My Recollections Part 8

JOY AND SORROW

The first reading of _Marie Magdeleine_ to the cast took place at nine o'clock one morning in the small hall of the Maison Erard, Rue de Mail, which had been used heretofore for quartet concerts. Early as the hour was Mme. Viardot was even earlier, so eager was she to hear the first notes of my work. The other interpreters arrived a few moments later.

Edouard Colonne conducted the orchestra rehearsals.

Mme. Viardot took a lively interest in the reading. She followed it like an artist well acquainted with the composition. She was a marvellous singer and lyric tragedienne and more than an artist; she was a great musician, a woman marvellously endowed and altogether unusual.

On the eleventh of April the Odeon received the public which always attends dress rehearsals and first nights. The theater opened its doors to All Paris, always the same hundred persons who think it the most desirable privilege in the world to be present at a rehearsal or a first night.

The press was represented as usual.

I took refuge with my interpreters in the wings. They were all there and they were highly excited. In their emotion it seemed as if they were to pa.s.s a final sentence on me, that they were about to give a verdict on which my life depended.

I can give no account of the impression of the audience. I had to leave the next day with my wife for Italy, so I had no immediate news.

The first echo of _Marie Magdeleine_ reached me at Naples in the form of a touching letter from the ever kindly Ambroise Thomas.

This is what the master, always so delicately attentive to everything which marked the steps of my musical career, wrote:

PARIS, April 12, 1873

As I am obliged to go to my country place to-day, I shall, perhaps, not have the pleasure of seeing you before your departure. In the uncertainty I cannot postpone telling you, my dear friend, how pleased I was last evening and how happy I was at your fine success.

It is at once a serious, n.o.ble work, full of feeling. It is of _our times_, but you have proved that one can walk the path of progress and still remain clear, sober, and restrained.

You have known how to move, because you have been moved yourself.

I was carried away like everyone else, indeed more than anyone else.

You have expressed happily the lovely poetry of that sublime drama.

In a mystical subject where one is tempted to fall into an abuse of somber tones and severity of style, you have shown yourself a colorist while retaining charm and clearness.

Be content; your work will be heard again and will endure.

Au revoir; with all my heart I congratulate you.

My affectionate congratulations to Madame Ma.s.senet.

AMBROISE THOMAS.

I read and re-read this dear letter. I could not get it out of my thoughts so agreeable and precious was the comfort it brought me.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Mme. Pauline Viardot]

I was lost in such delightful revery when, as we were taking the steamer for Capri, I saw a breathless hotel servant running towards me with a package of letters in his hands. They were from my friends in Paris who were delighted with my success and who were determined to express their joy to me. A copy of the _Journal des Debats_ was enclosed. It came from Ernest Reyer and contained over his signature an article which was most eulogistic of my work, one of the most moving I have ever received.

I had now returned to see this charming and intoxicating country. I visited Naples and Capri, then Sorrento, all picturesque places captivatingly beautiful, perfumed with the scent of orange trees, and all this on the morrow of a never to be forgotten evening. I lived in the most unutterable raptures.

A week later we were in Rome.

We had scarcely reached the Hotel de la Minerve when there arrived a gracious invitation to lunch from the director of the Academie de France, a member of the Inst.i.tute, the ill.u.s.trious painter Ernest Hebert.

Several students were invited to this occasion. We breathed the warm air of that wholly lovely day through the open windows of the director's salon where De Troy's magnificent tapestries representing the story of Esther were hung.

After lunch Hebert asked me to let him hear some of the pa.s.sages from _Marie Magdeleine_. Flattering accounts of it had come to him from Paris.

The next day the Villa's students invited me in their turn. It was with the keenest emotion that I found myself once more in that dining room with its arched ceiling, where my portrait was hung beside those of the other Grand Prixs. After lunch I saw in a studio opening into the garden the "Gloria Victis," the splendid masterpiece which was destined to make the name of Mercie immortal.

I must confess in speaking of _Marie Magdeleine_ that I had a presentiment that the work would in the end gain honors on the stage.

However I had to wait twenty years before I had that pleasant satisfaction. It verified the opinion I had formed of that sacred drama.

M. Saugey, the able director of the Opera at Nice, was the first to have the audacity to try it and he could not but congratulate himself. On my part I tender him my sincere thanks.

Our first _Marie Magdeleine_ on the stage was Lina Pacary. That born artist, in voice, beauty and talent was fitted for the creation of this part, and when the same theater later put on _Ariane_, Lina Pacary was again selected as the interpreter. Her uninterrupted success made her theatrical life really admirable.

The year following my dear friend and director Albert Carre put the work on at the Opera-Comique. It was my good fortune to have as my interpreters Mme. Marguerite Carre, Mme. Ano Ackte, and Salignac.

So I lived again in Rome in the most pleasant thoughts of _Marie Magdeleine_. Naturally it was the topic of conversation on the ideal walks I took with Hebert in the Roman Campagna.

Hebert was not only a great painter but also a distinguished poet and musician. In the latter capacity he played in a quartet which was often heard at the Academie.

Ingres, also a director of the Academie, played the violin. Delacroix was asked one day what he thought of Ingres's violin playing.

"He plays like Raphael," was the amusing answer of this brilliant colorist.

So delightful was our stay in Rome that it was with regret that we left that city so dear to our memories and went back to Paris.

I had hardly got back to No. 46 Rue du General Foy--where I lived for thirty years--than I became absorbed in a libretto by Jules Adenis--_Les Templiers_.

I had hardly written two acts when I began to worry about it. The piece was extremely interesting, but its historical situations took me along the road already travelled by Meyerbeer.

Hartmann agreed with me; indeed my publisher was so outspoken about it that I tore into bits the two hundred pages which I had submitted to him.

In deep trouble, hardly knowing where I was going, I happened to think of calling on Louis Gallet, my collaborator in _Marie Magdeleine_. I came from this interview with him with the plan of _Le Roi de Lah.o.r.e_.

From the funeral pyre of the last Grand Master of the Templars, Jean Jacques de Molay, whom I had given up, I found myself in the Paradise of India. It was the seventh heaven of bliss for me.

Charles Lamoureux, the famous orchestra leader, had just founded the Concerts de l'Harmonie Sacree in the Cirque des Champs elysees, which to-day has disappeared. (What a wicked delight they take in turning a superb theater into a branch of the Bank or an excellent concert hall into a gra.s.s plot of the Champs elysees!)

As everyone knows Handel's oratorios made these concerts famous and successful.

One snowy morning in January Hartmann introduced me to Lamoureux who lived in a garden in the Cite Frochot. I took with me the ma.n.u.script of _eve_, a mystical play in three acts.

The hearing took place before lunch. And by the time we had reached the coffee we were in complete accord. The work was to go to rehearsal with the following famous interpreters: Mme. Brunet Lafleur and Mm. Lasalle and Prunet.

Les Concerts de l'Harmonie Sacre had _eve_ on the program of the eighteenth of March, 1875, as had been arranged.