My Recollections Part 31

I owed this contretemps to a wrong address. Indeed the widow of the ill.u.s.trious poet of tragedy told me afterwards that my request never reached its destination.

Parodi! Truly he was the _vir probus dicendi peritus_ of the ancients.

What memories I have of our strolls along the Boulevard des Batignolles!

How eloquently he narrated the life of the Vestals which he had read in Ovid, their great historian!

I listened eagerly to his colorful talk, so enthusiastic about things of the past. Ah, his outbursts against all that was not elevated in thought, his n.o.ble pride in his intentions, dignified and simple in form--how superb, I say, these outbursts were, and how one felt that his soul thrilled in the Beyond! It was as if a flame burned in him searing on his cheeks the signs of his inward tortures.

I admired him and loved him deeply. It seems to me that our work together is not finished, but that some day we shall be able to take it up again in that mysterious realm whither we go but from which none ever returns.

I was entirely led astray by the silence which followed the sending of my letter and I was going to abandon the project of writing _Roma_, when a master poet came into my life. He offered me five acts--_Ariane_--for the Opera, as I have said already.

Five years later, in 1907, my friend Henri Cain asked me if I intended to resume my faithful collaboration with him.

As he chatted with me, he remarked that my thoughts were elsewhere and that I was preoccupied with another idea. That was it exactly. I was drawn to confess my adventure with _Roma_.

My desire to find in that work the text of my dreams was immediately shared by Henri Cain; forty-eight hours afterwards he brought me the authorization of the heirs. They had signed an agreement which gave me five years in which to write and put on the work.

It is an agreeable thing to thank again Mme. Parodi, a woman of unusual and real distinction, and her sons, one of whom holds a high place in the Department of Public Instruction.

As I have already said, I found myself in February, 1910, at Monte Carlo for the rehearsals and first performance of _Don Quichotte_. I again lived as before in that apartment in the Hotel du Prince de Galles which has always pleased me so much. I always returned to it with joy. How could it be otherwise?

The room in which I worked looked out on the level of the boulevards of the city and I had an incomparable view from my windows.

In the foreground were orange, lemon, and olive trees; on the horizon the great rock rising out of the azure waves, and on the rock the old palace modernized by the Prince of Monaco.

In this quiet peaceful home--an exceptional thing for a hotel--in spite of the foreign families installed there, I was stirred to work. During my hours of freedom from rehearsals I busied myself in writing an overture for _Roma_. I had brought with me the eight hundred pages of orchestration in finished ma.n.u.script.

The second month of my stay at Monte Carlo I spent at the Palace of Monaco. I finished the composition there amidst enchantment, in its deeply poetic splendor.

When I was present at the rehearsals of _Roma_ two years later and first heard the work played at sight by the artists of the Opera conducted with an extraordinary art by that master Leon Jehin, I thought of the coincidence that these pages had been written on the spot so near where they were to be played.

When I returned to Paris in April, after the sumptuous fetes with which the Oceanographic Museum was opened, I received a call from Raoul Gunsbourg. He came in the name of his Serene Highness to learn whether I had a work I could let him have for 1912. _Roma_ had been finished for some time; the material for it was all ready, and in consequence I could promise it to him and wait two years more. I offered it to him.

My custom, as I have said, is never to speak of a work until it is entirely finished, and the materials which are always important are engraved and corrected. It is a considerable task, for which I want to thank my dear publishers, Henri Heugel and Paul-emile Chevalier, as well as my rigid correctors at the head of whom I love to place Ed. Laurens, a master musician. If I insist on this, it is because up to now, nothing has been able to prevent the persistence of this formula, "M. Ma.s.senet is hurrying to finish his score in order to be ready for the first performance." Let us record it and get on!

It was not until December, 1911, that the rehearsals of the artists in _Roma_ began at Raoul Gunsbourg's, Rue de Rivoli.

It was fine to see our great artists enamored of the teachings of Gunsbourg who lived the roles and put his life into it in putting them on the stage.

Alas for me! An accident put me in bed at the beginning of those impa.s.sioned studies. However, every evening from five to seven I followed from my bed, thanks to the telephone, the progress of the rehearsals of _Roma_.

The idea of not being able, perhaps, to go to Monte Carlo bothered me, but finally my excellent friend, the eminent Dr. Richardiere, authorized my departure. On January 29 my wife and I started for that country of dreams.

At the station in Lyons, an excellent dinner! A good sign. Things look well.

The night, always fatiguing in a train, was endured by means of the joy of the future rehearsals. Things looked better!

The arrival in my beloved room at the Prince de Galles. An intoxication.

Things look better still!

What an incomparable health bulletin, is it not?

Finally, the reading of _Roma_, in Italian with the orchestra, artists and chorus. There were so many fine, kindly manifestations, that I paid for my warm emotions by catching cold.

What a contrast; what irony! However why be surprised? Are not all contrasts of that kind?

Happily my cold did not last long. Two days later I was up again, better than ever. I profited by this by going with my wife, always curious and eager to see picturesque places, to wander in an abandoned park. We were there in the solitude of that rich, luxuriant nature, in the olive groves, which let us see through their grayish green leaves, so tender and sweet, the sea in its changeless blue, when I discovered ... a cat!

Yes, a cat, a real cat, and a very friendly one! Knowing without a doubt that I had always been friendly with his kind, he honored me with his society and his insistent and affectionate mewings never left me. I poured out my anxious heart to this companion. Indeed, it was during my hours of isolation that the dress rehearsal of _Roma_ was at its height.

Yes, I said to myself, just now Lentulus has arrived. Now Junia. Behold Fausta in the arms of Fabius. At this very moment Posthumia drags herself to the feet of the cruel senators. For we, we others, have, and it is a strange fact, an intuition of the exact moment when this or that scene is played, a sort of divination of the mathematical division of time applied to the action of the theater. It was the fourteenth of February. The sun of that splendid day could not but brighten the joy of all my fine artists.

Monte Carlo,

Feb. 29, 1912.

Dear great friend,

You do me the honor to ask me for these lines for reproduction in America.

In America!...

It will be my glory to send thither my thought, full of admiration for that great country, for its choice public, for its theaters in which my works have been given. You honor my artists and myself so much by speaking of _Roma_, and I am the prouder of your words because they will present that _tragic opera_ with your talent's high authority.

Ma.s.sENET.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Facsimile of Ma.s.senet's Reply to an Invitation to Visit America]

I cannot speak of the superb first performance of _Roma_ without a certain natural embarra.s.sment. I leave that task to others, but I permit myself to reproduce what anyone could read in the next day's papers.

The interpretation--one of the most beautiful that it has been our lot to applaud--was in every way worthy of this new masterpiece of Ma.s.senet's.

A remarkable thing which must be noted in the first place is that all the parts are what are termed in theatrical parlance "good roles." Every one of them gives its interpreter chances for effects in singing and acting which are calculated to win the admiration and applause of the audience.

Having said this much in praise of the work, let us congratulate the marvellous interpreters in their order on the program.

Mlle. Kousnezoff with her youth, fresh beauty and superb dramatic soprano voice was a feast to the eyes and the ears and she will continue to be for a long time the prettiest and most seductive Fausta that one might wish for.

The particularly dramatic part of the blind Posthumia was the occasion of a creation which will rank among the most extraordinary in the brilliant career of that great operatic tragedienne Lucy Arbell.

Costumed with perfect esthetic appreciation in a beautiful dark robe of iron gray silk, with her face artificially aged but beautiful along cla.s.sic lines, Lucy Arbell moved and stirred the audience profoundly, as much by her impressive acting as by the deep velvety notes of her contralto voice.

Mme. Guiraudon in her scene in the second act achieved a great personal success, and never so much as yesterday did the Paris critic regret that this young, exquisite artist had abandoned prematurely her career as an artist and consents to appear hereafter but rarely and ... at Monte Carlo.

Mme. Eliane Peltier (the High Priestess) and Mlle. Doussot (Galla) completed excellently a female cast of the first order.

Furthermore the male parts were no less remarkable or less applauded.

M. Muratore, a grand opera tenor of superb appearance and generous voice, invested the role of Lentulus with a vigor and manly beauty which won all hearts, and which, in Paris as at Monte Carlo, will ensure him a brilliant and memorable triumph.