Reproduced from a portrait engraved after a painting by M.
Signol—Rome—1831.
]
After the Empire had been restored in France, Berlioz would have liked
to see reëstablished in his own favor the high position which his master
Lesueur had occupied under the first Empire; but all that he obtained
was the privilege of performing a Te Deum, which he was holding in
reserve for the coronation of the new sovereign, and it was Auber who
was appointed master of music of the Imperial Chapel. In December, 1854,
his sacred trilogy of the _Childhood of Christ_, completed and
remodelled, was given with great success, and if it was performed but
twice, it was only because Berlioz,—he had taken great care to announce
it in advance,—was on the point of departing for Gotha, Weimar, and
Brussels, where there was great eagerness to hear this new work. He
returned to Paris the following March, and on the evening of April 30,
1855, the day preceding the Universal Exposition, he gave in Saint
Eustache church the first performance of his grand _Te Deum_ for three
choruses, orchestra and organ. Afterwards when it became a question of
engraving it, Berlioz was able to see how greatly he was admired in
foreign lands, for the first subscribers were the kings of Hanover,
Saxony, Prussia, the emperor of Russia, the king of Belgium and the
queen of England. The following year he published a final and much
enlarged edition of his excellent _Treatise on Modern Instrumentation
and Orchestration_, originally brought out in 1844; he dedicated this
work to the king of Prussia. On the 21st of June, 1856, after four
_tours de scrutin_, he was nominated member of the Académie des
Beaux-Arts, replacing Adolphe Adam, who had refused to vote for him two
years before and had helped to form the majority in favor of Clapisson.
The following years were spent by Berlioz in organizing concerts at
Weimar and in England, and above all in the composition of the great
work on which he built his supreme hope of success in France, his
tragedy of _Les Troyens_. Since 1856 he had been invited every year to
Baden by Bénazet, contractor for the gaming tables, to organize grand
concerts for the benefit of the visitors. Thus when the king of Baden,
as Bénazet was called, concluded to build a new entertainment hall, it
occurred to him at once that it would be a fine idea to get Berlioz to
write something for its inauguration, and the latter, from the first
mention of the subject, felt a reawakening of the desire which had been
haunting him for thirty years, to write a comic opera, at once
sentimental and gay, on certain scenes arranged by himself after
Shakespeare’s comedy _Much Ado About Nothing_. He acquitted himself of
this agreeable task by fits and starts; the performance of the work at
Baden took place three days sooner than he hoped, and the success was
great enough with that cosmopolitan audience, in which the French
predominated, to find an immediate echo at Paris. The following year
Mesdames Viardot and Vendenheuvel-Duprez sang the delicious nocturne
which closes the first act. For an instant Berlioz indulged in the hope
that they were going to play his bit of comedy at the Opéra Comique, and
in this fond hope he wrote two more things and had them engraved; but he
was soon obliged to recognize that it would be impossible with such a
director as Emile Perrin, and so thought no more about it. Besides, he
was entirely occupied with his dear _Troyens_ and the production of this
beloved work absorbed his every thought. In 1857 he was all in the heat
of the composition; he talked about his antique tragedy to M. Bennett,
to Auguste Morel, to Hans von Bülow; in default of the music he read his
poem at the salons, sometimes at M. Edouard Bertin’s house, sometimes at
his own, and everywhere he received the warmest congratulations. At a
soirée at the Tuileries, the Empress spoke to him at length in regard to
it, and immediately he proposed to read his poems to the sovereigns if
the Emperor could find an hour to give him, but not until three acts
were completed, so that they might order the immediate study of it at
the Opéra. Alas, the Emperor, unlearned in matters of music, did not
respond favorably to Berlioz’s demands; he took no notice of his poem,
and did not give the longed-for order to mount _Les Troyens_ at the
_Opéra_. But while Berlioz was chafing with impatience at seeing _La
Favorite_ and _Lucie_, translated by Alphonse Royer, played over and
over again, and Halévy’s _La Magicienne_ and Félicien David’s
_Herculanum_ pass him by, the Emperor, through the solicitations of the
princess Metternich, opened the doors of the _Opéra_ to Richard Wagner,
and decreed that his _Tannhäuser_ should be given with great pomp and
magnificence.
The blow was a cruel one, and Berlioz, beside himself with rage and
disappointment, attacked this unexpected rival and his opera with a fury
that knew no bounds. He did not understand, unhappy man, that his cause
was closely allied to that of Richard Wagner; the public, influenced by
such critics as Scudo, Jouvin, Lasalle, Azevedo and Chadeuil, was
equally hard on both of them and classed them together as a couple of
dangerous madmen; no distinction was made between the two. The fall of
_Tannhäuser_, towards which Berlioz had worked with all his energies,
resulted in closing to him the stage of the Opéra, and it also assured
in advance the unpopularity of _les Troyens_ with the public ready to
extol or condemn the two innovators without discrimination. Moreover he
saw Gounod, Gevaert and many others gain access to the Opéra in
preference to himself. At last quite worn out with disappointment,
Berlioz decided to accept the offers of M. Carvalho. This manager had
just reopened the _Théâtre-Lyrique_ and wished to make a great hit in
order to obtain from the government a subsidy of a hundred thousand
francs.
But it was no longer a question of playing the whole of _les Troyens_ at
the _Théâtre-Lyrique_; they would content themselves now with playing
the first three acts, subdivided into five, under the title of _les
Troyens à Carthage_. The first part of the work Berlioz had published as
_la Prise de Troie_, but he never heard it performed. _Les Troyens à
Carthage_ was given at the _Théâtre-Lyrique_ Nov. 4, 1863, and scored a
failure, although nothing particularly hostile or unpleasant occurred on
the opening night; the poor author even entertained faint hopes of
future success. It was the cumulative effect of the scornful articles in
nearly all the large newspapers, the ridicule of the smaller press and
of the theatrical parodies, above all the absolute indifference of the
public, leaving his cherished work to drag itself miserably through a
score of performances, that disheartened Berlioz and killed him. His
whole life, indeed, had hung upon this last hope of success, and with
the conviction of genius, at the close of the general rehearsal he had
exclaimed with tears coursing freely down his cheeks, “It is beautiful,
it is sublime!” He retired to his house and lived there, taciturn,
desolate, seeing only a few chosen friends who tried to console him, and
cared for like a child by his mother-in-law; he had buried his second
wife (June, 1862) by the side of the first, in Montmartre cemetery.
Thanks to the income from his compositions he was able to give up his
post of musical critic of the _Débats_, which had become insupportable
to him, and was made an officer of the Legion of Honor. He had been a
chevalier for twenty-four years, having been appointed by M. de Gasparin
in 1839, six months before the performance of _Romeo and Juliet_. At
Paris he found some consolation in listening to selections from the
_Childhood of Christ_ at the concerts of the _Conservatoire_, and in
seeing people give serious attention to his compositions and sometimes
applaud them heartily, at the Popular Concerts recently founded by
Pasdeloup. Only two or three times did he consent to go out of France;
once to direct the _Damnation of Faust_ at Vienna, whither he was
invited by Herbeck, court capellmeister; once to conduct the _Harold_
Symphony at Cologne by the invitation of Ferdinand Hiller; finally to
St. Petersburg at the very urgent solicitations of the grand duchess
Helen, an enthusiastic admirer of his works. But on the eve of his
departure he learned of the death of his son Louis in a distant country.
It was a terrible blow to Berlioz, who was devotedly attached to this
son, a frail, dissipated youth, always discontented with his lot, and
little more than a source of anxiety to his father. He set out for St.
Petersburg with a broken heart, and though overwhelmed with successes
and triumphs, entertained and received like a friend by his young
admirer, the grand duchess, he felt his health failing and his strength
leaving him day by day. On his return he went south, thinking that the
Mediterranean might have a beneficial effect upon his health and
spirits; but twice while walking on the beach, once at Monaco,
afterwards at Nice, he was attacked with vertigo, and fell fainting to
the ground. He returned to Paris, and at the end of two months believed
himself cured of these fainting spells, but the nervous trouble
increased daily. He still had desire and strength enough left to drag
himself to Grenoble in August, 1868, to attend a musical solemnity at
which he was made honorary president by his colleagues, who were proud
of him at last. This was the end; on Monday morning the 8th of March,
1869, Hector Berlioz quietly and painlessly breathed his last.
[Illustration: