Later Queens of the French Stage

by H. Noel Williams

In November of the same year, the singer was able to discharge the debt of gratitude which she owed to her first master, Lemoine. Lemoine, it will be remembered had, some years before, produced an Électre, which had failed, in spite of the heroic efforts of his former pupil. Now, however, he had composed a far more important work on the subject of Phædra, from which he expected great things; and Madame Saint-Huberty exerted all her influence to secure it precedence over the Œdipe of Sacchini, who was also impatiently awaiting his turn.

Unhappily, she succeeded. Sacchini had the Queen’s promise that his work should be the first to be performed before the Court, at Fontainebleau; but one day Marie Antoinette approached him, and said, with tears in her eyes: “M. Sacchini; it is said that I show too much favour to foreigners. I have been so earnestly solicited to allow the Phèdre of M. Lemoine to be performed, in place of your Œdipe, that I could not refuse. You see my position; forgive me.”

The poor Italian was so bitterly disappointed at the indefinite postponement of the work, upon which he had based so many hopes, that he fell ill that same evening and died, three months later, without having been able to assist at the production of the masterpiece which was to render his name immortal.[201]

Lemoine’s Phèdre, the precedence for which had been so dearly purchased, was coldly received by the Court, and still more coldly by the town; and it was in vain that Madame Saint-Huberty called to her aid all her genius to save the work of her old master. At the third performance the theatre was almost empty. Ultimately, however, it proved a success, thanks to the ingenious intervention of a friend of the composer.

This friend was Quidor, the police-inspector who had been charged with the pursuit of the dancer Nivelon.[202] Quidor had under his professional supervision a great number of ladies of easy virtue, whom he invited, “in a manner which did not permit of any refusal,” to attend and to make their friends attend the performances of Phèdre. The theatre, deserted at the third representation, was crammed to suffocation at the fifth; dazzling toilettes appeared in all the boxes, while the applause was positively deafening; for the ingenious inspector had filled the pit and galleries with police in plain clothes, with orders not to spare their hands or voices.

This strategy was attended with complete success. The performers recovered their spirits, which had been naturally much damped by having to sing to empty boxes, and rendered full justice to what was really an admirable work; at the tenth representation the true public began to arrive, found the music charming, and joined heartily in the applause.[203]

The character of Madame Saint-Huberty was far less agreeable than her talent. Dauvergne, the director of the Opera, declared that she was the most abandoned woman in his theatre—which was to say a good deal—and, in a letter to Amelot, cited by Edmond de Goncourt, in his monograph on the actress, charges her with the most revolting vices—the same of which Sophie Arnould and Mlle. Raucourt had formerly been accused. Moreover, she was insolent and exacting, and wearied the administration with her caprices and pretensions.

“She is a great musician,” writes La Ferté, in 1784, to Amelot, “abounding in talent and essential to the Academy. If Nature had not lavished upon her all the necessary qualifications, Art would have created a prodigy in her favour. This artiste is too well aware that she is necessary to the Opera, in default of persons who can replace her with advantage. She is full of pretensions; she has intelligence, but a bad disposition. She must be humoured, but not spoilt, otherwise she will make herself, so to speak, the sovereign arbitrix of the Opera.”[204]

During a visit to Lyons, in 1785, where she was received with the same enthusiasm as elsewhere in the provinces, Madame Saint-Huberty conceived a violent fancy for the local tenor, one Saint-Aubin by name, who took the part of Énée in Didon, and did not rest content with making love to him on the stage. When her congé expired, nothing would satisfy her but that the fascinating tenor should follow her to Paris, and no sooner had she returned to the capital than she persuaded the administration to engage him for the Opera, and an ordre de début was accordingly despatched to Lyons:

“De Par Le Roi: