Later on I wanted the scenery of the first act of Thérèse to reproduce it exactly. Our artiste (Lucy Arbell) was especially impressed with the idea. It is well known that her ancestry makes her one of the descendants of the Marquis of Hertford.
When the score was finished and we knew the intentions of Raoul Gunsbourg, who wanted the work for the Monte Carlo Opéra, Mme. Massenet and I were informed that H. S. H. the Prince of Monaco would honor our modest home with his presence, and with the chief of his household, the Comte de Lamotte d'Allogny, would lunch with us. We immediately invited my collaborator and Mme. Claretie and my excellent publisher and Mme. Heugel.
The Prince of Monaco with his deep simplicity was good enough to sit near a piano I had got in for the occasion and listen to passages from Thérèse. He learned the following detail from us. During the first reading Lucy Arbell, a true artist, stopped me as I was singing the last scene, where Thérèse gasps with horror as she sees the awful cart bringing her husband, André Thorel, to the scaffold and cries with all her might, "Vive le Roi!" so as to ensure that she shall be reunited with her husband in death. Just then, our interpreter, who was deeply affected, stopped me and said in a burst of rapture, "I can never sing that scene through, for when I recognize my husband who has given me his name and saved Armand de Clerval, I ought to lose my voice. So I ask you to declaim all of the ending of the piece."
Only great artists have such inborn gifts of instinctive emotion. Witness Mme. Fidès Devriès who asked me to re-write the aria of Chimène, "Pleurez mes yeux." She found that while she was singing it she thought only of her dead father and almost forgot her friend, Rodriguez.
A sincere touch was suggested by the tenor, Talazac, the creator of Des Grieux. He wanted to add toi before vous which he uttered on finding Manon in the seminaire of Saint Sulpice. Does not that toi indicate the first cry of the old lover on seeing his mistress again?
The preliminary rehearsals of Thérèse took place in the fine apartment, richly decorated with old pictures and work of art, which Raoul Gunsbourg had in the Rue de Rivoli.
It was New Year's and we celebrated by working in the salon from eight o'clock in the evening until midnight.
Outside it was cold, but a good fire made us forget that, as we drank in that fine exquisite atmosphere champagne to the speedy realization of our common hopes.
How exciting and impressive those rehearsals were as they brought together such fine artists as Lucy Arbell, Edmond Clément and Dufranne!
The first performance of Thérèse came the next month, February 7, 1907, at the Monte Carlo Opéra.