Jules Massenet

“ 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. ”

“ In March, 1910, fêtes of unusual and unheard of splendor were given at Monaco at the opening of the colossal palace of the Oceanographic Museum.
Thérèse was given at the gala performance before an audience which included members of the Institute, confrères of his Serene Highness, a member of the Académie des Sciences. Many illustrious persons, savants from the whole world, representatives of the Diplomatic Corps, as well as M. Loubet, ex-president of the Republic, were there. ”

“ My wife has just put Marie Magdeleine under lock and key!
That detail is eloquent, is it not?
The devil! You've become singularly disturbing.
As to that, believe me that no one is more sincere in his admiration and in his affection than your,
BIZET.
That is the testimony of my excellent comrade and affectionate friend, George Bizet—a friend and comrade who would have remained steadfast had not blind destiny torn him from us in the full bloom of his prodigious and marvelous talent. ”

“ They welcomed our marvellous artists with great enthusiasm. Lucy Arbell was dazzling and extraordinary as La Belle Dulcinée and Gresse was an extremely comical Sancho.
In thinking over this work which they gave five times in the same season at Monte Carlo—a unique record in the annals of that house—I feel my whole being thrill with happiness at the thought of seeing again that dreamland, the Palace of Monaco, and his Serene Highness on the approaching occasion of Roma. ”

“ This city of the popes, the terre papale, as Rabelais called it, attracted me almost as much as that other city of the popes, ancient Rome.
We lived at the excellent Hotel de l'Europe, Place Grillon. Our hosts, M. and Mme. Ville, were worthy and obliging persons and were full of attention for us. That was imperative for I needed quiet to write La Navarraise, the act which Jules Claretie had entrusted to me and my new librettist Henri Cain.
Every evening at five o'clock our hosts, who had forbidden our door all day with jealous care, served us a delicious lunch. ”

“ The same week Mme. Massenet and I dined with M. and Mme. Alphonse Daudet. The other guests were Edmond de Goncourt and Charpentier, the publisher.
After dinner Daudet told me that he wanted me to hear a young artiste. "Music herself," he said. This young girl was Marie Delna! At the first bars that she sang (the aria from the great Gounod's La Reine de Saba) I turned to her and took her hands.
Posthumia (Roma) See page 297
"Be Charlotte, our Charlotte," I said, utterly carried away. ”

“ I have departed from this planet and I have left behind my poor earthly ones with their occupations which are as many as they are useless; at last I am living in the scintillating splendor of the stars, each of which used to seem to me as large as millions of suns. ”

“ These fears were only too well justified by the doubts of which I have spoken and if, in the sequel, Catulle Mendes had been present at our rehearsals he would have been of great assistance.
My gratitude to those great artists—Bréval, Arbell, Muratore, Gresse—is very great. They fought brilliantly and their talents inspired faith in a fine work. It was often planned to try to counteract the ill feeling. ”

“ In passing I want to pay tribute to the beautiful artistes who have taken the part. I will mention Mlles. Mary Garden, Geraldine Farrar, Lina Cavalieri, Mme. Bréjean-Silver, Mlles. Courtenay, Geneviève Vix, Mmes. Edvina and Nicot-Vauchelet, and still other dear artistes. They will pardon me if all their names do not come to my grateful pen at the moment.
The Italian Theatre (Maurel's Season) , as I have already said, put on Hérodiade two weeks after the first performance of Manon, with the following admirable artists: Fidès Devriès, Jean de Reszke, Victor Maurel, Edouard de Reszke. ”

“ With her I have gone up the steps of life, already long, but not so steep as those which led to Ara Coeli, that altar of the skies which recalls to Rome the pure and cloudless celestial abodes, which have led me along a way sometimes difficult and where the roses have been gathered in the midst of thorns. But is not life always so? ”

“ Saint-Saëns won the prize with his Prométhée; Charles Lenepveu was crowned for his Le Florentin—I was third—and Diaz got first place with La Coupe du Roi de Thulé. It was given at the Opéra under marvellous conditions of interpretation.
Saint-Saëns knew that I had competed and that the award had wavered between me and Diaz who had won. Shortly after this he met me and said:
"There are so many good and beautiful things in your score that I have just written to Weimar to see if your work can't be performed there."
Only great men act like that! ”

“ Heaven has marked you with a sign as one of its children; I feel it in everything which your beautiful work has stirred in my heart. But prepare for the martyr's rôle—for the part which must be played by all who come from on high and offend what comes from below. ”

“ The staging of the windmill scene, so ingeniously invented by Raoul Gunsbourg, was more complicated at the Gaîté, although they kept the effect produced at Monte Carlo.
A change of horses, cleverly hidden from the audience, made them think that Don Quixote and the dummy were one and the same man!
Gunsbourg's inspiration in staging the fifth act was also a happy chance. Any artist, even though he is the first in the world, in a scene of agony wants to die lying on the ground. With a flash of genius Gunsbourg cried, "A knight should die standing!" ”

“ Here I am in Paris, on the eve of the rehearsals and first performance of Roma at the Opéra. I have hope ... I have such admirable artists. They have already won the first battle for me. Will they not be able to triumph in the second? ”

“ I traveled from Genoa to Paris by rail. When one is young, one sleeps so well! I woke up shivering. It was freezing. The piercing cold of the night had covered the car windows with frosty ornaments.
We went by Montereau, and Paris was almost in sight! I could not imagine then that some years later I should own a summer house in this country near Égreville.
What a contrast between the beautiful sky of Italy, that eternally beautiful sky, sung by the poets, which I had just left, and the one I saw again, so dark, gray, and sullen! ”

“ In the foreground were orange, lemon, and olive trees; on the horizon the great rock rising out of the azure waves, and on the rock the old palace modernized by the Prince of Monaco.
In this quiet peaceful home—an exceptional thing for a hotel—in spite of the foreign families installed there, I was stirred to work. During my hours of freedom from rehearsals I busied myself in writing an overture for Roma. I had brought with me the eight hundred pages of orchestration in finished manuscript.
The second month of my stay at Monte Carlo I spent at the Palace of Monaco. ”

“ My entrance to Le Ménestrel began a glorious era for me, and every time I go there I feel the same deep happiness. All the satisfactions I enjoy as well as the disappointments I experience find a faithful echo in the hearts of my publishers. ”

“ I had scarcely recovered from the fine emotion of La Terre Promise at Saint Eustache than I fell seriously ill. They were then going on with the rehearsals of Le Cid at the Opéra which they intended to revive. The hundredth performance was reached in October of the same year.
All Paris was en fête. The capital, one of the most frequented places in the world, became even more and better than that: it was the world itself, for all people met there. All nations jostled one another; all tongues were heard and all costumes were set off against each other. ”

“ At this very moment Posthumia drags herself to the feet of the cruel senators. For we, we others, have, and it is a strange fact, an intuition of the exact moment when this or that scene is played, a sort of divination of the mathematical division of time applied to the action of the theater. It was the fourteenth of February. The sun of that splendid day could not but brighten the joy of all my fine artists. ”

“ How proud I was when I received my first notices of rehearsals and when I sat in the same place on the famous stage which had known Boïeldieu, Herold, M. Auber, Ambroise Thomas, Victor Massé, Gounod, Meyerbeer!...
I was about to learn an author's trials. But I was so happy in doing so!
A first work is the first cross of honor. A first love.
I had everything except the cross.
The first cast was: Marie Roze, in all the splendor of her youthful beauty and talent; Victor Capoul, the idol of the public; and Mlle. Girard, the spirited singer and actress, the delight of the Opéra-Comique. ”

“ But for our part what an inspiring joy it is to write works and parts for artists who realize our very dreams!
It is in gratitude that in speaking of Esclarmonde I dedicate these lines to her. The many people who came to Paris from all parts of the world in 1889 have also kept their memories of the artiste who was their joy and who had so delighted them.
A large, silent, meditative crowd gathered at the passing of the cortège which bore Sibyl Sanderson to her last resting place. A veil of sorrow seemed to be over them all.
Albert Carré and I followed the coffin. ”

“ I received the official notice of my nomination as professor at the Conservatoire and I went to Paris. I would have hardly imagined that I had said good-by to my beloved house at Fontainebleau with no hope of seeing it again.
The life which had now begun for me transplanted my summers of work in the midst of quiet and peaceful solitude—those summers which I had passed so happily far from the noise and tumult of the city. If books have their destiny as the poet says (habent sua fata libelli) , does not each one of us follow a destiny which is just as certain and irrevocable? ”

“ I know some one else who loves cats, not more but as much as I do, the gracious Countess Marie de Yourkevitch, who won the grand gold medal for piano playing at the Imperial Conservatoire of Music at St. Petersburg. She has lived in Paris for some years in a luxurious apartment where she is surrounded by dogs and cats, her great friends.
"Who loves animals, loves people," and we know that the Countess is a true Maecenas to artists. ”

“ ALWAYS WORK!
At the beginning of the preceding winter, Henri Cain proposed to Henri Heugel a text for an opera based on Alphonse Daudet's famous romance Sapho. He went to Heugel in order that I might the more certainly accept it, for he knew the influence my publisher had with me.
I had gone to the mountains with a light heart. There was to be no directing the Conservatoire and no more classes; I felt twenty years younger. I wrote Sapho with an enthusiasm I had rarely felt up to that time. ”

“ With the Scala at Milan, the San Carlo at Naples, the Communal Opéra at Boulogne, the old Apollo at Rome—since demolished and replaced in popular favor by the Costanzi—with the Pergola at Florence, the Carlo Felice at Genoa, and the Fenice at Venice, the beautiful Regio Theater, built opposite the Madame Palace on the Piazza Castella, is one of the most noted in all Italy. ”

“ A friend, who to my great joy is still living, got me better lessons. He was not like so many friends I met later, who are ever in need of one's assistance; those who slink away when you want to be comforted in poverty; the friends who are always pretending that they defended you last night against malevolent attacks in order to show you their fine opinions, but at the same time torturing you by repeating the wounding words directed at you. ”

“ It is a fine thing to go to the theater, but it is an entirely different thing to be present at a performance and listen to it. So the evening of Thérèse I again took my accustomed place in the Prince's salon. Tapestries and doors separated it from the box. I was alone there in silence, at least I might expect to be.
Silence? The roar of applause which greeted our artists was so great that neither doors nor hangings could muffle it. ”

“ I was bound to be pleased at writing a work based on the great Corneille's masterpiece, the libretto due to the fellow workers I had had in the competition for the Imperial Opera, La Coup de roi de Thulé, in which, as I have said, I failed to win the first prize.
I learned the words by heart, as I always did. I wanted to have it constantly in my thoughts, without being compelled to keep the text in my pocket, so as to be able to work at it away from home, in the streets, in society, at dinner, at the theater, anywhere that I might find time. ”

“ New joys were realized at the rehearsals of Don Quichotte at the Théâtre Lyrique de la Gaîté, where I knew I should receive the frankest, most open and affectionate welcome from the directors, the Isola brothers.
The cast we had at Monte Carlo was changed and at Paris we had for Don Quixote that superb artist Vanni Narcoux and for Sancho that masterly comedian Lucien Fugère. Lucy Arbell owed to her triumph at Monte Carlo her engagement as La Belle Dulcinée at the Théâtre Lyrique de la Gaîté. ”