My Recollections Part 28

In March, 1910, fetes of unusual and unheard of splendor were given at Monaco at the opening of the colossal palace of the Oceanographic Museum.

_Therese_ was given at the gala performance before an audience which included members of the Inst.i.tute, confreres of his Serene Highness, a member of the Academie des Sciences. Many ill.u.s.trious persons, savants from the whole world, representatives of the Diplomatic Corps, as well as M. Loubet, ex-president of the Republic, were there.

The morning of the formal inauguration the Prince delivered an admirable address, to which the presidents of the foreign academies replied.

I was already much indisposed and I could not take my place at the banquet at the palace, after which the guests attended the gala performance of which I have spoken.

Henry Roujon, my confrere at the Inst.i.tute, was good enough at the banquet the following day, to read the speech I would have delivered myself had I not been obliged to stay in bed.

To be read by Henri Roujon is both honor and success.

Saint-Saens was also invited to the fetes and he too stayed in the palace. He lavished the most affectionate care on me constantly. The Prince himself deigned to visit me in my sick room and both told me of the success of the performance and of our Therese, Lucy Arbell.

The doctor had left me quieter in the evening and he too opened my door about midnight. He doubtless did so to see how I was, but he also told me of the fine performance. He knew it would be balm of certain efficacy for me.

Here is a detail which gave me great satisfaction.

They had given _Le Vieil Aigle_ by Raoul Gunsbourg in which Mme.

Marguerite Carre, the wife of the manager of the Opera-Comique, was highly applauded. Albert Carre had been present at the performance and he met one of his friends from Paris and told him that he was going to put on _Therese_ at the Opera-Comique with its dramatic creatrix.

As a matter of fact four years after the premiere at Monte Carlo and after many other houses had performed the work, the first performance of _Therese_ was given at the Opera-Comique on May 28, 1911. _L'Echo de Paris_ was so kind as to publish for the occasion a wonderfully got up supplement.

As I write these lines, I read that the second act of _Therese_ is a part of that rare program of the fete offered to me at the Opera on Sunday, December 10, 1911, by the organizers of the pious French popular charity, "Trente Ans de Theatre," the useful creation of my friend, Adrian Bernheim, whose mind is as generous as his soul is great and good.

A dear friend said to me recently, "If you wrote _Le Jongleur de Notre Dame_ with faith, you wrote _Therese_ with all your heart."

Nothing could be said more simply, and nothing could touch me more.

CHAPTER XXVI

FROM ARIANE TO DON QUICHOTTE

I never deliver a work until I have kept it by me for months, even for years.

I had finished _Therese_--long before it was produced--when my friend Heugel told me that he had already made arrangements with Catulle Mendes to write a sequel to _Ariane_.

Although to our way of thinking _Bacchus_ was a distinct work, it should form a whole with _Ariane_.

The text for it was written in a few months and I took great interest in it.

And yet--and this is entire accord with my character--hesitation and doubt often bothered me.

Of all the fabulous stories of the G.o.ds and demiG.o.ds of antiquity those which relate to the Hindu heroes are perhaps the least known.

The study of the fables of mythology, which has had until recently only the interest of curiosity in even the most cla.s.sical learning, has, thanks to the work of modern scholars, acquired a higher import as they have discovered its role in the history of religion.

To allow the inspiration of his poetic muse, which was always so ardent and finely colored, wander at will in such a region was bound to delight the well informed mind of Catulle Mendes.

Palmiki's Sanscrit poem, the Ramayana, is at once religious and epic.

For those who have read that sublime poem it is more curious and greater than even the Nibelungen, Germany's epic of the Middle Ages, which traces the struggle between the family of the Nibelungen with Etzel or Attila and their consequent destruction. There is nothing exaggerated in calling the Ramayana the Iliad or Odyssey of India. It is as divinely beautiful as the immortal work of old Homer which has come down through the centuries.

I knew the legend through reading and rereading it, but what I had to do in my work was to add to my thought what the words, the verses, and the situations even could not explain clearly enough to the often inattentive public.

My work this time was intense, obstinate, implacable. I literally fought; I cut out, and I replaced. At last I finished _Bacchus_--after devoting many days and months to it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Queen Amah.e.l.ly (_Bacchus_)]

The cast selected by the new management at the Opera, Mm. Messager and Broussan, was as follows: Lucienne Breval reappeared as Ariane; Lucy Arbell, in memory of her success as Persephone was Queen Amah.e.l.ly in love with Bacchus; Muratore, our Thesus, doubled in the part of Bacchus, and Gresse accepted the role of the fanatical priest.

The new management was not yet firmly in the saddle and wanted to give our work a magnificent setting.

Even as they had been previously cruel to _Le Mage_ and to our excellent director, Gailhard (which did not prevent his going back there soon afterwards, better liked than ever) now they were hard on _Bacchus_.

When _Bacchus_ went on both the press and the public were undecided about the real worth of the new management.

Giving a work under such conditions was running a danger a second time.

I saw it, but too late; for the work, in spite of its faults, did not seem to warrant such an amount of abuse.

The public, however, which lets itself go in the sincerity of its feelings, showed a very comforting enthusiasm in certain parts of the work. It received the first scene of the third act, especially, with applause and numerous recalls. The ballet in the forests of India was highly appreciated. The entrance of Bacchus in his car (admirably staged) was a great success.

With a little patience the good public would have triumphed over the ill will of which I had been forewarned.

One day in February, 1909, I had finished an act of _Don Quichotte_ (I will speak of that later on)--it was four o'clock in the afternoon--and I rushed to my publishers to keep an appointment with Catulle Mendes. I thought I was late, and as I went in I expressed my regret at keeping my collaborator waiting. An employee answered me in these words:

"He will not come. He is dead."

My brain reeled at the terrible news. I would not have been more knocked out if some one had hit me over the head with a club. In an instant I learned the details of the appalling catastrophe.

When I came to myself I could only say, "We are lost as far as _Bacchus_ is concerned at the Opera. Our most precious support is gone."

The anger his keen, fine criticism aroused against Catulle Mendes was a pretext for revenge on the part of the slaughtered.

These fears were only too well justified by the doubts of which I have spoken and if, in the sequel, Catulle Mendes had been present at our rehearsals he would have been of great a.s.sistance.

My grat.i.tude to those great artists--Breval, Arbell, Muratore, Gresse--is very great. They fought brilliantly and their talents inspired faith in a fine work. It was often planned to try to counteract the ill feeling. I thank Mm. Messager and Broussan for the thought although it came to nothing.

I wrote an important bit of orchestration (with the curtain down) to accompany the victorious fight of the apes in the Indian forests with the heroic army of Bacchus. I managed to make real--at least I think I did--in the midst of the symphonic developments the cries of the terrible chimpanzees armed with stones which they hurled from the tops of the rocks.

Mountain pa.s.ses certainly don't bring good luck. Thermopylae and Ronceval as Roland and Leonidas learned to their cost. All their valor was in vain.

While I was writing this music I went many times to the Jardin des Plantes to study the habits of these mammals. I loved these friends of which Schopenhauer spoke so evilly when he said that if Asia has her monkeys Europe has her French. The German Schopenhauer was not very friendly to us.

Long before they decided, after many discussions, to start rehearsing _Bacchus_ (it did not appear until the end of the season of 1909) it was my good fortune to begin work on the music in three acts for _Don Quichotte_. Raoul Gunsbourg was exceedingly anxious to have both the subject and the cast at the Monte Carlo Opera.

I was in very bad humor when I thought of the tribulations _Bacchus_ had brought on me without there being anything with which I could reproach myself either as a man or as a musician.