FROM ARIANE TO DON QUICHOTTE
I never deliver a work until I have kept it by me for months, even for
years.
I had finished _Therese_--long before it was produced--when my friend
Heugel told me that he had already made arrangements with Catulle Mendes
to write a sequel to _Ariane_.
Although to our way of thinking _Bacchus_ was a distinct work, it should
form a whole with _Ariane_.
The text for it was written in a few months and I took great interest in
it.
And yet--and this is entire accord with my character--hesitation and
doubt often bothered me.
Of all the fabulous stories of the gods and demigods of antiquity those
which relate to the Hindu heroes are perhaps the least known.
The study of the fables of mythology, which has had until recently only
the interest of curiosity in even the most classical learning, has,
thanks to the work of modern scholars, acquired a higher import as they
have discovered its role in the history of religion.
To allow the inspiration of his poetic muse, which was always so ardent
and finely colored, wander at will in such a region was bound to delight
the well informed mind of Catulle Mendes.
Palmiki's Sanscrit poem, the Ramayana, is at once religious and epic.
For those who have read that sublime poem it is more curious and greater
than even the Nibelungen, Germany's epic of the Middle Ages, which
traces the struggle between the family of the Nibelungen with Etzel or
Attila and their consequent destruction. There is nothing exaggerated in
calling the Ramayana the Iliad or Odyssey of India. It is as divinely
beautiful as the immortal work of old Homer which has come down through
the centuries.
I knew the legend through reading and rereading it, but what I had to do
in my work was to add to my thought what the words, the verses, and the
situations even could not explain clearly enough to the often
inattentive public.
My work this time was intense, obstinate, implacable. I literally
fought; I cut out, and I replaced. At last I finished _Bacchus_--after
devoting many days and months to it.
[Illustration: Queen Amahelly (_Bacchus_)]
The cast selected by the new management at the Opera, Mm. Messager and
Broussan, was as follows: Lucienne Breval reappeared as Ariane; Lucy
Arbell, in memory of her success as Persephone was Queen Amahelly in
love with Bacchus; Muratore, our Thesus, doubled in the part of Bacchus,
and Gresse accepted the role of the fanatical priest.
The new management was not yet firmly in the saddle and wanted to give
our work a magnificent setting.
Even as they had been previously cruel to _Le Mage_ and to our excellent
director, Gailhard (which did not prevent his going back there soon
afterwards, better liked than ever) now they were hard on _Bacchus_.
When _Bacchus_ went on both the press and the public were undecided
about the real worth of the new management.
Giving a work under such conditions was running a danger a second time.
I saw it, but too late; for the work, in spite of its faults, did not
seem to warrant such an amount of abuse.
The public, however, which lets itself go in the sincerity of its
feelings, showed a very comforting enthusiasm in certain parts of the
work. It received the first scene of the third act, especially, with
applause and numerous recalls. The ballet in the forests of India was
highly appreciated. The entrance of Bacchus in his car (admirably
staged) was a great success.
With a little patience the good public would have triumphed over the ill
will of which I had been forewarned.
One day in February, 1909, I had finished an act of _Don Quichotte_ (I
will speak of that later on)--it was four o'clock in the afternoon--and
I rushed to my publishers to keep an appointment with Catulle Mendes. I
thought I was late, and as I went in I expressed my regret at keeping my
collaborator waiting. An employee answered me in these words:
"He will not come. He is dead."
My brain reeled at the terrible news. I would not have been more knocked
out if some one had hit me over the head with a club. In an instant I
learned the details of the appalling catastrophe.
When I came to myself I could only say, "We are lost as far as _Bacchus_
is concerned at the Opera. Our most precious support is gone."
The anger his keen, fine criticism aroused against Catulle Mendes was a
pretext for revenge on the part of the slaughtered.
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--Breval, 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. I thank Mm. Messager and Broussan for the thought
although it came to nothing.
I wrote an important bit of orchestration (with the curtain down) to
accompany the victorious fight of the apes in the Indian forests with
the heroic army of Bacchus. I managed to make real--at least I think I
did--in the midst of the symphonic developments the cries of the
terrible chimpanzees armed with stones which they hurled from the tops
of the rocks.
Mountain passes certainly don't bring good luck. Thermopylae and
Ronceval as Roland and Leonidas learned to their cost. All their valor
was in vain.
While I was writing this music I went many times to the Jardin des
Plantes to study the habits of these mammals. I loved these friends of
which Schopenhauer spoke so evilly when he said that if Asia has her
monkeys Europe has her French. The German Schopenhauer was not very
friendly to us.
Long before they decided, after many discussions, to start rehearsing
_Bacchus_ (it did not appear until the end of the season of 1909) it was
my good fortune to begin work on the music in three acts for _Don
Quichotte_. Raoul Gunsbourg was exceedingly anxious to have both the
subject and the cast at the Monte Carlo Opera.
I was in very bad humor when I thought of the tribulations _Bacchus_ had
brought on me without there being anything with which I could reproach
myself either as a man or as a musician.
So _Don Quichotte_ came into my life as a soothing balm. I had great
need of it. Since the preceding September I had suffered acute rheumatic
pains and I had passed much more of my existence in bed than out of it.
I had found a device which enabled me to write in bed.
I put _Bacchus_ and its uncertain future out of my thoughts, and day by
day I advanced the composition of _Don Quichotte_.
Henri Cain, as is his way, built up very cleverly a scenario out of the
heroic play by Le Loraine, the poet whose fine future was killed by the
poverty which preceded his death. I salute that hero to art whose
physiognomy resembled so much that of our "Knight of the Doleful
Countenance."
What charmed me and decided me to write this work was Le Loraine's
stroke of genius in substituting for the coarse wench at the inn,
Cervantes's Dulcinee, the original and picturesque La Belle Dulcinee.
The most renowned French authors had not had that idea.
It brought to our piece an element of deep beauty in the woman's role
and a potent poetical touch to our Don Quixote dying of love--real love
this time--for a Belle Dulcinee who justified the passion.
So it was with infinite delight that I waited for the day of the
performance which came in February, 1910. Oh beautiful, magnificent
premiere!
They welcomed our marvellous artists with great enthusiasm. Lucy Arbell
was dazzling and extraordinary as La Belle Dulcinee 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_.
New joys were realized at the rehearsals of _Don Quichotte_ at the
Theatre Lyrique de la Gaite, 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 Fugere. Lucy Arbell owed to her triumph at Monte Carlo
her engagement as La Belle Dulcinee at the Theatre Lyrique de la Gaite.
But was there ever unalloyed bliss?
I certainly do not make that bitter reflection in regard to the
brilliant success of our artists or about the staging of the Isola
brothers which was so well seconded by the stage manager Labis.
But judge for yourselves. The rehearsals had to be postponed for three
weeks on account of the severe and successive illnesses of our three
artists. A curious thing, however, and worthy of remark was that our
three interpreters all got well at almost the same time, and left their
rooms on the very morning of the general rehearsal.
The frantic applause of the audience must have been a sweet and
altogether exquisite recompense for them when it broke out at the dress
rehearsal, December 28, 1910, which lasted from one till five in the
afternoon.
My New Year's Day was very festive. I was ill and was on my bed of pain
when they brought me the visiting cards of my faithful pupils, happy at
my success, beautiful flowers for my wife, and a delightful bronze
statuette, a gift from Raoul Gunsbourg, which recalled to me all that I
owed him for _Don Quichotte_ at Monte Carlo, for the first performances
and the revivals of the same house.
The first year of _Don Quichotte_ at the Theatre Lyrique de la Gaite
there were eighty consecutive performances of the work.
It is a pleasure to recall certain picturesque details which interested
me intensely during the preliminary rehearsals.
First of all, the curious audacity of Lucy Arbell, our La Belle
Dulcinee, in wanting to accompany herself on the guitar in the song in
the fourth act. In a remarkably short time, she made herself a virtuoso
on the instrument with which they accompany popular songs in Spain,
Italy, and even in Russia. It was a charming innovation. She relieved us
of that banality of the artist pretending to play a guitar, while a real
instrumentalist plays in the wings, thus making a discord between the
gestures of the singer and the music. None of the other Dulcinees have
been able to achieve this tour de force of the creatrix. I recall, too,
that knowing her vocal abilities I brightened the role with daring
vocalizations which afterwards surprised more than one interpreter; and
yet a contralto ought to know how to vocalize as well as a soprano. _Le
Prophete_ and _The Barber of Seville_ prove this.
The staging of the windmill scene, so ingeniously invented by Raoul
Gunsbourg, was more complicated at the Gaite, 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!" And our Don Quixote
(then Chaliapine) leaned against a great tree in the forest and so gave
up his proud and love lorn soul.