My Recollections Part 26

I came away actually feverish with excitement. The libretto was in my pocket, against my heart, as if to make it feel the throbs, as I got into a victoria to go home. Rain fell in torrents but I did not notice it. Surely Ariane's tears permeated my whole being with delight.

Dear, good tears, with what gladness you must have fallen during the rehearsals! I was overwhelmed with esteem and attention by my dear director, Gailhard, as well as by my remarkable interpreters.

In August, 1905, I was walking pensively under the pergola of our house at egreville, when suddenly an automobile horn woke the echoes of that peaceful country.

Was not Jupiter thundering in the heavens, _Caelo tonantem Jovem_, as Horace says in the Odes. For a moment I could believe that such was the case, but what was my surprise--my very agreeable surprise--when I saw get down from that thundering sixty miles an hour two travelers, who, if they did not come from heaven, nevertheless let me hear the accents of Paradise in their friendly voices.

One was Gailhard, the director of the Opera, and the other the learned architect of the Garnier monument. My director had come to ask me how I was getting on with _Ariane_ and if I were willing to let the Opera have it.

We went up to my large room which with its yellow hangings of the period might have easily been taken for that of a general of the First Empire.

I at once pointed out a heap of pages on a large black marble table--the whole of the finished score.

At lunch, between the sardines of the hors d'oeuvre and the cheese of the dessert, I declaimed several situations in the work. Then my guests, put in a charming humor, were good enough to accept my invitation to make a tour of the property.

It was while we paced under the pergola of which I have spoken, in the delightfully fresh, thick shade of the vines whose leaves formed a verdant network that we settled on the cast.

Lucienne Breval was to have the role of Ariane; Louise Grandjean that of the dramatic Phedre, and by common consent, in view of her talent for tragedy and her established success at the Opera, we decided on Lucy Arbell for the role of the somber, beautiful Queen of h.e.l.l.

Muratore and Delmas were plainly indicated for Thesee and Pirithous.

As he was going away, Gailhard, remembering the simple, confiding formula by which our fathers made contracts in the good old days, plucked a branch from a eucalyptus in the garden and said, waving it at me:

"This is the token of the promises we have exchanged to-day. I carry it with me."

Then my guests got into their auto and disappeared in the whirling dust of the road. Did they carry away to the great city the near realization of my dearest hopes, was what I asked myself as I climbed to my room. I was tired and worn out by the emotions of the day and I went to bed. The sun still shone on the horizon in all the glory of its fire. It crimsoned my bed with its dazzling rays. I dreamt as I slept the most beautiful dream that can delude us when a task has been fulfilled.

I now record a detail which is of some importance.

My little Marie Magdeleine came to egreville to spend a few days with her grandparents. I yielded to her curiosity and told her the story of the piece. I had reached the place where Ariane is drawn into h.e.l.l to find the wandering soul of her sister Phedre, and as I stopped, my grand-child exclaimed at once:

"And now grandpapa we are going to be in h.e.l.l!"

The silvery wheedling voice of the dear child, her sudden, natural question produced a strange, almost magical, effect on me. I had had the intention of asking them to suppress that act, but now I suddenly decided to keep it, and I answered the child's fair question, "Yes, we are going into h.e.l.l." And I added, "We shall see there the affecting figure of Persephone finding again with delight the roses, the divine roses which remind her of the beloved earth where she lived of old, ere she became the Queen of that terrible place with a black lily in her hand for a scepter."

That visit to Avernus necessitates a stage setting and an interpretation which I will deliberately designate as intensive. I had to go to Turin (my last journey to that beautiful country) in pretty cold weather, December 14, 1907, accompanied by my dear Henri Heugel to be present at the last rehearsals at the Regio, the royal theater, where they were putting on _Ariane_ for the first time in Italy. The work had a luxurious stage setting and remarkable interpreters. The great artiste Maria Farneti had the role of Ariane. I noticed particularly the special care with which Serafin, the eminent conductor who was acting as stage manager, staged the act in h.e.l.l. Our Persephone was as tragic as one possibly could be; the aria of the Roses, however, seemed to me to be lacking in emotion. I remember that I told her at the rehearsal, throwing an armful of roses into her wide open arms, to press them to her heart ardently, as she would do, I added, with a husband or a beloved sweetheart whom she had not seen for twenty years! "From the roses which disappeared so long ago to the dear adored one who is at last found again is not so far! Think of that, Signorina, and the effect will be sure!" The charming artiste smiled, but had she understood?

So _Ariane_ was finished. My ill.u.s.trious friend, Jules Claretie, learned of this and recalled to me the promise I had made him of writing _Therese_, a lyric drama in three acts. He added:

"The work will be short, for the emotion it lets loose cannot be prolonged."

I went to work on it, but I will deal with that presently.

I have alluded to the pleasure I felt at every rehearsal at the constant happy discoveries in scenery or in feeling. Ah, with what constantly alert and devoted intelligence our artists followed the precious advice of Gailhard!

The month of June was, however, marked by dark days. One of our artistes fell seriously ill and they fought with death for thirty-six hours in order to save her. The work was all ready for the stage and as that artiste was necessarily missing for several weeks, they suspended the rehearsals during the summer. They were resumed at the end of September when our artists were all well and together again. These rehearsals were in a general way to go on during the month of October and we were to appear at the end of the month.

What was said was done; rare promptness for the stage. The first performance was on October 31, 1906.

Catulle Mendes, who had often been severe on me in his criticisms in the press, had become my ardent collaborator, and, something worth noting, he appreciated joyfully the reverence I had brought to the delivery of his verses.

In our common toil, as well as in our studies with the artists at the playhouse, I delighted in his outbursts of devotion and affection and in the esteem in which he held me.

The performances followed each other ten times a month, a unique fact in the annals of the theater for a new work, and this went on up to the sixtieth performance.

Apropos of this, they asked Lucy Arbell, our Persephone, how many times she had sung the work, feeling sure that her answer would be wrong.

"Why," she exclaimed, "sixty times!"

"No," replied her questioner, "you have sung it one hundred and twenty times, for you are always encored in the aria of the Roses."

I owed that sixtieth performance to the new directors, Mm. Messager and Broussan, and that seems to be the last of a work which started off so brilliantly.

What a difference, I say again, between the manner in which my works have been mounted for some years and the way they were put on when I was beginning!

My first works were put on in the provinces with old scenery, and I was compelled to hear the stage manager say things like this:

"For the first act we have found an old background from _La Favorita_; for the second two sets from _Rigoletto_," etc., etc.

I recall an obliging director who on the eve of a first performance, knowing that I lacked a tenor, offered me one, but warning me, "This artist knows the part, but I ought to tell you that he is always flat in the third act."

Which reminds me that in the same house I knew a ba.s.so who had a strange pretension, still more strangely expressed, "My voice," said our ba.s.so, "goes down so far that they can't find the note on the piano."

Oh, well, they were all valiant and honest artists. They did me service and had their years of success.

But I see that I am loitering on the way in telling of these old times.

I have to tell of the new work which was in rehearsal in Monte Carlo--I mean _Therese_.

CHAPTER XXV

SPEAKING OF 1793

One summer morning in 1905 my great friend, Georges Cain, the eminent and eloquent historian of Old Paris, got together the beautiful, charming Mme. Georges Cain, Mlle. Lucy Arbell, of the Opera, and a few others to visit what had once been the convent of the Carmelites in the Rue de Vaugirard.

We had gone through the cells of the ancient cloister, seen the wells into which the blood stained horde of Septembrists had thrown the bodies of the slaughtered priests, and we had come to the gardens which remain so mournfully famous for those frightful butcheries. Georges Cain stopped in the middle of his recital of these dismal events, and pointed out to us a white figure wandering alone in the distance.

"It is the ghost of Lucile Desmoulins," he said. Poor Lucile Desmoulins so strong and courageous beside her husband on his way to the scaffold where she was so soon to follow him!

It was neither shade nor phantom. The white figure was very much alive!

It was Lucy Arbell who had been overcome by deep emotion and who had turned away to hide the tears.

_Therese was already revealed_....

A few days afterwards I was lunching at the Italian Emba.s.sy. At dessert the kindly Comtessa Tornielli told us, with that charming grace and delightful eloquence which were so characteristic of her, the story of the amba.s.sdorial palace, Rue de Grenelle.