Métra describes this scene in the ironical tone characteristic of him. He represents Piccini precipitating himself at the feet of the singer, and amorously squeezing her hand. He shows us Marmontel, although more slow to bend the knee, employing vows and the most tender expressions to assure her that she arouses in his heart the most novel and the most lively emotions. And he concludes: “What a pleasing contrast to picture to oneself in this scene Saint-Huberty, still clothed in the purple of Didon, receiving with dignity the incense of great noblemen and men of letters, and to behold her, as a voluptuary of the time found her, two days later, in Paris, playing a game of piquet with her page, at the end of a table covered with a coarse and dirty dishcloth!”
In Paris, the opera and the singer obtained an even greater triumph than at Fontainebleau. The evening of the first representation (December 1, 1783) was “an evening of transports and delirium.” The public could not find means to express its admiration. At the conclusion of the impressive song,
“Ah! que je fus bien inspirée,”
the audience rose in a body and interrupted the performance with frenzied applause. At the touching air,
“Ah! prends pitié de ma faiblesse,”
there was not, we are assured, a dry eye in the whole house. “What more glorious triumph,” writes one of the actress’s biographers, “could this poor artiste in her days of toil and misery have ever dreamed of!”[195]
Among the critics, not a dissentient voice was heard; all joined in a chorus of praise of Didon and the great lyric tragédienne. “Madame Saint-Huberty,” wrote the Mémoires secrets, “played the part with the highest talent. She excelled even herself, and showed herself not less a great actress than an accomplished singer.” “It is the voice of Todi; it is the acting of Clairon!” cries Grimm. “It is a model which has not been seen on the stage for a long time, and will not soon be seen again.”
And Guinguéné, in his valuable study of the life and works of Piccini, writes: “The talent of this sublime actress has its origin in her extreme sensibility. An air might be better sung, but it would be impossible to give to any air, to any recitative, a truer, more passionate expression. No action could be more dramatic than hers, no silence more eloquent. One still recalls her terrible dumb-show, her tragic immobility; and the awful expression of her countenance during the long ritornello of the chorus of the priests, towards the end of the third act, and while the chorus is being sung.
“At the performance she did no more than replace herself in the position in which she had naturally found herself at the first general rehearsal. Some one spoke to her of the impression she had seemed to feel, and which she communicated to the whole audience.
“ ‘I really experienced it,’ she answered. ‘After the tenth bar, I felt as if I were dead.’[196]