In Paris alone—Paris, which afterwards made such an idol of the composer—did the "Crociato" fail to meet with immediate success. In nonsense and folly it may be truly said of the Parisians that "a little child shall lead them"; and so it happened on this occasion. In the admirable quartette of the second act a child is introduced, as in "Norma," to awaken the sympathies of an untractable tenor papa. This juvenile, by no means a young Apollo, took not the slightest interest in the music, and was so indifferent to the publicity of the situation, so utterly blasé, (and sleepy,) as to yawn during the most affecting passages. At the first yawn, the audience smiled; the prima donna, proceeding with her part, exclaimed in tragic Italian, "Restrain thy tears!"—and the child gaped again for the second time, while the audience grinned. "Heaven will comfort thee!" shrieked the singer,—whereat the child gave such a prodigious yawn that the house burst into laughter, and the vocalist could not finish the piece.
In 1827 Meyerbeer married, and retired from public life for a while. Two of the children born to him died, their loss casting so deep a shade on his soul that for nearly two years he composed only religious music to words selected from the Book of Psalms, or written by Klopstock. He also wrote a collection of melodies, among them an elegy entitled "At the Tomb of Beethoven." But erelong the glorious old instinct for operatic composition returned. On the seventeenth of September, 1829, M. Lubbert, then director of the opera, received a letter couched in these terms:—
"17 Septembre, 1829.
"J'ai l'honneur de vous prévenir, Monsieur, que par décision de ce jour j'ai accordé à M. Meyerbeer, compositeur, ses entrées à l'Académie Royale de Musique....
"L'Aide-de-Camp du Roi,
"Directeur-Général des Beaux-Arts,
"Vicomte de Larochefoucauld."
And two years later, on the twenty-first of September, 1831, Dr. Véron, the successor of Lubbert, opened his doors for the first performance of "Robert le Diable." This wonderful and popular opera was written in French, to a libretto sent to Berlin by Scribe, and was at first intended for the Opéra Comique, but its three acts were subsequently increased to five, and its destination changed to the Grand Opéra. Meyerbeer himself had to bear much of the expense of preparing the stage-appointments, though not to such an extent as on the production of his "Romilda" in Italy, when he bought the libretto, gave the music gratis, paid the singers, and provided the costumes.
Dr. Véron, in his Memoirs, gives an amusing account of the accidents which attended the first production of "Robert." In the third act, a chandelier fell, and the prima donna Dorus had a narrow escape from being hit by the falling glass; after the chorus of demons, a cloud, rising from the cave to hide the stage, reached a certain elevation, and then, giving way, tumbled on the boards, nearly striking Taglioni the dancer, who, as Elena, was extended on her tomb, ready for the next scene; and in the last act, Nourrit, the Robert of the evening, in the excitement of the moment, leaped down the trap-door by which Levasseur (the Bertram) had just disappeared. This last event received different interpretations. On the stage there was alarm and weeping, because it was then thought Nourrit in his leap had been killed or maimed; by the audience it was supposed that the author intended Robert should share with Bertram the infernal regions; while under the stage Levasseur greeted the tenor with mingled surprise and disgust:—"Que diable faites vous ici? Est ce qu'on a changé le dénouement?" Luckily, Nourrit was unhurt, the curtain was raised again, the singers made their conventional acknowledgments, and the names of the authors were announced amid the wildest enthusiasm.
After that night Meyerbeer had to pay no more money to get his operas on the stage. The tables were so completely turned that he thenceforth could command almost any price he chose to ask. To follow his career more minutely, after this period of his emergence into the bright light of fame, would be but to recount a story with which almost every one is familiar.