It was in June, 1781, after a representation of Gluck's Orphée, that the Académie Royale was burnt to the ground. Coronis (music by Rey, the conductor of the orchestra) was the last piece of the evening, and before it was finished, during the divertissement, one of the scenes caught fire. Dauberval, the principal dancer, had enough presence of mind to order the curtain down at once. The public wanted no more of Coronis, and went quietly away without calling for the conclusion of Rey's opera, and without having the least idea of what was taking place behind the curtain. In the meanwhile the fire had spread on the stage beyond the possibility of extinction. Singers, dancers, musicians, and scene-shifters, rushed in terror from the theatre, and about a dozen persons, who were unable to escape, perished in the conflagration. Madeleine Guimard was nearly burnt to death in her dressing-room, which was surrounded by flames. One of the carpenters, however, penetrated into her loge, wrapped her up in a counterpane (she was entirely undressed), and bore her triumphantly through the fire to a place of safety.
"Save my child! save my child!" cried Rey, in despair; and as soon as he saw the score of Coronis out of danger he went away, giving the flames full permission to burn everything else. All the manuscripts were saved, thanks to the courageous exertions of Lefebrvre, the librarian, who remained below in the music room even while the stage was burning, until the last sheet had been removed.
"The Opera is burnt down," said a Parisian to a Parisian the next morning.
"So much the better," was the reply. "It had been there such a time!"
This remark was ingenious but not true, for the Académie Royale de Musique had only been standing eighteen years. It was burnt down before, in 1768, on which occasion Voltaire, in a letter to M. d'Argental, wrote as follows: "on dit que ce spectacle était si mauvais qu'il fallait tôt ou tard que la vengeance divine éclatât." The theatre destroyed by fire in 1763[65] was in the Palais Royal, and it was reconstructed on the same spot. After the fire of 1781, the Porte St. Martin theatre was built, and the Opera was carried on there ten years, after which it was removed to the opera-house in the Rue Richelieu, which was pulled down after the assassination of the Duc de Berri. But we are advancing beyond the limits of the present chapter.
THE NEW OPERA HOUSE.
The new Opera House was built in eighty-six days. The members of the company received orders not to leave Paris, and during the interval were paid their salaries regularly as if for performing. The work began on the 2nd of August, and was finished on the 27th of October. Lenoir, the architect, had told Marie Antoinette that the theatre could be completed in time for the first performance to take place on the 30th of October.
"Say the 31st," replied the queen; "and if on that day I receive the key of my box, I promise you the Order of St. Michael in exchange."
The key was sent to her majesty on the 26th, who not only decorated Lenoir with the cordon of St. Michael, but also conferred on him a pension of six thousand francs; and on the 27th the theatre was opened to the public.
In 1784, Sacchini's Chimène, adapted from Il Gran Cid, an opera he had written for the King's Theatre in 1778, was produced at the Académie with great success. The principal part in this work was sustained by Huberti, a singer much admired by Piccinni, who wrote some airs in the cantabile style specially for her, and said that, without her, his opera of Dido, in which she played the principal part, was "without Dido." M. Castil Blaze tells us that she was the first true singer who appeared at the Académie. Grimm declares, that she sang like Todi and acted like Clairon. Finally, when Madame de Saint Huberti was performing at Strasburgh, in 1787, a young officer of artillery, named Napoleon Bonaparte, addressed the following witty and complimentary verses to her:—