From a drawing by Ingres in Rome, 1818. Engraved by Calamatta.
Paganini in his thirty-fourth year.
]
The year 1842 was an important date in Berlioz’s career. From that time
his life was a divided one. Misunderstood in his own country,
disheartened by his unsuccessful attempts to win the heart of the great
public, inconsolable for the failure of _Benvenuto_ which closed to him
forever the doors of the Academy of Music, he resolved to undertake an
artistic tour through Europe, and began with Belgium in the latter part
of the year 1842. He met with rather more success there than in France,
though he was still the subject of heated discussion. He took with him a
decidedly mediocre singer, Mademoiselle Martin Recio, who had made a
failure at the Opéra, and had managed to attach herself to him. He
married her later, soon after the death of Miss Smithson, from whom he
had been separated; but he was no happier in his second marriage than in
his first; his first wife drank, his second made unjustifiable
pretensions as a singer, which always exasperated him. After this little
excursion to Belgium, Berlioz determined to try his fortune in Germany,
where already some of his works had found their way; from this time
onward, his life was nothing more than a series of journeys through
France and foreign countries. His first grand tour was through northern
Germany. At Leipsic he saw Mendelssohn, whom he met on the best of
terms, forgetting all about their youthful quarrels; at Dresden he
inspired an equal devotion on the part of Richard Wagner, who received
him as a brother and treated him as a master; at Berlin he was no less
warmly welcomed by Meyerbeer, who recruited the necessary artists for
him and enabled him to direct a part of his _Requiem_.
On his return to Paris he organized, first, a monster festival at the
Exposition of the Products of Industry, in August, 1844, then four grand
concerts at the Circus of the Champs Elysées, early in 1845; but these
gigantic concerts which it had always been his aim to direct, brought
him no profit. Not discouraged by this, however, he gave grand concerts
at Marseilles and at Lyons, the modest success of which was due partly
to curiosity, partly to surprise. After that he went to Austria, Bohemia
and Hungary; this tour was scarcely finished when he rushed off to Lille
to organize a grand festival there on the occasion of the inauguration
of the Northern railroad. Finally in the summer of 1846 he returned to
Paris, and after having given a magnificent performance of his _Requiem_
in the Saint Eustache church, he decided to bring before the public his
most important work, _The Damnation of Faust_. The first performance
took place on December 6, before a small audience. The solos were sung
by Roger, Hermann, Leon, Henri, and Madame Duflôt-Maillard, who had no
better comprehension of the music than the public. The second
performance was given on Sunday the 20th, before an equally small house,
with a tenor who had to omit the _Invocation to Nature_. This convinced
Berlioz that he was still far from having conquered his own country. He
departed for Russia, deeply wounded by the indifference of his
countrymen.
Some of his Paris friends had clubbed together to furnish him the means
to go to St. Petersburg, whence he had received some brilliant offers.
He achieved the greatest success there, with musicians as well as with
the public, and the fact of his having formerly befriended Glinka at
Paris had its effect in enlisting sympathies for him in Russia. On his
way back he stopped at Berlin, where the _Damnation of Faust_ was given
with little enough appreciation, but where he received recognition from
the sovereign and the princess of Prussia. When he got back again to
Paris, crowned with laurels, and with money enough to settle all the
debts incurred by the performance of the _Damnation of Faust_ at the
_Opéra Comique_, he worked hard to get the appointment at the Opéra of
Duponchel and Roqueplan, who were talking of an immediate revival of
_Benvenuto Cellini_, of mounting _la Nonne sanglante_, etc. Berlioz
succeeded in getting them nominated directors, through the aid of the
Bertins, but they no sooner had the official notice in their pockets
than they utterly ignored Berlioz. The latter understood that he was
holding a restraint upon them, and since, as he said, he was accustomed
to this sort of proceedings, he took himself off to London in order to
rid them of his troublesome presence. The affair of the Drury Lane
concerts, unwisely entered into with the eccentric conductor Julien,
terminated in bankruptcy, and the Revolution which followed in 1848
would have left Berlioz without a sou had not Victor Hugo and Louis
Blanc obtained for the sworn disciple of the romantic school the humble
post of librarian at the Conservatoire.
In August, 1848, Berlioz experienced one of the keenest sorrows of his
life in the loss of his father. He went to Grenoble to attend his
father’s funeral, and in his Mémoires he gives a most touching account
of the sad visit. It was about this time that his little _Chœur de
Bergers_ was given under the pseudonym of Pierce Ducré, at the concerts
of the Philharmonic Society, Saint Cecilia hall, Chaussée d’Antin. In
1852 his _Benvenuto_ was given with great success at Weimar under the
fervent direction of Liszt, but the next year the same opera utterly
failed in London, where the Italians, said Berlioz, conspired to ruin
it. By “Italians” Berlioz meant the orchestral conductor Costa and his
party. Berlioz had accepted the preceding year the leadership of the New
Philharmonic, and had made by his success, and attacks, a bitter enemy
of the leader of the old _Philharmonic Society_.
[Illustration: