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II

Daniel François Esprit Auber was born at Caen, Normandy, January 29, 1784. He was destined by his parents for a mercantile career, and was articled to a French firm in London to perfect himself in commercial training. As a child he showed his passion and genius for music, a fact so noticeable in the lives of most of the great musicians. He composed ballads and romances at the age of eleven, and during his London life was much sought after as a musical prodigy alike in composition and execution. In consequence of the breach of the treaty of Amiens in 1804, he was obliged to return to Paris, and we hear no more of the counting-room as a part of his life. His resetting of an old libretto in 1811 attracted the attention of Cherubini, who impressed himself so powerfully on French music and musicians, and the master offered to superintend his further studies, a chance eagerly seized by Auber. To the instruction of Cherubini Auber owed his mastery over the technical difficulties of his art. Among the pieces written at this time was a mass for the Prince of Chimay, of which the prayer was afterwards transferred to “Masaniello.” The comic opera “Le Séjour Militaire,” produced in 1813, when Auber was thirty, was really his début as a composer. It was coldly received, and it was not till the loss of private fortune set a sharp spur to his creative activity that he set himself to serious work. “La Bergère Châtelaine,” produced in 1820, was his first genuine success, and equal fortune attended “Emma” in the following season.

The duration and climax of Auber’s musical career were founded on his friendship and artistic alliance with Scribe, one of the most fertile librettists and playwrights of modern times. To this union, which lasted till Scribe’s death, a great number of operas, comic and serious, owe their existence: not all of equal value, but all evincing the apparently inexhaustible productive genius of the joint authors. The works on which Auber’s claims to musical greatness rest are as follows: – “Leicester,” 1822; “Le Maçon,” 1825, the composer’s chef-d’œuvre in comic opera; “La Muette de Portici,” otherwise “Masaniello,” 1828; “Fra Diavolo,” 1830; “Lestocq,” 1835; “Le Cheval de Bronze,” 1835; “L’Ambassadrice,” 1836; “Le Domino Noir,” 1837; “Les Diamants de la Couronne,” 1841; “Carlo Braschi,” 1842; “Haydée,” 1847; “L’Enfant Prodigue,” 1850; “Zerline,” 1851, written for Madame Alboni; “Manon Lescaut,” 1856; “La Fiancée du Roi de Garbe,” 1867; “Le Premier Jour de Bonheur,” 1868; and “Le Rêve d’Amour,” 1869. The last two works were composed after Auber had passed his eightieth year.

The indifference of this Anacreon of music to renown is worthy of remark. He never attended the performance of his own pieces, and disdained applause. The highest and most valued distinctions were showered on him; orders, jewelled swords, diamond snuff-boxes, were poured in from all the courts of Europe. Innumerable invitations urged him to visit other capitals, and receive honour from imperial hands. But Auber was a true Parisian, and could not be induced to leave his beloved city. He was a Member of the Institute, Commander of the Legion of Honour, and Cherubini’s successor as Director of the Conservatory. He enjoyed perfect health up to the day of his death in 1871. Assiduous in his duties at the Conservatory, and active in his social relations, which took him into the most brilliant circles of an extended period, covering the reigns of Napoleon I., Charles X., Louis Philippe, and Napoleon III., he yet always found time to devote several hours a day to composition. Auber was a small, delicate man, yet distinguished in appearance, and noted for wit. His bons mots were celebrated. While directing a musical soirée when over eighty, a gentleman having taken a white hair from his shoulder, he said, laughingly, “This hair must belong to some old fellow who passed near me.”

A good anecdote is told à propos of an interview of Auber with Charles X. in 1830. “Masaniello,” a bold and revolutionary work, had just been produced, and stirred up a powerful popular ferment. “Ah, M. Auber,” said the King, “you have no idea of the good your work has done me.” “How, sire?” “All revolutions resemble each other. To sing one is to provoke one. What can I do to please you?” “Ah, sire! I am not ambitious.” “I am disposed to name you director of the court concerts. Be sure that I shall remember you. But,” added he, taking the artist’s arm with a cordial and confidential air, “from this day forth you understand me well, M. Auber, I expect you to bring out the ‘Muette’ but very seldom.” It is well known that the Brussels riots of 1830, which resulted in driving the Dutch out of the country, occurred immediately after a performance of this opera, which thus acted the part of “Lillibulero” in English political annals. It is a striking coincidence that the death of the author of this revolutionary inspiration, May 13, 1871, was partly caused by the terrors of the Paris Commune.

III

Boïeldieu and Auber are by far the most brilliant representatives of the French school of Opéra Comique. The work of the former which shows his genius at its best is “La Dame Blanche.” It possesses in a remarkable degree dramatic verve, piquancy of rhythm, and beauty of structure. Mr. Franz Hueffer speaks of this opera as follows: —

“Peculiar to Boïeldieu is a certain homely sweetness of melody which proves its kinship to that source of all truly national music, the popular song. The ‘Dame Blanche’ might be considered as the artistic continuation of the chanson, in the same sense as Weber’s ‘Der Freischütz’ has been called a dramatised Volkslied. With regard to Boïeldieu’s work, this remark indicates at the same time a strong development of what has been described as the ‘amalgamating force of French art and culture;’ for it must be borne in mind that the subject treated is Scotch. The plot is a compound of two of Scott’s novels – the ‘Monastery’ and ‘Guy Mannering.’ Julian, alias George Brown, comes to his paternal castle unknown to himself. He hears the songs of his childhood, which awaken old memories in him; but he seems doomed to misery and disappointment, for on the day of his return his hall and his broad acres are to become the property of a villain, the unfaithful steward of his own family. Here is a situation full of gloom and sad foreboding. But Scribe and Boïeldieu knew better. Their hero is a dashing cavalry officer, who makes love to every pretty woman he comes across, the ‘White Lady of Avenel’ among the number. Yet no one who has witnessed the impersonation of George Brown by the great Roger can have failed to be impressed with the grace and noble gallantry of the character.”

The tune of “Robin Adair,” introduced by Boïeldieu and described as “le chant ordinaire de la tribu d’Avenel,” would hardly be recognised by a genuine Scotchman; but what it loses in homely vigour it has gained in sweetness. The musician’s taste is always gratified in Boïeldieu’s two great comic operas by the grace and finish of the instrumentation, and the carefully composed ensembles, while the public is delighted with the charming ballads and songs. The airs of “La Dame Blanche” are more popular in classic Germany than those of any other opera. Boïeldieu may then be characterised as the composer who carried the French operetta to its highest development, and endowed it in the fullest sense with all the grace, sparkle, dramatic symmetry, and gamesome touch so essentially the heritage of the nation.

Auber’s position in art may be defined as that of the last great representative of French comic opera, the legitimate successor of Boïeldieu, whom he surpasses in refinement and brilliancy of individual effects, while he is inferior in simplicity, breadth, and that firm grasp of details which enables the composer to blend all the parts into a perfect whole. In spite of the fact that “La Muette,” Auber’s greatest opera, is a romantic and serious work, full of bold strokes of genius that astonish no less than they please, he must be held to be essentially a master in the field of operatic comedy. In the great opera to which allusion has been made, the passions of excited public feeling have their fullest sway, and heroic sentiments of love and devotion are expressed in a manner alike grand and original. The traditional forms of the opera are made to expand with the force of the feeling bursting through them. But this was the sole flight of Auber into the higher regions of his art, the offspring of the thoroughly revolutionised feeling of the time (1828), which within two years shook Europe with such force. Aside from this outcome of his Berserker mood, Auber is a charming exponent of the grace, brightness, and piquancy of French society and civilisation. If rarely deep, he is never dull, and no composer has given the world more elegant and graceful melodies of the kind which charm the drawing-room and furnish a good excuse for young-lady pianism.

The following sprightly and judicious estimate of Auber by one of the ablest of modern critics, Henry Chorley, in the main fixes him in his right place: —

“He falls short of his mark in situations of profound pathos (save perhaps in his sleep-song of ‘Masaniello’). He is greatly behind his Italian brethren in those mad scenes which they so largely affect. He is always light and piquant for voices, delicious in his treatment of the orchestra, and at this moment of writing – though I believe the patriarch of opera-writers (born, it is said, in 1784), having begun to compose at an age when other men have died exhausted by precocious labour – is perhaps the lightest-hearted, lightest-handed man still pouring out fragments of pearl and spangles of pure gold on the stage… With all this it is remarkable as it is unfair, that among musicians – when talk is going around, and this person praises that portentous piece of counterpoint, and the other analyses some new chord the ugliness of which has led to its being neglected by former composers – the name of this brilliant man is hardly if ever heard at all. His is the next name among the composers belonging to the last thirty years which should be heard after that of Rossini, the number and extent of the works produced by him taken into account, and with these the beauties which they contain.”

MEYERBEER

I

Few great names in art have been the occasion of such diversity of judgment as Giacomo Meyerbeer, whose works fill so large a place in French music. By one school of critics he is lauded beyond all measure as one “whose scientific skill and gorgeous orchestration are only equalled by his richness of melody and genius for dramatic and scenic effects; by far the greatest composer of recent years;” by another class we hear him stigmatised as “the very caricature of the universal Mozart … the Cosmopolitan Jew, who hawks his wares among all nations indifferently, and does his best to please customers of every kind.” The truth lies between the two, as is wont to be the case in such extremes of opinion. Meyerbeer’s remarkable talent so nearly approaches genius as to make the distinction a difficult one. He cannot be numbered among those great creative artists who by force of individuality have moulded musical epochs and left an undying imprint on their own and succeeding ages. On the other hand, his remarkable power of combining the resources of the lyric stage in a grand mosaic of all that can charm the eye and ear, of wedding rich and gorgeous music with splendid spectacle, gives him an unique place in music; for, unlike Wagner, whose ideas of stage necessities are no less exacting, Meyerbeer aims at no reforms in lyric music, but only to develop the old forms to their highest degree of effect, under conditions that shall gratify the general artistic sense. To accomplish this, he spares no means either in or out of music. Though a German, there is but little of the Teutonic genre in the music of Weber’s fellow-pupil. When at the outset he wrote for Italy, he showed but little of that easy assumption of the genius of Italian art which many other foreign composers have attained. It was not till he formed his celebrated art partnership with Scribe, the greatest of librettists, and succeeded in opening the gates of the Grand Opera of Paris with all its resources, more vast than exist anywhere else, that Meyerbeer found his true vocation, the production of elaborate dramas in music of the eclectic school. He inaugurated no clearly defined tendencies in his art; he distinctively belongs to no national school of music; but his long and important connection with the French lyric stage classifies him unmistakably with the composers of this nation.

The subject of this sketch belonged to a family of marked ability. Jacob Beer was a rich Jewish banker of Berlin, highly honoured for his robust intellect and scholarly culture, as well as his wealth. William, one of the sons, became a distinguished astronomer; another, Michael, achieved distinction as a dramatic poet; while the eldest, Jacob, was the composer, who gained his renown under the Italianised name of Giacomo Meyerbeer, a part of the surname having been adopted from that of the rich banker Meyer, who left the musician a great fortune.

Meyerbeer was born at Berlin, September 5, 1791, and was a musical prodigy from his earliest years. When only four years old he would repeat on the piano the airs he heard from the hand-organs, composing his own accompaniment. At five he took lessons of Lanska, a pupil of Clementi, and at six he made his appearance at a concert. Three years afterwards the critics spoke of him as one of the best pianists in Berlin. He studied successively under the greatest masters of the time, Clementi, Bernhard Anselm Weber, and Abbé Vogler. While in the latter’s school at Darmstadt, he had for fellow-pupils Carl von Weber, Winter, and Gansbacher. Every morning the abbé called together his pupils after mass, gave them some theoretical instruction, then assigned each one a theme for composition. There was great emulation and friendship between Meyerbeer and Weber, which afterwards cooled, however, owing to Weber’s disgust at Meyerbeer’s lavish catering to an extravagant taste. Weber’s severe and bitter criticisms were not forgiven by the Franco-German composer.

Meyerbeer’s first work was the oratorio “Gott und die Natur,” which was performed before the Grand Duke with such success as to gain for him the appointment of court composer. Meyerbeer’s concerts at Darmstadt and Berlin were brilliant exhibitions; and Moscheles, no mean judge, has told us that if Meyerbeer had devoted himself to the piano, no performer in Europe could have surpassed him. By advice of Salieri, whom Meyerbeer met in Vienna, he proceeded to Italy to study the cultivation of the voice; for he seems in early life to have clearly recognised how necessary it is for the operatic composer to understand this, though, in after-years, he treated the voice as ruthlessly in many of his most important arias and scenas as he would a brass instrument. He arrived in Vienna just as the Rossini madness was at its height, and his own blood was fired to compose operas à la Rossini for the Italian theatres. So he proceeded with prodigious industry to turn out operas. In 1818 he wrote “Romilda e Costanza” for Padua; in 1819, “Semiramide” for Turin; in 1820, “Emma di Resburgo” for Venice; in 1822, “Margherita d’Anjou” for Milan; and in 1823, “L’Esule di Granata,” also for Milan. These works of the composer’s ’prentice hand met with the usual fate of the production of the thousand and one musicians who pour forth operas in unremitting flow for the Italian theatres; but they were excellent drill for the future author of “Robert le Diable” and “Les Huguenots.” On returning to Germany Meyerbeer was very sarcastically criticised on the one side as a fugitive from the ranks of German music, on the other as an imitator of Rossini.

Meyerbeer returned to Venice, and in 1824 brought out “Il Crociato in Egitto” in that city, an opera which made the tour of Europe, and established a reputation for the author as the coming rival of Rossini, no one suspecting from what Meyerbeer had then accomplished that he was about to strike boldly out in a new direction. “Il Crociato” was produced in Paris in 1825, and the same year in London. In the latter city, Velluti, the last of the male sopranists, was one of the principal singers in the opera; and it was said by some of the ill-natured critics that curiosity to see and hear this singer of a peculiar kind, of whom it was said, “Non vir sed Veluti,” had as much to do with the success of the opera as its merits. Lord Mount-Edgcumbe, however, an excellent critic, wrote of it “as quite of the new school, but not copied from its founder, Rossini; original, odd, flighty, and it might be termed fantastic, but at times beautiful. Here and there most delightful melodies and harmonies occurred, but it was unequal, solos being as rare as in all the modern operas.” This was the last of Meyerbeer’s operas written in the Italian style.

In 1827 the composer married, and for several years lived a quiet, secluded life. The loss of his first two children so saddened him as to concentrate his attention for a while on church music. During this period he composed only a “Stabat,” a “Miserere,” a “Te Deum,” and eight of Klopstock’s songs. But he was preparing for that new departure on which his reputation as a great composer now rests, and which called forth such bitter condemnation on the one hand, such thunders of eulogy on the other. His old fellow-pupil, Weber, wrote of him in after-years – “He prostituted his profound, admirable, and serious German talent for the applause of the crowd which he ought to have despised.” And Mendelssohn wrote to his father in words of still more angry disgust – “When in ‘Robert le Diable’ nuns appear one after the other and endeavour to seduce the hero, till at length the lady abbess succeeds; when the hero, aided by a magic branch, gains access to the sleeping apartment of his lady, and throws her down, forming a tableau which is applauded here, and will perhaps be applauded in Germany; and when, after that, she implores for mercy in an aria; when, in another opera, a girl undresses herself, singing all the while that she will be married to-morrow, it may be effective, but I find no music in it. For it is vulgar, and if such is the taste of the day, and therefore necessary, I prefer writing sacred music.”

II

“Robert le Diable” was produced at the Académie Royale in 1831, and inaugurated the brilliant reign of Dr. Véron as manager. The bold innovations, the powerful situations, the daring methods of the composer, astonished and delighted Paris, and the work was performed more than a hundred consecutive times. The history of “Robert le Diable” is in some respects curious. It was originally written for the Ventadour Theatre, devoted to comic opera; but the company were found unable to sing the difficult music. Meyerbeer was inspired by Weber’s “Der Freischütz” to attempt a romantic, semi-fantastic legendary opera, and trod very closely in the footsteps of his model. It was determined to so alter the libretto and extend and elaborate the music as to fit it for the stage of the Grand Opera. MM. Scribe and Delavigne, the librettists, and Meyerbeer, devoted busy days and nights to hurrying on the work. The whole opera was remodelled, recitative substituted for dialogue, and one of the most important characters, Raimbaud, cut out in the fourth and fifth acts – a suppression which is claimed to have befogged a very clear and intelligible plot. Highly suggestive in its present state of Weber’s opera, the opera of “Robert le Diable” is said to have been marvellously similar to “Der Freischütz” in the original form, though inferior in dignity of motive.

Paris was all agog with interest at the first production. The critics had attended the rehearsals, and it was understood that the libretto, the music, and the ballet were full of striking interest. Nourrit played the part of Robert; Levasseur, Bertram; Mdme. Cinti Damoreau, Isabelle; and Mdlle. Dorus, Alice. The greatest dancers of the age were in the ballet, and the brilliant Taglioni led the band of resuscitated nuns. Habeneck was conductor, and everything had been done in the way of scenery and costumes. The success was a remarkable one, and Meyerbeer’s name became famous throughout Europe.

Dr. Véron, in his Mémoires d’un Bourgeois de Paris, describes a thrilling yet ludicrous accident that occurred on the first night’s performance. After the admirable trio, which is the dénoûment of the work, Levasseur, who personated Bertram, sprang through the trap to rejoin the kingdom of the dead, whence he came so mysteriously. Robert, on the other hand, had to remain on the earth, a converted man, and destined to happiness in marriage with his princess, Isabelle. Nourrit, the Robert of the performance, misled by the situation and the fervour of his own feelings, threw himself into the trap, which was not properly set. Fortunately the mattresses beneath had not all been removed, or the tenor would have been killed, a doom which those on the stage who saw the accident expected. The audience supposed it was part of the opera, and the people on the stage were full of terror and lamentation, when Nourrit appeared to calm their fears. Mdlle. Dorus burst into tears of joy, and the audience, recognising the situation, broke into shouts of applause.

The opera was brought out in London the same year, with nearly the same cast, but did not excite so much enthusiasm as in Paris. Lord Mount-Edgcumbe, who represented the connoisseurs of the old school, expressed the then current opinion of London audiences – “Never did I see a more disagreeable or disgusting performance. The sight of the resurrection of a whole convent of nuns, who rise from their graves and begin dancing like so many bacchantes, is revolting; and a sacred service in a church, accompanied by an organ on the stage, not very decorous. Neither does the music of Meyerbeer compensate for a fable which is a tissue of nonsense and improbability.”¹⁸

M. Véron was so delighted with the great success of “Robert” that he made a contract with Meyerbeer for another grand opera, “Les Huguenots,” to be completed by a certain date. Meanwhile, the failing health of Mdme. Meyerbeer obliged the composer to go to Italy, and work on the opera was deferred, thus causing him to lose thirty thousand francs as the penalty of his broken contract. At length, after twenty-eight rehearsals, and an expense of more than one hundred and sixty thousand francs in preparation, “Les Huguenots” was given to the public, February 26, 1836. Though this great work excited transports of enthusiasm in Paris, it was interdicted in many of the cities of Southern Europe on account of the subject being a disagreeable one to ardent and bigoted Catholics. In London it has always been the most popular of Meyerbeer’s three great operas, owing perhaps partly to the singing of Mario and Grisi, and more lately of Titiens and Giuglini.

When Spontini resigned his place as chapel-master at the Court of Berlin, in 1832, Meyerbeer succeeded him. He wrote much music of an accidental character in his new position, but a slumber seems to have fallen on his greater creative faculties. The German atmosphere was not favourable to the fruitfulness of Meyerbeer’s genius. He seems to have needed the volatile and sparkling life of Paris to excite him into full activity. Or perhaps he was not willing to produce one of his operas, with their large dependence on elaborate splendour of production, away from the Paris Grand Opera. During Meyerbeer’s stay in Berlin he introduced Jenny Lind to the Berlin public, as he afterwards did indeed to Paris, her début there being made in the opening performance of “Das Feldlager in Schlesien,” afterwards remodelled into “L’Étoile du Nord.”

Meyerbeer returned to Paris in 1849, to present the third of his great operas, “La Prophète.” It was given with Roger, Viardot-Garcia, and Castellan in the principal characters. Mdme. Viardot-Garcia achieved one of her greatest dramatic triumphs in the difficult part of Fides. In London the opera also met with splendid success, having, as Chorley tells us, a great advantage over the Paris presentation in “the remarkable personal beauty of Signor Mario, whose appearance in his coronation robes reminded one of some bishop-saint in a picture by Van Eyck or Dürer, and who could bring to bear a play of feature without grimace into the scene of false fascination, entirely beyond the reach of the clever French artist Roger, who originated the character.”

“L’Étoile du Nord” was given to the public February 16, 1854. Up to this time the opera of “Robert” had been sung three hundred and thirty-three times, “Les Huguenots” two hundred and twenty-two, and “Le Prophète” a hundred and twelve. The “Pardon de Ploërmel,” also known as “Dinorah,” was offered to the world of Paris April 4, 1859. Both these operas, though beautiful, are inferior to his other works.