History of the Opera from its Origin in Italy to the present Time Part 26

It is decreed that the _Siege of Thionville_ shall be represented gratis and solely for the amus.e.m.e.nt of the _sans culottes_, who, to this moment have been the true defenders of liberty and supporters of democracy."

Soon afterwards it was proposed to shut up the Opera, but Hebert, the ferocious Hebert, better known as _le pere d.u.c.h.esne_, undertook its defence on the ground that it procured subsistence for a number of families, and "caused the agreeable arts to flourish."

It was thereupon resolved "that the Opera should be encouraged and defended against its enemies." At the same time the managers Cellerier and Francur were arrested as _suspects_. Neither of them was executed.

[Sidenote: THE "MARATISTES" AGAIN.]

The Opera was now once more placed under the direction of a committee chosen from among the singers and dancers, who were selected this time, not by reason of their artistic merit, but solely with reference to their political principles. Lays, one of the chief managers, was a furious democrat, and on one occasion insisted on Mademoiselle Maillard (Gluck's "Armida!") appearing in a procession as the G.o.ddess of Reason.

Mademoiselle Maillard having refused, Chaumette was appealed to. The arguments he employed were simple but convincing. "Well, _citoyenne_,"

he said, "since you refuse to be a divinity, you must not be astonished if we treat you _as a mortal_." Fortunately for the poor prima donna, Mormoro, a member of the Commune of Paris, and a raging "Maratiste"

(which has not quite the same meaning now as in the days of the "Todistes") claimed the obnoxious part for his unhappy wife. The beautiful Madame Mormoro was forced to appear in the streets of Paris in the light and airy costume of an antique G.o.ddess, with the thermometer at twenty degrees below freezing point! "Reason" not unreasonably wept with annoyance throughout the ceremony.

Leonard Bourdon, called by those who knew him _Leopard_ Bourdon, used all his influence, as a distinguished member of the Mountain, to get a work he had prepared for the Opera produced. His piece was called the _Tomb of the Impostors_, or _the Inauguration of the Temple of Truth_.

It was printed at the expense of the Republic, but never brought out. In the first scene the stage represents a church, built with human skulls.

In the sanctuary there is to be a fountain of blood. A woman enters to confess, the priest behaves atrociously in the confessional, &c., &c.

The scenes and incidents throughout the drama are all in the same style, and the whole is dedicated in an uncomplimentary epistle to the Pope.

Leopard tormented the directors actors, and actresses, night and day, to produce his master-piece, and threatened, that if they were not quick about it, he would have a guillotine erected on the stage.

This threat was not quite so vain as it might seem. A list of twenty-two persons engaged at the Opera (twenty-two--the fatal number during the Reign of Terror), had been already drawn up by Hebert, as a sort of executioner's memorandum. When he was in a good humour he would show it to the singers and dancers, and say to them with easy familiarity; "I shall have to send you all to the guillotine some day. Two reasons have prevented me hitherto; in the first place you are not worth the trouble, in the second I want you for my amus.e.m.e.nt." These reasons were not considered quite satisfactory by the proscribed artists, and Beaupre, a comic dancer of great talent, contrived by various humorous stratagems (one of which, and doubtless the most readily forgiven, consisted in intoxicating Hebert), to gain possession of the fatal list; but the day afterwards the republican _dilettante_ was always sufficiently recovered from the effects of his excessive potations to draw up another one exactly like it.

[Sidenote: DANGEROUS MELODIES.]

At the head of the catalogue of suspected ones figured the name of Lainez, whom the republicans could not pardon for the energy and expression with which he had sung the air _Chantez, celebrez votre reine_, at the last performances of _Iphigenie en Aulide_; and that of Mademoiselle Maillard, whose crime has been already mentioned. At this period it was dangerous not only to sing the words, but even to hum or whistle the music of such airs as the aforesaid _Chantez, celebrez votre reine_, _O Richard o mon roi!_ _Charmante Gabrielle_, and many others, among which may be mentioned _Pauvre Jacques_--an adaptation of Dibdin's _Poor Jack_, in which allusions had been discovered to the fate of Louis XVI. Indeed, to perform any kind of music might be fatal to the executant, and thus Mesdemoiselles de Saint Leger, two young ladies living in Arras, were executed for having played the piano the day that Valenciennes fell into the hands of the enemy.

Mademoiselle Maillard, much as she detested the republicans, was forced, on one occasion, to sing a republican hymn. When Lainez complimented her on the warmth of her expression, the vigour of her execution, she replied, "I was burning with rage at having to sing to such monsters."

Vestris, the Prince de Guemene of the Vestris family, he who had been accused by his father of wis.h.i.+ng to produce a misunderstanding between the Vestrises and the Bourbons, had to dance in a _pas de trois_ as a _sans culottes_, between two nuns!

Sophie Arnould, accused (and not quite unreasonably), of aristocratic sympathies, pointed indignantly to a bust of Gluck in her room, and asked the intelligent agents of the Republic, if it was likely she would keep the bust of Marat were she not a true republican?

The vocalists of a revolutionary turn of mind would have succeeded better if they had possessed more talent; but the Parisian public, even in 1793, was not prepared to accept correctness in politics as an excuse for inaccuracy in singing. Lefevre, a sixth tenor, but a bloodthirsty republican, insisted on being promoted to first characters, and threatened those whom he wished to replace with denunciations and the guillotine, if they kept him in a subordinate position any longer.

Lefevre had his wish gratified in part, but not altogether. He appeared as _primo tenore_, but was violently hissed by his friends, the _sans culottes_. He then came out as first ba.s.s, and was hissed again. In his rage he attributed his _fiasco_ to the machinations of the counter-revolution, and wanted the soldiers to come into the theatre, and fire upon the infamous accomplices of "Pitt and Coburg."

[Sidenote: AN ATROCIOUS TENOR.]

This bad singer, and worse man, was one of the twelve chiefs of the National Guard of Paris, and on certain days had the command of the city. As his military rule was most oppressive, the Parisians used to punish him for his tyranny as a soldier, by ridiculing his monstrous defects as a vocalist.

Though the Reign of Terror was a fearful time for artists and art, the number of playhouses in Paris increased enormously. There were sixty-three theatres open, and in spite of war, famine, and the guillotine, they were always full.

In 1794, the opera was transferred to the Rue de la Loi (afterwards Rue de Richelieu), immediately opposite the National Library. With regard to this change of locality, let us hear what M. Castil Blaze has to say, in his own words.

"How was it that the opera was moved to a building exactly opposite the National Library, so precious and so combustible a repository of human knowledge? The two establishments were only separated by a street, very much too narrow: if the theatre caught fire, was it not sure to burn the library? That is what a great many persons still ask; this question has been re-produced a hundred times in our journals. Go back to the time when the house was built by Mademoiselle Montansier; read the _Moniteur Universel_, and you will see that it was precisely in order to expose this same library to the happy chances of a fire, that the great lyrical entertainment was transferred to its neighbourhood. The opera hung over it, and threatened it constantly. At this time enlightenment abounded to such a point, that the judicious Henriot, convinced in his innermost conscience that all reading was henceforth useless, had made a motion to burn the library. To move the opera to the Rue Richelieu--the opera, which twice in eighteen years had been a prey to the flames--to place it exactly opposite our literary treasures, was to multiply to infinity the chances of their being burnt.'

Mercier, in reference to the literary views of the Committee of Public Safety, writes in the _Nouveau Paris_, as follows:--

"The language of Omar about the Koran was not more terrible than those uttered by the members of the committee of public safety when they expressed their intentions formally, as follows:--'Yes, we will burn all the libraries, for nothing will be needed but the history of the Revolution and its laws.'" If the motion of Henriot had been carried, David, the great Conventional painter was ready to propose that the same service should be rendered to the masterpieces in the Louvre, as to the literary wealth of the National Library. Republican subjects, according to David, were alone worthy of being represented.

[Sidenote: THE OPERA AND THE NATIONAL LIBRARY.]

At one of the sittings of the very council in which Henriot had already brought forward his motion for burning the Library, Mademoiselle Montansier was accused of having built the theatre in the Rue Richelieu with that very design. On the 14th of November, 1793, Chaumette at the sitting of the Commune of Paris, said--

"I denounce the _Citoyenne_ Montansier. The money of the Englishman[71]

has been largely employed in raising this edifice, and the former queen gave fifty thousand crowns towards it. I demand that this theatre be closed on account of the dangers which would result from its catching fire." Adopted.

Hebert. "I denounce _la demoiselle_ Montansier, personally; I have information against her. She offered me a box at her new theatre to procure my silence. I demand that la Montansier be arrested as a suspicious person." Adopted.

Chaumette. "I demand, moreover, that the actors, actresses and directors of the Parisian theatres be subjected to the censors.h.i.+p of the council."

Adopted.

After deciding that the theatre in the Rue de la Loi could not be kept open without imperilling the existence of the National Library, and after imprisoning Mademoiselle Montansier for having built it, the Commune of Paris deliberately opened it as an opera house! Mademoiselle Montansier was, nevertheless, still kept in prison, and remained there ten months, until after the death of Robespierre.

Mademoiselle Montansier's nocturnal a.s.semblies in the Palais Royal were equally renowned before and after her arrest. Actors and actresses, gamblers, poets, representatives of the people, republican generals, retired aristocrats, conspicuous _sans culottes_, and celebrities of all kinds congregated there. Art, pleasure, politics, the new opera, the last execution were alike discussed by Dugazon and Barras, le pere d.u.c.h.esne and the Duke de Lauzun, Robespierre and Mademoiselle Maillard, the Chevalier de Saint Georges and Danton, Martainville and the Marquis de Chanvelin, Lays and Marat, Volange and the Duke of Orleans. From the names just mentioned, it will be understood that some members of this interesting society were from time to time found wanting. Their absence was not much remarked, and fresh notorieties constantly came forward to fill the places of those claimed by the guillotine.

After Mademoiselle Montansier's liberation from prison, Napoleon Bonaparte was introduced to her by Dugazon and Barras. His ambition had not yet been excited, and Barras--who may, nevertheless, have looked upon him as a possible rival, and one to be dreaded--wished to get up a marriage between him and the fas.h.i.+onable but now somewhat antiquated syren of the Palais Royal. Everything went on well for some time. Then a magnificent dinner was given with the view of bringing the affair to a conclusion; but Bonaparte was very reserved, and Barras now saw that his project was not likely to succeed. At a banquet given by Mademoiselle Montansier, to celebrate the success of the thirteenth Vendemiaire, Bonaparte proposed a toast in honour of his venerable "intended," and soon afterwards she married Neuville.

[Sidenote: MADEMOISELLE MONTANSIER.]

Mademoiselle Montansier who had been shamefully cheated, indeed robbed, by the Convention, hoped to have her claims recognised by the Directory.

Barras offered her one million, six hundred thousand francs. She refused it, the indemnity she demanded for the losses which she had sustained by the seizure of her theatre at the hands of the Convention amounting to seven millions. Napoleon, when first consul, caused the theatre to be estimated, when its value was fixed at one million three hundred thousand francs. After various delays, Mademoiselle Montansier received a partial recognition of her claim, accompanied by an order for payment, signed by the Emperor at Moscow.

Some readers have, probably, been unable to reconcile two facts mentioned above with respect to the Opera under the Convention:--1. That the performers were not paid; and 2. That the public attended the representations in immense numbers. The explanation is very simple. The money was stolen by the Commune of Paris. Gardel, the ballet-master, required fifty thousand francs for the production of a work composed by himself, on the subject of _William Tell_. Twice was the sum ama.s.sed from the receipts and professedly set apart for the unfortunate _William Tell_, and twice the money disappeared. It had been devoted to the requirements of patriots in real life.