “the fabrication
of these manuscripts, by whomsoever made, has
accordingly betrayed itself almost in every line, so as
to show beyond the possibility of doubt that not a
single piece in this collection was the production of
IRELAND'S “ VORTIGERN."
139
Shakespeare or of the other persons to whom they
The editor professed to have received, and really
had received, Vortigern and certain dramatic fragments
from his son, Samuel William Henry Ireland, a youth
not nineteen years of age, who claimed to have dis-
covered them accidentally at the house of a gentleman
of considerable property. "Amongst a mass of family
papers," said the confiding father, “the contracts
between Shakespeare, Lowine and Condelle, and the
lease granted by him and Hemynge to Michael Fraser,
which was first found, were discovered; and soon after..
(described as the friend of Shakespeare in consequence
of his having saved his life on the river Thames when
in extreme danger of being drowned), and also the deed
of trust to John Hemynge, were discovered. In pur-
suing this search, he was so fortunate as to meet with
some deeds, very material to the interest of this
gentleman, and such as established beyond all doubt
his title to a considerable property—deeds of which
this gentleman was as ignorant as he was of his having
in possession any of the MSS. of Shakespeare. In
return for this service, added to the consideration that
140
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
the young man bore the same name and coat of arms
with the person who saved the life of Shakespeare,
this gentleman promised him everything relative to
the present subject that had been, or should be, found
either in town or at his house in the country. At
this house the principal part of the Shakespeare papers,
together with a great variety of books containing
his MS. notes and three MS. plays, with part of
another, were discovered.
“Fortified as he is with the opinion of the unpre-
judiced and intelligent, the editor will not allow that
it can be presumption in him to say that he has no
doubt of the truth and authenticity of that which
he lays before the public.”
Not only Sheridan, but also Harris, the manager
of the rival theatre, was most anxious to produce
the much-talked-of work; and on the night of its
first representation Drury Lane was crowded. The
first part of the tragedy went off without any dis-
approbation—which seems to show but little dis-
crimination on the part of the audience. But on
Kemble's arriving at the line which has since become
famous-
“And when this solemn mockery is o’er,"
IRELAND'S “VORTIGERN.”
141
loud groans proceeded from the pit; and such was the
noise that for some minutes the performance could
not go on. Then Kèmble repeated the fatal line-
doing so, according to the Irelands, with “malice
prepense;" and once more cries, both of approval and
of disapproval, were raised. When the play was after-
wards published the Irelands accused the great actor
of having played the principal character with a view
to a fiasco, and complaints were also made of his
conduct as acting manager. Kemble, for one thing,
had declined to accept certain alterations in his part
suggested by Samuel Ireland, saying that the play
would be acted faithfully from the copy sent to the
theatre. It is said that had Vortigern succeeded, the
spirited author, besides sharing the profits with
Sheridan for sixty nights, proposed to bring out a
series of historical and other playsmall, of course,
by Shakespeare.
If Sheridan had doubts as to the authenticity of
Vortigern, and Kemble was quite convinced that the
play was spurious, so certain of this was Porson, that
he not only declined to put his name to the paper
drawn up by Dr. Parr in attestation of Vortigern's
genuineness-saying that he detested subscriptions
142
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
of all kinds, more especially to articles of faith-
but he soon afterwards pretended to have discovered
in an old trunk some manuscript pieces of Sophocles.
Of these he was content to produce one brief extract
consisting of fourteen lines, which was recognised by
scholars as the old nursery ballad of “Three children
sliding on the ice,” translated into Greek iambics.
CHAPTER X.
WEBER'S "DER FREYSCHÜTZ.”
CAROLINE BAUER dwells in her Memoirs on the
immense popularity achieved by Der Freyschütz at
Berlin, where, immediately after its production, its
songs and choruses used to be sung all over the
town. Some persons, however, had better musical
memories than others; and on one occasion an
animated street row took place between an old
gentleman who had begun Annchen's graceful solo,
and, not being able to continue it, had it finished
for him by a small boy who happened to be passing
at the time. The old gentleman accused the small
boy of "robbing him of his opening”-much as
Wagner, in his Opera and Drama, charges the lyrical
composers of his time with “robbing the people of
their songs.”
144
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
It is said, too, that when the popularity of
Weber's best known work was at its height in
London, a gentleman advertised in the papers for a
servant who was unable to whistle the airs from
Der Freyschütz. Fortunately or unfortunately, it is
not necessary to take any such precaution in regard
to the airs of contemporary operas. There is not
the least probability, for instance, of any servant
vexing his master's heart by whistling in his pre-
sence airs from Savonarola or from the Canterbury
Pilgrims; nor is there much chance that melodies
from M. Reyer's Sigurd or even the finest strains from
the later operas of Wagner will take the fancy and
catch the ear of footmen or grooms. The tuneful
themes, however, in which Der Freyschütz abounds
possess the truly Shakespearian merit of delighting
alike the simple, natural man, and the man of educa-
tion and refinement. No opera more popular in the
broad sense of the word than Der Freyschütz has
ever been produced; and unlike some other master-
pieces, such as the Marriage of Figaro, the Barber
of Seville and William Tell, it was received with
enthusiasm by the first audience before which it
was represented. This was at Berlin in 1821; and
145
though in different capitals Der Freyschütz met with
different fortunes it may said in a general way to
have carried the public everywhere by storm.
But though the production of Der Freyschütz on the
stage of the Berlin Opera-house took place in 1821,
the first idea of the work was conceived eleven years
earlier. Weber, in the spring of 1810, was staying
near Heidelberg with his friend Alexander von Düsch.
He had just before been expelled-indeed ejected
from Stuttgart by order of the King, who, having
no further need of his services, had him suddenly
arrested in the orchestra and taken to the frontier ;
and he can have been in no very happy condition
of mind when Herr von Düsch rendered him the
inestimable service of calling his attention to the
story of Der Freyschütz in Apel's collection of tales.
Düsch read the fascinating legend aloud; and Weber
saw that he had at last found what he had long been
seeking—a fit subject for a romantic opera. Such
was Weber's enthusiasm that nothing would content
him but to trace at once, with the assistance of
Düsch, the scenario of the work which he had
determined to compose. The preparation of the
dramatic frame-work occupied thė two friends all
146
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
night, and the sun rose before they had quite
completed it.
The composer having satisfied his first impulse,
his ardour, for a time, cooled. He had at that
moment on hand an opera, Abu Hassan, which it
was necessary to finish without delay. Soon after-
wards he produced Sylvana. Then, the post of
musical director at Prague having been offered to
him, he went to Bohemia, where, during a sojourn
of some years, he may well have inspired himself
with the native melodies of the land; though it
would be difficult in Der Freyschütz, or in any other
of Weber's operas, to find direct traces of Czech
themes. From Prague Weber passed to Dresden,
and there established intimate relations with the
poet Kind, to whom he communicated his operatic
project as sketched out half-a-dozen years before at
Heidelberg. Kind was so delighted with the idea
that he resolved to put it at once into form. For
his libretto he was to receive the modest sum of
thirty ducats. Weber, say his biographers, paid
the money in advance; and the poet at once set to
work. The “book” was finished in a few days,
and Weber forth with began to compose the music.
WEBER'S “DER FREYSCHÜTZ."
147
He was at this time deeply in love with the young
girl whom he was afterwards to marry; and it
needs no psychologist to tell us whether or not his
condition of mind was favourable to poetic work.
Every day a letter reached him from Prague where
his betrothed resided. He had made her acquaint-
ance at Frankfort, where she filled the part of
Sylvana in his opera of that name. But he was at
that time in love with Margaret Lange, whom he
had known at Stuttgart; and it was only when he
became musical director at Prague that he thought
seriously of Caroline Brandt, and got her engaged
by his new director. Not that he was even then in
love with Caroline. A singer named Theresa Brunetti
had gained his heart; and it was not until some time
after Caroline's arrival at Prague that Weber, worried
and distracted, it is said, by the jealousy of Theresa,
devoted himself to the woman who was henceforth to
occupy him exclusively.
"I found when I got back to the house," wrote
Weber one day to Caroline Brandt, “ the first act of
my opera. It pleases me much. The poem will be
very interesting and at the same time terrible; but
do not be alarmed, it ends well. Kind hopes to have
L 2
148
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
finished his libretto in a fortnight. I will then have
it copied without delay, and will send it to you to see
if you like it. I have my doubts, for you are very
difficult in regard to everything which concerns your
king. You always want something extraordinary for
him. My poem, however, will be extraordinary.
Judge of it from this. The devil is introduced under
the features of the Black Huntsman; bullets are cast
at midnight in the wolf's glen, and millions of phan-
toms assist at the operation. Hoo! Hoo!. ..."
Kind kept his word. On the 25th of February he
sent Weber the second act; on the 3rd of March the
third and last; so that altogether the libretto of Der
Freyschütz was completed in less than ten days.
Weber now wrote once more to his betrothed, giving
her a full account of the book. “An old gamekeeper
has resolved to give his daughter to one of his hunts-
men, who will succeed him in his post. The prince
has nothing to say against this determination; only
there is an old custom, by which a new keeper, before,
receiving his appointment, must show himself a perfect
shot. Now it happens that the huntsman preferred
by the young girl-Max, who is considered a perfect
shot always misses the mark during the time
2
· WEBER'S “ DER FREYSCHÜTZ."
149
preceding the formal trial. Reduced to despair, he
gives himself up to Caspar, another huntsman, a rascal,
who has dealings with the devil, and who also wishes
to marry the keeper's daughter. Caspar casts at night
in the wolf's glen seven magic bullets, of which six will
reach the mark, while the seventh belongs to the devil.
The last is to kill the young girl; and, unable to
survive his loss, Max will kill himself—such at least is
Caspar's conclusion. But Heaven has decided other-
wise. Agatha falls, but only from fear, and it is Caspar
who, struck by Max's bullet, serves as victim to Satan.
•Why?' you will ask me. The piece will tell you.
Be content to know for the present that everything
ends for the best. I know that you will not understand
much of this, and that you will, perhaps, not be able
to form any idea of it. But I have only given you this
sketch as a foretaste of the poem which you will soon
read for yourself.”
A few days afterwards Weber sent the poem to his
betrothed, and it was lucky that he did so; for Caroline,
with her knowledge of the stage, was able to suggest
one or two important improvements which, doubtless,
contributed to the success of the work. In the original
text, the opera opened with two scenes between Agatha,
150
..
Famous PRESENTATIONSTOU
.
FIRST REPRESENTATIONS(D
Anne and the Hermit. These expository scenes are
said to have rendered the story clearer. But being of
quite an ordinary character, they would have, as
Caroline Brandt pointed out, the effect of cooling the
imagination of the public, which could not fail to
be excited by the romantic character of the overture.
“Cut out these scenes,” she wrote. “Strike into
popular life from the very beginning of this popular
opera. Believe me. Begin at once with the scene
of the inn.”
Baron Max Maria von Weber, son of the composer,
points out, in his biography of his father, that the part
of Anne was written specially for Caroline Brandt; as
that of Constance, in the Seraglio, was written by
Mozart for his future wife, Constance Weber, own
cousin to the composer of Der Freyschütz ; "and it
is doubtless," he adds, “to this association and this
coincidence that the special admiration entertained by
Weber. for the Seraglio must be attributed. “Mozart,'
he was in the habit of saying, "might, if he had lived,
have composed ten other masterpieces like Don Juan,
but he could not have produced a second Seraglio.'”
The letters addressed by Weber at this time, to his
bride, show how much he was occupied with his other
WEBER'S “DER FREYSCHÜTZ."
151
bride—the Huntsman's Bride, as the work afterwards
to be known as Der Freyschütz, was originally called.
But he was working at it only in imagination; and it
was not until upwards of four months after he had
received the libretto that he put the first note to paper.
When, however, he had once begun, he worked at it
more assiduously than at any other of his operas.
Der Freyschütz was originally intended for the
German Opera of Dresden, to which Weber was
attached as musical conductor. But no proposition
was made to him in reference to its production; and in
May, 1818, Count Bruhl, superintendent of the royal
theatres of Berlin, happening to visit Dresden, and
promise to bring it out in the Prussian capital. By
the 6th of December, Weber was sufficiently advanced
with his work to be able to write to Count Bruhl that
it would be all ready by the month of March following.
The final numbers of Der Freyschütz were composed
very quickly under pressure from the Count, who was
anxious to receive the complete score. The last piece
written by the composer is usually the first one
performed; just as an author, after he has finished
his book, completes it by a preface. Weber sketched
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FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
UU
his overture on the 22nd of February; and it appears
from his diary that he scored it for the orchestra
between the 7th and 11th of May. It was not,
however, completed until the 14th of May, on which
day the last note of Der Freyschütz, that is to say, the
last note of the overture, was written. During the
month of June, Weber went over the entire work, “and,"
says his son in his excellent biography, “found it perfect."
“So it appears,” continues Baron Max Maria, “from
the admirable manuscript which his widow afterwards
presented to the Royal Library of Berlin, a manuscript
in which no erasure, no correction, can be discovered,
but which is clear and pure like the work itself. The
notes seem to have rolled and fixed themselves upon
the paper by enchantment."
Weber was now married ; and he arrived in Berlin
with his wife Caroline on the 4th May, 1821, where
they were hospitably received at the house of Meyer-
beer's parents : Weber and Meyerbeer had, it will be
remembered, studied together under the Abbé Vogler.
On the 21st of May the rehearsals of Der Freyschütz
were begun; and as they went on Weber made
numerous alterations, sometimes remodelling entire
scenes. This statement, borrowed from his son's
WEBER'S “ DER FREYSCHÜTZ."
153
CU
biography, does not accord with the statement cited
above; that when Weber had once finished Der
Freyschütz he made no further corrections. The
orchestral players, meanwhile, were delighted with the
work—the best augury for success that a composer
can desire.
It was on the sixth anniversary of a great battle that
Weber with his Der Freyschütz was to meet and
conquer the Berlin public; and on the evening of the
18th of June, 1821, the Royal Theatre was filled with
an audience which included no small number of literary
and musical celebrities. Benedict—the Sir Julius
Benedict of our own time and of any time during the
last fifty years—was present, with his young friend,
Felix Mendelssohn, by his side ; “who,” says Baron:
Max Maria, "shouted aloud and applauded with
enthusiasm." Benedict's cousin, too, Heinrich Heine,
was there. He was then just twenty-one years of age;
for, as he has himself observed, he ought to be looked
upon as one of the “first men of the century" if only
from the fact that he was born at its very beginning.
The effect of the overture was magical; and, re-
demanded with one accord, it was played a second
154
.
Famous PRESENTATIONS101
ST
.
FIRST REPRESENTATIONStime, to cause even greater enthusiasm on its
repetition.
To all light, however, there is shadow, and as the
performance went on, the partisans of Spontini, then
all powerful at Berlin, were prodigal of their sneers.
Every piece in the new opera made its mark. But
when the work was finished the Spontinians, re-
membering the glories of so many heroic operas
composed by their favourite master, asked calmly why
so much fuss had been made about a simple vaudeville ?
Nevertheless, on the fall of the curtain, the audience,
as a whole, were so impressed that no one left the
house, which for some minutes resounded with
shouts and cries of approval. At last the composer
appeared on the stage to receive congratulations in
every form, including bouquets and crowns (greater
novelties then than they are now), together with
copies of verses which, we must suppose, had been
improvised during the representation. The success
was, in a word, unexampled.
Returning home that evening, Weber wrote in his
diary: “First representation of Der Freyschütz-received
with incredible enthusiasm. The overture and the
WEBER'S “ DER FREYSCHÜTZ.”
155
popular songs re-demanded; out of seventeen pieces,
fourteen applauded beyond measure. Everything for
the best; I was recalled, and went forward to salute
the public, accompanied by Frau Seidler and Fraulein
Eunike, not being able to find the others. Verses and
crowns fell at my feet. Soli Deo Gloria !”
CHAPTER XI.
MEYERBEER'S “ROBERT LE DIABLE.”
ALTHOUGH Meyerbeer appeared with brilliant
success as a pianist when he was but nine years
old, and may, therefore, be classed with the large
number of infant phenomena that music has produced,
he did not give the full measure of his genius as a
composer until at the age of forty he produced Robert
le Diable. Born in 1791, the son (like Mendelssohn,
like Benedict, and like Heine) of a Jewish banker,
the name he inherited was that of. Beer. But a
friend, named Meyer, having left him a large sum
of money on condition that the young composer
would adopt his name, the vulgar “ Beer” was con-
verted into the distinguished “ Meyerbeer”; and not
wishing, apparently, to do things by halves, the newly-
made Meyerbeer abandoned the ill-sounding cognomen
MEYERBEER'S "ROBERT LE DIABLE.”
157
of Liebmann which he had hitherto borne, for the
euphonious Giachomo. Liebmann Beer studied com-
position with Carl Maria von Weber under the Abbé
Vogler; and Giachomo Meyerbeer, his musical
education completed, went to Italy to try his fortune
as a composer. He had already made some unim-
portant essays at Munich ; but his first work of pre-
tension was Romilda e Costanza, which was performed
with great success at Padua in 1818. The year
following Meyerbeer brought out at Venice Emma di
Resburgo, which made so great an impression that its
fame reached Germany, where it was reproduced at
Vienna, Munich, Dresden and Frankfort. The young
German composer wrote several other operas, all in
the style of Rossini ;. thereby causing much grief to
Weber, his former fellow-student, who had hoped
better things of him. It was to be expected, however,
that Meyerbeer would be influenced by the triumphs
of Rossini, living as he did in Italy and witnessing
constantly the effects of Rossini's music on the
impressionable audiences around him. He was soon,
however, to depart from his Italian manner; and the
last work in the style which, when Meyerbeer began
to write, enjoyed unbounded popularity throughout
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FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
Italy, was Il Crociato. This work made its way to
Paris and London. It was the last opera in which a
male soprano was heard ; so that in one respect it
must have been more old-fashioned than the operas
of Rossini, who is known to have set his face against
these personages, refusing, to the great advantage of
the musical art, to write parts for them.
or less successfully in the footsteps of Rossini he
probably did not altogether satisfy him when he changed
his style under the influence of Weber's own Der
Freyschütz. That the authors of the libretto of Robert
le Diable were imitating the Der Freyschütz poem is
evident enough; and the resemblance was probably
more striking when Robert le Diable was first planned
as an opéra comique, with spoken dialogue and
without ballet, than it is now in its “grand opera”
form.
When Dr. Véron, at that time manager of the Grand
Opera, undertook to produce Robert le Diable in its
new and more developed shape, be resolved (as he as-
sures us in his Mémoires d'un Bourgeois de Paris) to
stake everything on the result. “Scarcely,” he writes,
"was I installed in my post, when I experienced
MEYERBEER'S "ROBERT LE DIABLE.”
159
a lively impatience to read the poem of Robert
le Diable, the only work which could be immediately
brought out. I was struck by the grandeur and
originality of the subject. All the parts seemed to me
interesting, which is always a good presage for the
success of a dramatic work. But after long reflection
I submitted some observations to MM. Scribe and
Germain Delavigne, authors of the poem, and to M.
Meyerbeer, author of the score. The parts were already
distributed, and that of Bertram, the King of the
lower regions, belonged to Dabadie. This artist had
a baritone voice, and I was astonished that the part
of Bertram was not to be sung by a bass. I insisted
on its being entrusted to M. Levasseur, whose voice,
physiognomy and whole person, full of nobility and
distinction, would represent so well the poetic character
of Bertram. The author became converted to my
ideas, and I undertook at once the delicate mission of
withdrawing the part from M. Dabadie and the more
easy task of getting M. Levasseur to accept it. M.
Meyerbeer had, then, to transpose in his score all that
was written for the baritone voice; and he con-
gratulated himself on having consented to this change,
M. Meyerbeer expressed to me a great desire that
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FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
Mme. Schroeder-Devrient should be engaged to sing
the part of Alice. I made sincere and pressing pro-
positions to this artist, who pronounced and spoke
French very badly. But she had the good sense to
resist my entreaties. The part of Alice was definitely
entrusted to Mdlle. Dorus, who created it with much
talent and success.
“The scene of pantomime and ballet in the third
act, during which Robert gathers the talismanic branch,
was at first nothing but a picture from the old operatic
Olympus, with arrows, quivers, doves and gauze.
Monsieur Duponchel, whom I had entrusted with
the superintendence of the scenery and costunies, went
into the most amusing rage with these antiquities,
these relics of the classical heavens, and proposed the
scene of the nuns coming out of their tomb in the
midst of the cloister scene, now so well known. I
praised M. Duponchel warmly for his suggestion.
With the house lighted up I gave a general rehearsal
of this scene with scenery and costumes. I begged
Meyerbeer to be present. I expected his approbation,
and hoped that I had shown myself worthy of his
confidence. All this is very fine,' said the maestro
to me with almost an annoyed air; “but you don't
MEYERBEER'S “ ROBERT LE DIABLE.”
161
believe in the merit of my music, and are aiming
at a spectacular success. The genius of M. Meyerbeer
is modest and distrustful. I opened to M. Duponchel
an unlimited credit for the mise en scène of Robert le
Diable. Yet in spite of my well-meant prodigality,
in spite of all my efforts, in spite of the fortunate
changes on which I insisted for the success of the
work, it has nevertheless been printed, and a hundred
times, that I brought it out unwillingly and in spite
of myself.
“Thus,” adds M, Véron, with amusing pathos, “is
history written—even the history of opera managers.”
Then, to show how baseless were the stories circulated
so freely about the means adopted by Meyerbeer for
insuring the success of his work, including the
anecdote of his paying out of his own pocket for
the organ—at that time an entire novelty on the
operatic stage—and buying, moreover, every disposable
organ in Paris, so that no other theatre might be
able to anticipate his new musical effect, he prints a
letter from Meyerbeer, dated twenty-three years after-
wards, Feb. 9, 1854, and in the following terms :-
“SIR, It has been my constant principle, my
invariable habit, not to pay attention to the false
M
162
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
reports circulated on my account. I must, nevertheless
avow that my conscience has often reproached me for
not deviating from this rule in a case where I am not.
alone concerned, but in which, in connection with
one of my works, endeavours have been made to injure
a man to whom I owed nothing but praise, and who
deserved from me a reciprocity of good offices. I refer
to the false reports spread by a number of journalists,
according to which you only brought out Robert le
Diable in spite of yourself and unwillingly, according
to which I was even obliged to pay out of my own
pocket for the organ employed in the fifth act of this
work. My conscience often tormented me for not
having contradicted in the newspapers these false
statements. But time was marching, years had
passed, and I was afraid that it might be very late to
recall so distant a recollection. An opportunity now
presents itself, and it is you who offer it to me in
publishing your memoirs, in which some lines will,
perhaps, be given to the work which you made one of
the events of your brilliant management. This
opportunity I seize; and I declare the stories in
question to be completely false. The organ was paid
for by you, furnished by you, like everything else
MEYERBEER'S "ROBERT LE DIABLE.”
163
required for the mise en scène of Robert le Diable, and
I am bound to declare that, far from limiting yourself
to what was strictly necessary, you went much beyond
the ordinary obligations of a manager towards authors
and the public. I shall never forget the great service
you rendered me by changing the assignment of the
part of Bertram, which I had had the weakness to
givé to a certain artist, an excellent one, it is true, to
Dabadie,—and which I did not feel myself able to with-
draw from him. You had happily the courage which I
did not possess. The negotiations succeeded, and the
part was given to Levasseur. Massol, an artist
of distinction, was moreover intrusted by you with
a simple fragment of a part, that of the herald.
“The pupils of the Conservatoire summoned by you
came every evening to reinforce the chorus. Nothing
was spared for the mise en scène, the costumes,
or the accessories. If I recall these facts it is to
recognise and establish, as far as in me lies, the great,
intelligent and devoted part taken by you in the
success of Robert le Diable. What I regret not being
able equally to recall is the thousand ingenious aids,
the delicate attentions which were addressed to the
composer as much as to the work, and for which my
M 2
164
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FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS:
gratitude must be more lively and more profound than
if the public had had an opportunity of appreciating
them like myself.”
When the parts had been finally distributed, the
manager, in consultation with his various chiefs, came
to the conclusion that the preliminary studies, the
musical rehearsals, and the rehearsals of the mise en
scène would occupy altogether at least six months.
Every Monday, the different chiefs met in the
manager's private room to report progress and take
instructions. The manager never ceased impressing
on his subordinates the necessity of punctuality; and
their answers, he assures us, were always the same,
“Be at rest," said the machinist; “I shall be ready
before the music.” “The scenery will not have to wait
for me," declared the costumier. The manager on his
side, impressed individually upon each of his sub-
ordinates that if he would be ready in time there was
nothing to fear from the dilatoriness of his colleagues.
“I risked," says the author of the Mémoires d'un
Bourgeois de Paris, “a large stake on the opera of
Robert le Diable, and my anxiety increased as the date
of the first representation approached. A very few
days before the final rehearsal, Madame Damoreau, who
MEYERBEER’S “ROBERT LE DIABLE.”
165
<
had been studying very assiduously the part of the
Princess Isabelle, came one morning, in the best of
spirits, to inform me, in the gayest manner, that the
terms of her engagement gave her two months' holiday,
and that she proposed to begin it not later than the 1st
of December. Robert le Diable was to be brought out
in the first days of November.
“It seems to me quite natural,' I said to Madame
Damoreau, 'that as you have scarcely recovered from a
disease of the lungs you should choose the severest
time of year for setting out on your travels. Let us
show our cards. You wish me to buy back your
holiday? You have chosen an excellent moment for
obliging me to treat with you. I do not reproach you
with it. I take more interest than you yourself do in
expose yourself to the ice and snow of the month of
December. How much did your two months' holiday
bring you under Charles X.?'
“My last two months' holiday was purchased for
19,000 francs.
"I do not wish to have any money arguments with
you ; so I will give you 19,000 francs, and trust to your
166
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
these two months all the services which your health
will allow you to render.'
“I had been generous. Madame Damoreau showed
herself devoted. She supported the fatigue of the
various representations of Robert le Diable, and, thanks
to her rare vocal talent, in the second and fourth acts
of this work, she obtained constantly the honour of two
or three rounds of applause."
Two Italians, the brothers Gambatti, had been en-
gaged at the opera, on Rossini's recommendation, as
cornets-the cornet à piston being at that time a new
instrument. It was heard, I believe, for the first time
at the Concerts of the Conservatoire in the year 1826.
One of the brothers had an important solo to play in
the fifth act of Robert the Devil. But after the last
general rehearsal they both went to the manager, and
declared that they would not take part in the first
representation unless their salary were raised. This was
a far less important matter than the purchase of
Madame Damoreau's two months' leave. “I cared only
for the success of Robert le Diable," says Dr. Véron;
“and discussions, not to speak of law-suits, would
cause me more trouble and more expense than money
sacrifices made with a good grace.: M. Meyerbeer,
MEYERBEER'S "ROBERT LE DIABLE."
167
moreover, would have been anxious and vexed if I had
replaced the brothers Gambatti, and I accordingly gave
in without appearing to be aware that I was being
treated with violence. I behaved with something of
the good-nature of the traveller who, having been
robbed by a brigand of his watch, was polite enough to
tell him that it was a little slow. I said to one of the
brothers Gambatti, “You will be quite satisfied with
an increase of salary? Would you not like a special
fee for your solo ?'”. This excessive generosity
rather disconcerted him.
It was not until after four months of orchestral and
other rehearsals that the general rehearsals were
reached. “General rehearsals, especially at the opera,''
writes Dr. Véron, “ cause great fatigue and great
emotion to every one to the composer, the artists, the
chiefs of department and the manager. M. Scribe, aided
by the chorus and ballet-masters, shows as much ardour
as ability and ingenuity in placing his works on the
stage. There are good and bad rehearsals, and one
comes from them full of hope or much discouraged. ...
When a general rehearsal takes place with choruses,
principal singers, and full orchestra, but without
scenery, without costumes, and without full light, the
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FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
1
musical execution gains much and produces always a
great effect. In the darkness and silence of the empty
and more sonorous house, without any distraction for the
other senses, one is, so to say, all ears; nothing is lost
of the fine shades of expression in the singing, of the
delicate embroideries of the orchestration. But at the
first representation the disappointment is great. In
the immense, splendidly lighted theatre, filled with an
excited crowd, all the rich and elegant details of the
score will be lost through the stuff of the women's
dresses and the diminished sonority of a building
crowded in the pit, boxes, and gallery. Great musical
ideas, grand orchestral effects will now alone produce
an impression. Thus it happened that at the first
representation of Robert the Devil, the public, after
applauding the two first acts, was only impressed and
deeply moved by the chorus of demons. The admira-
tion, the emotion, the enthusiasm of the public were
carried to the highest point throughout the fifth act.
“One of our general rehearsals lasted until three in
the morning, and we all left it despondent and despair-
ing. It was a full rehearsal with scenery and costumes,
and with the whole theatre lighted up. The house
was empty, and the orchestra represented only by
MEYERBEER’S “ ROBERT LE DIABLE.”
169
a quartet of strings. The blaze of light, the glitter of
the costumes, the effect of the scenery, taken with
the poverty and insignificance of the instrumental
accompaniment produced a most intolerable contrast.
The days preceding an important representation are
for the director a series of emotions and perplexities,
which pursue him until the last moment. One
inevitable final meeting takes place in his private
room; that in which the author of the words and the
composer of the music have to be prevailed upon to
accept some necessary cuts. The author of the poem
maintains that to take away one phrase, one word
is to render the work unintelligible; so cunningly is
it constructed. The composer resists with not less
obstinacy. His score, he says, cannot be broken up
into fragments. It is all combined and prepared in
such a manner as to form one perfect whole. One
piece serves as indispensable contrast to another. A
chorus which it has perhaps been suggested to leave
out is essential for the effect of the succeeding air.
The discussions on such points are interminable. I
had ended by showing myself impassible in presence
of the storms and tempests that were raging around
me; and I devoted the time during which these
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FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
O
FAMOUS quarrels lasted to a polite and engaging correspondence
with all the newspaper editors. I was still labouring
for the success of the work. At last a conclusion was
arrived at and a general understanding established.
The chief copyist was making the necessary changes
and suppressions in the score; and the public at least
never found fault with the words and music that were
now suppressed.
“But when a director has prepared, like a good
general, everything necessary for the success of the
work on the stage, his troubles begin for the front of
the house. Every one wants something from him on
the occasion of a first representation; and that of
Robert le Diable was exciting public interest to the
highest degree. Everything and every one must be
thought of. It is necessary, in assigning places, to
displease no one, and above all to excite no jealousies
so as to have no irritated enemies in the house. Such
a journalist will never pardon you for having given his
fellow-journalist a better place than himself. The
author and composer, the leading artists, the claqueurs
must be satisfied. The care, the foresight, the con-
ferences, the instructions indispensable to secure the
efficient working of the claque at each representation,
MEYERBEER’S “ROBERT LE DIABLE.”
171
and above all on great critical occasions, must be dealt
with elsewhere. One must remember, too, the number
of the box that Madame --- would like to have,
the number of the stall preferred by the friend of a
minister or of the editor of some great journal. One
must respect moreover, the omnipotence of the un-
known journalist as of the journalist in vogue; and
on the critical day the existence is revealed of a crowd
of newspapers not previously heard of.”
On November 22nd, 1831, the bill announced the
first representation of Robert the Devil ; and Dr. Véron,
after a brief repose during which he was not, let us
hope, visited even by the graceful apparition of the
nuns in the ballet scene of Meyerbeer's master-
piece, awoke to all the anxieties—anguish one might
almost say—of the situation. First he was visited by
the conductor, the chorus-master, the ballet-master,
and the musical conductor, from whom he was anxiously
awaiting the latest reports. Was nobody ill ? Had no
singer a sore throat, no dancer a sprained ankle ?
Almost every leading artist in the establishment had
a part in Robert le Diable, and one indispositon would
prevent the completeness of the representation. Re-
assured on this point the worthy doctor shut himself
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FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
YT
01
up in his private room, and with his door hermetically
closed defied the pressing letters, and more pressing
visits from those dilatory persons who beg for a box
or claim a stall at the very last moment.
The first representation of Robert le Diable was a
series of accidents which might well have had the
gravest consequences. In the third act a screen, to
which were booked a dozen lighted lamps, fell forward.
with a crash at the very moment when Mdlle. Dorus,
the impersonator of Alice, was entering. The screen
was very near falling upon the singer's head, but she
was not alarmed. She retreated a few steps, and then
continued her part without the slightest sign of
trepidation.
After the chorus of demons in this same act a
curtain has to rise from beneath the stage, and, pulled
upwards by a number of wires, to shut off the previous
scene. This curtain of clouds reached a great height,
when suddenly the wires gave way, and the curtain
fell. Malle. Taglioni, who represented the abbess, and
was reposing on her tomb in the character of a statue
not yet animated, had only time to return suddenly
to life and spring to the side of the stage in order to
avoid being seriously injured. The principal curtain
MEYERBEER'S “ROBERT LE DIABLE.”
173
wa
ICE
soon
was at once lowered, to go up again soon afterwards,
amid the general applause of the public, much struck
by the original and brilliantly-lighted scene of the
cloister. A much more alarming accident took place
in the fifth act, at the close of the admirable trio which
brings the work to an end. Bertram was to sink by
means of an "English trap"_"vampire trap” in the
phraseology of our own stage—to the regions of the
dead. Robert, on the contrary, converted by Pro-
vidence and the prayers of Alice, was to remain on
earth in order to marry the Princess Isabelle. But
Nourrit, the representative of Robert, in a moment of
impulse advanced and fell into the opening left by the
descending trap. A cry of despair arose from behind
the scenes. Every one thought that Nourrit was killed.
Malle. Dorus, who had been in no way affected by the
danger she herself had encountered, now ran from the
stage weeping and sobbing. The incident, however,
was differently appreciated in different parts of the
theatre. The public thought, without understanding
why, that Robert had given himself to the devil and
was following him to his dark abode. On the stage
the general belief was that Nourrit had met with a
fatal accident. Beneath the stage the sudden arrival
174
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
of Nourrit had caused no particular emotion either to
himself or to M. Levasseur, who had preceded him in
his downward flight. Fortunately, the mattresses and
feather bed prepared for the descent of Bertram had
not been removed when, in his turn, or rather out of
his turn, Robert also went down. Levasseur was just
going up stairs to his dressing-room when suddenly
turning round he saw Nourrit make his rapid but
harmless fall. “What the deuce are you doing here?”
he said to him ; "have they altered the final scene ?”
But Nourrit had no time to reply. He was in too
great a hurry to reassure his friends and the public as
to his personal condition; and before many minutes
had passed he was able to appear on the stage, leading
by the hand Mdlle. Dorus, now weeping with joy.
There was a burst of applause from the wbole house.
The curtain fell, and the names of the author and
composer were announced to the public amidst the
most frantic enthusiasm. Before retiring to rest
Nourrit had himself bled, whether to calm his excite-
ment or to prevent evil effects from the fall does not
appear. Bleeding was an absurdity of those days
which has now fortunately passed out of fashion.
M. Levasseur, who had obtained a wonderful success
MEYERBEER'S “ROBERT LE DIABLE.”
175
in the character of Bertram, was not bled. But Dr.
Véron voluntarily bled himself for Levasseur's benefit.
He raised his nightly fee, that is to say (a payment
independent of salary) from 50f. to 100f.; this latter
being the same modest fee (les feux in French) which
the tenor and prima donna received.
The success of Robert le Diable was both brilliant and
lasting. The work was destined to make the tour of
Europe. At the beginning the novelty of the subject, the
splendour of the scenery, the completeness of the staging,
and the brilliant dancing of Mdlle. Taglioni in the
scene of the resuscitated nuns, constituted its principal
attractions. But before long the score was understood
and the music universally admired. Those who had
heard it once wished to hear it again ; and the more
the work was listened to the more it was applauded.
Dr. Véron is probably right when he declares that “at
no epoch do the annals of the stage record such a
success.”
The legend of Robert le Diable has been so much
altered and has received such numerous additions at
the hands of Scribe, that only the merest traces of the
original story are to be found in the libretto pre-
pared ostensibly on that subject for Meyerbeer. The
176
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
historian, however, quoted by Schéeible in Das Kloster,
who records the doings of Robert le Diable, disposes of
his own statements, one by the other, when he tells us
that Robert, Duke of Normandy, was born in 763, and
that he was the son of Charlemagne. After that we
are not much astonished to find him stating that
Robert, who is chiefly known to Englishmen as William
the Conqueror's father, was by his mother's vow made
over to the devil before he was born; that he was
endowed with the power of assuming the forms of
beasts; that he was in the habit of flying in the air
supported by his familiar spirit; and that his famulus
ended by dropping him, when, falling on a tree, he
went to pieces. It is also related of Robert that he
made a pilgrimage to Rome with the view of interest-
ing the Pope in his case and getting the curse under
which he suffered removed; and, like all these
magicians, he once fell in love with a princess.
At Meyerbeer's request Scribe had made Robert and
his familiar spirit the principal personages in a work
which was originally intended for the Opéra Comique,
and which, like Der Freyschütz, evidently its model,
contained in its first shape spoken dialogue and no
ballet. When it was afterwards taken to the Académie
MEYERBEER'S “ROBERT LE DIABLE.”
177
a. new or at least an extended form was given to it.
The spoken dialogue was put into recitative, and almost
an entire act of ballet was introduced. The added
spectacular scenes may well have spoilt the character
of the work, which is disconnected and extravagant
as now presented. Scribe, however, had endeavoured
to treat his subject as such subjects are treated in
mediæval legends of the same description. Bertram,
with a certain likeness to Caspar, bears a greater re-
semblance to Mephistopheles; and the librettist has not
forgotten that in the popular tale Robert was already
before his birth looked upon as a child of the devil.
Bertram in fact is his father. Robert makes journeys,
becomes enamoured of a princess, and is saved by Alice,
his good angel-much as in some half dozen legends
the man who has made himself over to the devil is
saved by the favour of the Holy Virgin. Analyse it,
and good legendary elements are to be found in Scribe's
Robert le Diable ; but in their artificial combination
they no more make a genuine legend than certain
chemical powders which mixed together effervesce,
produce natural mineral water.
CHAPTER XII.
VICTOR HUGO'S “HERNANI.”
“ HERNANI” was the third of Victor Hugo's plays,
but the first that was represented. Cromwell, published
in 1827, and known to this day chiefly by its preface,
was never produced on the stage. Marion Delorme
begun and finished during the month of June, 1829,
was interdicted by the censorship of Charles X., and
indeed by Charles X. himself, with whom Victor Hugo
had a personal interview on the subject. The picture
of Louis XIII.'s reign was not agreeable to bis
descendant; and the last of the Bourbon kings is
said to have been particularly annoyed at the
omnipotent part assigned in Victor Hugo's drama to
the great cardinal.
Baron Taylor, director of the Théâtre Français, had
expressed to Victor Hugo his regret at being unable to
was
VICTOR HUGO'S “HERNANI."
179
produce Marion Delorme; and he told the young poet
that he had nothing to bring out in place of it.
“When did you mean to play it ?” asked Hugo.
“In January or February," was the reply.
“Perhaps then something can be managed. We are
now," he calculated, “at the beginning of August.
Come to me on the 1st of October.”
On the 1st of October Baron Taylor duly arrived ;
when Victor Hugo, taking a manuscript from his drawer,
handed him Hernani. He had begun writing the work
on the 17th of September, and had finished it on the
25th of the same month. It had occupied him just eight
days-three days less than Marion Delorme. Dumas,
who mentions these facts in his Memoirs, adds that
both pieces were planned in the poet's mind before
- he put a line of either on paper.
As the scene of Hernani was laid in Spain, neither
the censorship nor the king himself could bring against
the work such objections as had been raised in the case
of Marion Delorme. On other grounds, however, the
piece, after it had been accepted unanimously by the
reading committee of the Théâtre Français, was
condemned in the strongest terms—even while its
performance was recommended-by the censorship
N 2
180
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
committee, consisting of Baron Trouvé, superintendent
of the theatres, and the commissaries, Brifaut, Chéron,
Laya, and Sauvo. The report of these gentlemen,
justly described by M. Alfred Barbon in his Victor
Hugo et son Temps, as a “ monument of folly," concluded
as follows:
“However much we 'might extend our analysis it
could only give an imperfect idea of Hernani ; of the
eccentricity of its conception and the faults of its
execution. It seems to us a tissue of extravagances,
to which the author has vainly endeavoured to give
a character of elevation, but which are only trivial and
often vulgar. This piece abounds in unbecoming
thoughts of every kind. The king expresses himself
like a bandit, the bandit treats the king like a brigand.
The daughter of a grandee of Spain is a shameless
woman, without dignity or modesty. Nevertheless,
in spite of so many capital faults, we are of opinion
that not only would there be nothing injudicious in
authorising the representation of this piece, but that
it would be wise policy not to cut out a single word.
It is well that the public should see what point of
wildness the human mind may reach when it is freed
from all rule and all propriety."
VICTOR HUGO's “HERNANI."
181
In spite, however, of the too ingenious suggestion
that the piece should be played precisely as written
so that it might more surely be damned, a few
changes were afterwards recommended, such as the
suppression or alteration of certain strong expressions
addressed to the king. There was no question, how-
ever, of suppressing the piece as a whole. Hernani,
then, was put in rehearsal; and Alexandre Dumas
has told us in his Memoirs of the difficulties which
Victor Hugo had now to eucounter on the part of
Mlle. Mars, to whom the part of Doña Sol had been
assigned. Mlle. Mars at the first rehearsal came
forward to the footlights, and placing her hand over
her eyes looked towards that portion of the stalls
where she knew the author was sitting,
“ M. Hugo," she said; “is M. Hugo there?”
"I am here, madam," replied Hugo, getting up.
“Ah, very well. Thank you. Tell me now, M.
Hugo "
“Madam—"
“I have this verse to say:
«
Vous êtes mon lion, superbe et généreux.'”
182
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
“Yes, madam. Hernani says to you:
6. Hélas ! j'aime pourtant d'une amour bien profonde.
Ne pleure pas . . . mourons plutôt! que n'ai je un monile,
Jo te le donnerais !–je suis bien malheureux !'
and you reply to him :
""Vous êtes mon lion, superbe et généreux !?”
1
“ Do you like that, M. Hugo ?”
“What?”
«« Vous êtes mon lion:""
“I wrote it, madam, so I must have thought it was
right.”
“ Then you are attached to it—to your lion?”
“I am attached to it, and I am not attached to it,
madam. Suggest something better, and I will
adopt it.”
“It is not for me to make any suggestion. I am
not the author.”
“Well then, madam, in that case let us leave it
as it is written.”
“The fact is it seems to me so odd to call M. Firmin
mon lion."
“Yes, because in playing the part of Doña Sol,
you wish to remain Mlle. Mars. If you were really
. VICTOR HUGO'S “HERNANI."
183
the ward of Ruy Gomez de Silva, that is to say, a
noble Castilian lady of the 16th century, you would
not see in Hernani M. Firmin, but one of those
terrible leaders of bands who made Charles V. tremble
even in his capital. Then you would understand that
such a woman may call such a man her lion, and it
would seem to you less odd."
“Very well. If you are attached to your lion let
us say no more about it. I am here to say what is
written. Mon lion is in the manuscript, and I shall
say mon lion. Mon Dieu ! it's all the same to me
Come, Firmin-
PS
sal
me
“Vous êtes mon lion, superbe et généreux.'”
And the rehearsal went on. Only the next day
when she reached the same place, Mlle. Mars stopped
as on the day before, placed her hand over her eyes,
and, as on the day before, pretended to be looking
for the author.
“M. Hugo," she said, with her dry, clear voice—the
voice of Mlle. Mars and not that of Célimène—“is
M. Hugo there ?”
"I am here, madam," replied Hugo with the
same placidity.
184
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
“Ah, so much the better. I am very glad you
are there."
“Madam, I had the honour to present my respects
to you before the rehearsal.”
“Very true. Well, have you reflected ?"
“On what, madam ?"
"On what I said to you yesterday.”
“You did me the honour, madam, yesterday, to say
many things.”
“Yes, quite right. But I want to speak to you
about that famous hemistich.”
“ Which one ?"
“Good heavens, you know which !”
"I assure you not, madam. You make so many
good and just observations that I don't know which
you refer to.”
“I mean the hemistich of the lion."
“Oh, yes— Vous êtes mon lion. I remember.”
“Well, have you thought of another hemistich ?”
“I must confess, madam, that I have not tried to
do so."
“ You do not think this hemistich dangerous,
then ?”
“What do you mean by dangerous'?”!
1
VICTOR HUGO'S “HERNANI."
185
"I call dangerous what may be hissed.”
"I have never entertained any ambition not to
be hissed."
“Yes, but the less hissing the better.”
“You think, then, that the hemistich of the lion
will be hissed ?”
"I am sure of it.”
“Then, madam, you will fail to say it with your
habitual talent.” .
“I shall say it as well as I can. Nevertheless, I
should prefer—_”
“What?"
“ To say something different.”
“What?”
“Well, something different."
“What?”
“Say for instance”—and here Mlle. Mars affected
to seek an expression wbich for the last three days.
she had been muttering between her teeth—“say for
instance-well-well-
.
CC
w.Vous êtes mon seigneur, superbe et généreux.'
Does not mon seigneur' suit the verse as well as
mon lion ?'”
186
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
“Yes, madam. Only 'mon lion' raises the verse,
while 'mon signeur' flattens it. I would rather be
hissed for a good verse than applauded for a bad one."
“Well, well, don't let us be angry. Your "good
verse' shall be said without any alteration. Come,
Firmin, mon ami, let us go on,
"
Vous êtes mon lion, superbe et généreux.”
Of course, on the night of the first performance
Mlle. Mars, instead of saying “ Vous êtes mon lion” said
“ Vous êtes mon seigneur." The verse was neither ap-
plauded nor hissed. It was no longer worth noticing.
A little further on the king surprises Hernani and
Doña Sol in one another's arms in a room, the door
of which is masked by a picture. Then begins the
famous scene known as the scene of the portraits; a
scene of seventy-six verses which passes between Don
Carlos and Ruy Gomez; a scene in which Doña Sol
listens dumb and motionless like a statue; a scene in
which she takes no part until the king wishes to
have the duke arrested, when, tearing off her veil
and throwing herself between the duke and the guards,
she cries out-
SCE
“ Roi Don Carlos, vous êtes
Un mauvais roi!”
.
VICTOR HUGO'S “HERNANI.”'
187
What was poor Doña Sol to do with herself during
these seventy-six verses ? One day she resolved to
have an explanation on the subject with the author.
Advancing to the footlights in her usual style, she
asked whether the author was in the stalls.
“You are there, M. Hugo ?”
“Yes, madam."
“Well, I want you to render me a service.”
“With great pleasure. What is it?”
"I want you to tell me what to do."
“ When ?”
“Why while M. Michelot and M. Joanny are talking
together.”
“You listen, madam.”
“Yes, I listen. . I understand that. Only it seems
to me that I listen rather a long time." .
“You know that the scene was much longer, and
that I have shortened it by some twenty verses.”
“Well, could you not shorten it still further by cutting
out twenty more ?"
“ Impossible, madam.”
“Or at least so arrange matters that I may take
part in it?”
“But you do take part in it by your very presence.
188
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
The life of the man you love is at stake, and it seems
to me that the situation is strong enough for you to
wait impatiently but silently for the result.”
“It is long, all the same.”
“I don't think so, madam.”
“Very well, let us say no more about it. But the
public will certainly say "What is Mlle. Mars about
with her hand on her breast? It was scarcely worth
while to give her the part to make her stand with
a veil over her eyes and without speaking during half
an act.?"
“The public will say that beneath the hand, not of
Mlle. Mars but of Doña Sol, her heart beats, and that
beneath the veil, not of Mlle. Mars but of Doña Sol,
her face reddens with hope or grows pale with terror;
that during the silence, not of Mlle. Mars but of Doña
Sol, the woman who loves Hernani is collecting in her
heart the storm which bursts with these words, scarcely
respectful from a subject to her sovereign :
" Roi Don Carlos, vous êtes
Un mauvais rqi;'
and, believe me, madam, that will be enough for the
public."
VICTOR HUGO'S “HERNANI.”
189
“ If that is your idea, so be it. It is really very good
of me to trouble myself about the matter. If there is
any hissing during the scene, I at least shall not be
hissed, for I have not a word to say. Come, Michelot,
come, Johanny, let us go on:
" "Roi Don Carlos, vous êtes
Un mauvais roi!'
Now you are satisfied-are you not, M. Hugo ?”
“Quite satisfied, madam” and with his imperturb-
able serenity, says Dumas, Hugo bowed and sat down
again.
The next day Mlle. Mars stopped the rehearsal at
the same place, advanced to the footlights, placed her
hand before her eyes, and in the same voice as the day
before said : “Is M. Hugo there?”
“I am here, madam.”
“Well, have you thought of anything for me
to say ?"
“Where ?"
“You know well enough-in the famous scene where
these gentlemen have one hundred and fifty verses
while I look at them and hold my tongue. I know
they are charming to look at; but one hundred and
fifty verses are a good many."
190
TT
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
“In the first place, madam, there are not a hundred
and fifty verses in the scene. There are only seventy-
six-I have counted them. Secondly, I never promised
to give you something to say. On the contrary, I
endeavoured to prove to you that your silence and your
motionless attitude, from which you depart by a
terrible burst of indignation, constituted one of the
chief beauties of the scene."
“Beauties? Beauties? I am very much afraid
that the public will not be of your opinion.”
“We shall see.”
“Yes—but it will be rather late when you have
seen. You wish, then, very decidedly not to let me
say a word during the whole scene?”
“That is my desire."
“ It is all the same to me. I will go to the back of
the stage and let these gentlemen talk of their affairs
in front.”
“You will go to the back of the stage if you like,
madam. Only, as the affairs of which they speak are
as much yours as theirs, you will commit an absurdity.
When you are ready, madam, we will go on with the
rehearsal.”
And the rehearsal continued. But every day there
VICTOR HUGO's “ HERNANI."
191
was some interruption in the style of those which have
been already mentioned. “This was," says Dumas,
“extremely annoying to Hugo, who, still new to the
stage, had thought the most difficult thing was to
create the piece and the most wearying to work it out,
but who now perceived that all this was delight com-
pared to the rehearsals.”
When the rehearsal was over Hugo went on to the
stage and said to Mlle. Mars that he would be glad
to have a few words with her; and without much
preface he begged her to give up the part of Doña
Sol. The great actress could scarcely believe he was
in earnest. When she found such was the case she
promised, if she might be allowed to keep it, to carry
out in every respect the author's wishes. Her soul,
however, still rebelled against the poet's “mon lion,"
for which, as before mentioned, she substituted at the
performance the familiar “mon seigneur" of the French
classical dramatists.
If Alexandre Dumas has given the best, if not the
only, account of the rehearsal of Hernani, we must for
a description of the first representation turn to the
famous one written by Théophile Gautier in his Histoire
du Romantisme. The battle which took place on this
192
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
PER
nans
occasion has, like the battles of Marengo and Austerlitz,
of Leipsic and Waterloo, been described again and
again ; and Théophile Gautier alone has written four
different accounts of it, three of which are to be found
in his collected feuilletons (Histoire du Théâtre, &c.),
and the fourth in the work specially devoted to the early
struggles of the romantic school in France. The fight
was not only between romanticists and classicists, but
also between youth and old age. By some curious acci-
dent no middle-aged man seems to have been present.
According to the most authentic records of the fray,
juvenile extravagance and recklessness fought on
one side, senile formality and respectability on the
other. The young romanticists shocked their enemies
by the audacious cut, the flagrant colour of their
garments; while the aged classicists horrified their
foes by their sombre attire and their denuded skulls.
The first rows of stalls were, according to one historian,
“ paved with academical bald heads:” as though
pale death did not equally strike at the short,
straight hair of classicists and the luxuriant curls of
romanticists:
“Pauperum capillos, regumque crines ! ”
VICTOR HUGO's “HERNANI.”
193
“For this generation,” says Gautier, “ Hernani has
been what the Cid was for the contemporaries of
Corneille.” But we must renounce all idea of trans-
lating Théophile Gautier. His picturesque language
defies reproduction in another tongue. Let him
therefore speak for himself:
“ Tout ce qui était jeune, vaillant, amoureux,
poétique, en reçut le souffle. Ces belles exagéra-
tions héroïques et castillanes, cette superbe emphase
espagnole, ce langage, si fier et si hautain dans sa
familiarité, ces images d'une étrangeté éblouissante,
nous jetaient comme en extase et nous enivraient
de leur poésie capiteuse. Le charme dure encore
ď Hernani a fait des pièces aussi belles, plus complètes
et plus dramatiques que celle-là peut-être; mais
nulle n'exerça sur nous, une pareille fascination.”
A classicist whom history does not name is ac-
cused of having concealed himself in the theatre
during the rehearsal, with the view of "stealing and
disfiguring” such of the lines as he might be able
to remember. Possibly this unhappy man (whose
life was spared) wished only to show himself better
informed than other people in regard to a work
194
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
which was to occupy the attention of “all Paris," and
which, strangely enough, was burlesqued at the
Vaudeville several days before it was produced in
its original form at the Théâtre Français.
· The demand for places was something quite
unexampled ; and among the applicants were Thiers
and Benjamin Constant, who, to judge from their
writings, must be supposed to have ranged them-
selves more or less decidedly on the classical
side. The band of romanticists was under the
direction of Gérard de Nerval, author of the
delightful Voyage en Orient, translator of Faust,
and Heine's coadjutor in the French prose trans-
lation of the Book of Songs. Before the day
of battle Gérard de Nerval visited the officers
who were to act under him, among whom may
be mentioned Balzac, the first of French novelists,
if not the first novelist of the world; that Wagner
of the past, Hector Berlioz; Auguste Maquet, the
dramatist; Joseph Bouchardy, the melodramatist, to-
gether with Alexandre Dumas, historian of the re-
hearsals of Hernani and Théophile Gautier, chronicler
in more than one place of its first representation.
Nerval distributed among his trusted confederates
VICTOR HUGO'S “HERNANI."
195
tickets of admission in the form of squares of red
paper, in the corner of which was stamped the
Spanish word “Hierro," signifying iron. That Théo-
phile Gautier had a red waistcoast made for the
occasion is sufficiently well known. Those who wish
for particulars on the subject of this famous gar-
ment will find them in one of the best-known chapters
of the Histoire du Romantisme: “La legende du gilet
rouge.” This poet of nineteen summers had decided
that it would not be becoming to appear on such
an occasion in the costume of a bourgeois ; and he
entertained a personal liking for red, “ that noble
colour which is at once blood, life, light, heat, and
which harmonises so well with gold and with
marble.”
The celebrated waistcoat was, after many protests,
made by Gautier's tailor on a pattern cut by
Gautier himself; and it is interesting to know that
it was fastened at the back with hooks and eyes.
The rest of Gautier's costume consisted of pale
green trousers with a violet stripe down the side,
a black coat with deep velvet facings, and a
loose grey overcoat lined with green satin. A
riband of moire encircled his manly neck, and
02
196
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
did duty at once for shirt-collar and cravat. “Who-
ever knows the French character," says Théophile
Gautier (who must here, well or ill, be turned into
English), “ will admit that to appear in a theatre
where is assembled what people call 'all Paris' with
hair as long as that of Albert Dürer, and a waistcoat
as red as the muletta of an Andalusian torero,
requires quite another courage and another force of
soul than to advance to the assault of a redoubt
bristling with cannons vomiting forth death. For in
every war a number of brave fellows without solici-
tation execute these easy acts of prowess, whereas up
to the present time only one Frenchman has been
found capable of exhibiting on his breast a piece
of stuff of so unfamiliar, so aggressive, so startling
a hue."
The costumes of the other supporters of Hernani
were scarcely less eccentric than that of Gautier
himself. These also have been described in a
feuilleton by the inventor and wearer of the red
waistcoat; and some idea of them is conveyed
by the picture which, in the illustrated edition
of Jérome Paturot, represents the tumult which
accompanied the first performance of Hernani.
VICTOR HUGO'S “ HERNANI."
197
as
Frogged coats and velvet jackets, fur collars, satin
sleeves, Spanish cloaks, Tyrolese hats were among the
distinguishing signs of romanticism, according as the
wearers wished to resemble revolutionary heroes or
figures from the paintings of Reubens, Rembrandt,
Titian, or Velasquez. Their hair was terribly long,
and many of them wore their beard—at a time
when it was considered unbecoming for a civilian
to wear moustaches or even whiskers. A writer
bearing the droll name of Philothée O'Neddy, called
the long-haired, grotesquely-attired defenders of
romanticism “ brigands de la pensée ; ” while Théo-
phile Gautier declared himself eager to attack
“ l'hydre du perruquinisme."
It had been arranged that the bearers of red tickets
should be admitted to the Théâtre Français by a
private door at two o'clock in the afternoon; and the
knights of romanticism marched to their camping
ground in procession. As they approached the theatre
projectiles of the most disagreeable kind, including
rotten vegetables, were thrown at them. Balzac was
struck in the face. But it was considered best to sup-
port the attack in silence; for if a battle had taken
place in the street, the police would have interfered and
198
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
there would have been no contest within the walls of
the Théâtre Français. Hissed by the classicists, and
with no romanticists to support it there is no saying
what, in such a case, the fate of the piece might not
have been. Who, moreover, it was asked, when the
trumpet of battle has sounded, thinks of giving a kick
to a barking dog ?
“At two o'clock the doors were opened and the band
of romanticists entered the theatre, which was forthwith
searched in view of hostile classicists who, it was
fancied, might be found lying hid in dark corners,
ready to rise and hiss as soon as the curtain should
go up. No classicists, however, were discovered. The
performance would not begin for some six or seven
hours. Meanwhile the young romanticists, who had
brought with them ham, sausages, hard eggs, and
bottles of wine, had a sufficiently lively time; eating,
drinking, singing songs, and discussing the beauties of
the piece they had come to applaud. Victor Hugo
had intended originally to call it Three to One.
Castilian Honour had also been suggested. But the
general opinion of those consulted was in favour of
Hernani, the title under which the work is invariably
played, though in the first printed edition it is entitled
VICTOR HUGO'S “HERNANI.”
199
Hernani ; or, Castilian Honour. Hernani, as the young
Hugoites reminded one another, was the name of a
Spanish village near the French frontier which had
struck the imagination of the poet when, as a child,
he passed through it on his return from Spain to
France.
Some of Victor Hugo's most intimate friends knew
by heart long passages from the play about to be
performed; and these were recited and repeated from
mouth to mouth during the long interval which
separated the improvised picnic in the pit from the
rising of the curtain and the presentation of Hernani
on the stage.
The chandelier was lighted; and now, before the
curtain went up, the drama of the evening began in the
audience department.
As soon as the doors of the theatre were opened the
band of romanticists turned their eyes towards the in-
comers, and if, among them, a pretty woman appeared,
her arrival was greeted with a burst of applause. These
marks of approbation were not bestowed on rich
toilettes and dazzling jewellery. They were reserved
for beauty in its simplest manifestations.
Thus no one was received with so much enthusiasm
200
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
C.
.
as Mlle. Delphine Gay, afterwards Mme. de Girardin,
who, in a white muslin dress, relieved by a blue scarf,
wore no ornaments whatever. The cost of this unpre-
tending costume is recorded in the literary annals of the
time. Mlle. Gay assured the Duke de Montmorency
the morning after the representation that she had not
spent on her dress more than twenty-eight francs.
Now arrived the classicists, thanks to whose bald
heads the stalls were forthwith “paved.” “The agitated
crowd,” says M. Barbon, in his Victor Hugo et son Temps
"murmured and growled. The two armies found them-
selves face to face-indeed as has well been said, two
civilisations. The adversaries, with angry looks and
with rage in their hearts, measured one another, and
exchanged insults. Gautier's red waistcoat attracted
all eyes and excited strange murmurs. The young
romanticist, erect in the pit, smiled with disdain and
shrugged his shoulders; ready, if necessary, to reply by
a blow with his fist to any direct provocation. Endowed
with prodigious force, he only awaited the opportunity
of treating the Philistines as Samson treated them.”
The storm was about to burst, when suddenly the
three traditional knocks were heard and the curtain
rose. But scarcely had the aged Dona Josefa Duarte
VICTOR HUGO's “ HERNANI.”
201
exclaimed, as she listened for the signal which the
gallant expected by her mistress was to make :
“Serait-ce déja lui ? C'est bien à l'escalier.
Dérobé—”
than the battle at once began. The adjective
attached to the substantive escalier had been torn from
it to be cast into the succeeding line. This species of
enjambement was regarded by the classicists not merely
as an error but as an impertinence.
“The orgie is beginning," said some one. “They
are breaking up the verses and throwing the pieces
out of window.”
This observation, attributed to a classicist, seems by
its picturesqueness and its exaggeration well worthy of
the school he was opposing. “A pupil of Deveria, with
a complexion as tawny as Cordova leather, and hair as
thick and red as that of Giorgione," pointed out that
“the word dérobé, thrown over, and as if suspended
outside the verse, painted admirably the staircase of
love and mystery, thrusting its spiral through the walls
of the manor-house. What marvellous architectonic
science, what feeling for the art of the sixteenth
century! What profound comprehension of an entire
civilisation! It would be difficult, so Théophile
TTT
202
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
Gautier assures us, to understand in the present day
the rage with which such a hemistich as,
. “Est-il minuit?"
"Minuit bientôt."
was attacked and defended on either side. The
classicists thought it trivial, familiar, unbecoming that
a king should ask what o'clock it was, like an ordinary
citizen, and that he should be told, like a common
peasant, that it was nearly midnight. If a dignified
periphrase had been employed, if his Majesty for
example had been informed that the hand of Time
was about to reach its last resting-place, the classicists
might have approved. But a direct question followed
by a direct answer was too much for them, and they
would not stand it. If they objected to plain language,
they were equally indisposed to tolerate descriptive
epithets, metaphors, comparisons, poetical expressions,
in short—"le lyrisme pour tout dire” (once more to
quote Théophile Gautier in the original): “ces échappées
rapides vers la nature, ces élans de l'âme au dessus de
la situation, ces ouvertures de la poésie à travers le
drame, si fréquentes dans Shakespeare, Calderon et
Goethe, si rares chez nos grands auteurs du dix-septième
siècle."
VICTOR HUGO's “HERNANI."
203
Hernani's exclamation at the end of the first act
" De ta suite—j'en suis," was the signal for an outburst
of enthusiasm on the part of Hugo's ardent followers.
The Hugoites did not form a compact body, but
occupied different parts of the pit and stalls in groups.
They were easily recognisable by their sometimes
picturesque, sometimes nothing less than grotesque,
costumes, and by their defiant air.
The goodwill of the combatants on both sides was
sufficiently shown by the readiness with which they
did battle in support or in attack of words which could
not have been spoken, since they did not belong to
the piece.
Thus, in the scene where Ruy Gomez, on the point
of marrying Doña Sol, entrusts her to Don Carlos
Hernani exclaims to the former : “ Vieilard stupide ! .
il l'aime.” M. Parseval de Grandmaison, a rigid clas-
sicist, but rather hard of hearing, thought Hernani
had said: “ Vieil cos de pique ! il l'aime."
“This is too much !” groaned M. Parseval.
“What do you say?” replied Lassailly, who was
sitting next him in the stalls, and who had only heard
his neighbour's interruption.
"I say, sir, that it is not permissible to call a
204
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
venerable old man like Ruy Gomez de Silva, 'old ace:
of spades.'"
“He has a perfect right to do so; cards had been
invented. Cards were invented under Charles VI.,
M. l'Académicien. If you do not know that I must
teach you. Bravo for · Vieil as de pique !' Bravo
Hugo!”
At the end of the fourth act a publisher, M. Mame,
begged Victor Hugo to come outside into the street
to speak to him for a few minutes. He proposed to
buy the copyright of the piece for 6,000 francs. The
bargain was struck, and the money paid forthwith in
a tobacco-shop; and it was needed, for Victor Hugo,
who has himself told this anecdote, only possessed
at the time some fifty francs. The poet, with his
2401. in his pocket, returned to the theatre; and
according to Victor Hugo himself, “it would be
impossible without having seen her to form an idea
of the effect produced by the great actress in the part
of Doña Sol, to which she gave an immense develop-
ment, going in a few minutes through the whole
gamut of her talent, from the graceful to the sublime,
and from the sublime to the pathetic.” Mlle. Mars, how-
ever, had been unable to reconcile herself to the words,
VICTOR HUGO's “HERNANI."
205
OC
“ Mon lion," and had carried out her idea, as expressed
at the first rehearsal, of calling M. Firmin, “ Mon-
seigneur.” 1
Théophile Gautier assures us, that Mlle. Mars
“could only lend to the proud and passionate Doña
Sol a sober and refined talent, preoccupied with con-
siderations of propriety more suited, for the rest, to
comedy than to drama. With the exception of old
Johanny, the actors who created the parts were not in
sympathy with the new style, and played, loyally no
doubt, but without much conviction. Firmin gave to
Hernani that feverish trepidation which with him
simulated warmth ; Michelot was a somewhat mediocre
Don Carlos, whose diction was embarrassed by the
forms of the modern verse. . . . Johanny alone realised
the idea of Ruy Gomez de Silva. He was delighted
with the part, and believed in it absolutely. His
hand mutilated in action gave him the air of a hero
in retirement, and he delivered superbly this verse :
SS
“Ressaye à soixante ans ton harnois de bataille !”
In spite of the constant hisses, mingled with over-
powering applause, which every night the piece called
forth, Hernani was a decided success. It occupied
206
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
the bill for many weeks, and brought in brilliant
receipts. The piece was attacked violently in the
press, the Journal des Débats being the only one of
the daily papers which defended it. Théophile Gautier,
then but nineteen years of age, had not yet begun
to write feuilletons. Neither he, nor Gérard de Nerval,
nor Dumas, had any journal open to them; and the
criticism of the period was almost entirely on the
side of the traditional, the conventional, and what
was falsely called the classical. The only adverse
article to which Victor Hugo seems to have replied
was the one published by Armand Carrel. In his letter
the poet dwelt on the strange pretensions of the so-
called classicists of 1830, to which Armand Carrel
replied: "I am for the classics, it is true; but the
classics whom I do nayself the honour of acknowledging
as such died a long time ago.”
The literary war assumed such importance that
it divided public attention with the accession to
power of the Polignac ministry ; soon to be followed
by the Revolution of July. In the provinces Her-
nani caused the same disturbances which its first
representation had provoked at Paris; and which, it
must be added, were called forth by many of the
VICTOR HUGO's “ HERNANI.”
207
succeeding representations. At one of the provincial
theatres a dispute during the performance led to a duel,
in which one of the combatants was killed.
Victor Hugo received a number of anonymous letters
full of insults, and threatening him even with death.
His friends, taking a serious view of these menaces,
used to wait for him at the doors of the theatre
and escort bim home, when the performance was
at an end.
It has been already mentioned that a burlesque of
Hernani was played before the work parodied was
brought out. After its production it was travestied
under many different titles such as: Hernani ou
la contrainte par cor; N. 1. Ni ou le danger des
Castilles ; and Fanfan le troubadour à la représentation
d'Hernani.
. “Hernani,” says Paul de Saint-Victor,“planted for the
first time on our stage, as on the breach of a place
taken by assault, the standard of liberty in art.
What the Cid was for the old theatre, Hernani was
for the new—a revolution and a revival. When it
appeared, in 1830, the poet was to upset the false
classical tragedy which Corneille had made in marble
and which, from Campistron to M. de Jouy, his
W
-
a.
208
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
successors had made in plaster. Hernani sounded
the horn as Joshua the trumpet, and the three unities
crumbled to dust. An army of original and living
personages, violent and superb, fantastic and lyrical,
of strange demeanour and picturesque attire, came from
all points of history to encamp on the place where
abstract kings had been relating to their doubles
colourless dreams.... What this great literary
reformer destroyed and wished to destroy was second-
hand, furbished up tragedy; conventional, commonplace
comedy; and rhetoric-aping eloquence.
“The romanticists,” he adds, “have been compared
to the barbarians. They might accept the comparison.
Where the horse of Attila passed grass ceased to
grow. Where the drama of Victor Hugo has passed
the sorry thistles, the artificial flowers of the false
classical style, have grown no more."
The likening of Victor Hugo to Attila, and grass
to artificial flowers, is quoted less in genuine admiration
than with the view of showing to what grotesque
similitudes even such a writer as Paul de Saint-Victor
may be led by an exaggerated passion for picturesque
comparisons.
From the various enthusiastic descriptions of the
VICTOR HUGO'S "HERNANI.”
209
first representation of Hernani let us turn to the
satirical account given by Jérome Paturot in Louis
Reybaud's well-known story
“I was just speaking of the first representation of
Hernani. There we were really admirable ! Never
was a pitched battle conducted with more regularity
or gained with more vigour. You should have seen
our hair! It made us look like a flock of lions.
Excited to such a pitch we might have committed a
crime ; Heaven did not wish it. But how the piece was
received ! What shouts, what bravos, what stamping!
The benches of the Comédie Française recollected it
for the next three years. In our state of effervescence
we ought to be thanked for not having demolished
the house. All notion of right, all respect for property
seemed extinguished in our souls. From the very
first scene it was I who gave the signal on these two
verses being delivered :
“* Et reçoit tous les jours, malgré les envieux,
Le jeune amant sans barbe à la barbe du vieux.'
“From this moment to the fall of the curtain there
was a continuous roll of applause. When Charles V.
called out:-
"«Croyez-vous donc qu'on soit si bien dans cette armoire ?'
LOW
se.
210
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
the house could contain itself no longer. It was
carried away by the scene of the pictures, and the
scene of the monologue finished it all. If the drama
had been in six acts we should have fallen down
asphyxiated. The author was discreet, and we escaped
with a few spinal affections."
CHAPTER XIII.
DUMAS THE YOUNGER'S “DAME AUX CAMÉLIAS."
THE first representation of La Dame aux Camélias
is less remarkable for what took place on the occasion,
than for the articles it called forth not only on the play,
and on the novel by the same author from which the
play was derived, but on the unhappy young woman
whom Dumas Fils, as he was then called, had taken
for his heroine. The production, too, of the Dame aux
Camélias had the noteworthy effect of calling forth, in
dramatic form, replies, rejoinders, and surrejoinders to
the argument which was supposed to underlie the
work.
The play, which was soon to become celebrated
throughout France, and in its operatic form with
music by Verdi throughout Europe, was not produced
without serious objections on the part of the censor-
P 2
212
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
Dulue
LI
ship; and it was only through the intercession of the
Duc de Morny that permission to represent La Dame
aux Camélias was at last obtained.
Little did the Jesuit Camelli, when he brought
from Japan the flower which was to bear a name
derived from his own; little did he think of what class
of women this flower—Camellia Parisiana–would one
day become the recognised symbol. It is without fra-
grance; for which reason, in its outward and inward
significance, it was habitually worn by the fair one
without reputation to whom the name of Dame aux.
Camélias was so appropriately given.
The not very healthy work, and the feverish life
closed by premature death of the beautiful sinner
whose fate and fortune had inspired it, were treated at
length by Jules Janin, Théophile Gautier, Paul de
Saint-Victor, Nestor Roqueplan, and other authors
and journalists of the day; and to show that light-
minded Frenchmen were not alone capable of being
moved by the tragic end of the fascinating Marie
Duplessis, it may be mentioned that our own Charles
Dickens was as much touched by it as the numerous
French writers who more or less perfectly have put,
their feelings on the subject into literary form.
DUMAS'S “DAME AUX CAMÉLIAS."
213
“Not many days after I left," writes Mr. Forster in
his Life of Dickens, 1 under date of 1847, “all Paris
was crowding to the sale of a lady of the demi-monde,
Marie Duplessis, who had led the most brilliant and
abandoned of lives, and left behind her the most
exquisite furniture, and the most voluptuous and
sumptuous bijouterie. Dickens wished at one time to
have pointed the moral of this life and death, of which
there was great talk in Paris while we were together.
The disease of satiety, which only less often than
hunger passes for a broken heart, had killed her.
• What do you want ?' asked the most famous of the
Paris physicians, at a loss for her exact complaint.
At last she answered : ‘To see my mother. She was
sent for; and there came a simple Breton peasant
woman, clad in the quaint garb of her province, who
prayed by her bed until she died.” It was not, as
might be inferred from Mr. Forster's statement, the
peasant woman who died but Marie Duplessis.
Nor was it from Brittany but from Normandy that
Marie Duplessis came. Nor is it certain that her name
was Duplessis. A writer in Larousse's Dictionary,
quoting apparently from Nestor Roqueplan, but with-
1 Vol. ii. 306.
214
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
out condescending to use turned, in places where
they certainly seem needed, accuses the poor girl
of having changed her name. The considerate, gentle-
minded Théophile Gautier contents himself with
saying that by a slight alteration she “ aristocratised”
it. The writer in Larousse assures us moreover that
Marie Duplessis “lied readily," saying that “lies
whitened the teeth ;" from which he hesitatingly
infers that she was " perhaps” not the ideal character
which she has been painted. According to Jules
Janin-who, besides devoting to the first representation
a long article in the feuilleton which he published
every Monday in the Débats, had previously written a
preface to the Dame aux Camélias in its original
narrative form-Marie Duplessis had “wit, taste, and
good sense.” Paul de Saint-Victor describes her as
tall, beautiful, and rich in instinctive tastes.”
From her Norman home she came to Paris, and was
soon mixed up in the scholastic life of the Quartier
Latin. She attracted, however, the attention of a
certain duke who is said to have formed a genuine
attachment for ber, and to have aimed at directing
her life towards better things. A further change in
her existence was caused by her meeting, at some,
as
DUMAS'S “ DAME AUX CAMÉLIAS.”
215
1
German watering-place, with an old Russian diplo-
matist, old enough, it is said, to have signed the
Treaty of Tilsit, who saw in her the living image of a
lost child to whom he had been passionately devoted.
The diplomatist, described by the writers on this
subject by the initial S., adopted Marie Duplessis in
so far that, while leaving her her full liberty, he pro-
vided magnificently for her wants. She lived by
herself, and was expected only to play the part of
family portrait.
“What,” asks Théophile Gautier, in his truly admirable
feuilleton, of February 25, 1852, “what is this Dame
aux Camélias which has obtained a double success in
the form of a book and of a play? Is it a fantastic
tale, a purely poetical invention ? Alas! no. And
these few lines, written by us at the time of her death,
will throw light on this transparent mystery, and will
serve as preface to the work of the young Alexandre
Dumas, who begins his dramatic career with a triumph
worthy of his father's glory. We re-copy them, certain
that every one has forgotten them : so many things
have happened since then.
" Walking the other day on the Boulevard de la
Madeleine we saw a crowd of carriages standing in front
So mai
216
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
of a house which was placarded with large, bills. The
mob entered and went up stairs. We imitated the mob.
The furniture was being sold of Marie Duplessis who
had died of consumption a few days before, at the end
of the carnival.
“Who was this Marie Duplessis ?” many of our
male and above all our female readers will doubt-
less ask.
“ More than once, at the Italian opera, at the Grand
opera, at all the representations to which it is im-
possible to gain admittance, they will certainly have
remarked in the finest box of the theatre a young
woman of exquisite distinction, and admired that chaste
oval, those beautiful black eyes shaded by long fringes,
those eyebrows of so pure an arch, that nose so deli-
cately chiselled, that aristocratic cast of features which
points her out as a duchess to those who do not know
her. The freshness of her bouquets, the elegance of her
dress, the brilliancy of her diamonds, are quite in har-
mony with this idea. Duchess she was; but her duchy
was in Bohemia, in the country of the seven castles of
which Nodier has written the legend. ... Had she
been ugly she would not perhaps have died; she would
have remained in her village occupied with honest
I
DUMAS'S “ DAME AUX CAMÉLIAS.”
217
labour, breathing pure air, drinking unadulterated milk,
and walking in the long grass of the meadows. But
wealth seeks beauty as the magnet seeks the pole. ...
“* As I looked at her abode a sinister detail I had
heard came back to my mind. She was afraid of death,
this lovely girl; for to be dead is to be ugly and
forgotten. For three days, as she felt that she was
slipping on the edge of the gulf into which we shall
all fall, she had, to keep herself up, laid hold of
her nurse's hand. The hand that was warm, in her
hand which was cold, seemed to her a branch by which
she could hang on to life. Never would she let it go.
She quitted it, however, at last : when the pale angel
came and took her. By a last effort of youth, shudder-
ing before destruction, she raised herself straight up
as if to escape, uttered three shrieks, and fell back for
ever in her funeral clothes.
“While the idlers and the purchasers were feeling the
satin of the hangings and the wool of the mattresses, I
fancied I saw on the pink of the bed-curtain that refined,
delicate face now white as a shroud, with eyes dilated
by an unspeakable dread.
“. There were present people of all kinds, the best and
the worst, lions and Jews, lorettes and honest women,
<
<
218
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
delighted to have an opportunity of penetrating for
once into this profane interior, this paradise of for-
bidden joys. They were looking at everything with
a greedy and impatient curiosity. According to their
view everything was too fine, too rich, too elegant.
Those candelabra, fit for a king's palace, would have
burned the ceiling; this table, with feet of gilded bronze,
its marble slab garlanded with flowers and constellated
with birds, a princess might have looked at it twice before
placing her elbows on it; this furniture with plaques
of the finest porcelain, these pieces of old Sèvres, these
tender blues are out of place anywhere but in a château,
they exclaimed in chorus—and in that they were right.
But was it the dead woman's fault if no one had
given her a château ? One could see in their eyes,
when they contemplated these pretty things, that they
considered virtue ill-paid; for they did not know
what each of these splendid fancies had cost their
possessor!
“A little art and pottery relieved opportunely all
this luxuriousness. A few pastels and two charming
drawings of Vidal broke the monotony of the hangings.
On the shelves of an oak library, sculptured and worked
as by the glittering chisel of Verbruggen and Berruguete,
DUMAS'S “DAME AUX CAMÉLIAS."
219
some
magnificently bound, were noble, admirable books, the
honour of the human intellect. Cervantes, Molière,
Lesage, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, J. J. Rousseau,
Châteaubriand, Lamartine, Victor Hugo, Walter Scott,
Cooper, were represented by some masterpieces. You
also, Nouvelle Heloise, whom one cannot read without
being lost, you figured in this illustrious assembly.
She could read it! ... Manon Lescaut, too, was there
-her own story anticipated. . .
“. Severe moralists will accuse us of feeling too
tender a pity for this poor sinner, who had taken a flat
nearly opposite the Madeleine and from her window
could see, as she listened to foolish talk, the figure of
the repentant one, weeping in marble at the foot of the
Divine Master. But was all the fault hers alone? Is
there nothing in the viciousness of the idle rich to
blame? An artist, if he had known her, would have
made her his Fornarina, and would have fixed on
canvas that charming head, for ever gone. How was
it that none of those magnificent youths who en-
cumbered her boudoir with such rich caskets, such
1 The reader will remember that Rousseau, in his preface to La
Nouvelle Héloïse, warns virtuous women against reading the book ;
adding that the woman who reads a few pages of it without being
shocked is “already lost."
220
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
precious vases, had ever the idea of spreading a handful
of gold before a sculptor and making eternal in Car-
rara or Paros this beauty which was the glory and the
shame of Marie Duplessis ? At least her lost life would
have served some purpose. Phryne left a statue and
the centuries absolved her. Who among us, thanks to
Phidias or Praxiteles, has not piously worshipped some
Greek hetaira ?'
“The regret which we then expressed seems to have
been heard by the young writer, full of heart, whose
name has just been hailed with enthusiasm in the
inidst of a shower of bouquets which, this time, had not
been ordered beforehand and which women tore from
their bosoms bathed in tears. It is no cold image that
he has cut in the white stone of Pentelicus. It is a figure
which moves and breathes, which lives and suffers,
which has genuine tears in its eyes and genuine blood
in its veins. Marie Duplessis has at last the statue
we claimed for her. The poet has done the work of
the sculptor; and instead of the body we have the soul
with Mme. Doche to lend it her charming form.".
La Dame aux Camélias called into existence a whole
series of pieces in which the true character of women
who had none was treated controversially with examples
DUMAS'S “DAME AUX CAMÉLIAS."
221
in support of arguments. The next subject of stage
discussion was the desirability of getting married in
certain cases where the marriage ceremony had been
dispensed with. Then in due course the rights of
natural children, and the compromising effect of such
offspring on mothers proposing to lead a new life.
Finally the divorce question produced a whole crop of
pieces, serious and comic; and it may be that the treat-
ment of this question by a succession of dramatists,
who dwelt on the misery and disgrace resulting from
marriages practically dissolved but legally indis-
soluble, had some effect in hastening the adoption of
M. Naquet's bill. The cruel position of a husband
chained to a disreputable wife and unable to set himself
free, has been shown in one of M. Sardou's most
effective pieces, which, thirty years ago, when England
also was without a divorce law, would have been as
effective in England as in France. But it was difficult
for English audiences to realise the situation; and now
that continued wedlock between husbands and wives
who hate one another is no longer enforced by law, the
difficulty for French audiences may soon be equally
great. With the passing of M. Naquet's Divorce Bill
such pieces as the Odette of M. Sardou, the Diane de
Y
222
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
Lys of M. Alexandre Dumas the younger, and the
Fiammina of M. Mario Uchard lost all significance.
When the pressure of the matrimonial knot has become
quite unbearable it is now no longer necessary either that
the wife should retire to a convent or that the husband
should get shot. The difficulty is solved by the simpler,
though less dramatic means of a divorce.
CHAPTER XIV.
"TANNHÄUSER" AT THE PARIS OPERA, 1861.
THE first performance of Tannhäuser at the Dresden
Opera, where Wagner at the time was musical con-
ductor, made much less noise than the representa-
tion of that work given at the Paris Opera House
-Académie Impériale de Musique, as it was then
called—where it was played for the first and to all
existing appearances for the last time in March, 1861.
Produced at Dresden in 1845 with Wagner's niece,
Joanna Wagner, in the part of Elizabeth, it was played
but twice. It was reproduced on other German stages.
Its reception, however, was not generally favourable,
and Wagner had yet many a year to wait before his
music was appreciated by any large portion of the
public. “The opposition to the new movement in-
augurated by Wagner made itself felt in several places,”
224
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
says Mr. Francis Hueffer, in his interesting and valu-
able volume on Wagner published in the series of The
Great Musicians. “The press especially," he con-
tinues, “ assumed that hostile position, which up till
lately it held almost without exception, and partly
yet the new dramatic language spoken by him could be
addressed only to a few sympathising friends. This
sense of isolation, combined with his daily experience
of the utter want of artistic aims and principles in the
management of the great German theatres, surrounded
him with an atmosphere of morbid discontentedness, in
which a change at any price seemed a relief, and it was
in this mood that he, although little of a politician,
joined the insurrectionary movement of 1848 and 1849
by word and deed.”
The first performance of Lohengrin, which was soon
to increase greatly the number of Wagner's admirers in
all parts of Germany, was due to his friendship with
Liszt. Towards the end of his last stay at Paris, he sat
brooding over his melancholy fate, when suddenly his
eye fell on the score of Lohengrin, which he had almost
forgotten. Suddenly he writes, in a letter on the
subject, “I felt something like compassion that this
“ TANNHÄUSER” AT THE PARIS OPERA, 1861. 225
ean
music should never sound from off the death pale
paper.” Two words I wrote to Liszt. His answer was
the news that preparations for the performance were
being made on the largest scale the limited means of
Weimar would permit. Everything that men and
circumstances could do was done in order to make the
work understood.
Lohengrin, itself successful, did much more for the
success of Wagner than Tannhäuser had done; and
when in due time the question of producing one of
Wagner's works at the French Opera House presented
itself, it seems strange in the present day that
Lohengrin was not chosen. Possibly it was feared
that the moving swan and Lohengrin's address to that
mysterious bird, would appeal too strongly to what
Victor Hugo in one of his prefaces calls the “génie
essentiellement vaudevilliste" of the French. Probably,
too, it was thought that Tannhäuser would be more
acceptable as a work in which the composer has not
broken so completely with operatic traditions as in his
later productions.
It was at the express recommendation of the Emperor
Napoleon-in fact at his command—that in 1861, soon
after the Italian war and the peace of Villafranca, a
226
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
rehearsal at the Académie Impériale de Musique. The
Emperor was said to have been moved by the Princess
Metternich, wife of the Austrian ambassador at Paris,
and one of the leading personages at the Imperial
Court.
Many different and even conflicting accounts have
been published of the production of Tannhäuser at the
Paris Opera House. Wagner, in a letter on the sub-
ject, has attached undue importance to the fact of the
ballet being introduced not towards the end of the
opera, according to the general rule, but in the first
act and even in the early part of that act. This, he
says, prevented the members of the Jockey Club from
dining at their ease, and yet reaching the theatre in time
to see what to them is in every theatrical representa-
tion the chief attraction. It is impossible, however, to
imagine the members of the Jockey Club, or indeed of
any club composed of ordinary theatre-goers taking a
delight in the ballet music of Tannhäuser ; which, good
or bad, has none of the ordinary qualities of ballet
music and is as different, for instance, from the bright,
melodious ballet music of Guillaume Tell as dulness and
distraction are from light-heartedness and joy.
S
“TANNHÄUSER” AT THE PARIS OPERA, 1861. 227
After referring to the Paris Figaro for a mundane
account of the affair, and to the Journal des Débats for a
critical view from a competent musician; after consult-
ing, moreover, letters on the subject from Berlioz and
from Prosper Mérimée, I cannot find any mention
of an organised cabal nor indeed of organised opposi-
tion in any form. The work was received with
some attempts at enthusiasm on the part of sincere
admirers—many of whom had come from Germany
specially to applaud it; with yawns from a large por-
tion of the audience, and with laughter from a few.
“ The appearance of Tannhäuser on our first lyric
scene," wrote M Joseph d'Ortigue, who was associated,
at the time, with Berlioz in the musical criticism of the
Journal des Débats, “has not, I suppose, answered the
expectation of M. Wagner and his partisans, nor even
that of his adversaries . . . We are of those who would
have desired a different reception for Tannhäuser and
its author. We reject the system. But the artist
must be honoured, who, even in the eyes of his most
determined adversaries, is a man of intelligence, con-
viction, and will, and whose talent, regarding him
simply as a composer, is vigorous, full of colour, if
not original, and wanting neither in elevation nor
228
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
depth. We should have desired, therefore, for M.
Wagner a reception at once sympathetic and respectful.
The first epithet would have been for the healthy portion
of his work, for those pieces which the author has
musician has consented to show himself simple, reason-
able, and correct, speaking the language of all the world.
The other epithet, addressed solely to the system, might
have served to show it politely to the door. But how
could any such issue be hoped for a work on whose
forehead was pompously inscribed 'complete and
radical reconstruction of art; restoration of true
melody, reform of sensation, absolute rooting out of
all received habits' ? And who could guarantee that
some unforeseen detail, a piece of germanic naïveté,
an unfortunate ritornello from à hautboy, an un-
fortunate allusion would not start the spark which, in
communicating itself in the twinkling of an eye to the
entire audience, would bring forth not claps of thunder
but, much worse, shouts of laughter-that laughter which
does not disarm but which is on the contrary the most
terrible arm since it suppresses or terminates all dis-
cussion. It was M. Wagner who was addressed, and
above all his music; but also his champions who had
“ TANNHÄUSER” AT THE PARIS OPERA, 1861, 229
come, it is said, from Germany by express train to
defend the ground, to dispute it foot by foot, to prolong
the struggle in order to render it more honourable.
How did it happen that not one of these rose up to
applaud the passages, the tirades which are after their
own heart, and that they only applauded the pieces
which we ourselves were the first to applaud ? How
did it not occur to them that they were thus giving
themselves the lie, and condemning at the same time
themselves and their patron ?”
After a long criticism, in which, with much besides,
he sets forth that far from being so original as his
partisans assert Wagner lives on the common property
of Weber, Spontini, Berlioz, and other composers in-
cluding those of Italy, M, d’Ortigue continues : “The
Emperor, France, the Opera, behaved worthily toward:
M. Wagner, and we thank them for it. But the experi-
ment has been made. Our Imperial Académie cannot
again undertake such enterprises. . . . It would be a
long and difficult task to relate the efforts, the zeal,
patience, courage, devotion, and abnegation, by which
the leading singers, the chorus singers, the orchestra,
and its excellent chief sought to arrive at an irreproach-
able execution of Tannhäuser. M. Wagner had come
230
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
to fight a battle ; all endeavoured if not by conviction,
at least by a deep and delicate feeling of duty to help
him in this struggle. Niemann sang and acted the
part of Tannhäuser with a warmth and impulse some-
times excessive. He has an extensive and powerful
voice; he should regulate and moderate it. Morelli
(Wolfram) is a very able singer. He gave much charm
and relief to many portions of his rôle, notably to the
Song of the Star.' The admirable voice of Madame
Marie Sax was magnificently displayed in the scenes
of the second and third acts, in which, moreover, she
revealed genuine dramatic talent. Cazaux represents
exceedingly well the Landgrave Hermann and Madame
Tedesco Venus—both parts beneath the talent of the
interpreters. But the orchestra is above all praise.
The greatest honours are due to it and to M. Dietsch,
the conductor."
Among those present at the production of Tannhäuser
was Prosper Mérimée, who gives in his Lettres à une
Inconnue an account of the performance which throws
no light on the character of the work or the merit of
the execution. It possesses value, however, as showing
the impression made in 1861 on a Frenchman of the
highest cultivation, who may or may not have been
“TANNHÄUSER” RIS
AT THE
OPERA, 1861. 231
AT THE PARIS capable of appreciating music. “Music,” according to
Berlioz's ingenious but somewhat incomplete definition,
is “ the art of moving intelligent persons by sequences
and conbinations of sounds.” Swift, Dr. Johnson,
Sydney Smith, Sir Walter Scott, were all men to whom
the epithet “intelligent” could scarcely be denied.
But it would have been difficult to “move ” any one of
them by such “sequences and combinations of sounds”
as in the art sense of the word constitute music.
Mérimée, in any case, describing various “ennuis”
which he has lately had to support, such as speech-
making, official dinners, religious affectation, and false
sentimentality, completes the list with Wagner's
opera. “The last ennui, but a colossal one," writes
Mérimée, “was Tannhäuser. Some say that the
representation at Paris was one of the secret
conventions of the treaty of Villafranca; others that
Wagner has been sent to us in order to force us to
admire Berlioz. As a matter of fact it is prodigious.
It seems to me that I could write to-morrow something
like it by taking inspiration from my cat walking over
the keyboard of the piano. The performance was very
curious. The Princess of Metternich took terrible
pains to make people think that she understood it, and
232
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
to start applause which would not come. Everybody
was yawning ; but at the same time every one wished
to appear to understand this riddle without an answer.
People said just under Madame de Metternich's box that
the Austrians were taking their revenge for Solferino.
People also said qu'on s'ennuie aux récitatifs et qu'on se
TANNE AUX AIRS. Try to understand. Your Arab
music would, I imagine, be a good preparation for this
infernal hubbub. The fiasco is enormous. Auber calls
it Berlioz without melody.”
As for Berlioz himself, he, the musician, wrote more
severely, more insultingly of Tannhäuser than even the
author of Carmen and Colomba. “Wagner,” he says in
a letter from Paris, dated Feb. 21st, 18611, “is turning
into goats the singers, the orchestra, and the chorus of
the opera. Nothing can be made of this Tannhäuser
music. The last general rehearsal was, it is said,
atrocious and did not finish until one in the morning.
Liszt is coming to support the charivari school. I
shall not write the article on Tannhäuser. I have
begged d’Ortigue to undertake it. That will be better
in every respect, and will disappoint them the more."
Some days latter, on the 5th of March, Berlioz writes
1 Correspondance inédite d'Hector Berlioz. Lettre 103.
“TANNHÄUSER” AT THE PARIS OPERA, 1861. 233
to the same correspondent, M. Louis Berlioz: “We
are much occupied in our musical world with the
scandal tbat will be produced by the representation of
Tannhäuser. People seem everywhere to be in a rage.
The minister came away the other day from the
rehearsal in a state of fury. The Emperor is not
pleased, and yet there are some enthusiasts of good
faith even among the French. Wagner is evidently
mad. He will die as Jullien died last year, of a brain
attack. Liszt has not come. He will not be present
at the first representation. He apparently foresees a
catastrophe. On this opera in three acts 160,000 francs
have been spent up to the present moment. However
we shall see it all on Friday. As I have already told
you I shall not write the article upon it. I shall leave
that to d'Ortigue. I wish to protest by my silence,
prepared to pronounce later on if I am forced to it."
Finally on the 14th of March, writing the morning
after the representation to Madame Massart, the eminent
pianist and professor, he says: “Ah! God of Heaven,
what a representation! What bursts of laughter! The
Parisian showed himself yesterday in quite a new light.
He laughed at bad musical style. He laughed at the
impudence of a burlesque orchestration ; he laughed
234
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
I
at the naïvetés of a hautboy. He understands at last
that there is such a thing as style in music. As for the
horrors they were hissed splendidly. ... Try never to
play better than you did last time. If you go on
making progress you will fall into the well of the
Future. Perfection is enough."
The second representation of Tannhäuser was more
unsuccessful even than the first; or to use Berlioz's
own words, was worse than the first. “People did not
laugh so much,” he continues; "they were furious and
hissed without mercy in spite of the presence of the
Emperor and the Empress who were in their box. The
Emperor was amused. As the audience went out the
unhappy Wagner was called on the staircase: “Rascal,
impostor, idiot!' If it continues, one of these days
the representation will not be finished, and the last
word will have been said. The press is unanimous for
extermination. As for me I am cruelly avenged.”
A bitter feeling quite unworthy of him manifests
itself in Berlioz's last remark. He knew, however, that
his colleague Joseph d’Ortigue had pointed out in the
account of the performance contributed to the Débats
that Tannhäuser, apart from all question of its general
merit, contained some striking pieces of unmistakable
III
" TANNHÄUSER” AT THE PARIS OPERA, 1861. 235
beauty: pieces which he himself had praised almost
with enthusiasm after hearing them at a concert given
by the composer at the Théâtre des Italiens.
“After excessive pains, enormous expense, and
numerous, but still insufficient, rehearsals," he wrote,
“Richard Wagner has succeeded in presenting some of
his compositions at the Théâtre des Italiens. Fragments
borrowed from dramatic works lose more or less from
being thus executed out of the frame intended for
them. Overtures and instrumental introductions gain
on the other hand, because they are rendered with more
pomp and brilliancy than they would be by an ordinary
opera orchestra, far less numerous and less advantage-
ously arranged than a concert orchestra. The result
of the experiment tried upon the Pasian public by
the German composer was easy to foresee. A certain
number of hearers without prejudice soon recognised
the powerful qualities of the artist and the pernicious
tendencies of his system. A greater number seemed to
recognise nothing in Wagner but violent will, and in his
music a fastidious and irritating noise.”
After a number of general remarks, Berlioz continues:
"The grand scene of Tannhäuser (march and chorus) is
i A Travers Chants. Par Hector Berlioz. P. 293.
236
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
full of superb brilliancy and pomp, which are increased
by the special sonority of the key of B natural
major. The rhythm, which is never tormented or
troubled by the juxtaposition of other rhythms of a
contrary nature, has here a chivalrous, proud, robust .
character. One is quite sure, without seeing this scene
in representation that such music accompanies the
movements of strong and valiant men covered with
glittering armour. This piece contains a clearly-
designed, elegant but not very rich melody, which
recalls by its form, if not by its accent, a celebrated
theme in Der Freyschütz.1
“The last repetition of the vocal phrase in the grand
tutti is still more energetic than all that has preceded
it, thanks to the intervention of a figure for the basses
executing eight notes in the bar and contrasting with
the upper part, in which only two or three are heard.
Some of the modulations are but little heard, and follow
too closely one upon the other. But the orchestra
imposes them with such vigour, such authority, that the
ear accepts them at once without resistance. We must
here recognise a masterly page, instrumented like all
the rest by an able hand. The wind instruments and
an
i Final movement of the overture and of Agatha's grand air.
“ TANNHÄUSER" AT THE PARIS OPERA, 1861. 237
voices are animated by a powerful inspiration; and the
violins, treated admirably in the upper part of their
register, seemed to cast upon the whole dazzling sparks.
“The Tannhäuser overture is, in Germany, the most
popular of Wagner's orchestral pieces. Force and
grandeur are its dominating qualities; but the method
followed by the author in this composition produces, at
least in me, extreme fatigue. It begins with an
andante maestoso, a sort of chorale of a noble character
which, later on, towards the end of the allegro, re-
appears accompanied in the upper parts by an obstinate
figure for the violins. The theme of this allegro,
composed of two bars only, is in itself little interesting.
The developments to which it serves as pretext
bristle, as in the overture to the Flying Dutchman,
with chromatic passages, modulations and harmonies of
extreme harshness. When at last the chorale reappears,
the theme being slow and of considerable dimensions,
the brief figure for the violins, which is to accompany it
until the end, is necessarily repeated with a persistence
terrible for the listener. He has already heard it
twenty-four times in the andante. He hears it in the
peroration of the allegro one hundred and eighteen
times. This obstinate or rather insatiable figure
238
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
appears, then, altogether one hundred and forty two
times in the overture. Is not that too much ? It
reappears often again in the course of the opera,
which makes me suppose that the author attributes to
it some expressive meaning connected with the action ;
a meaning I cannot divine."
It would be superfluous in the present day to
explain the contrast between the two themes, heard
first separately, then in combination.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE “ BALLET COMIQUE DE LA REINE,” AND THE ORIGIN
OF OPERA.
THE first dramatic ballet produced in Europe of
which a full account has been preserved, and which
was regarded by its author as something quite new,
resembled in most respects the operas by which it was
to be followed in Italy and afterwards in France, Eng-
land, and Germany. In France, however, the effect
which the Ballet Comique de la Reine, and other similar
works might have had in developing a taste for
dramatic music was rendered impossible by the civil
wars, by which the country was to be distracted, before
opera as such, was introduced towards the end of the
seventeenth century by Cardinal Mazarin.
Baltazarini, in the preface to his very complete
libretto (which in addition to words and music gives
240
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
pictures admirably drawn of the principal personages
and the most important scenes) declares himself the
inventor of a new entertainment. “I have,” he says,
" blended together poetry, music and dancing, in a
manner which if ever done before must have been in
such remote antiquity, that it may well now be called
new. As the ancients never recited verses without
music, so Orpheus never played without singing. I
have, however, given the first place to dancing, and
assigned a second and third to poetry and music, in
order to gratify at once, the eye, ear and understanding."
The result of Baltazarini's attempt was, in any case, an
opera; one in which there is a good deal of dancing,
no doubt (though not more than in Massenet's Roi
de Lahore and many other modern operas), but in
which a dramatic story is after the true operatić
manner, set forth, and carried on in song, supported
by instrumental accompaniments. It is strange indeed,
that when centenaries of every kind and of every degree
are celebrated, no musician suggested that some notice
should be taken of the tercentenary of the oldest
operatic ballet, and at the same time of the oldest
operatic melody or tune. There are popular airs,
and even part songs which are more ancient, no doubt,
THE BALLET COMIQUE DE LA REINE.
241
LUI
than the air in the Ballet Conrique de la Reine, which
was published for the first time in 1584. But these
for the most part, if not absolutely without exception,
exist only as curiosities.
There is not much life for instance in the famous
“Sumer is icumen in”; not even since its revival with
modern treatment by Mr. Villiers Stanford, in his Can-
terbury Pilgrims. That this primitive composition dates
in its original form from the thirteenth century has,
thanks to musical antiquaries, been established beyond
doubt. But, however popular it may have been six
centuries ago, it cannot by any ingenuity be so pre-
sented as to charm the public of the present day.
The air, on the other hand, from the Ballet Comique
de la Reine, to which, according to the stage directions,
Circe made her entrance, is quite of modern type.
Offenbach, or some other composer of opéra bouffe,
has actually used it as ballet music; and it has
obtained a large sale in France and England, arranged
as an easy pianoforte piece and entitled, very absurdly,
Gavotte de Louis XIII. That Louis XIII. may have
danced to the tune in question is possible enough,
just as, beyond doubt, the corps de ballet of the
Alhambra, in Leicester Square, have danced to it. But
242
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
the air belongs by publication to the year 1582, when
the music of the Ballet Comique de la Reine seems for
the first time to have been printed; the work having,
however, been produced on the stage a year earlier,
in 1581. In the original libretto of the work, giving
at once sketches of the scenes and the music of the
principal songs and dances, the air which an arranger
was to name Gavotte de Louis XIII. is described as
“ Le son de la clochette auquel Circé sortit de son jardin
-Un son fort gay.” In the original composition each
note is accompanied by a full chord, which renders it
more ponderous and less clearly rhythmical than its
modern reproduction. Baltazarini, or Baltazar de
Beaujoyeulx, in his very full account of the so-called
ballet gives, together with the description of the dances
and the words of the songs, the music of the principal
pieces—if that can be called music which is for the
most part utterly unmusical. With the exception only
of Circe's air the “son de la clochette," there is nothing
in the work which bears any resemblance to what is
called a tune. The music has not even the merit of
simplicity; and in many of the pretended airs, the key
changes at each bar.
Circe's son de la clochette is so entirely different from
THE BALLET COMIQUE DE LA REINE.
243
.
the rest of the music that one cannot help regarding
it as the work of another hand, probably that of
Baltazarini himself, who was, above all things, a
musician, and who first made his reputation, not as an
impresario and stage manager, but as a composer and
conductor of a band of Italian violinists. The air in
its simplest form—the highest part, that is to say,
of the five vocal parts in which the piece was written-
has been reproduced by Dr. Burney in his History of
Music. But its authorship in the Ballet Comique de la
Reine is surrounded by the same obscurity which en-
velops so many inventions. The ballet, however, was
produced by the before-mentioned Baltazarini, esteemed
in Italy the best violinist of his day, and presented
(together with the violin-band which he directed) by
Marshal de Brissac to Catherine de' Medici, who
made him intendent of her music and her first valet de
chambre. She also changed his name to “Beaujoyeulx,"
or “de Beaujoyeulx.” He afterwards associated him-
self for the composition of ballet music with several
French musicians; two of whom, Beaulieu and Salmon,
prepared between them the score of Le Ballet Comique
de la Reine. Whether, and to what extent, Baltazarini
helped them can scarcely in the present day be decided.
R 2
244
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
He produced Circe, as the ballet was also called, and
superintended its production in every department; but
in his preface to the published work he names Beaulieu
and Salmon as the composers of the music.
Castil-Blaze in his little-known volume, La Danse
et les Ballets depuis Bacchus jusqu'à Mlle. Taglioni,
describes Beaulieu and Salmon as “Music Masters
to Henry III.," and ás Baltazarini's assistants; in which
character they are said to have composed for his ballet
“a portion of the airs and recitatives.” Baltazarini
being responsible for the general success of the en-
tertainment would be sure to have contributed to it
any effective music that he might have been able to
introduce from Italy, whether by himself or by any
other composer; and though Beaulieu and Salmon
were employed for the musical department as Jules
Patin, the king's painter, was entrusted with the
preparation of the scenery, and Lachenaye, the king's
almoner, with the writing of the words, Baltazarini
would certainly have done his best for the work at
once as poet, painter, and musician; and he had dis-
tinguished himself in all three characters. He made
it his business to choose subjects, develop plots, and
furnish sketches for scenery and accessories; and he
THE BALLET COMIQUE DE LA REINE.
245
was at the same time a musician by profession. Burney
speaks positively of the music of this ballet as having
been composed by Beaulieu and Salmon. But neither
he nor Castil-Blaze know any more on the subject than
can be gathered from Baltazarini's own account of the
work, and from a contemporary notice of it published
in the Journal de l'Estoile. If no chronicler of the
period has thought it worth while to supply precise
information as to who the composer was of each
particular piece, the work as a whole is fully described
in the said journal or chronicle.
“On Monday, September 18th,” says the writer," the
Duc de Joyeuse [Henry III.'s favourite “minion "] and
Marguerite of Lorraine, daughter of Nicholas de
in the Queen's Chamber, and the following Sunday
were married at 3 o'clock in the afternoon at the
parish Church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois. The King
led the bride, followed by the Queen, the Princesses
and other ladies so superbly clad, that no one recollects
to have seen anything like it in France, so rich and
so sumptuous. The dresses of the King and of the
bridegroom were the same, and were so covered with
embroidery, pearls, and precious stones, that it was
246
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
impossible to estimate the value of them. Such an
accoutrement had, for instance, cost ten thousand crowns
in the making; and at the seventeen feasts which, in
due order, and from day to day, were given by the King
to the princes and lords related to the bride, and by
other great persons of the Court; all the lords and ladies
changed their attire which, for the the most part, was
in linen of cloth, or gold and silver, enriched with
embroidery and precious stones in great number and of
great price. The expense was so great including tour-
naments, masquerades, presents, devices, music and
liveries, that the report went about that the King
would not be quit for twelve hundred thousand crowns
[equivalent to three million six hundred thousand
francs]. On Tuesday, October 16th, the Cardinal
de Bourbon gave his feast in the Hotel of his Abbey,
St. Germain-des-Prés, and had constructed on the River
Seine a superb apparatus consisting of a large bark, in
the form of a triumphal car, in which King, princes,
princesses, and the newly-married couple were to pass
from the Louvre to the Pré-aux-Clercs in solemn pomp.
This handsome car was to be drawn on the water by
other boats disguised as sea-horses, tritons, dolphins,
whales and other marine monsters, to the number of
THE BALLET COMIQUE DE LA REINE.
247
twenty-four. In front, concealed in the belly, of the
said monsters were trumpets, clarions, cornets, violins,
hautboys and many excellent musicians, and even some
letters-off of fireworks, who, during the crossing, were
to afford pastime, not only to the King, but to fifty
thousand persons on the banks.” But the mystery was.
not well played and it was impossible to make the
animals advance as had been intended. So that the
King, after he had watched from four o'clock in the
afternoon until seven at the Tuileries the movement
and working of these animals without perceiving
any effect, said sarcastically that " c'était des bêtes qui
commandaient à d'autres bêtes”; and having got into
his coach, he went away with the Queen and all his
suite to the Cardinal's feast, which was the most mag-
nificent of all. Among other entertainments His
Eminence gave the representation of an artificial garden
filled with flowers and fruits, as if it had been May,
or July or August. On Sunday, the 15th, the Queen
gave her feast at the Louvre, and after the feast the
ballet of Circe and her nymphs.
This is the ballet called by Dr. Burney, inadvertently,
or by a misprint, Ceres and her Nymphs. All he
says on the subject of the actual representation is
248
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
borrowed from Ménestrier (Des Ballets Anciens et
Modernes), who had laid under contribution the Journal
de l'Estoile; and from Baltazarini's own account of the
Ballet Comique de la Reine of which Dr. Burney had
purchased "the only copy he had ever seen” at the sale
of Topham Beauclerc's library. Circe and her Nymphs,
or the Ballet Comique de la Reine, was represented in
the large Salle de Bourbon by the Queen, the Princes,
the Princesses, and the great nobles of the Court.
Begun at 10 o'clock in the evening, not finishing
until 3 o'clock the next morning. The Queen and the
Princesses, who represented the Naiads and the Nereids,
terminated the ballet by a distribution of presents to
the Princes and Nobles, who in the form of Tritons
had danced with them. Each Triton received a gold
medal with a suitable inscription; and Baltazarini,
or Beaujoyeulx, as he was now called, was complimented
at the end of the representation by the whole Court.
His genius was extolled and his glory celebrated in
verses which hailed him as one who, from the ashes
of Greece, had revived a new art, who with “divine
wit" had composed a ballet, and who had so placed it
on the stage that he had surpassed himself in his
character of “inventive geometrician.”
THE BALLET COMIQUE DE LA REINE.
249
“On Monday, the 16th, in the garden of the Louvre,
there was,” says the Chronicler, “a combat of Fourteen
Whites against Fourteen Yellows at 8 o'clock in the
evening by torch light. On Tuesday, the 17th, there
were conflicts with the pike, the sword, and the butt-end
of the lance on foot and on horseback. On Thursday,
the 19th, took place the Ballet of the Horses, in which
Spanish horses, racehorses and others advanced as they
fought, retired, and turned round to the sound and
cadence of trumpets and clarions, having been trained
to it five months beforehand. All this was beautiful and
agreeable, but the great excellence which showed itself
on the days of Tuesday and Thursday was the music of
voices and instruments, being the most harmonious and
most delicate that was ever heard. There were also
fireworks which sparkled and burst to the fright and
joy of every one without anyone being injured.”
It is beyond doubt that the earliest specimens of
what is now called opera were artificially produced,
and, so to say, made to order by Italian potentates and
magnates in search of a new artistic enjoyment and
intent too on perfecting a new form of Italian drama
resembling in character the Greek plays. The drama
was started by Thespis in a cart. The opera, on the
250
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
other hand, was founded by Popes, Cardinals and Kings.
The first operatic libretto, that of Poliziano's Orfeo,
was the work of Cardinal Riario, nephew of Sixtus IV.;
and Pope Clement IX. was the author of no less than
seven libretti. The subject of Orpheus, alike lyrical and
dramatic, has been a favourite one with composers for
the last four centuries, from Poliziano, who produced
his Orfeo at Rome in 1480, up to Gluck, three centuries
later; and from Gluck down to Offenbach in this day.
But the work brought out four hundred years ago
at Rome bore little resemblance in a musical point of
view to modern opera. Early, however, in the 17th
century, in 1608, the favourite subject of Orpheus was
treated by Monteverde; who, besides introducing the
modern scale and giving new development to the har-
monic system of his predecessors, assigned far greater
importance in his operas to the accompaniments, and
greatly increased both the number and varieties of
the instruments in the orchestra. Monteverde, who
employed every kind of instrument known in his time,
announced the entry and re-entry of each personage in
his operas by a distinctive combination of instrument;
a dramatic means made use of long afterwards by Hoff-
mann, better known by his fantastic tales than by his
THE BALLET COMIQUE DE LA REINE.
251
opera of Undine, and at a later period, with more system
and greater elaboration by Wagner. Monteverde's Orfeo
was brought out at the Court of Mantua, possibly under
the direction of that gallant but dissolute Duke of Mantua,
whom Mario used to impersonate so admirably in Rigo-
letto. In this work, apart from the combinations which
announced the entry and re-entry of each character, the
bass-viols accompanied Orpheus, the viols Eurydice, the
trombones Pluto, the organs Apollo, while Charon sang
to the accompaniment of that sentimental instrument
the guitar. Monteverde, the real founder of opera in
something like its present form, produced a number of
works at Venice until the fame of the Venetian operas
spread throughout Italy. From Italy the new enter-
tainment was introduced into France, where it is
generally believed to have been naturalized by the
Italian scullion and violinist Lulli, though the honour
may be more justly claimed for Cardinal Mazarin or
Mazarini. Remembering Cardinal Manning's dictum
that theatrical entertainments « from the Italian
opera to the penny gaff form one long devil's chain,"
it is interesting to know that opera was deliberately
invented in Italy by a Pope surrounded by Cardinals,
while the first opera brought out in France in the
252
FAMOUS FIRST REPRESENTATIONS.
French language, Akbar, King of Mogul, was the work
of an Abbé, Mailly by name, who, like Wagner and the
Italian composer, Boito, of the present day, wrote both
the words and music of his operas. The second French
opera, on the subject of Ariadne, was composed by
Cambert, the musician, who was afterwards driven from
France by the intrigues of Lulli, and came to England,
where he produced his Ariadne in English. Cambert
was not the first musician who brought out operas in
England, but he was the first who produced operas and
directed operatic representations continuously.
Lyric dramas meanwhile had been introduced into
England, in direct imitation of the Italian represen-
tations, by Sir William Davenant, who, according to
himself, though his evidence on such a point cannot
positively be accepted, was the son of Shakespeare.
The so-called opera of the Siege of Rhodes, produced by
Sir William Davenant in the dark days—dark at least in
an artistic sense-of the Commonwealth, seems to have
been merely a play with a good number of songs and
choruses introduced. These songs were chiefly the work
of Henry Lawes, the famous composer of the music to
Milton's Comus. Opera, it may here be explained, was
tolerated in England at a time when all other forms of
THE BALLET COMIQUE DE LA REINE.
253
the drama were proscribed because, as the chronicler,
Anthony à Wood, gravely sets forth, “ being in an
unknown language it could not corrupt the morals of
the people.”
Music is no longer an unknown language. Indeed
the simple fact of a drama being performed in music
widens its sphere of intelligibility, and places it within
the comprehension of persons of various countries
speaking various tongues. It is the most cosmo-
politan entertainment ever invented, and for that reason
admirably suited to the wants of the age. Singers
frequently do their best to render it more unintelligible
than it need be, and librettists often give them powerful
aid towards that end by furnishing them with words
which it is nearly impossible to sing. An opera, how-
ever, may be perfectly intelligible as to its general
meaning without the words being heard at all. Indeed
those who are over careful as to the precise signification
of the words of an opera do not as a rule care for the
music. They are like those lovers of pictures who
think more of the subject or story of a picture than of
its presentment and general execution.
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THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD. With Illustrations
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LIBRARY EDITION.
In post Svo. With the Original Illustrations, 30 vols., cloth, £12.
0
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NICHOLAS NICKLEBY ... ... ... ... 39 , 2 vols.
MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT ...
2 vols. 16 0
OLD CURIOSITY SHOP & REPRINTED PIEC
2 vols. 16 o
BARNABY RUDGE and HARD TIMES
2 vols. 16 o
BLEAK HOUSE... ...
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LITTLE DORRIT ...
2 vols. 16 o
DOMBEY AND SON ...
,, . 2 vols. 16 O
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SKETCHES BY “BOZ"
I vol. 80
OLIVER TWIST ...
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CHRISTMAS BOOKS .. ...
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A TALE OF TWO CITIES
16
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GREAT EXPECTATIONS ...
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PICTURES FROM ITALY & AMERICAN NOT
I vol.
UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER ... ...
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CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND ...
I vol.
EDWIN DROOD and MISCELLANIES ... ... 12 , I vol. 80
CHRISTMAS STORIES from "Household Words," &c. 14 , I vol. 8 o
THE LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. By JOHN FORSTER. With Illustrations.
Uniform with this Edition. Ios. 6d.
0
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0
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DICKENS'S (CHARLES) WORKS.-Continued.
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PICKWICK PAPERS
8 Illustrations ...
MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT ...
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DOMBEY AND SON
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NICHOLAS NICKLEBY
DAVID COPPERFIELD
BLEAK HOUSE
LITTLE DORRIT ... ...
OUR MUTUAL FRIEND...
BARNABY RUDGE... ... ...
OLD CURIOSITY SHOP ... ... ...
A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
EDWIN DROOD and OTHER STORIES ..
CHRISTMAS STORIES, from "Household Words" ...
SKETCHES BY “BOZ" ... ... ... ... ...
AMERICAN NOTES and REPRINTED PIECES
CHRISTMAS BOOKS ...
OLIVER TWIST ... ...
GREAT EXPECTATIONS... ...
TALE OF TWO CITIES ... ...
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UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER ... ... ... 4 „ ...
THE LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. Numerous Illustrations. 2 vols. 7 o
THE LETTERS OF CHARLES DICKENS ... ... ... 2 vols. 8 o
00
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BOOKS PUBLISHED BY
DICKENS'S (CHARLES) WORKS.—Continued.
THE ILLUSTRATED LIBRARY EDITION.
(WITH LIFE.)
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The collection comprises all the minor writings it was Mr. Dickens's wish to
preserve.
T
SKETCHES BY “BOZ." With 40 Illustrations by George Cruikshank.
PICKWICK PAPERS. 2 vols. With 42 Illustrations by Phiz.
OLIVER TWIST. With 24. Illustrations by Cruikshank.
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A TALE OF TWO CITIES. With 16 Illustrations by Phiz.
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NICHOLAS NICKLEBY 2 vols.
MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT. 2 vols.
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DAVID COPPERFIELD. 2 vols.
CHRISTMAS BOOKS.
OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 2 vols.
CHRISTMAS STORIES.
BLEAK HOUSE. 2 vols.
LITTLE DORRIT. 2 vols.
OLD CURIOSITY SHOP AND REPRINTED PIECES. 2 vols.
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UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER.
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TALE OF TWO CITIES.
CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
EDWIN DROOD AND MISCELLANIES.
PICTURES FROM ITALY AND AMERICAN NOTES.
BOOKS PUBLISHED BY
DICKENS’S (CHARLES) WORKS.—Continued.
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MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT, Two Vols.
DAVID COPPERFIELD, Two Vols.
OLIVER TWIST.
GREAT EXPECTATIONS.
NICHOLAS NICKLEBY, Two Vols.
SKETCHES BY " BOZ."
CHRISTMAS STORIES.
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AMERICAN NOTES AND PICTURES FROM ITALY
EDWIN DROOD; AND OTHER STORIES.
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DOMBEY AND SON, Two Vols.
A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
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MUTUAL FRIEND, Two Vols.
HARD TIMES.
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REPRINTED PIECES.
TIS
BOOKS PUBLISHED BY
DICKENS'S (CHARLES) WORKS.- Continued.
MR. DICKENS'S READINGS.
Fcap. 8vo, sewed.
CHRISTMAS CAROL IN PROSE. IS.
CRICKET ON THE HEARTH.IS.
CHIMES: A GOBLIN STORY. Is..
STORY OF LITTLE DOMBEY. Is.
POOR TRAVELLER, BOOTS AT THE HOLLY-TREE
INN, and MRS. GAMP. · IS.
A CHRISTMAS CAROL, with the Original Coloured Plates.
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CHARLES DICKENS'S CHRISTMAS BOOKS.
REPRINTED FROM THE ORIGINAL PLATES.
Illustrated by JOHN LEECH, D. MACLISE, R. A., R. DOYLE,
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Fcap. cloth, 1s. cach. Complete in a case, 55.
A CHRISTMAS CAROL IN PROSE.
THE CHIMES: A Goblin Story.
THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH: A Fairy Tale of
Home.
THE BATTLE OF LIFE. A Love Story.
THE HAUNTED MAN AND THE GHOST'S STORY.
SIXPENNY REPRINTS.
READINGS FROM THE WORKS OF
CHARLES DICKENS.
As selected and read by himself and now published for the first time. Illustrated.
A CHRISTMAS CAROL, AND THE HAUNTED MAN.
By CHARLES DICKENS. Illustrated.
THE CHIMES: A GOBLIN STORY, AND THE CRICKET
ON THE HEARTH. Illustrated.
THE BATTLE OF LIFE: A LOVE STORY, HUNTED
DOWN, AND A HOLIDAY ROMANCE. Illustrated.
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THE FORTNIGHTLY REVIEW.
Edited by FRANK HARRIS,
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ADMIRAL LORD ALCESTER.
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SIR JOHN LUBBOCK, BART., M.P
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THE EARL OF LYTTON.
AUTHOR OF “GREATER BRITAIN."
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. THE EDITOR.
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