Some years later, a few nights after the production of “Guillaume Tell,” a serenade was given to Rossini, by the artists of the Opera, under the direction of Habeneck, the chef d’orchestre. Méry, in the preface to his French version of “Semiramide,” has given a lively description of the scene.
“Habeneck,” he says, “conducted his army on to the boulevard, and made it execute the overture to ‘Guillaume Tell.’ Soulié, the charming writer of ‘La Quotidienne,’ had brought up a crowd of Royalists; Armand Marrast, Carrel, Rabbe, and myself, represented the Liberal journals. The applause shook the windows on the boulevard; and the enthusiasm became really frantic when Levasseur, Nourrit, and Dabadie, sang the trio of the oath.
“Boieldieu, that musician of genius and of heart, who lodged in the same house, went down to Rossini and embraced him.
“Paer and Berton sat at the Café des Variétés, taking an ice, and saying to one another, in a duet, ‘Art is lost!’”
Why, it may be asked, does Méry point out that Rossini’s music, in the year 1829, was applauded both by Royalists and Liberals?
The explanation is, that the question of Rossini’s merit had become, to a certain extent, a political question, like the disputes between the Gluckists and the Piccinnists; and at an earlier period (1752) between the supporters of Italian and the supporters of French music.
Shortly before the French Revolution of 1789, the party of Marie Antoinette believed only in Gluck, while the party of Madame Dubarry swore by Piccinni.
During the Restoration and until the Revolution of 1830, it was the sign of a good royalist to praise Rossini’s music, and a sign of liberalism to condemn it. This had nothing whatever to do with Rossini’s own political opinions, which were never very marked. But Rossini’s music and the romantic school of poetry and painting were classed together, and the romantic school, with Victor Hugo, Lamartine, and Alfred de Vigny at its head, began by being royalist.
Balzac describes somewhere a hero of this period as devoted to “Byron’s poetry, Géricault’s painting, Rossini’s music;” and persons who entertained these tastes were looked upon as Royalists, and denounced accordingly by the Liberals.
It was absurd, but so it was. Of course, too, there were limits to the absurdity; and it must have been near its end when Armand Carrel went out on the boulevard to applaud the overture to “Guillaume Tell.”