LOUIS GALLET
As _Déjanire_, cast in a new form, has again appeared in the vast frame
of the Opéra stage, I may be allowed to recall my recollections of my
friend and collaborator, Louis Gallet, the diligent and chosen companion
of my best years, whose support was so dear and precious to me.
Collaboration for some reason unknown to me is deprecated. Opera, it is
said, should spring from the brain like Minerva, fully armed. So much
the better if such divine intellects can be found, but they are rare and
always will be. For dramatic and literary art on the one hand and
musical art on the other require different powers, which are not
ordinarily found in the same person.
I first met Louis Gallet in 1871. Camille du Locle, who was the manager
of the Opéra-Comique at the time, could not put on _Le Timbre d'Argent_,
and while he waited for better days, which never came, to do that, he
offered me a one-act work. He proposed Louis Gallet as my collaborator,
although I had not known him until then. "You were made to understand
each other," he told me. Gallet was then employed in some capacity at
the Beaujon hospital and lived near me in the Faubourg Saint-Honoré. We
soon formed the habit of seeing each other every day. Du Locle had
judged aright. We had the same tastes in art and literature. We were
equally averse to whatever is too theatrical and also to whatever is not
sufficiently so, to the commonplace and the too extravagant. We both
despised easy success and we understood each other wonderfully. Gallet
was not a musician, but he enjoyed and understood music, and he
criticised with rare good taste.
Japan had recently been opened to Europeans. Japan was fashionable; all
they talked about was Japan, it was a real craze. So the idea of writing
a Japanese piece occurred to us. We submitted the idea to du Locle, but
he was afraid of an entirely Japanese stage setting. He wanted us to
soften the Japanese part, and it was he, I think, who had the idea of
making it half Japanese and half Dutch, the way the slight work _La
Princesse Jaune_ was cast.
That was only a beginning and in our daily talks we sketched the most
audacious projects. The leading concerts of the time did not balk at
performing large vocal works, as they too often do to-day to the great
detriment of the variety of their programmes. We then thought that we
were at the beginning of the prosperity of French oratorio which only
needed encouragement to flourish. I read by chance in an old Bible this
wonderful phrase,
"And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth," and so I
proposed to Gallet that we do a Deluge. At first he wanted to introduce
characters. "No," I said, "put the Bible narrative into simple verse,
and I will do the rest." We know with what care and success he
accomplished his delicate task. Meanwhile he gave Massenet the texts for
_Marie-Madeleine_ and _Le Roi de Lahore_, and these two works created a
great stir in the operatic world.
We had dreams of historical opera, for we were quite without the
prejudice against this form of drama which afflicts the present school.
But I was not _persona grata_ to the managers and I did not know at what
door to knock, when one of my friends, Aimé Gros, took the management of
the Grand-Théâtre at Lyons and asked me for a work. This was a fine
opportunity and we grasped it. We put together, with difficulty but with
infinite zest, our historical opera, _Etienne Marcel_, in which Louis
Gallet endeavored to respect as far as is possible in a theatrical work
the facts of history. Despite illustrious examples to the contrary he
did not believe that it was legitimate to attribute to a character who
has actually lived acts and opinions that are entirely fanciful. I was
in full agreement with him in that as in so many other things. I go even
farther and cannot accustom myself to the queer sauces in which
legendary characters are often served. It seems to me that the legend is
the interesting thing, and not the character, and that the latter loses
all its value when the legend which surrounds it is destroyed. But
everyone knows that I am a crank.
Some time after my _Henri VIII_, in which Vaucorbeil had imposed
another collaborator on me, Ritt asked me for a new work. We were
looking about for a subject, when Gallet came to my house and timidly,
as if fearing a rebuff, proposed _Benvenuto Cellini_. I had thought of
that for a long time, and the idea had come to me of putting into
musical form that fine drama, which had had its hours of glory, where
Mélingue modeled the statue of Hebe before the populace. I, therefore,
accepted the suggestion with pleasure. This enterprise brought me in
touch with Paul Meurice, whom I had known in my childhood, when he was
wooing Mlle. Granger, his first wife and an intimate friend of my
mother's. Paul Meurice revealed a secret to me: that the romance
_Ascanio_, attributed to Alexander Dumas, had been entirely written by
Meurice. The work met with a great success, and out of gratitude, Dumas
offered to help Meurice in constructing a drama from the romance, which
was to be signed by Meurice alone. So it is easy for one who knows
Dumas's dramas to find traces of his handiwork in _Benvenuto Cellini_.
It was not particularly easy to make an opera out of the play, and
Gallet and I worked together at it with considerable difficulty. We soon
saw that we should have to eliminate the famous scene of the casting of
the statue. When we reached this point in the play, Benvenuto had
already done a good deal of singing, and this scene with its violence
seemed certain to exceed the strength of the most valiant artist. In
connection with our _Proserpine_, I have been accused of supposing that
Vacquerie had genius. It would be too much to say that he had genius,
but he certainly had great talent. His prose showed a classical
refinement, and his poetry, in spite of fantastic passages which no one
could admire, was sonorous in tone, contained precious material, and was
both interesting and highly individual. What allured me in _Proserpine_
was the amount of inner emotion there was in the drama, which is very
advantageous to the music. Music gives expression to feelings which the
characters cannot express, and accentuates and develops the
picturesqueness of the piece; it makes acceptable what would not even
exist without it.
Vacquerie approved highly the convent scene which Gallet invented. This
introduced a quiet and peaceful note amidst the violence of the original
work. Gallet wrote a sonnet in Alexandrine verse for Sabatino's
declaration of his love. I was unable to set this to music, for the
twelve feet embarrassed me and prevented my getting into my stride. As I
did not know what else to do, I took the sonnet and by main force
reduced the verse to ten feet with a cæsura at the fifth foot. I took
this to my dear collaborator in fear and trembling, and, as I had
feared, he at once fell into the depths of despair.
"That was the best thing in my work," he said. "I nursed and caressed
that sonnet, and now you have ruined it."
In the face of this despair, I screwed up my courage. As I had
previously cut down the verse, I now tried lengthening out the music.
Then, I sang both versions to the disconsolate poet.
And what a miracle! He was altogether reconciled, approved both
versions, and did not know which one to choose. We ended with a
patchwork. The two quatrains are in verses of ten feet, and the two
tiercets in Alexandrine metre.
Outside of our work, too, our relations were delightful. We wrote to
each other constantly in both prose and verse; we bombarded each other
with sonnets; his letters were sometimes ornamented with water colors,
for he drew very well and one of his joys was to cover white paper with
color. Gallet drew the sketches for the desert in _Le Roi de Lahore_ and
the cloister in _Proserpine_.
When Madame Adam founded the _Nouvelle Revue_ she offered me the
position of musical critic, which I did not think I ought to accept. She
did not know where to turn. "Take Gallet," I advised her. "He is an
accomplished man of letters. He is not a musician in the sense that he
has studied music, but he has the soul of a musician, which is worth
much more." Madame Adam followed my advice and found it good.
At this period, under the guise of Wagnerism, the wildest theories and
the most extravagant assertions were current in musical criticism.
Gallet was naturally well poised and independent and he did not do as
the rest did. Instead he opposed them, but from unwillingness to give
needless offense he displayed marked tact and discretion in his
criticisms. This did him no good, however, for it aroused no sentiment
of gratitude, and without giving him credit for a literary style that
was rare among librettists, his contemporaries received each of his
works with a hostility entirely devoid of either justice or mercy.
Gallet felt this hostility keenly. He felt that he did not deserve it,
since he took so much care in his work and put so much courtesy into his
criticism. The blank verse he used in _Thaïs_ with admirable regard for
color and harmony, counting on the music to take the place of the rhyme,
was not appreciated. This verse was free from assonance and the
banalities which it draws into operatic works, but it kept the rhythm
and sonorous sound which is far removed from prose. That was the period
when there was nothing but praise for Alfred Ernst's gibberish, though
that was an insult alike to the French language and the masterpieces he
had the temerity to translate. Gallet used the same blank verse in
_Déjanire_, although its use here was more debatable, but he handled it
with surprising skill. Now that this text has been set to music, it
shows its full beauty.
Louis Gallet devoted a large part of his time to administrative duties,
for he was successively treasurer and manager of hospitals. Nevertheless
he produced works in abundance. He left a record of no less than forty
operatic librettos, plays, romances, memoirs, pamphlets, and innumerable
articles. I wish I knew what to say about the man himself, his
unwearying goodness, his loyalty, his scrupulousness, his good humor,
his originality, his continual common sense, and his intellect, alert to
everything unusual and interesting.
What good talks we used to have as we dined under an arbor in the large
garden which was his delight at Lariboisière! I used to take him seeds,
and he made amusing botanical experiments with them.
He was seriously ill at one period of his life. He was wonderfully
nursed by his wife--who was a saint--and he endured prolonged and
atrocious sufferings with the patience of a saint. He watched the growth
of his fatal disease with a stoicism worthy of the sages of antiquity
and he had no illusion about the implacable illness which slowly but
surely would result in his premature death. A constantly increasing
deafness was his greatest trouble. This cruel infirmity had made
frightful progress when, in 1899, the Arènes de Béziers opened its doors
for the second time to _Déjanire_. In spite of everything, including his
ill health which made the trip very painful, he wanted to see his work
once more. He heard nothing, however--neither the artists, the choruses,
nor even the applause of the several thousand spectators who encored it
enthusiastically. A little later he passed on, leaving in his friends'
hearts and at the work-tables of his collaborators a void which it is
impossible to fill.
[Illustration: The First Performance of _Déjanire_ at Les Arènes de
Béziers]