My Recollections Part 13

I stopped nonplussed. Must I put him too in my collection of wooden-faced directors?

"I know," said M. Calabresi, as he accosted me, "that you have a great work, _Herodiade_. If you will give it to me, I will put it on at once at the Theatre de la Monnaie."

"But you don't know it," I said.

"I would never dream of asking a hearing--of you!"

"Well," I replied at once, "I will inflict it on you."

"But I am going back to Brussels to-morrow morning."

"This evening, then," I retorted. "I shall expect you at eight o'clock in Hartmann's shop. It will be closed by that time ... we shall be alone."

I hurried to Hartmann's, radiant, and told him, laughing and crying, what had happened to me.

A piano was brought immediately, and Paul Milliet was hurriedly informed.

Alphonse de Rothschild, my colleague at the Academie des Beaux Arts, knew that I had to go to Brussels very often for the rehearsals of _Herodiade_. They were about to begin at the Theatre Royal de la Monnaie, and he wanted me to avoid delays at the stations so he gave me a pa.s.s.

They became so accustomed to seeing me cross the frontier at Feignies and Quevy that I became a real friend of the customs' officers, especially of those on the Belgian side. I remember that to thank them for their kind attentions I sent them seats for the Theatre de la Monnaie.

A real ceremony took place at the Theatre Royal in the month of October of this same year 1881. As a matter of fact _Herodiade_ was the first French work to be created on the superb stage of the capital of Belgium.

On the appointed day, my two excellent directors, Stoumon and Calabresi, went with me as far as the great public foyer. It was a vast place with gilt paneling and was lighted from the colonnaded peristyle of the theater on the Place de la Monnaie. On the other side of the Place (a relic of old Brussels) was the Mint and, in a corner, the Stock Exchange. These buildings have since disappeared and have been replaced by a magnificent Post Office. The Exchange has been moved to a magnificent palace a short ways away.

In the middle of the foyer to which I was taken was a grand piano about which there were twenty chairs arranged in a semi-circle. Besides the directors, there were my publisher and my collaborator, as well as the artists we had selected to create the parts. At the head of these artists was Martha Duvivier, whose talent, fame, and beauty fitted her for the role of Salome; Mlle. Blanche Deschamps, later the wife of the famous orchestra leader Leon Jehin, had the role of Herodiade; Vernet, Jean; Manoury, Herod; the elder Gresse, Phanuel. I went to the piano, turned my back towards the windows, and sang all the roles including the choruses.

I was young, eager, happy, and, I add to my shame, very greedy. But if I accuse myself, it is to excuse myself--for leaving the piano so often to get a bite at a table laden with exquisite food spread out on a plentiful buffet in the same foyer. Every time I got up, the artists stopped me as if to say, "Have pity.... Keep on.... Continue.... Don't stop again." I ate almost all the food which had been prepared for us all. The artists were so much pleased that they thought more of embracing me than of eating. Why should I complain?

I lived at the Hotel de la Poste, Rue Fosse-aux-Loups, beside the theater. In the same room, on the ground floor on the corner of the hotel overlooking the Rue d'Argent, I wrote, the following autumn, the rough draft of the Seminaire act of _Manon_. Later on I preferred to live in the dear kindly Hotel du Grand-Monarque, Rue des Fripiers, and I continued to do so until 1910.

This hotel plays a part in my deepest memories. I lived there often with Reyer, the author of _Sigurd_ and of _Salammbo_, my colleague at the Academie des Beaux-Arts. There, we both lost our collaborator and friend Ernest Blau. He died here, and in spite of the custom that no funeral black shall be hung in front of a hotel, Mlle. Wanters, the proprietress, insisted that the obsequies should be public and should not be concealed from the people who lived there. In the salon among strangers we said the tender words of farewell to the collaborator on _Sigurd_ and _Esclarmonde_.

A grim detail! Our poor friend Blau dined the evening of his death at the house of Stoumon, the director. As he was early, he stopped in the Rue des Sablons to look at some luxurious coffins displayed in an undertaker's shop. As we had just paid our last farewell and had placed the mortal remains of Blau in a temporary vault beside the casket of a young girl, which was covered with white roses, one of the bearers observed that if he had been consulted the deceased could not have chosen a better neighborhood. The head undertaker reflected: "We have done things well. M. Blau noticed a fine coffin and we let him have it cheap."

As we came from that vast cemetery, comparatively empty at that time, we were all impressed by the poignant grief of Mme. Jeanne Raunay, the great artiste. She walked slowly by the side of the great master Gevaert.

Oh, mournful winter day!

The rehearsals of _Herodiade_ went on at the Monnaie. They were full of delirious joy and surprises for me. Its success was considerable. Here is what I find in the papers of the times.

At last the great night came.

From the night before--Sunday--the public formed lines at the entrance to the theater (the cheaper seats were not sold in advance at that time). The ticket sellers spent the whole night in this way, and while some sold their places in line at a high price on Monday morning, others held on and sold places in the pit for sixty francs on the average. A stall cost one hundred and fifty francs.

That evening the auditorium was taken by storm.

Before the curtain rose, the Queen entered her stage box accompanied by two ladies of honor and Captain Chretien, the King's orderly.

In the neighboring box were their Royal Highnesses the Count and Countess of Flanders, accompanied by the Baron Van den Bossch d'Hylissem and Count Oultremont de Duras, grand master of the princely household.

In the Court Boxes were Jules Devaux, chief of the King's cabinet; Generals Goethals and Goffinet, aides-de-camp; Baron Lunden, Colonel Baron Anethan, Major Donny, Captain Wyckerslooth, the King's orderlies.

In the princ.i.p.al boxes: M. Antonin Proust, Minister of Fine Arts in France, with Baron Beyens, Belgian Minister to Paris, the heads of the cabinet, and Mme. Frere Orban, etc.

In the lower stage box: M. Buls, recently elected Burgomaster, and the aldermen.

In the stalls and balcony were numerous people from Paris: the composers, Reyer, Saint-Saens, Benjamin G.o.dard, Joncieres, Guiraud, Serpette, Duvernois, Julien Porchet, Wormser, Le Borne, Lecocq, etc., etc.

This brilliant emotional audience, said the chronicles of the time, made the work a delirious success.

Between the second and the third acts Queen Marie Henriette summoned the composer to her box and congratulated him warmly, as well as Reyer whose _Statue_ had just been given at the Monnaie.

The enthusiasm swelled crescendo to the end of the evening. The last act ended amid cheers. There were loud calls for the composer and the curtain was raised several times, but the "author" did not appear. As the audience was unwilling to leave the house, the stage manager, Lap.i.s.sida, who had staged the work, finally had to announce that the author had left as soon as the performance ended.

Two days after the Premiere the composer was invited to dine at Court and a royal decree appeared in the _Moniteur_ naming him Chevalier de l'Ordre de Leopold.

The dazzling success of the first performance was trumpeted through the European press, which, almost without exception, praised it in enthusiastic terms. As to the enthusiasm of the first days, it continued persistently through fifty-five consecutive performances, which, according to the papers, realized four thousand francs every evening above the subscriptions.

_Herodiade_, which made its first appearance on the stage of the Monnaie December 19, 1881, under the exceptionally brilliant circ.u.mstances just quoted from the newspapers of Belgium as well as of other countries, reappeared at this theater, after many revivals, during the first fortnight of November, 1911--nearly thirty years later. _Herodiade_ long ago pa.s.sed its hundredth performance at Brussels.

And I was already thinking of a new work.

CHAPTER XV

THE ABBE PREVOST AT THE OPeRA-COMIQUE

One autumn morning in 1881 I was much disturbed, even anxious. Carvalho, the director of the Opera-Comique, had entrusted to me the three acts of _Phoebe_ by Henri Meilhac. I had read and re-read them, but nothing in them appealed to me; I clashed with the work which I had to do; I was nervous and impatient.

With fine bravery I went to see Meilhac. The happy author of so many delightful works, of so many successes, was in his library, among his rare books in marvellous bindings, a fortune piled up in his rooms on the mezzanine floor in which he lived at 30 Rue Drouot.

I can still see him writing on a small round table beside a large table of the purest Louis XIV style. He had hardly seen me than he smiled his good smile, as if pleased, in the belief that I brought news of our _Phoebe_.

"Is it finished?" he asked.

I retorted _illico_ to this greeting, in a less a.s.sured tone:

"Yes, it is finished; we will never speak of it again."

A lion in his cage could not have been more abashed. My perplexity was extreme; I saw a void, nothingness, about me, when the t.i.tle of a work struck me as a revelation.