MODERN FRANCE
GOUNOD—THOMAS—BIZET—SAINT SAËNS—REYER—MASSENET—BRUNEAU—CHARPENTIER—DEBUSSY
If one were set upon paradox, it would not be far from the truth to say that up to the middle of the nineteenth century the most famous French composers had been either German or Italian. Certainly if Lulli, Gluck, Rossini and Meyerbeer—to name only a few of the distinguished aliens who settled in Paris—had never existed, French opera of the present day would be a very different thing from what it actually is. Yet in spite of the strangely diverse personalities of the men who had most influence in shaping its destiny, modern French opera is an entity remarkable for completeness and homogeneity, fully alive to tendencies the most advanced, yet firmly founded upon the solid traditions of the past.
Gounod (1818-1893) was trained in the school of Meyerbeer, but his own sympathies drew him rather towards the serene perfection of Mozart. The pure influence of that mighty master, combined with the strange mingling of sensuousness and mysticism which was the distinguishing trait of his own character, produced a musical personality of high intrinsic interest, and historically of great importance to the development of music. If not the actual founder of modern French opera, Gounod is at least the source of its most pronounced characteristics.
His first opera, 'Sapho' (1851), a graceful version of the immortal story of the Lesbian poetess's love and death, has never been really popular, but it is interesting as containing the germs of much that afterwards became characteristic in Gounod's style. In the final scene of Sappho's suicide, the young composer surpassed himself, and struck a note of sensuous melancholy which was new to French opera. 'La Nonne Sanglante' (1854), his next work, was a failure; but in 'Le Médecin malgré lui' (1858), an operatic version of Molière's comedy, he scored a success. This is a charming little work, instinct with a delicate flavour of antiquity, but lacking in comic power. It has often been played in England as 'The Mock Doctor.' Sganarelle is a drunken woodcutter, who is in the habit of beating his wife Martine. She is on the look-out for a chance of paying him back in his own coin. Two servants of Géronte, the Croesus of the neighbourhood, appear in search of a doctor to cure their master's daughter Lucinde, who pretends to be dumb in order to avoid a marriage she dislikes. Martine sends them to the place where her husband is at work, telling them that they will find him an able doctor. She adds that he has one peculiarity, namely, that he will not own to his profession unless he is soundly thrashed. Under the convincing arguments of the two men, Sganarelle admits that he is a doctor, and follows them to their master's house. Léandre, Lucinde's lover, persuades Sganarelle to smuggle him into the house as an apothecary. The two young people with Sganarelle's help contrive an elopement, but when the marriage is discovered, Géronte visits his wrath upon the mock doctor, and is only pacified by the news that Léandre has just inherited a fortune.
The year 1859 saw the production of 'Faust,' the opera with which Gounod's name is principally associated. The libretto, by MM. Barbier and Carré does not of course claim to represent Goethe's play in any way. The authors had little pretension to literary skill, but they knew their business thoroughly. They fastened upon the episode of Gretchen, and threw all the rest overboard. The result was a well-constructed and thoroughly comprehensible libretto, with plenty of love-making and floods of cheap sentiment, but as different in atmosphere and suggestion from Goethe's mighty drama as could well be imagined.
The first act shows us Faust as an old man, sitting in his study weary and disappointed. He is about to end his troubles and uncertainty in death, when an Easter hymn sung in the distance by a chorus of villagers seems to bid him stay his hand. With a quick revulsion of feeling he calls on the powers below, and, rather to his surprise, Mephistopheles promptly appears. In exchange for his soul, the devil offers him youth, beauty, and love, and, as an earnest of what is to come, shows him a vision of the gentle Margaret sitting at her spinning wheel. Faust is enraptured, hastily signs the contract, and hurries away with his attendant fiend.
The next act is taken up with a Kermesse in the market-place of a country town. Valentine, the brother of Margaret, departs for the wars, after confiding his sister to the care of his friend Siebel. During a pause in the dances Faust salutes Margaret for the first time as she returns from church. The third act takes place in Margaret's garden. Faust and Mephistopheles enter secretly, and deposit a casket of jewels upon the doorstep. Margaret, woman-like, is won by their beauty, and cannot resist putting them on. Faust finds her thus adorned, and wooes her passionately, while Mephistopheles undertakes to keep Dame Martha, her companion, out of the way. The act ends by Margaret yielding to Faust's prayers and entreaties. In the fourth act Margaret is left disconsolate. Faust has deserted her, and Valentine comes home to find his sister's love-affair the scandal of the town. He fights a duel with Faust, whom he finds lurking under his sister's window, and dies cursing Margaret with his last breath. During this act occurs the church scene, which is sometimes performed after Valentine's death and sometimes before it. Margaret is kneeling in the shadowy minster, striving to pray, but the voice of conscience stifles her half-formed utterances. In Gounod's libretto, the intangible reproaches which Margaret addresses to herself are materialised in the form of Mephistopheles, a proceeding which is both meaningless and inartistic, though perhaps dramatically unavoidable. In the,' last act, after a short scene on the Brocken and a conventional ballet, which are rarely performed in England, we are taken to the prison where Margaret lies condemned to death for the murder of her child. Faust is introduced by the aid of Mephistopheles, and tries to persuade her to fly with him. Weak and wandering though she is, she refuses, and dies to the chant of an angelic choir, while Faust is dragged down to the abyss by Mephistopheles. Gounod's music struggles nobly with the tawdriness and sentimentality of the libretto. A good deal of the first and last acts is commonplace and conventional, but the other three contain beauties of a high order. The life and gaiety of the Kermesse scene in the second act, the sonorous dignity of Valentine's invocation of the cross, and the tender grace of Faust's salutation—the last a passage which might have been written by Mozart—are too familiar to need more than a passing reference. In the fourth act also there is much noble music. Gounod may be forgiven even for the soldiers' chorus, in consideration of the masculine vigour of the duel terzetto—a purified reminiscence of Meyerbeer—and the impressive church scene. But the most characteristic part of the work is, after all, the love music in the third act. The dreamy languor which pervades the scene, the cloying sweetness of the harmonies, the melting beauty of the orchestration, all combine to produce an effect; which was at that time entirely new to opera, and had no little share in forming the modern school. With all his admiration of Mozart, Gounod possessed little of his idol's genius for characterisation. The types in 'Faust' do not stand out clearly. Margaret, for instance, is merely a sentimental school-girl; she has none of the girlish freshness and innocence of Goethe's Gretchen, and Mephistopheles is much more of a tavern bully than a fallen angel. Yet with all its faults 'Faust' remains a work of a high order of beauty. Every page of the score tells of a striving after a lofty ideal, and though as regards actual form Gounod made no attempt to break new ground, the aim and atmosphere of 'Faust,' no less than the details of its construction, contrast so strongly with the conventional Italianism of the day, that it may well be regarded as the inauguration of a new era in French music.
'Faust' marks the zenith of Gounod's career. After 1859 he was content for the most part merely to repeat the ideas already expressed in his chef-d'oevre, while in form his later works show a distinctly retrograde movement. He seems to have known nothing of the inward impulse of development which led Wagner and Verdi from strength to strength.
Philémon et Baucis' (1860) is a charming modernisation of a classical legend. Jupiter and Vulcan, visiting earth for the purpose of punishing the impiety of the Phrygians, are driven by a storm to take refuge in the cottage of an aged couple, Philémon and Baucis. Pleased with the hospitable treatment which he receives at their hands, and touched by the mutual affection of the old people, which time has done nothing to impair, Jupiter restores their lost youth to them. This leads to dangerous complications. The rejuvenated Baucis is so exceedingly attractive that Jupiter himself falls a victim to her charms, and Philémon becomes jealous and quarrelsome. Baucis finally persuades Jupiter to promise her whatever she wishes, and having extorted the oath compels him to return to Olympus, leaving Philémon and herself to enjoy another lifetime of uninterrupted happiness. 'Philémon et Baucis' adheres strictly to the conventional lines of opéra comique, and has little beyond its tuneful grace and delicate orchestration to recommend it. Nevertheless it is a charming trifle, and has survived many of Gounod's more pretentious works. 'La Reine de Saba' (1862) and 'La Colombe' (1866) are now forgotten, but 'Mireille' (1864), one of the composer's most delightful works, still enjoys a high degree of popularity. The story, which is founded upon Mistral's Provençal romance 'Miréio,' is transparently simple. Vincent, a young basket-maker, loves the fair Mireille, who is the daughter of a rich farmer named Raymond. Raymond will have nothing to say to so humble a suitor, and favours the pretensions of Ourrias, a herdsman. While making a pilgrimage to a church in the desert of Crau, Mireille has a sunstroke, and her life is despaired of. In an access of grief and remorse her father promises to revoke his dismissal of Vincent, whereupon Mireille speedily recovers and is united to her lover. Gounod's music seems to have borrowed the warm colouring of the Provençal poet's romance. 'Mireille' glows with the life and sunlight of the south. There is little attempt at dramatic force in it, and the one scene in which the note of pathos is attempted is perhaps the least successful in the whole opera. But the lighter portions of the work are irresistible. 'Mireille' has much of the charm of Daudet's Provençal stories, the charm of warmth and colour, independent of subject. More than one version of the opera exists. That which is now most usually played is in three acts. In the first version of the work there is a curious scene, in which Ourrias is drowned by a spectral ferryman in the waters of the Rhone, but this is now rarely performed.