However, Meyerbeer was still to grow, and les Huguenots, performed at the Opéra, Feb. 21, 1836, was to be the crowning point of his glory. It should be said that he was admirably served by his collaborator Scribe. The latter, after having given him the fantastic poem of Robert, wrote for him the the passionate, pathetic and dramatic poem of the Huguenots, which revived at the same time a splendid page of history, in which he introduced, in the happiest manner, a picturesque element which permitted the artist to vary his palette and give to each episode a color of its own. The most diverse and powerful situations abound in this superb poem, and it is just to declare that Meyerbeer has interpreted them with an incomparable genius.
After the Huguenots three years passed during which France received no new work from Meyerbeer. Meanwhile people had much to say about the Prophète; but Meyerbeer, exceptionally anxious about the good execution of his works, not finding in the personnel of the Opéra at that time the artists of whom he had dreamed for this work, waited patiently. Moreover, the office of capellmeister of the king of Prussia, to which he had been appointed, called him often to Berlin during this period. It was in this capacity that he composed a grand Italian cantata, la Festa nella corte di Ferrara, which was performed at court in 1843, and a German opera in three acts, A Camp in Silesia, composed for the inauguration of the new royal theatre of Berlin (Dec. 7, 1844) and which was rather coldly received. It was at this time also that he published, with French words, a great number of admirable songs, of which a collection in four volumes has recently been formed in Paris. It was during this period that he composed the beautiful music for his brother's drama, Struensée, and his first March (Fackeltanz), performed for the marriage of the princess Wilhelmina of Prussia with the king of Bavaria.
Finally, on April 16, 1849, the Prophète, so long expected, made its appearance at the Paris Opéra, interpreted by Roger (Jean de Leyde), Levasseur (Jacharie), Mme. Viardot (Fidès) and Mme. Castellan (Bertha).
Le Pardon de Plöermel was the last of Meyerbeer's works brought out before his death, which occurred at Paris, May 2, 1864. For nearly twenty years l'Africaine had been under consideration, but the master waited for this work as he had done for le Prophète, until the personnel of the Opéra could offer him such artists as he deemed necessary for its proper execution. Meanwhile, he had drawn up instructions relative to this Africaine, which he wished to have carried out after his death. Among other things he requested that the rôle of Sélika be confided to Mme. Marie Lasse, and that of Vasco to M. Naudin, whose voice he had admired at the Théâtre Italien. The direction of the Opéra took pains to conform to this posthumous desire and l'Africaine appeared at this theatre, under the conditions specified by the composer, April 28, 1865. While fully taking into account the great value of certain episodes of this work, it will surely be no violation to Meyerbeer's memory to say that l'Africaine has added nothing to his glory. Even without l'Africaine he would still have remained one of the most magnificent geniuses that has illumined the art of the nineteenth century.
TOMB OF THE MEYERBEER FAMILY.
From large lithograph Memorial published at the time of Meyerbeer's death.
The transformation of the genre of the French grand opera had begun with Auber's La Muette de Portici, performed in 1828. La Muette was the first work conceived in the new forms and in the vast proportions of the school which was to succeed the school of Gluck and his followers. The scenic development, the pursuit of new and piquant harmonies, the importance given to the orchestra; all this, joined to a more varied and less uniform melodic expression, had produced a deep impression on the public, and dethroned with a single blow the ancient opera which had reigned for more than half a century. Rossini had come later with his William Tell, in which the splendor of the style, the richness of inspiration and the fullness of dramatic expression, all carried to their highest degree, had marked an advance over the remarkable work of the French composer, without, however, surpassing the latter's elegance and originality. With Robert le Diable, Meyerbeer, in his turn, struck a note entirely personal, and in this work the passionate vigor of accent, the power of orchestral combinations, the particular character and relief given to each of the personages, indicated a musician of a new and profoundly original genius; a genius more complex than that of his predecessors, seeking for effects in the detail as well as in the ensemble, but arriving like them, and by different means, at an intensity of expression which was difficult to surpass.
It goes without saying that the score of Robert le Diable contained suggestions of the forms adopted by the author in the course of his Italian career. This is especially noticeable in the first act and the beginning of the second, and it would not have been an easy matter to avoid it. But the general style of the work has an incontestable grandeur, the declamation, noble and powerful, assumes the character of the French lyric declamation, the contrasts of situations are striking and managed with a remarkable intelligence, and the color of the music, its fantastic character, so well in accord with the subject, are of such an intensity as to produce on the hearer an ineffaceable impression. It is in the third act especially, divided into two distinct parts, that the genius of the composer is given full scope, and attains its most complete magnificence. The comic scene between Bertram and Raimbaut, that in which voices from below call to Bertram, the dramatic scene between Bertram and Alice, are all of a great beauty, and the tableau following, that of the evocation of nuns in the depth of their cloister, with the episode of the seduction of Robert, is of a wonderful poetry and grace, and contrasts in a striking manner with that which precedes. In the fourth act it is the human passion which speaks its most pathetic language from the grand duet of Robert and Isabelle to the moment when the powerful finale comes to prove to us that Gluck's genius and his transports are not unknown to the genius of Meyerbeer. As to the fifth act, it is of an admirable dramatic feeling.