Two composers, Auber and FÉlicien David — Auber, the legend of his youthful appearance — How it arose — His daily rides, his love of women's society — His mot on Mozart's "Don Juan" — The only drawback to Auber's enjoyment of women's society — His reluctance to take his hat off — How he managed to keep it on most of the time — His opinion upon Meyerbeer's and HalÉvy's genius — His opinion upon GÉrard de Nerval, who hanged himself with his hat on — His love of solitude — His fondness of Paris — His grievance against his mother for not having given him birth there — He refuses to leave Paris at the commencement of the siege — His small appetite — He proposes to write a new opera when the Prussians are gone — Auber suffers no privations, but has difficulty in finding fodder for his horse — The Parisians claim it for food — Another legend about Auber's independence of sleep — How and where he generally slept — Why Auber snored in VÉron's company, and why he did not in that of other people — His capacity for work — Auber a brilliant talker — Auber's gratitude to the artists who interpreted his work, but different from Meyerbeer's — The reason why, according to Auber — Jealousy or humility — Auber and the younger Coquelin — "The verdict on all things in this world may be summed up in the one phrase, 'It's an injustice'" — FÉlicien David — The man — The beginnings of his career — His terrible poverty — He joins the Saint-Simoniens, and goes with some of them to the East — Their reception at Constantinople — M. Scribe and the libretto of "L'Africaine" — David in Egypt at the court of Mehemet-Ali — David's description of him — Mehemet's way of testing the educational progress of his sons — Woe to the fat kine — Mehemet-Ali suggests a new mode of teaching music to the inmates of the harem — FÉlicien David's further wanderings in Egypt — Their effect upon his musical genius — His return to France — He tells the story of the first performance of "Le DÉsert" — An ambulant box-office — His success — Fame, but no money — He sells the score of "Le DÉsert" — He loses his savings — "La Perle du BrÉsil" and the Coup-d'État — "No luck" — NapolÉon III. remains his debtor for eleven years — A mot of Auber, and one of Alexandre Dumas pÈre — The story of "AÏda" — Why FÉlicien David did not compose the music — The real author of the libretto. I knew Auber from the year '42 or '43 until the day of his death. He and I were in Paris during the siege and the Commune; we saw one another frequently, and I am positive that the terrible misfortunes of his country shortened his life by at least ten years. For though at the beginning of the campaign he was close upon ninety, he scarcely looked a twelvemonth older than when I first knew him, nearly three decades before; that is, a very healthy and active old man, but still an old man. So much nonsense has been written What added, probably, to Auber's reputation of possessing the secret of perpetual youth was his great fondness for women's society, his very handsome appearance, though he was small comparatively, and his faultless way of dressing. He was most charming with the fairer sex, and many of the female pupils of the Conservatoire positively doted on him. Though polite to a degree with men—and I doubt whether Auber could have been other than polite with no matter whom—his smiles, I mean his benevolent ones, for he could smile very sceptically, were exclusively reserved for women. When he heard Mozart's "Don Juan" for the first time, he said, "This is the music of a lover of twenty, and if a man be not an imbecile, he may always have in a little corner of his heart the sentiment or fancy that he is only twenty." There was but one drawback to Auber's enjoyment of the society of women—he was obliged to take off his hat in their presence, and he hated being without that article of dress. He might have worn a skull-cap at home, though there was no necessity for it, as far as his hair was concerned, for up to the last he was far from bald; but he wanted his hat. He composed with his hat on, he had his meals with his hat on, and though he would have frequently preferred to take his seat in the stalls or balcony of a theatre, he invariably had a box, and generally one on the stage, in order to keep his hat on. He would often stand for hours on the balcony of his house in the Rue Saint-Georges with his hat on. "I never feel as much at home anywhere, not even in my own apartment, as in the synagogue," he said one day. He frequently went there for no earthly reason than because he could sit among a lot of people with his hat on. In fact, those frequent visits, coupled with his dislike to be bareheaded, made people wonder now and then whether Auber was a Jew. The supposition always made Auber smile. "That would have meant the genius of a Meyerbeer, a Mendelssohn, or a HalÉvy," Auber was exceedingly fond of society, and yet he was fond of solitude also. Many a time his friends reported that, returning home late from a party, they found Auber standing opposite his house in the Rue Saint-Georges, with apparently no other object than to contemplate it from below. After his return to Paris from London, whither he had been sent by his father, in order to become conversant with English business habits, he never left the capital again, though at the end of his life he regretted not having been to Italy. It was because Rossini, who was one of his idols, had said "that a musician should loiter away some of his time under that sky." But almost immediately he comforted himself with the thought that Paris, after all, was the only city worth living in. "I was very fond of my mother, but I have one grievance against her memory. What did she want to go to Caen for just at the moment when I was about to be born? But for that I should have been a real Parisian." I do not think it made much difference, for I never knew such an inveterate Parisian as Auber. When the investment of Paris had become an absolute certainty, some of his friends pressed him to leave; he would not hear of it. They predicted discomfort, famine, and what-not. "The latter contingency will not affect me much, seeing that I eat but once a day, and very little then. As for the sound of the firing disturbing me, I do not think it will. It has often been said that the first part of my overture to 'Fra Diavolo' was inspired by the retreating tramp of the regiment; there may be some truth in it. If it be vouchsafed to me to hear the retreating I do not suppose that, personally, Auber suffered any privations during the siege. A man in his position, who required but one meal a day, and that a very light one, was sure to find it somewhere; but he had great trouble to find sufficient fodder for his old faithful hack, that had carried him for years, and when, after several months of scheming and contriving to that effect, he was forced to give it up as food for others, his cup of bitterness was full. "Ils m'ont pris mon vieux cheval pour le manger," he repeated, when I saw him after the event; "je l'avais depuis vingt ans." It was really a great blow to him. There is another legend about Auber which is not founded upon facts, namely, that he was pretty well independent of sleep. It was perfectly true that he went to bed very late and rose very early, but most people have overlooked the fact that during the evening he had had a comfortable doze, of at least an hour and a half or two hours, at the theatre. He rarely missed a performance at the OpÉra or OpÉra-Comique, except when his own work was performed. And during that time he slumbered peacefully, "en homme du monde," said Nestor Roqueplan, "without snoring." "I never knew what it meant to snore," said Auber, apologetically, "until I took to sleeping in VÉron's box; and as it is, I do not snore now except under provocation. But there would be no possibility of sleeping by the side of VÉron without snoring. You have to drown his, or else it would awaken you." Auber was a brilliant talker, but he scarcely ever liked to exert himself except on the subject of music. It was all in all to him, and the amount of work he did must have been something tremendous. There are few students of the history of operatic music, no matter how excellent their memories, who could give the complete list of Auber's works by heart. We tried it once in 1850, when that list was much shorter than it is now; there was not a single one who gave it correctly. The only one who came within a measureable distance was Roger, the tenor. In spite of his world-wide reputation, even at that time, Auber was as modest about his work as Meyerbeer, but he had more confidence in himself than the latter. Auber was by no means ungrateful to the artists who contributed to his At the first blush, this sounds something like jealousy in the guise of humility, but I am certain that there was no jealousy in Auber's character. Few men have been so uniformly successful, but he also had his early struggles, "when perhaps I did better work than I have done since." The last sentence was invariably trolled out when a pupil of the Conservatoire complained to him of having been unjustly dealt with. I remember Coquelin the younger competing for the "prize of Comedy" in '65 or '66. He did not get it, and when we came out of Auber's box at the Conservatoire, the young fellow came up to him with tears in his eyes. I fancy they were tears of anger rather than of sorrow. "Ah, Monsieur Auber," he exclaimed, "that's an injustice!" "Perhaps so, my dear lad," replied Auber; "but remember that the verdict on all things in this world may be summed up in the words you have just uttered, 'It's an injustice.' Let me give you a bit of advice. If you mean to become a good Figaro, you must be the first to laugh at an injustice instead of weeping over it." Wherewith he turned his back upon the now celebrated comedian. In the course of these notes I shall have occasion to speak of Auber again. Auber need not have generalized to young Coquelin; he might have cited one instance of injustice in his own profession, to which, fortunately, there was no parallel for at least thirty years. In the forties the critics refused to recognize the genius of FÉlicien David, just as they had refused to recognize the genius of Hector Berlioz. In the seventies they were morally guilty of the death of Georges Bizet, the composer of "Carmen." I knew little or nothing of Hector Berlioz, but I frequently met FÉlicien David at Auber's. It was a pity to behold the man even after his success—a success which, however, They did not kill the imagination in David's case, but they undermined his constitution. It was at that period that he fell in with the Saint-Simoniens, to the high priest of which, M. Enfantin, who eventually became the chairman of the Paris, Lyons, and Mediterranean Railway Company, he took me many years later. After their dispersion, the group to which he belonged went to the East, and it is to this apparently fortuitous circumstance that the world owes not only "Le DÉsert," "La Perle du BrÉsil," and "L'Eden," but probably also Meyerbeer's "Africaine." Meyerbeer virtually acknowledged that but for David's scores, so replete with the poetry of the Orient, he would have never thought of such a subject for one of his operas. M. Scribe, on the other hand, always maintained that the idea emanated from him, and that it dated from 1847, when the composer was given the choice between "La ProphÈte" and "L'Africaine," and chose the former. One might almost paraphrase the accusation of the wolf against the lamb in La Fontaine's fable. "M. Scribe, if you did not owe your idea to FÉlicien David, you owed it to Montigny, the director of the Gymnase, who in the thirties produced a play with a curious name, and a more curious plot, at the Ambigu-Comique." To return for a moment to FÉlicien David, whose melancholy vanished as if by magic when he related his wanderings "Those who would infer from this," said David one day, referring to the same subject, "that Mehemet-Ali was lacking in intelligence, would commit a grave error. I am convinced, from the little I saw of him, that he was a man of very great natural parts. His features, though not absolutely handsome, were very striking and expressive. He was over sixty then, but looked as if he could bear any amount of fatigue. His constitution must originally have been an iron one. Instead of the Oriental repose which I expected, there was a kind of semi-European, semi-military stiffness about him, which, however, soon wore off in conversation. I say advisedly conversation, albeit that he did not understand a word of French, which was the only language I spoke, and that I could not catch a word of his. But in spite of Koenig-Bey's acting the interpreter, it was a conversation between us both. He seemed to catch the meaning of my words the moment they left my lips, and every now and then smiled at my remarks. He as it were read the thoughts that provoked them, and I do not wonder at his having been amused, for I myself was never so amused in my life. Perhaps you will be, when I tell you that I was not to see the ladies I had to teach; my instruction was to be given to the eunuchs, who, in their turn, had to transmit them to the viceroy's wives and daughters. Of course, I tried to point out the impossibility of such a system, but Mehemet-Ali shook his head with a knowing smile. That was the only way he would have his womenkind initiated into the beauties of Mozart and Mendelssohn. I need not tell you that the arrangement came to nought." Nearly all these conversations which I have noted down here, without much attempt at transition, took place at different times. One day, when he was relating some experiences of his wanderings through the less busy haunts of Egypt, I happened to say, "After all, Monsieur David, they did you good; they inspired you with the themes of your most beautiful works." "Now would you like to hear what happened after the performance?" he continued. "The place was full and the applause tremendous. Next morning the papers were full of my name; I was, according to most of them, 'a revelation in music.' But for all that I was living in an attic on a fifth floor, and had not sufficient money to pay my orchestra, let alone to arrange for another concert. As for the score of 'Le DÉsert,' it went the round of every publisher but one, and was declined by all these. At last the firm of Escudier offered me twelve hundred francs for it, which, of course, I was glad to take. They behaved handsomely after all, because they arranged for a series of performances of it, which I was to direct at a fee of a thousand francs per performance. Those good Saint-Simoniens, the Pereiras, Enfantin, Michel Chevalier, had not lifted a finger to help me in my need; nevertheless, I was not going to condemn good principles on account of the men who represented them not very worthily. Do you know what was the result of this determination not to be unjust if others were? I embarked my little savings in a concern presided over by one of them. I lost every penny of it; since then I have never been able to save a penny." FÉlicien David was right—he never made money; first of all, "because," as Auber said, "he was too great an artist to I wrote just now that FÉlicien David composed very slowly. But for this defect, if it was one, Verdi would have never put his name to the score of "AÏda." The musical encyclopedias will tell you that Signor Ghislanzoni is the author of the libretto, and that the khedive applied to Signor Verdi for an opera on an Egyptian subject. The first part of that statement is utterly untrue, the other part is but partially true. Signor Ghislanzoni is at best but the adapter in verse and translator of the libretto. The original in prose is by M. Camille du Locle, founded on the scenario supplied by Mariette-Bey, whom IsmaÏl-Pasha had given carte blanche with regard to the music and words. Mariette-Bey intended from the very first to apply to a French playwright, M. du Locle had also been authorized to find a French composer, but it is very certain that Mariette-Bey had in his mind's eye the composer of "Le DÉsert," though he may not have expressly said so. At any rate, M. du Locle applied to David, who refused, although the "retaining fee" was fifty thousand francs. It was because he could not comply with the first and foremost condition, to have the score ready in six months at the latest. Then Wagner was thought of. It is most probable that he would have refused. To Mariette-Bey belongs the credit furthermore of having entirely stage-managed the opera. Thus FÉlicien David, who had revealed "the East in music" to the Europeans, no more reaped the fruits of his originality than Decamps, who had revealed it in painting. Was not Auber right when he said to young Coquelin that the verdict on all things in this world might be summed up in the one phrase, "It's an injustice"? |