History of the Opera from its Origin in Italy to the present Time Part 19

Piccinni had not quite completed his _Iphigenia_, when, to his horror, he heard that Gluck's was already in rehearsal! He rushed to Devismes, reminded him of his promise, reproached him with want of faith, but all to no purpose. The director of the Opera declared that he had received a "command" to produce Gluck's work immediately, and that he had nothing to do but to obey. He was very sorry, was in despair, &c.; but it was absolutely necessary to play M. Gluck's opera first.

[Sidenote: THE TWO IPHIGENIAS.]

Piccinni felt that he was lost. He went to his friends, and told them the whole affair.

"In the first place," said Guinguenee, the writer, "let me look at the poem?" The poem was not merely bad, it was ridiculous. The manager had taken advantage of Piccinni's ignorance of the French language to impose upon him a _libretto_ full of absurdities and common-places, such as no sensible schoolboy would have put his name to. Guinguenee, at Piccinni's request, re-wrote the whole piece--greatly, of course, to the annoyance of the original author.

In the meanwhile the rehearsals of Gluck's _Iphigenia_ were continued.

At the first of these, in the scene where _Orestes_, left alone in prison, throws himself on a bench saying "L_e calme rentre dans mon cur_," the orchestra hesitated as if struck by the apparent contradiction in the accompaniment, which is still of an agitated character, though "Orestes" has declared that his heart is calm. "Go on!" exclaimed Gluck; "he lies! He has killed his mother!"

The musicians of the Academie had a right, so many at a time, to find subst.i.tutes to take their places at rehearsals. Not one profited by this permission while _Iphigenia_ was being brought out.

The _Iphigenia in Tauris_ is known to be Gluck's masterpiece, and it is by that wonderful work and by _Orpheus_ that most persons judge of his talent in the present day. Compared with the German's profound, serious, and admirably dramatic production, Piccinni's _Iphigenia_ stood but little chance. In the first place, it was inferior to it; in the second, the public were so delighted with Gluck's opera that they were not disposed to give even a fair trial to another written on the same subject. However, Piccinni's work was produced, and was listened to with attention. An air, sung by _Pylades_ to _Orestes_, was especially admired, but on the whole the public seemed to be reserving their judgment until the second representation.

The next evening came; but when the curtain drew up, Piccinni discovered, to his great alarm, that something had happened to Mademoiselle Laguerre, who was entrusted with the princ.i.p.al part.

_Iphigenia_ was unable to stand upright. She rolled first to one side, then to the other; hesitated, stammered, repeated the words, made eyes at the pit; in short, Mdlle. Laguerre was intoxicated!

"This is not 'Iphigenia in Tauris,'" said Sophie Arnould; "this is 'Iphigenia in Champagne.'"

That night, the facetious heroine was sent, by order of the king, to sleep at For-l'Eveque, where she was detained two days. A little imprisonment appears to have done her good. The evening of her re-appearance, Mademoiselle Laguerre, with considerable tact, applied a couplet expressive of remorse to her own peculiar situation, and, moreover, sang divinely.

[Sidenote: IPHIGENIA IN CHAMPAGNE.]

While the Gluck and Piccinni disputes were at their height, a story is told of one amateur, doubtless not without sympathizers, who retired in disgust to the country and sang the praises of the birds and their gratuitous performances in a poem, which ended as follows:--

La n'est point d'art, d'ennui scientifique; Piccinni, Gluck n'ont point note les airs; Nature seule en dicta la musique, Et Marmontel n'en a pas fait les vers.

The contest between Gluck and Piccinni (or rather between the Gluckists and Piccinnists) was brought to an end by the death of the former. An attempt was afterwards made to set up Sacchini against Piccinni; but Sacchini being, as regards the practice of his art, as much a Piccinnist as a Gluckist, this manuvre could not be expected to have much success.

The French revolution ruined Piccinni, who thereupon retired to Italy.

Seven years afterwards he returned to France, and, having occasion to present a pet.i.tion to Napoleon, was graciously received by the First Consul in the Palace of the Luxembourg.

"Sit down," said Napoleon to Piccinni, who was standing; "a man of your merit stands in no one's presence."

Piccinni now retired to Pa.s.sy; but he was an old man, his health had forsaken him, and, in a few months, he died, and was buried in the cemetery of the suburb which he had chosen for his retreat.

In the present day, Gluck appears to have vanquished Piccinni, because, at long intervals, one of Gluck's grandly constructed operas is performed, whereas the music of his former rival is never heard at all.

But this, by no means, proves that Piccinni's melodies were not charming, and that the connoisseurs of the eighteenth century were not right in applauding them. The works that endure are not those which contain the greatest number of beauties, but those of which the form is most perfect. Gluck was a composer of larger conceptions, and of more powerful genius than his Italian rival; and it may be said that he built up monuments of stone while Piccinni was laying out parterres of flowers. But if the flowers were beautiful while they lasted, what does it matter to the eighteenth century that they are dead now, when even the marble temples of Gluck are antiquated and moss-grown?

I cannot take leave of the Gluck and Piccinni period without saying a few words about its princ.i.p.al dancers, foremost among whom stood Madeleine Guimard, the thin, the fascinating, the ever young, and the two Vestrises--Gaetan, the Julius of that Caesar-like family, and Auguste its Augustus.

One evening when Madeleine Guimard was dancing in _Les fetes de l'hymen et de l'amour_, a very heavy cloud fell from the theatrical heavens upon one of her beautiful arms, and broke it. A ma.s.s was said for Mademoiselle Guimard's broken arm in the church of Notre Dame.[52]

[Sidenote: MADELEINE GUIMARD.]

Houdon, the sculptor, moulded Mademoiselle Guimard's foot.

Fragonard, the painter, decorated Mademoiselle Guimard's magnificent, luxuriously-furnished hotel. In his mural pictures he made a point of introducing the face and figure of the divinity of the place, until at last he fell in love with his model, and, presuming so far as to show signs of jealousy, was replaced by David--yes Louis David, the fierce and virtuous republican!

David, the great painter of the republic and of the empire was, of course, at this time, but a very young man. He was, in fact, only a student, and Madeleine Guimard, finding that the decoration of her "Temple of Terpsich.o.r.e" (as the _danseuse's_ artistic and voluptuous palace was called) did not quite satisfy his aspirations, gave him the stipend he was to have received for covering her walls with fantastic designs, to continue his studies in the cla.s.sical style according to his own ideas.

This was charity of a really thoughtful and delicate kind. As an instance of simple bountiful generosity and kindheartedness, I may mention Madeleine Guimard's conduct during the severe winter of 1768, when she herself visited all the poor in her neighbourhood, and gave to each dest.i.tute family enough to live on for a year. Marmontel, deeply affected by this beneficence, addressed the celebrated epistle to her beginning--

_"Est il bien vrai, jeune et belle d.a.m.nee," &c._

"Not yet Magdalen repentant, but already Magdalen charitable," exclaimed a preacher in allusion to Madeleine Guimard's good action, (which soon became known all over Paris, though the dancer herself had not said a word about it); and he added, "the hand which knows so well how to give alms will not be rejected by St. Peter when it knocks at the gate of Paradise."

Madeleine Guimard, with all her powers of fascination, was not beautiful nor even pretty, and she was notoriously thin. Byron used to say of thin women, that if they were old, they reminded him of spiders, if young and pretty, of dried b.u.t.terflies. Madeleine Guimard's theatrical friends, of course, compared her to a spider. Behind the scenes she was known as _L'araignee_. Another of her names was _La squelette des graces_. Sophie Arnould, it will be remembered, called her "a little silk-worm," for the sake of the joke about "_la feuille_," and once, when she was dancing between two male dancers in a _pas de trois_ representing two satyrs fighting for a nymph, an uncivil spectator said of the exhibition that it was like "two dogs fighting for a bone."

[Sidenote: MADELINE GUIMARD.]

Madeleine Guimard is said to have preserved her youth and beauty in a marvellous manner, besides which, she had such a perfect acquaintance with all the mysteries of the toilet, that by the arts of dress and adornment alone, she could have made herself look young when she was already beginning to grow old. Marie-Antoinette used to consult her about her costume and the arrangement of her hair, and once when, for insubordination at the theatre, she had been ordered to For-l'Eveque, the _danseuse_ is reported to have said to her maid, "never mind, Gothon, I have written to the Queen to tell her that I have discovered a style of _coiffure_; we shall be free before the evening."

I have not s.p.a.ce to describe Mademoiselle Guimard's private theatre,[53]

nor to speak of her _liaison_ with the Prince de Soubise, nor of her elopement with a German prince, whom the Prince de Soubise pursued, wounding him and killing three of his servants, nor of her ultimate marriage with a humble "professor of graces" at the Conservatory of Paris. I must mention, however, that in her decadence Madeleine Guimard visited London (a dozen Princes de Soubise would have followed her with drawn swords if she had attempted to leave Paris during her prime); and that Lord Mount Edgc.u.mbe, the author of the interesting "Musical Reminiscences," saw her dance at the King's Theatre in the year 1789.

This was the year of the taking of the Bastille, when a Parisian artist might well have been glad to make a little tour abroad. The dancers who had appeared at the beginning of the season had been insufferably bad, and the manager was at last compelled to send to Paris for more and better performers. Amongst them, says Lord Mount Edgc.u.mbe, "came the famous Mademoiselle Guimard, then near sixty years old, but still full of grace and gentility, and she had never possessed more." Madeleine Guimard had ceased to be the rage in Paris for nearly ten years, ("_Vers 1780_," says M. A. Houssaye, in his "Galerie du Dix-huitieme Siecle", _elle tomba peu a peu dans l'oubli_"), but she was not sixty or even fifty years of age when she came to London. M. Castil Blaze, an excellent authority in such matters, tells us in his "_Histoire de l'Academie Royale de Musique_," that she was born in 1743.

[Sidenote: THE VESTRIS FAMILY.]

By way of contrast to Madeleine Guimard, I may call attention to Mademoiselle Theodore, a young, pretty and accomplished _danseuse_, who hesitated before she embraced a theatrical career, and actually consulted Jean Jacques Rousseau on the subject; who remained virtuous even on the boards of the Academie Royale; and who married Dauberval, the celebrated dancer, as any respectable _bourgeoise_ (if Dauberval had not been a dancer) might have done. Perhaps some aspiring but timid and scrupulous Mademoiselle Theodore of the present day would like to know what Rousseau thought about the perils of the stage? He replied to the letter of the _danseuse_ that he could give her no advice as to her conduct if she determined to join the Opera; that in his own quiet path he found it difficult to lead a pure irreproachable life: how then could he guide her in one which was surrounded with dangers and temptations?

Vestris, I mean Vestris the First, the founder of the family, was as celebrated as Mademoiselle Guimard for his youthfulness in old age. M.

Castil Blaze, the historian of the French Opera, saw him fifty-two years after his _debut_ at the Academie, which took place in 1748, and declares that he danced with as much success as ever, going through the steps of the minuet "_avec autant de grace que de n.o.blesse_." Gaetan left the stage soon after the triumphant success of his son Auguste, but re-appeared and took part in certain special performances in 1795, 1799 and 1800. On the occasion of the young Vestris's _debut_, his father, in court dress, sword at side, and hat in hand, appeared with him on the stage. After a short but dignified address to the public on the importance of the art he professed, and the hopes he had formed of the inheritor of his name, he turned to Auguste and said, "Now, my son, exhibit your talent to the public! Your father is looking at you!"

The Vestris family, which was very numerous, and very united, always went in a body to the opera when Auguste danced, and at other times made a point of stopping away. "Auguste is a better dancer than I am," the old Vestris would say; "he had Gaetan Vestris for his father, an advantage which nature refused me."

"If," said Gaetan, on another occasion, "_le dieu de la danse_ (a t.i.tle which he had himself given him) touches the ground from time to time, he does so in order not to humiliate his comrades."

This notion appears to have inspired Moore with the lines he addressed in London to a celebrated dancer.

"---- You'd swear When her delicate feet in the dance twinkle round, That her steps are of light, that her home is the air, And she only _par complaisance_ touches the ground."

[Sidenote: THE VESTRIS FAMILY.]

The Vestrises (whose real name was _Vestri_) came from Florence. Gaetan, known as _le beau Vestris_, had three brothers, all dancers, and this ill.u.s.trious family has had representatives for upwards of a century in the best theatres of Italy, France and England. The last celebrated dancer of the name who appeared in England, was Charles Vestris, whose wife was the sister of Ronzi di Begnis. Charles Vestris was Auguste's nephew. His father, Auguste's brother, was Stefano Vestris, a stage poet of no ability, and Mr. Ebers, in his "Seven Years of the King's Theatre,"[54] tells us (giving us therein another proof of the excellent _esprit de famille_ which always animated the Vestrises) that when Charles Vestris and his wife entered into their annual engagement, "the poet was invariably included in the agreement, at a rate of remuneration for his services to which his consanguinity to those performers was his chief t.i.tle."

We can form some notion of Auguste Vestris's style from that of Perrot (now ballet-master at the St. Petersburgh Opera), who was his favourite pupil, and who is certainly by far the most graceful and expressive dancer that the opera goers of the present day have seen.

END OF VOL. I.

HISTORY

OF

THE OPERA,