A NEW LIFE
The year 1891 was marked by an event which had a profound effect on my
life. In the month of May of that year the publishing house of Hartmann
went out of business.
How did it happen? What brought about this catastrophe? I asked myself
these questions but could get no answer. It had seemed to me that all
was going as well as could be expected with my publisher. I was utterly
stupefied at hearing that all the works published by the house of
Hartmann were to be put up at auction; that they would have to face the
ordeal of a public sale. For me this was a most disturbing uncertainty.
I had a friend who had a vault, and I entrusted to him the orchestral
score and piano score of _Werther_ and the orchestral score of _Amadis_.
He put these valueless papers beside his valuables. The scores were in
manuscript.
I have already written of the fortunes of _Werther_, and perhaps I
shall of _Amadis_, the text of which was by our great friend Jules
Claretie of the French Academy.
As may be imagined, my anxiety was very great. I expected to see my
labor of many years scattered among all the publishers. Where would
_Manon_ go? Where would _Herodiade_ bring up? Who would get _Marie
Magdeleine_? Who would have my _Suites d'Orchestra_? All this disturbed
my muddled brain and made me anxious.
Hartmann had always shown me so much friendliness and sensitiveness in
my interests, and he was, I am sure, as sorrowful as I was about this
painful situation.
Henri Heugel and his nephew Paul-Emile Chevalier, owners of the great
firm Le Menestrel, were my saviors. They were the pilots who kept all
the works of my past life from shipwreck, prevented their being
scattered, and running the risks of adventure and chance.
They acquired all of Hartmann's assets and paid a considerable price for
them.
In May, 1911, I congratulated them on the twentieth anniversary of the
good and friendly relations which had existed between us and at the
same time I expressed the deep gratitude I cherish towards them.
How many times I had passed by Le Menestrel, and envied without
hostility those masters, those published, all those favored by that
great house!
My entrance to Le Menestrel 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.
* * * * *
Some years later Leon Carvalho again became the manager at the
Opera-Comique. M. Paravey's privilege had expired.
I recall this card from Carvalho the day after he left in 1887. He had
erased his title of "directeur." It expressed perfectly his sorrowful
resignation:
"_My dear Master_,
"I scratch out the title, but I retain the memory of my great
artistic joys where _Manon_ holds a first place....
"What a fine diamond!
"LEON CARVALHO."
His first thought was to revive _Manon_ which had disappeared from the
bills since the fire of mournful memory. This revival was in October,
1892.
Sibyl Sanderson, as I have said, had been engaged for a year at the
Theatre de la Monnaie at Brussels. She played _Esclarmonde_ and _Manon_.
Carvalho took her from the Monnaie to revive _Manon_ in Paris. The work
has never left the bills since and, as I write it, has reached its 763rd
performance.
At the beginning of the same year _Werther_ was given at Vienna as well
as a ballet: _Le Carillon_. The applauded collaborators were our Des
Grieux and our German Werther: Ernest Van Dyck and de Roddaz.
It was on my return from another visit to Vienna that my faithful and
precious collaborator Louis Gallet paid me a visit one day at Le
Menestrel. My publishers had arranged a superb study where I could
rehearse my artists from Paris and elsewhere in their parts. Louis
Gallet and Heugel proposed to me a work on Anatole France's admirable
romance _Thais_.
I was immediately carried away by the idea. I could see Sanderson in the
role of Thais. She belonged to the Opera-Comique so I would do the work
for that house.
Spring at last permitted me to go to the seashore where I have always
liked to live and I left Paris with my wife and daughter, taking with me
all that I had composed of the work with so much happiness.
I took with me a friend who never left me day or night--an enormous gray
Angora cat with long silky hair.
I worked at a large table placed on a veranda against which the waves of
the sea sometimes broke heavily and scattered their foam. The cat lay on
the table, sleeping almost on my pages with an unceremoniousness which
delighted me. He could not stand such strange noises and every time it
happened he pushed out his paws and showed his claws as if to drive the
sea away.
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.
The exquisite poet Jeanne Dortzal is also a friend of these felines with
the deep-green enigmatic eyes; they are the companions of her working
hours.
I finished _Thais_ at the Rue du General Foy, in my bedroom where
nothing broke the silence except the crackling of the Yule logs which
burned in the fireplace.
At that time I did not have a mass of letters which I must answer, as is
the case now; I did not receive a quantity of books which I must run
over so that I could thank the authors; neither was I absorbed in
incessant rehearsals, in short, I did not lead the sort of a life I
would willingly qualify as infernal, if it were not my rule _not_ to go
out in the evening.
At six in the morning I received a call from my masseur. His cares were
made necessary by rheumatism in my right hand, and I had some trouble
with it.
Even at this early morning hour I had been at work for some time, and
this practitioner, Imbert, who was in high good standing with his
clients, brought me morning greetings from Alexander Dumas the Younger
from whose house he had just come. As he came, he said, "I left the
master with his candles lighted, his beard trimmed, and comfortably
installed in his white dressing gown."
One morning he brought me these words--a reply to a reproach I had
allowed myself to make to him:
"Confess that you thought that I had forgotten you, man of little
faith.
"A. DUMAS."
Between whiles, and it was a delightful distraction, I had written _Le
Portrait de Manon_, a delightful act by Georges Boyer, to whom I already
owed the text of _Les Enfants_.
Some good friends of mine, Auguste Cain, the famous sculptor of animals,
and his dear wife, had been generous and useful to me in difficult
circumstances, and I was delighted to applaud the first dramatic work of
their son Henri Cain. His success with _La Vivandiere_ affirmed his
talent still more. The music of this work in three acts was the swan
song of the genial Benjamin Godard. Ah! the dear great musician who was
a real poet from his youth up, in the first bars he wrote. Who does not
remember his masterpiece _Le Tasse_?
As I was strolling one day in the gardens of the dismal palace of the
dukes d'Este at Ferrare, I picked a branch of oleander which was just in
blossom and sent it to my friend. My gift recalled the incomparable duet
in the first act of _Le Tasse_.
During the summer of 1893 my wife and I went to Avignon. 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. My friends, the
Provencal poets, used to gather around, and among them was Felix Gras,
one of my dearest friends.
One day we decided to pay a visit to Frederic Mistral, the immortal poet
of Provence who played a large part in the renaissance of the poetic
language of the South.
He received us with Mme. Mistral at his home--which his presence made
ideal--at Millane. He showed when he talked that he knew not only the
science of Form but also that general knowledge which makes great
writers and makes a poet of an artist. As we saw him we recalled that
_Belle d'aout_, the poetical story full of tears and terrors, then the
great epic of _Mirelle_, and so many other famous works besides.
By his walk and vigor one recognized him as the child of the country,
but he was a gentleman farmer, as the English say; although he is not
any more a peasant on that account, as he wrote to Lamartine, than
Paul-Louis Courier, the brilliant and witty pamphleteer, was a
cultivator of vineyards.
We returned to Avignon full of the inexpressible enveloping charm of the
hours we had passed in the house of this great, illustrious poet.
The following winter was entirely devoted to the rehearsals of _Thais_
at the Opera. I say at the Opera in spite of the fact that I wrote the
work for the Opera-Comique where Sanderson was engaged. She triumphed
there in _Manon_ three times a week.
What made me change the theater? Sanderson was dazzled by the idea of
entering the Opera, and she signed a contract with Gailhard without even
taking the mere trouble of informing Carvalho first.
Heugel and I were greatly surprised when Gailhard told us that he was
going to give _Thais_ at the Opera with Sibyl Sanderson. "You've got the
artist; the work will follow her!" There was nothing else for me to say.
I remember, however, how bitterly Carvalho reproached me. He almost
accused me of ingratitude, and God knows that I did not deserve that.
_Thais_ was interpreted by Sibyl Sanderson; J. F. Delmas, who made the
role of Athanael one of his most important creations; Alvarez, who
consented to play the role of Nicias, and Mme. Heglon, who also acted in
the part which devolved upon her.
As I listened to the final rehearsals in the depths of the empty
theater, I lived over again my ecstatic moments before the remains of
Thais of Antinoe, beside the anchorite, who had been bewitched by her
grace and charm. We owed this impressive spectacle which was so well
calculated to impress the imagination to a glass case in the Guimet
Museum.
The evening of the dress rehearsal of _Thais_ I escaped from Paris and
went to Dieppe and Pourville, with the sole purpose of being alone and
free from the excitements of the great city. I have said already that I
always tear myself away in this fashion from the feverish uncertainties
which hover over every work when it faces the public for the first time.
No one can tell beforehand the feeling that will move the public,
whether its prejudices or sympathies will draw it towards a work or turn
it against it. I feel weak before the baffling enigma, and had I a
conscience a thousand times more tranquil, I would not want to attempt
to pierce the mystery!
The day after my return to Paris Bertrand and Cailhard, the two
directors of the Opera, called on me. They appeared to be down at the
mouth. I could only get sighs from them or a word or two, which in their
laconicism spoke volumes, "The press! Immoral subject! It's done for!"
These words were so many indications of what the performance must have
been.
So I told myself. Nevertheless seventeen years have gone and the piece
is still on the bills, and has been played in the provinces and abroad,
while at the Opera itself _Thais_ has long since passed its hundredth
performance.
Never have I so regretted letting myself go in a moment of
disappointment. It is true that it was only a passing one. Could I
foresee that I should see again this same score of _Thais_, dated 1894,
in the salon of Sibyl Sanderson's mother, on the music rest of the very
piano at which that fine artiste, long since no more, studied?
To accustom the public to the work, the directors of the Opera
associated with it a ballet from the repertoire. Subsequently Gailhard
saw that the work pleased, and in order to make it the only performance
of the evening he asked me to add a tableau, the Oasis, and a ballet to
the third act. Mlle. Berthet created this new tableau and Zambelli
incarnated the new ballet.
Later, the title role was sung in Paris by Mlles. Alice Verlet and Mary
Garden and Mme. Kousnezoff. I owe some superb nights at the Opera to
them. Genevieve Vix and Mastio sang it in other cities. I wait to speak
of Lina Cavalieri for she was to be the creator of the work at Milan,
October, 1903. This creation was the occasion for my last journey to
Italy up to now.