Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 1

by H. Sutherland Edwards

The Opera in France had much to go through before it attained its present artistic development, or, as regards the French form of grand opera, found its present capacious and splendid home. It is the proud boast of Frenchmen that Le Nouvel Opéra—as the existing Grand Opéra in Paris has been called for the last sixteen years, and as it will probably be called for a long while to come—covers thirteen times as much ground as the Royal Opera House of Berlin. It is, indeed, superior by its commodiousness as well as its magnificence to every other opera house in Europe; though what above all distinguishes it is its admirable site, and the wide open space in which it stands. In many capitals the theatres, even the finest, are only portions of a street. At Moscow, it is true, the Great Theatre stands by itself in a vast square—a square which, compared with the Place de l’Opéra, is a desert space. From its very origin the Opera in France has always been regarded as an institution of the first importance. It enjoyed special privileges from the Crown, it was managed like a department of the State, and an attack {134} upon the Opera was punished like a treasonable offence.

“Before I tell you,” wrote Rousseau towards the end of the eighteenth century, “what I think of this famous theatre, I will state what is said about it. The judgment of connoisseurs may correct mine if I am wrong. The Opera of Paris passes in the capital for the most pompous, the most voluptuous, the most admirable spectacle that human art has ever invented. Its admirers declare it to be the most superb monument of the magnificence of Louis XIV., and one is not so free as you may think to express an opinion on such an important subject. Here you may dispute about everything except music and the Opera; on these topics alone it is dangerous not to dissemble. French music is defended, too, by a very rigorous inquisition, and the first thing intimated as a warning to strangers who visit this country is that all foreigners admit there is nothing in this world so fine as the Opera of Paris. The fact is, discreet people hold their tongues, and dare only laugh in their sleeves.”

Rousseau then, speaking in the person of St. Preuz, the hero of “La nouvelle Héloise,” describes the performance as it took place at the Opera. “Imagine,” he says, “an enclosure fifteen feet broad, and long in proportion; this enclosure is the theatre. On its two sides are placed at intervals screens, which are crudely painted with the objects which the scene is about to represent. At the back of the enclosure hangs a great curtain, painted in like manner and nearly always pierced and torn that it may represent at a little distance gulfs on the earth or holes in the sky. Everyone who passes behind this stage or touches the curtain produces a sort of earthquake which has a double effect. The sky is made of certain bluish rags suspended from poles or cords, as linen may be seen hung out to dry in any washerwoman’s yard. The sun, which is here sometimes seen, is a lighted torch in a lantern. The cars of the gods and goddesses are composed of four rafters squared and hung on a thick rope in the form of a swing or see-saw; between the rafters is a cross plank on which the god sits down, and in front hangs a piece of coarse cloth, well dirtied, which acts the part of clouds for the magnificent car. One may see, towards the bottom of the machine, two or three stinking candles, badly snuffed, which, while the great personage dementedly presents himself swinging in his see-saw, fumigate him with an incense worthy of his dignity. The agitated sea is composed of long angular arrangements of cloth and blue pasteboard strung on parallel spits, which are turned by little blackguard boys. The thunder is a heavy cart rolled over an arch, and is not the least agreeable instrument one hears. The flashes of lightning are made of pinches of resin thrown on a flame; and the thunder is a cracker at the end of a fusee.

“The theatre is, moreover, furnished with little square traps, which, opening at need, announce that the demons are about to issue from their cave. When they have to rise into the air little imps of stuffed brown cloth are substituted for them, or sometimes real chimney sweeps, who swing about suspended on ropes till they are majestically lost in the rags of which I have spoken. The accidents, however, which not unfrequently happen are sometimes as tragic as farcical. When the ropes break, the infernal spirits and immortal gods fall together, and lame or occasionally kill one another. Add to all this the monsters which render some scenes very pathetic, such as dragons, lizards, tortoises, crocodiles, and large toads, who promenade the theatre with a menacing air, and display at the Opera all the temptations of St. Anthony. Each of these figures is animated by a lout of a Savoyard who has not even intelligence enough to play the beast.

“Such, my cousin, is the august machinery of the Opera, as I have observed it from the pit, with the aid of my glass, for you must not imagine that all this apparatus is hidden, and produces an imposing effect. I have only described what I have seen myself, and what any other spectator may see. I am assured, however, that there are a prodigious number of machines employed to put the whole spectacle in motion, and I have been invited several times to examine them; but I have never been curious to learn how little things are performed by great means.”

When our musical historian, Dr. Burney, visited Paris and heard at the Opera the works of Rameau, successor to Lulli, under whose direction the French Opera was founded, he found the music monotonous in the extreme, and without either rhythm or expression. He could admire nothing at the French Opera except the dancing and the decorations; and these alone, he says, seemed to give pleasure to the audience. It was not, at that time, the custom in France to name the singers in the programme; and throughout the eighteenth century no singer in France attained such eminence as was reached by numbers in Italy, and by not {135} a few in England, some of Italian, some of English birth. Naturally, then, in the eighteenth century French Opera singers were not well paid; and chroniclers relate that a Mlle. Aubry and a Mlle. Verdier, being engaged in the same line of stage business, had to live in the same room and sleep in the same bed. Apart from the obscurity naturally resulting from the suppression of the names, inconvenience was caused by the uncertainty in which the public found itself of knowing which singer, on any particular evening, would appear. Shortly before the establishment of the Republic, when, for the first time, the names of singers were printed in the bills, an habitué rushed out of the theatre in a high state of indignation, and began to beat one of the money-takers in the lobby. The poor man at once understood the reason of his aggressor’s wrath. “How was I to know,” he exclaimed, “that they would let Le Ponthieu sing to-night!”

The initial step towards high melody at the French Opera was taken when, some fifteen years before the Revolution, first Gluck, then Piccini, were invited to Paris to produce adaptations of former successes, or original works, fitted in either case to French libretti. While praising the melody of the Italians as much as he condemns the solemnity of the French, Rousseau expresses the highest admiration for the genius of Gluck, the great reformer of the French operatic stage. After the arrival of Gluck in Paris Rousseau is said never to have missed a representation of Orphée. He said, moreover, in reference to the gratification which that work had afforded him, that “after all there was something in life worth living for, since in two hours so much genuine pleasure could be obtained.”

The next great assistance to the French Opera, and this a permanent one, was given by the Republic, through the establishment of a large music-school, known as the Conservatoire, where a course of gratuitous instruction is given to all comers capable at the stipulated age of passing the indispensable test examination. Before, however, the Conservatoire, destined to produce so many excellent vocalists, instrumentalists, and composers, had time to bear fruit, Napoleon had done much to encourage and develop French musical art. Napoleon, as a young man, was one of the first admirers of the afterwards famous Mme. St. Huberti; and when Mme. Mara refused an engagement pressed upon her at the time of the Empire, Napoleon would have arrested her and forced her to accept it had she not fled from Paris. Then, another cause of improvement at the French Opera was the frequent visits paid, early in this century, and especially since the Peace of 1815, by foreign artists to the capital which, in former days, had set its face both against vocalists and composers from abroad. Lulli, the founder of opera in France, was an Italian by birth, though after his naturalisation he got to be looked upon as a Frenchman. His successor, Rameau, was no doubt a Frenchman. But the French tradition was so completely broken by the advent of Gluck and Piccini that the French have never since exhibited any of their ancient prejudice against foreign composers; and it is to these that for the last seventy or eighty years the Grand Opera of Paris has owed most of its success, that is to say, to Spontini, Rossini, Donizetti, Verdi, and, above all, Meyerbeer.

A highly interesting account of the rehearsals of Meyerbeer’s Robert le Diable—one of the typical works of the modern repertoire of grand opera—is given, in his “Mémoires d’un Bourgeois de Paris,” by Dr. Véron, for some time manager of the Opera House. “It was not,” he {136} tells us, “until after four months of orchestral and other rehearsals that the general rehearsals were reached. These latter,” he continues, “caused great fatigue and great excitement to everyone; to the composer, the singers, the chiefs of department, and the manager. When a general rehearsal takes place, with choruses, principal singers, and full orchestra, but without scenery, without costumes, and without full light, the musical execution gains much and produces always a great effect. In the darkness and silence of the empty and more sonorous house, without any distraction for the other senses, one is, so to say, all ears; nothing is lost of the fine shades of expression in the singing, of the delicate embroideries of the orchestration. But at the first representation the disappointment is great. In the immense, splendidly lighted theatre, filled with an excited crowd, all the rich and elegant details of the score will be lost through the stuff of the women’s dresses and the diminished sonority of a building crowded in pit, boxes, and gallery. Great musical ideas, grand orchestral effects, will now alone produce an impression. Thus it happened that at the first representation of Robert the Devil, the public, after applauding the first two acts, was only impressed and deeply moved by the chorus of demons.”