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

CHAPTER XIII.
THE FRENCH OPERA BEFORE AND AFTER THE REVOLUTION

THE OPERA DURING THE CONVENTION

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

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

OPERATIC AND RELIGIOUS FETES

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

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

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

BEHIND THE SCENES

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

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

"Monseigneur,

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

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

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

"We are, with profound respect,

"Monseigneur,

"Your most Serene Highness's very humble and

"devoted Servants,

"Guimard, Heinel," &c.

With twenty other names.

GENEROSITY OF THE BALLET

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

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

OPERA AND REVOLUTION

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

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

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

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

OPERA AND REVOLUTION

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

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

MARIE ANTOINETTE

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

FACTS AND COINCIDENCES

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

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

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

IN BEHALF OF AND FOR THE PEOPLE,

GRATIS,

In joyful commemoration of the Death of the Tyrant,

THE NATIONAL OPERA

WILL GIVE TO DAY, 6 PLUVIOSE, YEAR II., OF THE REPUBLIC,

MILTIADES AT MARATHON,

THE SIEGE OF THIONVILLE,

THE OFFERING TO LIBERTY

REPUBLICAN CELEBRITIES

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

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

AGREEABLE CRITICS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE "MARATISTES" AGAIN

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

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

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