Opera Books

French Music in
the XIXth Century

By

Arthur Hervey

CHAPTER XI

MASSENET AND THE MODERN FRENCH OPERA

THE composer whose name heads this chapter, is undoubtedly the most popular representative of modern French opera. His influence over his contemporaries has been very great, almost as great as that of Gounod, from whom he may in a measure be said to proceed.
     Massenet (b. 1842) is essentially typical of his epoch and of his nation. In some ways an eclectic, who at times coquets with Wagnerism and at others shows some inclination to adopt modern Italian methods, Massenet reniains heart and soul a Frenchman.
     The affinity existing between him and Gounod does not reveal itself only in certain exterior details of musical form. Massenet, in a sense, continues the line of the composer of Faust, whose style he has assimilated and transformed into one of his own. The tender language of love employed by Gounod has been remodelled by Massenet, who has subtilised and refined it in its essence, thus practically renewing it ; and, by the introduction of personal elements, he has created a new and fascinating form of musical expression.
     Saint-Saëns has said that Massenet is to Gounod what Schumann was to Mendelssohn.
     Like Gounod, Massenet has ever been at his best when delineating the tender passion. His female types certainly bear a strong family resemblance. This may be attributed to the fact that whether his heroine is called Eve, Mary Magdalen, Herodias, Manon, Esciarmonde, Thaïs, Sapho, she is always to him the personification of woman exemplified at her frailest. What matters the name or the epoch? Is not love eternally the same? Are not the passions more or less identical throughout the ages? Massenet does not seem to have set himself so much the task of specially individualising certain women as of celebrating the eternal feminine exemplified in one particular type.
     "Das ewig Weibliche zieht uns hinan:" Goethe’s words might serve as a motto to some of the French composer’s works. His female characters have all something of the modern Parisienne, and this is where Massenet shows himself so essentially a man of his time. His first successes in the concert-room were gained with the oratorios Marie Magdeleine and Eve. To the surprised delight of some and the scandal of others, the music of these works proved .the very reverse of that which is usually associated with the term oratorio. Instead of dry fugues, arid recitatives, formally constructed choruses, Massenet provided strains of luscious sweetness and tender melodies of alluring charm. The young master conquered at least the feminine portion of Parisian society. This was in the early ‘seventies, when he laid the foundation-stone of his reputation. The rest was speedily to follow.
     Massenet’s oratorios are devoid of anything approaching to Biblical grandeur. The composer has seemingly avoided any attempt to rise to the heights of his subject. He makes Adam and Eve sing love duets very much as he would any pair of lovers. There is no doubt, however, that in the above oratoriettes Massenet proved that he had a style peculiarly his own, one which it was impossible to mistake. Like Gounod, he has his special mannerisms, and this is the reason why he has been so much imitated. The sensuous charm of his melodies is undeniable, and even in his least successful compositions his touch is unmistakable.
     In considering his operas, we may pass over La Grand’ Tante and Don César de Bazan, early works of no great import, to come to Le Roi de Lahore, produced at the Opéra in 1877. This opera achieved much success at the time, and was heard in other countries besides France. As the name implies, the story is laid in the East, and affords opportunities for gorgeous scenic display. It is an excellent example of the modern French opera, and its comparative neglect of late years is surprising. Every baritone has sung, or tried to sing, the famous "arioso" which Lassalle used to interpret so inimitably.
     Hérodiade, Massenet’s next opera, was produced in Brussels in 1881. The composer had returned to the Bible for inspiration, and this is probably the only reason why this work has not been heard in London, although two of its melodies have constantly been sung in our concert-rooms.
     Hérodiade was followed some three years later by Manon, the composer’s most popular opera. Massenet’s treatment of the Abbé Prévost’s romance is wholly delightful. The subject was particularly suited to his muse. Nothing here is forced or unnatural, but music and text are intimately allied. Massenet is indeed much more at home in a work of this description, an opera de demi-caractère, than when he is treating a heroic subject like that of Le Cid, which, however, met with success in Paris at the time of its production in 1885.
     Esclarmonde, given in Paris during the Exhibition year of 1889, is not known in England at all, yet it is unquestionably one of Massenet’s best works. The composer, while retaining his personal methods of expression, has here made a curious incursion into the domains of Bayreuth. There can be no doubt that in writing it he must have been haunted by Wagnerian phantoms. Guiding themes are employed in this work with much skill, one of these being singularly like a motive in Die Meistersinger. Yet the score bears the imprint of its composer’s individuality in every bar.
     Werther seems to have been composed at about the same period as Esclarmonde, either just before or just after, though its first performance only took place in 1892, in Vienna. Goethe’s book scarcely strikes one as particularly suitable for operatic treatment. The incidents are too few and the action is too restricted. At the same time, the romantic nature of the subject and the sentimental character of the hero were well calculated to captivate the composer, whose musical temperament particularly fits him to express emotions of a concentrated kind and who excels in imparting a soft mystic colouring to scenes of love and sentiment. Massenet seems here to have been actuated by the desire to produce a lyrical drama rather than an opera, and the construction of this work is remarkable in point of unity. He has not yielded to the temptation of writing any set pieces, duets or choruses, of the conventional pattern, and his music is expressive and emotional.
     Le Mage, a five-act opera, produced at the Paris Grand Opéra in 1891, must count as one of the composer’s failures.
     Otherwise is it with Thaïs, given at the same theatre three years later, which has remained in the répertoire. Yet this work scarcely represents the composer at his best, for it cannot be com-pared to Le Roi de Lahore, Manon, Esclarmonde, or Werther, which are perhaps the composer s most remarkable operas.
     In La Navarraise, the first production of which took place at Covent Garden in 1894, Massenet appears to have been actuated by the desire to rival Mascagni on his own ground, this work being of the same type as Cavalleria Rusticana, although here again the individuality of the composer asserts itself in a marked fashion. Sapho, an operatic adaptation of Alphonse Daudet’s novel, Cendrillon, a musical fairy tale (was Massenet thinking of Humperdinck and his Hänsel und Gretel?) Griselidis and Le Jongleur de Notre Dame are the latest operatic scores of this gifted and wonderfully prolific composer.
     The above cursory survey will suffice to show that in his operas Massenet has not followed any special dramatic plan or been guided by any fixed ideal; yet his own individuality pierces through everything he writes, and is discernible in his operas as well as in his suites for orchestra, and other works.
     Among the younger French composers who have already distinguished themselves are several who were pupils of Massenet at the Conservatoire, where the master taught for some years. Their names are Alfred Bruneau, Georges Marty, Hillemacher, Paul Vidal, Missa, Pierné, Xavier Leroux, Savard, Kayser, Gustave Charpentier, Carraud, Silver, Bloch, Rabaud, Max d’Ollone.
     In Ernest Reyer (b. 1823) we find a composer of a different type from Massenet. The friend and follower of Berlioz, Ernest Reyer has not acquired a great popularity outside his own country. He is nevertheless one of France’s most gifted operatic composers, a musician of sincerity and courage, who has never gone out of his way to court popularity, but having nailed his colours to the mast has not retreated from his position, and, instead of making advances to the public, has waited with calm indifference until the public should come to him. For this he has had to exercise patience, but he has conquered at last. His early success with La Statue, in 1861, had been forgotten, and Erostrate had not brought him any further fame. It was only in 1884 that his true worth was recognised, with the production of Sigurd, in which he entered into formidable competition with Wagner, the subject of his opera being identical with that of Götterdämmerung.
     Although not uninfluenced by the German master in his style, Reyer cannot be classed among his imitators. He employs representative themes in a modified way, but in form his operas are more of the early Wagner (Tannhäuser and Lohengrin), type, with suggestions of Weber, Meyerbeer, and Berlioz. Salammbo, an operatic version of Flaubert’s novel, contains some very beautiful music and is instinct with dramatic feeling. It has met with much favour in Paris, and is up to the present the composer’s last dramatic work. Reyer succeeded Berlioz as musical critic to the Journal des Débats, to which paper he remained a contributor for many years.
     Certain operatic composers now forgotten have had their hour of celebrity and deserve a passing mention : Mermet, whose opera Roland à Roncevaux created a great sensation in the sixties: Membrée, composer of L’Esclave; Duprato, Semet, Ferdinand Poise, who all cultivated the opéra comique genre with more or less success. Lenepveu, who is an esteemed professor at the Conservatoire, is the author of Velleda, an opera performed at Covent Garden in 1882 with Mme. Patti in the principal part. Paladilhe, whose name has been mentioned previously, took Paris by storm in 1887 with his Patrie, a work constructed more or less on Meyerbeerian lines.
     Victorin Joncières has made several attempts in opera. One of the first adherents of Wagner in Paris, he has not followed the master’s lead too closely, although his music shows signs of his early admiration. His operas possess sterling musicianly qualities, but are not very individual in character. They are essentially works of transition. The varied influences of Wagner, Gounod, Meyerbeer, may be detected in his Dimitri, which created a certain stir in the seventies, in La Reine Berthe, and in Le Chevalier Jean. The composer’s most recent opera, Lancelot du Lac, shows no change in his methods.
     Salvayre is the author of several operas, Le Bravo, Richard III., Egmont, La Dame de Montsoreau, which have not remained in the répertoire.
     Emanuel Chabrier, a composer with an exuberant personality, wrote two operas, Gwendoline, a work in which may be detected Wagnerian influences, and Le Roi malgré lui, a brilliant specimen of the modernised opéra comique. His premature death was a real loss.
     Ernest Guiraud, (b. 1837, d. 1892) the intimate friend of Bizet, was an honest, hard-working musician. His ballet "Gretna Green," his operas Piccolino and Galante A venture, contain many pleasing and graceful pages, and he was an adept in the art of instrumentation. An unfinished opera of his, Frédégonde, was completed by Saint-Saëns and played a few times with moderate success at the Grand Opéra. Guiraud lacked the individuality which stamps the man of genius. Léo Delibes, (b. 1836, d. 1891) on the other hand, had a decided personality of his own. No one has written more beautiful ballet-music. "Sylvia," produced at the Opéra in 1876, is a veritable masterpiece of the genre. In his operas Jean de Nivelle and Lakmé he adhered to the conventional forms of the Opéra Comique. Melodious, graceful, poetical, refined, Delibes was very typically French in his music, and a more delightful composer in his own particular line never existed.
     All the operas produced in Paris between 1870 and 1890 show the serious efforts of French composers to keep abreast of the times without abandoning certain .consecrated forms of the past. The leitmotiv is timidly employed here and there, while Wagnerian harmonies and instrumental effects are largely drawn upon. Meyerbeer, Wagner, Berlioz, and Gounod are the prevailing influences of this period. The French, so go-ahead in some ways, are curiously conservative in others. The conventional forms of the Grand Opéra style, for instance, seemed to have acquired the fixity of the laws of the Medes and Persians, until the Wagnerian music-dramas were played in Paris. The introduction of a ballet into every grand opera, whether or not the situation demanded it, has led to curious incongruities, such as the presence of a valse and a mazurka in Gounod’s Polyeucte, an opera dealing with the early Christians, and a Scotch ballet danced at Richmond in Saint-Saëns’s Henry VIIL At the Opéra Comique, as I have already pointed out, the spoken dialogue remained de rigueur for many years, The institution of the claque is another remnant of the past which must assuredly soon disappear. It was bad enough in the days of the old Italian operas, when it was customary for singers to bow their thanks, and for the performance to be interrupted by" encores"; but nowadays, when people are supposed to take an interest in the plot of an opera, this obsolete custom has no raison d’être, unless it be to gratify the vanity of vocalists.
     Paul Lindau, the well-known German writer, once wrote an amusing account of this system, from which I extract the following : "The claque, let it be known, is organised in a thoroughly military manner. In the centre of the house sit the staff; around, at regular distances, the twenty to thirty captains, having each under their orders a company of ten or twelve soldiers. This army corps, therefore, consists of about three hundred old guards. The captains require to be very intelligent, and to have great experience, in order to be able to seize immediately the intentions of their general, and to guess by his look the nuances of the applause."
     Whether the system is still carried out in this fashion I am unable to say.
     I have yet to deal with the latest phase of the modern French "lyrical drama," but before doing so there is an artist who claims attention, one who, a Belgian by birth, elected to become a naturalised Frenchman, whose fame during his lifetime was not widespread, although his great worth has now been recognised, but who has exercised a great and lasting influence over the present generation of French composers—I mean César Franck.

Last updated October 21, 2006