Later Queens of the French Stage

by H. Noel Williams

It is only, however, fair to say that she made ample atonement on the following evening. Thinking perhaps, as one of her biographers suggests, that any one was good enough to sing with a voiceless prima donna, the management entrusted the part of Dardanus to a new tenor named Muguet, “who had neither voice, figure, nor expression.” The audience not unnaturally resented the experiment, and M. Muguet and the opera with him were in a fair way to be hissed off the stage, when Sophie came to the rescue and, by superb singing and impassioned acting, restored the house to good humour and converted a complete failure into something approaching a success.

Seeing that the ladies of the Opera were the King’s servants in the literal sense of the phrase, and that misbehaviour on their part was wont to be construed as disobedience to his Majesty’s commands and punished accordingly, why, it may well be asked, was such conduct tolerated? Why did not the chief of the King’s Household intervene with one of those lettres de cachet which were generally so efficacious in bringing contumacious artistes to their senses? The answer is that Sophie had so many noble admirers always ready to espouse her cause that to punish her as she deserved could not have failed to create a great deal of unpleasantness; for which reason, though the directors appealed again and again to the Comte de Saint-Florentin to exercise his authority, their representations were without effect. Here is an instance:

On March 24, 1772, Sophie, who was announced to take the part of Thélaïre, in Rameau’s Castor et Pollux, had not arrived when the time came for the opera to begin, and her place was, therefore, taken by her understudy, Mlle. Beaumesnil. As no intimation of her inability to appear that evening had reached them, the directors naturally concluded that she had been suddenly taken ill, and their astonishment and indignation may be imagined when they presently espied the lady in a box, laughing and talking with several of her admirers, and, seemingly, in the best of health and spirits. A message demanding an explanation of what she meant by appearing in the front of the house when she was “billed” to play a part produced the impertinent reply that she had come to take a lesson from Mlle. Beaumesnil! The angry directors thereupon appealed to the chief of the King’s Household and begged him to send the recalcitrant actress to For l’Évêque. But the Prince d’Hénin, or some other influential adorer, interceded on her behalf, and the only punishment she received was “a severe reprimand.”

Such misplaced leniency, Bachaumont tells us, was highly displeasing to a certain section of the Opera’s patrons, and when, an evening or two later, Mademoiselle did condescend to appear, a number of people came to the theatre “with the intention of humiliating her by hissing.” Sophie, however, perhaps desirous of making atonement to the public for its previous disappointment, put forth all her powers and sang and acted so admirably that the malcontents’ courage failed them, and, finally, forgetting the object which had brought them thither, they joined heartily in the general applause.[37]

Owing to the cares of maternity and other causes, chief of which would seem to have been a pronounced antipathy to hard work, Sophie’s appearances at the Opera were very irregular, and sometimes her name did not find a place in the bills for several months together. Thus, she was absent from October 1761 to the following February; again from November 1766 to August 1767; while in 1770 she does not appear to have sung at all. A less popular actress, or one whose life outside the theatre was less notorious, might have incurred some risk of finding herself forgotten. But Sophie’s admirers were numerous and faithful, and when she had a part which suited her, and was in the humour to do herself justice, her singing and, more especially, her acting were so superior to her rivals that the house was invariably crowded. Among her triumphs may be mentioned: Thisbé, in Pyrame et Thisbé; Oriane, in Amadis de Gaule;[38] Aline, in Aline, Reine de Golconde,[39] “which,” says Bachaumont, “she endowed with all the delicate graces of sentiment, beauty, and talent”; Psyché, in L’Amour et Psyché; Iphise, in Dardanus, and Thélaïre, in Castor et Pollux, when the critic of the Mercure declared that she was “not a character of the piece, but Thélaïre herself, and that the feelings she depicted passed involuntarily into the souls of the spectators.”[40]

Although Bélanger was Mlle. Arnould’s amant de cœur, the Prince d’Hénin remained her titular protector. The prince was an exceedingly dull and fatuous person, with the most absurdly exaggerated idea of his own importance, and bored the lady insufferably, although financial considerations compelled her to tolerate him. At the same time, she was at no pains to conceal from her friends the ennui which his visits occasioned her, and when, at the beginning of the year 1774, the Comte de Lauraguais, with whom she still maintained friendly relations, returned from a lengthy visit to England, she hastened to pour her troubles into his sympathetic ear. Perhaps Lauraguais would have been not unwilling to resume his connection with Sophie, had there been no Prince d’Hénin in the way, and cherished a grudge against that nobleman for taking the place which had so long been his own. Perhaps he had some other grievance against him, for the prince was by no means universally beloved. Any way, he determined to have a little diversion at his expense. We read in the Mémoires secrets:

“February 19, 1774.—The Comte de Lauraguais, that amiable nobleman, whose inextinguishable gaiety is so marvellously seconded by his lively imagination, after having amused London, has come to enliven this capital with his sallies and ingenious pleasantries, of which one relates a charming instance: Some days ago, he summoned four doctors of the Faculty of Medicine to a consultation, in order to know whether it were possible for any one to die of ennui. They replied in the affirmative and, after a long preamble, setting forth the reasons for their decision, signed a paper to that effect, in all good faith. The family of Brancas is so generally composed of lunatics, hypochondriacs, hysterical and melancholy persons, and so forth, that they imagined that the question put to them concerned some relative of the consultant, and agreed that the only means of effecting a cure was to remove out of the patient’s sight the object which occasioned this condition of inertia and stagnation.

“Armed with this document duly signed and witnessed, the facetious nobleman proceeded to lay it before a Commissary of Police and, at the same time, to lodge a complaint against the Prince d’Hénin, who, by his continual obsession of Mlle. Arnoux (sic), would infallibly cause that actress to perish of ennui, and the public to lose one whom it valued highly, and whom he especially desired to preserve.”

Needless to say, the commissary did not issue the warrant demanded; but, equally needless to say, he related the jest to every one he happened to meet that morning, with the result that, in a very few hours, this “charming instance of the inextinguishable humour of the Comte de Lauraguais” was the talk of Paris, and was voted the best comedy that had been played for many a long day. The Prince d’Hénin naturally did not look at the matter in quite the same light, and talked about sending the count a challenge. According to one account, he actually did so, and a bloodless duel followed. But since, as we shall presently see, he was a nobleman by no means remarkable for his courage, it is more probable that he ultimately decided to pocket the affront.

In the course of that same month, Sophie Arnould determined to withdraw altogether from the Opera and, accordingly, sent in her resignation, giving as her reason the unsatisfactory state of her health. The Duc de la Vrillière, however, declined to accept it, at the same time assuring her, in a courteous letter, that, “under no circumstances would more be required of her than her strength would permit of her undertaking.” Although it would appear that Sophie was really somewhat out of health at that time—so that Lauraguais’s charge against the poor Prince d’Hénin was not without a basis of truth—her resolution to quit the scene of her many triumphs was dictated by a very different reason. The fact of the matter was that the Sophie Arnould of 1774 was not the Sophie Arnould of 1758—not the singer who had charmed all Paris in Les Amours des Dieux and Énée et Lavinie. Her voice, always more expressive than powerful, was becoming perceptibly weaker. Her beauty, though she was still very attractive, had lost its freshness. Her frequent absences, her endless caprices, her arrogance and insolence, so long tolerated, had begun to weary not only the long-suffering directors of the Opera, but the public and the critics who influenced it. Where there had been applause, there was now silence. Where there had been praise, there was now criticism, and criticism sometimes of a peculiarly galling kind. In a word, Sophie’s long reign was drawing to a close. And Paris was eagerly awaiting the arrival of a new composer. Gluck, who was to revolutionise opera in France, was coming, at the invitation of Marie Antoinette, to give a series of “musical dramas”—as he himself called them—reconstructed from those which had delighted Vienna and Italy. Supported as he would be by the young Dauphiness and the Court, his success was a foregone conclusion. What unthinkable humiliation for her if, when the principal parts came to be allotted, she should be passed over in favour of one of her youthful competitors: Mlle. Laguerre or, worse still, Rosalie Levasseur, the mistress of Mercy-Argenteau, the Austrian Ambassador, between whom and herself the bitterest rivalry existed! Rather than incur such a risk, she would retire of her own accord, while her laurels were still untarnished, while her sovereignty was still acknowledged.