SPEAKING OF 1793
One summer morning in 1905 my great friend, Georges Cain, the eminent
and eloquent historian of Old Paris, got together the beautiful,
charming Mme. Georges Cain, Mlle. Lucy Arbell, of the Opera, and a few
others to visit what had once been the convent of the Carmelites in the
Rue de Vaugirard.
We had gone through the cells of the ancient cloister, seen the wells
into which the blood stained horde of Septembrists had thrown the bodies
of the slaughtered priests, and we had come to the gardens which remain
so mournfully famous for those frightful butcheries. Georges Cain
stopped in the middle of his recital of these dismal events, and pointed
out to us a white figure wandering alone in the distance.
"It is the ghost of Lucile Desmoulins," he said. Poor Lucile Desmoulins
so strong and courageous beside her husband on his way to the scaffold
where she was so soon to follow him!
It was neither shade nor phantom. The white figure was very much alive!
It was Lucy Arbell who had been overcome by deep emotion and who had
turned away to hide the tears.
_Therese was already revealed_....
A few days afterwards I was lunching at the Italian Embassy. At dessert
the kindly Comtessa Tornielli told us, with that charming grace and
delightful eloquence which were so characteristic of her, the story of
the ambassdorial palace, Rue de Grenelle.
In 1793 the palace belonged to the Gallifet family. Some of the members
of that illustrious house were guillotined, while others went abroad. It
was determined to sell the building as the property of the people, but
this was opposed by a servant of firm and decided character. "I am the
people," he said, "and you shall not take from the people what belongs
to it. I am in my own place here!"
When one of the surviving Gallifet emigres returned to Paris in 1798,
his first thought was to go and see the family home. He was greatly
surprised when the faithful servant whose vigorous speech had prevented
its destruction received him and said, falling at his master's feet,
"Monseigneur, I have taken care of your property. I give it back to
you."
The text of _Therese_ was foretold. That revelation was its
presentiment.
I had the first vision of the music of the work at Brussels in the Bois
de la Cambre in November of that year.
It was a beautiful afternoon under a dim autumnal sun. One knew that the
beneficent sap was slowly running down in the beautiful trees. The gay
green foliage which had crowned their tops had disappeared. One by one
at the caprice of the wind the leaves fell, dried up, reddened and
yellowed by the cold, taking in the gold, irony of Nature! its very
brilliance, and shadings and most varied tints.
Nothing resembled less the poor sorry trees of our Bois de Boulogne. In
the mighty spread of their branches those magnificent trees remind one
of those which are so much admired in the parks at Windsor and Richmond.
I walked on the dead leaves, scuffling them with my feet. Their rustling
pleased me and were a delightful accompaniment to my thoughts.
I was closer to the heart of my work, "in the bowels of the subject,"
for among the four or five people with me was the future heroine of
_Therese_.
I searched everywhere, greedily, for all that had to do with the
horrible period of the Terror, in all the engravings which would give me
the sinister dark story of that epoch, in order to make the scenes in
the second act as true as possible, and I confess that I like it.
I returned to Paris to my room Rue de Vaugirard, and wrote the music of
_Therese_ during the winter and spring (I finished it in the summer at
the seashore).
I remember that one morning the work on one situation demanded the
immediate assistance of my collaborator, Jules Claretie, and that it
unnerved me a good deal. I decided forthwith to write to the Minister of
Posts, Telegraphs and Telephones and ask him to grant me an almost
impossible thing: to place a telephone in my room before four o'clock.
Naturally the tone of my letter reflected that of a deferential
petition.
How could I have hoped for it? When I returned from my affairs, I found
on my mantel a pretty telephone apparatus which was quite new.
The Minister, M. Berard, one of our most distinguished men of letters,
had felt bound to interest himself in my capricious wish on the spot. He
had sent a crew of twenty men with everything required for a rapid
installation.
Dear, charming minister! I love him the more for his kindly word one
day. "I was happy," he said, "to give you such pleasure, to you who have
given me so much pleasure at the theater with your works."
_Pari pari refertur_, yes, it was returning like for like, but done with
a grace and kindness which I appreciated highly.
Hello!... Hello! At the first attempt I was very clumsy of course. All
the same I managed to hold a conversation.
I also learned, another useful kindness, that my number would not appear
in the Annuaire. Consequently nobody could call me up. I was the only
one who could use the marvellous instrument.
I did not wait long to call up Claretie and he was much surprised by the
call from the Rue Vaugirard. I told him my ideas about the difficult
scene which had brought about the installation of the telephone.
The difficulty was in the final scene.
I telephoned to him,
"Cut Therese's throat and it will be all right."
I heard an unknown voice crying excitedly (our wire was crossed):
"Oh, if I only knew who you were, you scoundrel, I would denounce you to
the police. A crime like that! Who is to be the victim?"
Suddenly Claretie's voice:
"Once her throat is cut she will be put in the cart with her husband. I
prefer that to poison."
The other man's voice:
"Oh, that's too much! Now the rascals want to poison her. I'll call the
superintendent. I want an inquiry!"
A terrible buzzing ensued; then a blissful calm.
It was time; with a subscriber roused to such a pitch, Claretie and I
ran the chance of a bad quarter of an hour! I still tremble at the
thought of it.
After that I often worked with Claretie over the wire. The Ariane thread
also took my voice to Persephone, I should say ... Therese, whom I let
hear in this way this or that vocal ending, so as to have her opinion
before I wrote down the notes.
One beautiful spring day I went to revisit the Garden at Bagatelle and
its pretty pavilion, then still abandoned, which the Comte d'Artois had
built under Louis XVI. I fixed thoroughly in my memory that delightful
little chateau which the triumphant Revolution allowed to be exploited
for picnic parties after despoiling its oldtime owner of it. When he got
it back under the Restoration, the Comte d'Artois called it Babiole,
Bagatelle or Babiole it's all the same; and this same pavilion was
occupied almost to our own time by Sir Richard Wallace, the famous
millionaire, philanthropist and collector.
Later on I wanted the scenery of the first act of _Therese_ 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 Opera, 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. We immediately invited
my collaborator and Mme. Claretie and my excellent publisher and Mme.
Heugel.
The Prince of Monaco with his deep simplicity was good enough to sit
near a piano I had got in for the occasion and listen to passages from
_Therese_. He learned the following detail from us. During the first
reading Lucy Arbell, a true artist, stopped me as I was singing the last
scene, where Therese gasps with horror as she sees the awful cart
bringing her husband, Andre Thorel, to the scaffold and cries with all
her might, _"Vive le Roi_!" so as to ensure that she shall be reunited
with her husband in death. Just then, our interpreter, who was deeply
affected, stopped me and said in a burst of rapture, "I can never sing
that scene through, for when I recognize my husband who has given me his
name and saved Armand de Clerval, I ought to lose my voice. So I ask you
to _declaim_ all of the ending of the piece."
Only great artists have such inborn gifts of instinctive emotion.
Witness Mme. Fides Devries who asked me to re-write the aria of Chimene,
_"Pleurez mes yeux_." She found that while she was singing it she
thought only of her dead father and almost forgot her friend,
Rodriguez.
A sincere touch was suggested by the tenor, Talazac, the creator of Des
Grieux. He wanted to add _toi_ before _vous_ which he uttered on finding
Manon in the seminaire of Saint Sulpice. Does not that _toi_ indicate
the first cry of the old lover on seeing his mistress again?
The preliminary rehearsals of _Therese_ took place in the fine
apartment, richly decorated with old pictures and work of art, which
Raoul Gunsbourg had in the Rue de Rivoli.
It was New Year's and we celebrated by working in the salon from eight
o'clock in the evening until midnight.
Outside it was cold, but a good fire made us forget that, as we drank in
that fine exquisite atmosphere champagne to the speedy realization of
our common hopes.
How exciting and impressive those rehearsals were as they brought
together such fine artists as Lucy Arbell, Edmond Clement and Dufranne!
The first performance of _Therese_ came the next month, February 7,
1907, at the Monte Carlo Opera.
That year my dear wife and I were again the guests of the Prince in
that magnificent palace my admiration for which I have already told.
His Highness invited us to his box--the one where I had been called at
the end of the premiere of _Le Jongleur de Notre Dame_ and where the
Prince of Monaco himself had publicly invested me with the Grand Cordon
of the Order of St. Charles.
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
_Therese_ 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.
At the official dinner given at the palace the next day our applauded
creators were invited and feted. My celebrated confrere Louis Diemer,
the marvellous virtuoso, who had consented to play the harpsichord in
the first act of _Therese_, Mme. Louise Diemer, Mme. Massent and I were
there. To reach the banquet hall my wife and I had to go up the Stairs
of Honor. It was near our apartment--that ideally beautiful apartment,
truly a place of dreams.
For two consecutive years _Therese_ was played at Monte Carlo and with
Lucy Arbell, the creator, we had the brilliant tenor, Rousseliere and
the master professor, Bouvet.
In March, 1910, fetes of unusual and unheard of splendor were given at
Monaco at the opening of the colossal palace of the Oceanographic
Museum.
_Therese_ was given at the gala performance before an audience which
included members of the Institute, confreres of his Serene Highness, a
member of the Academie 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.
The morning of the formal inauguration the Prince delivered an admirable
address, to which the presidents of the foreign academies replied.
I was already much indisposed and I could not take my place at the
banquet at the palace, after which the guests attended the gala
performance of which I have spoken.
Henry Roujon, my confrere at the Institute, was good enough at the
banquet the following day, to read the speech I would have delivered
myself had I not been obliged to stay in bed.
To be read by Henri Roujon is both honor and success.
Saint-Saens was also invited to the fetes and he too stayed in the
palace. He lavished the most affectionate care on me constantly. The
Prince himself deigned to visit me in my sick room and both told me of
the success of the performance and of our Therese, Lucy Arbell.
The doctor had left me quieter in the evening and he too opened my door
about midnight. He doubtless did so to see how I was, but he also told
me of the fine performance. He knew it would be balm of certain efficacy
for me.
Here is a detail which gave me great satisfaction.
They had given _Le Vieil Aigle_ by Raoul Gunsbourg in which Mme.
Marguerite Carre, the wife of the manager of the Opera-Comique, was
highly applauded. Albert Carre had been present at the performance and
he met one of his friends from Paris and told him that he was going to
put on _Therese_ at the Opera-Comique with its dramatic creatrix.
As a matter of fact four years after the premiere at Monte Carlo and
after many other houses had performed the work, the first performance of
_Therese_ was given at the Opera-Comique on May 28, 1911. _L'Echo de
Paris_ was so kind as to publish for the occasion a wonderfully got up
supplement.
As I write these lines, I read that the second act of _Therese_ is a
part of that rare program of the fete offered to me at the Opera on
Sunday, December 10, 1911, by the organizers of the pious French popular
charity, "Trente Ans de Theatre," the useful creation of my friend,
Adrian Bernheim, whose mind is as generous as his soul is great and
good.
A dear friend said to me recently, "If you wrote _Le Jongleur de Notre
Dame_ with faith, you wrote _Therese_ with all your heart."
Nothing could be said more simply, and nothing could touch me more.