sought but for effect, and had no regard to dramatic truth. In this manner, Meyerbeer has become not only the most famous, but also—and this is the principal thing—the richest musician of the entire world. He knows his business, as no one before has known it.
Meyerbeer is distinguished particularly for his predilection for religious scenes. With consummate skill, he uses them to produce striking contrasts. None of his last operas fail in this spicy seasoning. As a Jew, he is impartial among the different Christian sects. He maligns and mocks them all. In Robert le Diable, it is Catholicism which is put under contribution to furnish material for his religious scenes; in the Huguenots, he abuses Protestantism in the same manner and to the same end.
Marcel, a personage insignificant and dull, a fanatical Huguenot, interrupts everywhere the action of the piece with a Protestant canticle, always inopportunely and without reason, but producing always a grand effect by contrast. It is the air of the canticle of Luther: “Our God is a tower of strength.” The success of the Huguenots, this opera being so much a favorite, rests almost entirely on the contrasts produced by this canticle.
In the first act, a merry company of cavaliers is found at table drinking and singing a riotous song. Marcel, the incomprehensible solitary, proceeds to thunder out, with a loud voice accompanied with brazen instruments: “Hear me, strong God! My voice is raised to thee.” This canticle, in the midst of jovial drinkers, intermingled with the song they are singing—how can it fail of effect? In the second act, there is a very violent scene. At the instigation of Queen Margaret, the Count St. Bris has proposed his daughter to the
Chevalier Raoul, who refuses her. Valentina, the daughter, despised and scorned, complains; Queen Margaret preaches peace; all shout and fence, and Marcel adds his chorus in a thundering voice, “God, our guard and protection, listen to our cries!” Is not this a shameful prostitution of sacred things? But it produces effect; and our opera-going public, which boasts of its delicate taste, is enchanted with it, and imagines that the violent impression produced by these contrasts is a religious and edifying sentiment.
In L’Africaine, the last production of Meyerbeer, he introduces us immediately, in the first act, to a sitting of the secret council of the King of Portugal. It is understood that the grand inquisitor and a certain number of cardinals play the principal rôle. Finally, Vasco de Gama is condemned, loaded with chains, and thrown into the deepest dungeon. Why? Because he has affirmed the existence of distant and unknown lands of which the Scripture does not speak. You know well that ecclesiastical dignitaries have always had the habit of refuting with chains and a prison novel ideas and scientific discoveries. At least, by this scene the public is convinced of it, with the aid of stunning music. This same opera, so much approved, contains also a very piquant amorous intrigue. There are several choruses of prayer, then a large vessel on the stage, and finally a manchineel tree, which spreads death. We must agree that it is the possible and the impossible.
However, it is not the Jew Meyerbeer who has pushed to the extreme his musical industry. The Jew Offenbach has gone much further. The former speculated principally on the curiosity of the unreflecting masses; but while his art is under subjection
to frivolity, he still seeks to preserve a certain decorum. But Offenbach has got rid of the last remains of modesty and propriety. Yet the Christian public besiege the workshop, and applaud with frenzy the musical indecencies of this industrious Jew.
Orphées aux Enfers, La Belle Hélène, La Vie Parisienne, such, for several years, have been the favorite works with a public in advance of its age. These operas have been played every day for weeks and months on every stage; and often there are disputes over the tickets for these representations. Of course, it is all owing to the beautiful music.
With these impure works, dramatic music has attained the extreme of degradation. After having been lowered by Meyerbeer and the modern composers of France and Italy to the rank of an equestrienne, who rides round the circus in elegant costume, the muse of music has been thrown to the demi-monde by Offenbach. She could not fall lower.