My Recollections Part 20

Sibyl Sanderson, as I have said, had been engaged for a year at the Theatre de la Monnaie at Brussels. She played _Esclarmonde_ and _Manon_.

Carvalho took her from the Monnaie to revive _Manon_ in Paris. The work has never left the bills since and, as I write it, has reached its 763rd performance.

At the beginning of the same year _Werther_ was given at Vienna as well as a ballet: _Le Carillon_. The applauded collaborators were our Des Grieux and our German Werther: Ernest Van Dyck and de Roddaz.

It was on my return from another visit to Vienna that my faithful and precious collaborator Louis Gallet paid me a visit one day at Le Menestrel. My publishers had arranged a superb study where I could rehea.r.s.e my artists from Paris and elsewhere in their parts. Louis Gallet and Heugel proposed to me a work on Anatole France's admirable romance _Thas_.

I was immediately carried away by the idea. I could see Sanderson in the role of Thas. She belonged to the Opera-Comique so I would do the work for that house.

Spring at last permitted me to go to the seash.o.r.e where I have always liked to live and I left Paris with my wife and daughter, taking with me all that I had composed of the work with so much happiness.

I took with me a friend who never left me day or night--an enormous gray Angora cat with long silky hair.

I worked at a large table placed on a veranda against which the waves of the sea sometimes broke heavily and scattered their foam. The cat lay on the table, sleeping almost on my pages with an unceremoniousness which delighted me. He could not stand such strange noises and every time it happened he pushed out his paws and showed his claws as if to drive the sea away.

I know some one else who loves cats, not more but as much as I do, the gracious Countess Marie de Yourkevitch, who won the grand gold medal for piano playing at the Imperial Conservatoire of Music at St. Petersburg.

She has lived in Paris for some years in a luxurious apartment where she is surrounded by dogs and cats, her great friends.

"Who loves animals, loves people," and we know that the Countess is a true Maecenas to artists.

The exquisite poet Jeanne Dortzal is also a friend of these felines with the deep-green enigmatic eyes; they are the companions of her working hours.

I finished _Thas_ at the Rue du General Foy, in my bedroom where nothing broke the silence except the crackling of the Yule logs which burned in the fireplace.

At that time I did not have a ma.s.s of letters which I must answer, as is the case now; I did not receive a quant.i.ty of books which I must run over so that I could thank the authors; neither was I absorbed in incessant rehearsals, in short, I did not lead the sort of a life I would willingly qualify as infernal, if it were not my rule _not_ to go out in the evening.

At six in the morning I received a call from my ma.s.seur. His cares were made necessary by rheumatism in my right hand, and I had some trouble with it.

Even at this early morning hour I had been at work for some time, and this pract.i.tioner, Imbert, who was in high good standing with his clients, brought me morning greetings from Alexander Dumas the Younger from whose house he had just come. As he came, he said, "I left the master with his candles lighted, his beard trimmed, and comfortably installed in his white dressing gown."

One morning he brought me these words--a reply to a reproach I had allowed myself to make to him:

"Confess that you thought that I had forgotten you, man of little faith.

"A. DUMAS."

Between whiles, and it was a delightful distraction, I had written _Le Portrait de Manon_, a delightful act by Georges Boyer, to whom I already owed the text of _Les Enfants_.

Some good friends of mine, Auguste Cain, the famous sculptor of animals, and his dear wife, had been generous and useful to me in difficult circ.u.mstances, and I was delighted to applaud the first dramatic work of their son Henri Cain. His success with _La Vivandiere_ affirmed his talent still more. The music of this work in three acts was the swan song of the genial Benjamin G.o.dard. Ah! the dear great musician who was a real poet from his youth up, in the first bars he wrote. Who does not remember his masterpiece _Le Ta.s.se_?

As I was strolling one day in the gardens of the dismal palace of the dukes d'Este at Ferrare, I picked a branch of oleander which was just in blossom and sent it to my friend. My gift recalled the incomparable duet in the first act of _Le Ta.s.se_.

During the summer of 1893 my wife and I went to Avignon. This city of the popes, the _terre papale_, as Rabelais called it, attracted me almost as much as that other city of the popes, ancient Rome.

We lived at the excellent Hotel de l'Europe, Place Grillon. Our hosts, M. and Mme. Ville, were worthy and obliging persons and were full of attention for us. That was imperative for I needed quiet to write _La Navarraise_, the act which Jules Claretie had entrusted to me and my new librettist Henri Cain.

Every evening at five o'clock our hosts, who had forbidden our door all day with jealous care, served us a delicious lunch. My friends, the Provencal poets, used to gather around, and among them was Felix Gras, one of my dearest friends.

One day we decided to pay a visit to Frederic Mistral, the immortal poet of Provence who played a large part in the renaissance of the poetic language of the South.

He received us with Mme. Mistral at his home--which his presence made ideal--at Millane. He showed when he talked that he knew not only the science of Form but also that general knowledge which makes great writers and makes a poet of an artist. As we saw him we recalled that _Belle d'aout_, the poetical story full of tears and terrors, then the great epic of _Mirelle_, and so many other famous works besides.

By his walk and vigor one recognized him as the child of the country, but he was a gentleman farmer, as the English say; although he is not any more a peasant on that account, as he wrote to Lamartine, than Paul-Louis Courier, the brilliant and witty pamphleteer, was a cultivator of vineyards.

We returned to Avignon full of the inexpressible enveloping charm of the hours we had pa.s.sed in the house of this great, ill.u.s.trious poet.

The following winter was entirely devoted to the rehearsals of _Thas_ at the Opera. I say at the Opera in spite of the fact that I wrote the work for the Opera-Comique where Sanderson was engaged. She triumphed there in _Manon_ three times a week.

What made me change the theater? Sanderson was dazzled by the idea of entering the Opera, and she signed a contract with Gailhard without even taking the mere trouble of informing Carvalho first.

Heugel and I were greatly surprised when Gailhard told us that he was going to give _Thas_ at the Opera with Sibyl Sanderson. "You've got the artist; the work will follow her!" There was nothing else for me to say.

I remember, however, how bitterly Carvalho reproached me. He almost accused me of ingrat.i.tude, and G.o.d knows that I did not deserve that.

_Thas_ was interpreted by Sibyl Sanderson; J. F. Delmas, who made the role of Athanael one of his most important creations; Alvarez, who consented to play the role of Nicias, and Mme. Heglon, who also acted in the part which devolved upon her.

As I listened to the final rehearsals in the depths of the empty theater, I lived over again my ecstatic moments before the remains of Thas of Antinoe, beside the anchorite, who had been bewitched by her grace and charm. We owed this impressive spectacle which was so well calculated to impress the imagination to a gla.s.s case in the Guimet Museum.

The evening of the dress rehearsal of _Thas_ I escaped from Paris and went to Dieppe and Pourville, with the sole purpose of being alone and free from the excitements of the great city. I have said already that I always tear myself away in this fas.h.i.+on from the feverish uncertainties which hover over every work when it faces the public for the first time.

No one can tell beforehand the feeling that will move the public, whether its prejudices or sympathies will draw it towards a work or turn it against it. I feel weak before the baffling enigma, and had I a conscience a thousand times more tranquil, I would not want to attempt to pierce the mystery!

The day after my return to Paris Bertrand and Cailhard, the two directors of the Opera, called on me. They appeared to be down at the mouth. I could only get sighs from them or a word or two, which in their laconicism spoke volumes, "The press! Immoral subject! It's done for!"

These words were so many indications of what the performance must have been.

So I told myself. Nevertheless seventeen years have gone and the piece is still on the bills, and has been played in the provinces and abroad, while at the Opera itself _Thas_ has long since pa.s.sed its hundredth performance.

Never have I so regretted letting myself go in a moment of disappointment. It is true that it was only a pa.s.sing one. Could I foresee that I should see again this same score of _Thas_, dated 1894, in the salon of Sibyl Sanderson's mother, on the music rest of the very piano at which that fine artiste, long since no more, studied?

To accustom the public to the work, the directors of the Opera a.s.sociated with it a ballet from the repertoire. Subsequently Gailhard saw that the work pleased, and in order to make it the only performance of the evening he asked me to add a tableau, the Oasis, and a ballet to the third act. Mlle. Berthet created this new tableau and Zambelli incarnated the new ballet.

Later, the t.i.tle role was sung in Paris by Mlles. Alice Verlet and Mary Garden and Mme. Kousnezoff. I owe some superb nights at the Opera to them. Genevieve Vix and Mastio sang it in other cities. I wait to speak of Lina Cavalieri for she was to be the creator of the work at Milan, October, 1903. This creation was the occasion for my last journey to Italy up to now.

CHAPTER XX

MILAN--LONDON--BAYREUTH

I regret all the more that I have given up traveling, for I seem to have become lazy in this regard, since my visits to Milan were always so delightful--I was going to say adorable--thanks to the friendly Edouard Sonzogno, who constantly paid me the most delicate and kindly attentions.

What delightful receptions, and perfectly arranged and elaborate dinners, we had at the fine mansion at 11 Via Goito! What bursts of laughter and gay sallies there were; what truly enchanted hours I pa.s.sed there, with my Italian confreres, invited to the same love-feast as I, at the house of the most gracious of hosts: Umberto Giordano, Cilea and many others!

In this great city I had excellent friends and ill.u.s.trious ones as well, as Mascagni and Leoncavallo, whom I had known before and had had as friends in Paris. They did not then foresee the magnificent situation they would create for themselves one day at the theater.

In Milan my old friend and publisher Giulio Ricordi also invited me to his table. I was sincerely moved at finding myself again in the bosom of the Ricordi family to whom I was attached by so many charming memories.

It is unnecessary to add that we drank to the health of the ill.u.s.trious Puccini.

Among my memories of Milan I have kept the recollection of being present at Caruso's debut. The now famous tenor was very modest then; and when, a year afterwards, I saw him wrapped in an ample fur-coat, it was obvious that the figures of his salary must have mounted _crescendo_. As I saw him I did not envy him his brilliant fortune or his undoubted talent, but I did regret--that winter especially--that I could not put his rich warm coat on my back.... It snowed, indeed, in Milan, in large and seemingly endless flakes. It was a hard winter. I remember that once I hadn't enough bread from my breakfast to satisfy the appet.i.te of some thirty pigeons which, s.h.i.+vering and trembling with cold, came to my balcony for shelter. Poor dear little creatures! I regretted that I could not do more for them. And involuntarily I thought of their sisters in the Piazza Saint Marc, so pretty, so friendly, who at that instant must be just as cold.