The subject was Cleopatra after Actium. Dying in convulsions, she invokes the spirits of the Pharaohs, demanding—criminal though she be—whether she dare claim a place beside them in their mighty tombs. It was a magnificent theme, and I had often pondered over Juliet’s—
“But if when I am laid into the tomb,”
which is, at least in terror of approaching death, analogous to the appeal of the Egyptian Queen.
I was fool enough to head my score with those very words—the unpardonable sin to my Voltairean judges—and wrote what seemed to me a weird and dramatic piece, well suited to the words. I afterwards used it, unchanged, for the Chorus of Shades in Lelio; I think it deserved the prize. But it did not get it. None of the compositions did. Rather than give it to a “young composer of such revolutionary tendencies” they withheld it altogether.
Next day I met Boïeldieu, who, on seeing me, said:
“My dear boy, what on earth possessed you? The prize was in your hand, and you simply threw it away.”
“But, monsieur, I really did my best.”
“That’s just it! Your best is the opposite of your good. How could I possibly approve? I, who like nice gentle music—cradle-music, one might say.”
“But, monsieur, could an Egyptian queen, passionate, remorseful, and despairing, die in mortal anguish of body and soul to the sound of cradle-music?”
“Oh, come! come! I know you have plenty of excuses, but they go for nothing. You might at least have written gracefully.”