The French school of light opera, founded by GrÉtry, reached its greatest perfection in the authors of “La Dame Blanche” and “Fra Diavolo,” though to the former of these composers must be accorded the peculiar distinction of having given the most perfect example of this style of composition. FranÇois Adrien BoÏeldieu, the scion of a Norman family, was born at Rouen, December 16, 1775. He received his early musical training at the hands of Broche, a great musician and the cathedral organist, but a drunkard and brutal taskmaster. At the age of sixteen he had become a good pianist and knew something of composition. At all events, his passionate love of the theatre prompted him to try his hand at an opera, which was actually performed at Rouen. The revolution which made such havoc with the clergy and their dependants ruined the BoÏeldieu family (the elder BoÏeldieu had been secretary of the archiepiscopal diocese), and young FranÇois, at the age of nineteen, was set adrift on the world, his heart full of hope and his ambition bent on Paris, whither he set his feet. Paris, however, proved a stern stepmother at the outset, as she always has been to the struggling and unsuccessful. He was obliged to tune pianos for his living, and was glad to sell his brilliant chansons, which afterwards made a fortune for his publisher, for a few francs apiece.

Several years of hard work and bitter privation finally culminated in the acceptance of an opera, “La Famille Suisse,” at the ThÉÂtre Faydeau in 1796, where it was given on alternate nights with Cherubini’s “MÉdÉe.” Other operas followed in rapid succession, among which may be mentioned “La Dot de Suzette” (1798) and “Le Calife de Bagdad” (1800). The latter of these was remarkably popular, and drew from the severe Cherubini the following rebuke—“Malheureux! Are you not ashamed of such undeserved triumph?” BoÏeldieu took the brusque criticism meekly and preferred a request for further instruction from Cherubini—a proof of modesty and good sense quite remarkable in one who had attained recognition as a favourite with the musical public. BoÏeldieu’s three years’ studies under the great Italian master were of much service, for his next work, “Ma Tante Aurore,” produced in 1803, showed noticeable artistic progress. It was during this year that BoÏeldieu, goaded by domestic misery (for he had married the danseuse Clotilde Mafleuray, whose notorious infidelity made his name a bye-word), exiled himself to Russia, even then looked on as an El Dorado for the musician, where he spent eight years as conductor and composer of the Imperial Opera. This was all but a total eclipse in his art-life, for he did little of note during the period of his St. Petersburg career.

He returned to Paris in 1811, where he found great changes. MÉhul and Cherubini, disgusted with the public, kept an obstinate silence; and Nicolo was not a dangerous rival. He set to work with fresh zeal, and one of his most charming works, “Jean de Paris,” produced in 1812, was received with a storm of delight. This and “La Dame Blanche” are the two masterpieces of the composer in refined humour, masterly delineation, and sustained power both of melody and construction. The fourteen years which elapsed before BoÏeldieu’s genius took a still higher flight were occupied in writing works of little value except as names in a catalogue. The long-expected opera “La Dame Blanche” saw the light in 1825, and it is to-day a stock opera in Europe, one Parisian theatre alone having given it nearly two thousand times. BoÏeldieu’s latter years were uneventful and unfruitful. He died in 1834 of pulmonary disease, the germs of which were planted by St. Petersburg winters. “Jean de Paris” and “La Dame Blanche” are the two works, out of nearly thirty operas, which the world cherishes as masterpieces.

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’oeuvre 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.”