She ended by doing something very much more audacious: she sang the second air of the Queen of the Night from The Magic Flute.
The composer’s feelings may be adjudged from his remarks in his Souvenirs: “What a prodigious voice! Three octaves, either forte or pianissimo!”
He did not waste any time. His publisher was urging him to set a poem on a Byzantine subject, Esclarmonde, to music, and, with Sybil Sanderson in mind, he went to work directly on the score. Esclarmonde, in which Massenet pays his tribute to Wagner—the subject suggests Parsifal and Tristan und Isolde, to say nothing of Armide—was produced at the Opéra-Comique during the Paris Exposition of 1889. It was given 101 times before Miss Sanderson went to Brussels.
Before her début Sybil Sanderson was scarcely known in Paris. It was rumored among artists that Massenet had written an opera for a fair Californian (she was the daughter of Judge S. W. Sanderson, of the Supreme Court) who was being trained by the master to play the title part, and some few had seen Massenet dining at a restaurant in the Rue Daunou with an American girl, accompanied by a lady who, judging from the likeness of the two, was probably her mother. Then came her début, and all Paris was talking about La Belle Sanderson, and the extraordinary range of her voice.
Thaïs, the famous opera of the monk and the Alexandrian courtesan, was also written for Miss Sanderson. While Massenet was composing it the singer was appearing three times a week at the Opéra-Comique in Manon. It was therefore for that theatre that Thaïs was destined. However, Miss Sanderson, like many another artist before and since, moved by a sudden caprice, signed a contract with Gailhard to sing at the Opéra, without taking the trouble to inform Carvalho, then manager of the Opéra-Comique. Massenet did not hesitate. He wrote to Gailhard: “You have the artist; the work must follow her!”
Thaïs was produced March 16, 1894—and failed! At that time the book was considered a trifle indelicate! Even Sybil Sanderson’s popularity could not save it. In 1898 the work was revived with Mme. Berthet in the title part. For this reprise Massenet wrote a new scene in the oasis and the scene of the ballet, which have always been omitted in American representations, except in Boston. Lina Cavalieri sang the work in Paris in 1907. Since then it has never been long from the affiches of the Opéra, while in America it has become one of the most popular of modern operas, thanks to Mary Garden, who made her American début in the title rôle, and subsequently prevented Lina Cavalieri from singing it in New York. While he was writing Thaïs Massenet always kept a tiny figurine on his writing table. This had been made for him by Gérome, and served him as his present inspiration.
Here is the tribute that Massenet pays to Sybil Sanderson in his “Souvenirs”: “Sybil Sanderson!... It is only with poignant emotion that I recall this singer struck by pitiless Death, in her full beauty, in the glory of her talent. Ideal Manon at the Opéra-Comique; unforgettable Thaïs at the Opéra; these rôles identified themselves with her temperament, one of the most magnificently gifted that I have ever known. An invincible vocation called her to the theatre, there to become the ardent interpreter of many of my works; but also, for us, what joy to write operas and rôles for the artists who realize our dreams!...
“The silent crowd which pressed on the way of the cortège which led Sybil Sanderson to her last home was considerable. Over it a veil of sadness seemed to hang. Albert Carré and I followed the coffin. We walked directly behind what remained of her beauty, grace, and talent, and Carré, interpreting the feelings of the people about us, said:
“‘She was loved.’”
It is to the “Souvenirs” also that we must turn for a description of the selection of the first Manon. Mme. Carvalho sighed when she heard the music, and breathed the wish that she was twenty years younger, so that she might sing it. Characteristically, Massenet dedicated the score to her. He wanted Mme. Vaillant-Couturier, then singing an operetta of Lecocq’s at the Nouveautés, for the opera.