From an engraving after a painting by Mme. Vigée-Lebrun, in 1785, the
year of the first representation of “Richard Cœur de Lion.”
]
“Richard Cœur de Lion”—the denouement of which was changed by the author
of the piece, Sedaine, at least three times—marks the culminating point
of the master’s career. The piece had a great and lasting success, and
it remains still in the répertoire of the Opéra Comique. The
instrumentation has been reconstructed in a very careful and happy
manner by Adolphe Adam.
After this work Grétry produced several others, which did not, however,
meet with the same good fortune. Nevertheless, Grétry occupies a place
of honor in the history of theatrical music, and his style is remembered
as original. If he never acquired the dexterity of the adepts at
counterpoint then in renown, and if his harmonies are at times awkward
and even faulty, they still have a peculiar attraction which makes them
not only acceptable but original and charming.
One day when I went to see Auber in his little house in the Rue St.
Georges I found the author of “La Muette de Portici” and the “Domino
Noir” at the piano with one of Grétry’s scores in front of him. “Just
look at this passage,” said Auber, “it is very curious, considered as to
the succession of chords. This harmony is certainly not correct, and
would never have entered the mind of what is called a musical savant.
And yet if you try to change it you may make it more accurate, but it
will be wanting in relief and expression.” That is because the
awkwardness of Grétry is the awkwardness of an artistic genius, and
awkwardness of that kind is a thousand times better than the accuracy of
the cold and unimaginative musician.
I said above that Grétry had the first intuition of the _leit motiv_ in
“Richard Cœur de Lion,” as a device for recalling to the spectator
either an event, a scene, an essential object or a personage, with their
distinctive peculiarities, at the same time preserving unity of style in
the general construction of his work;—I said that he also imagined an
invisible orchestra such as that which exists in the Wagner Theatre at
Bayreuth. Grétry speaks as follows in his work, “Mémoires et Essais sur
la Musique,” in the chapter entitled: “Plan for a new Theatre”:
“I should like the auditorium of my theatre to be small, holding at the
most a thousand persons, and consisting of a sort of open space without
boxes, small or great, because these nooks only encourage scandal or
worse. I should like the orchestra to be concealed so that neither the
musicians nor the lights on their music-stands would be visible to the
spectators. The effect would be magical, the more so as it is always
understood that the orchestra is not supposed to be there. A solid stone
wall ought, in my opinion, to separate the orchestra from the theatre,
so that the sound may reverberate in the auditorium.”
[Illustration: Oscar Comettant]
[Illustration: