Reviews — The New York Times

From the New York Times - September 8, 1912

MASSENET’S MEMOIRS DESCRIBED HIS OWN FUNERAL

     A far less famous man has often received the commendation of posterity for having produced a more egotistical autobiography. Dedicated to the grandchildren of Massenet, whatever light it throws on the genius of the man, on his personality and the events of his active yet tranquil career, it is at least a marvel of modesty, kindliness, and good humor.
     Now, first as to the extraordinary document, fragments of which caused all Paris to marvel between the day of the death and the day of the funeral. Here is what wrote the composer of “Manon,” “Thaïs,” “Le Cid,” and “Don Quichotte:”
     “I had departed from this planet, leaving my poor terrestrial friends to their varied and useless toil; at least, I was living in the shining splendor of the stars which then appeared to me each as large as a multitude of suns. Formerly I had never been able to secure such an array of light at the Op‚ra, where very often the backgrounds (fonds) are too obscure. [Play upon the word “fonds,”.] Henceforth I was not obliged to answer letters. I had said farewell to first nights, to literary conflicts, and to others that flowed from them.
     “Here there were no more newspapers, no more dinners, no more exciting nights!
     “Ah! If I could only advise my friends to join me here, I would not hesitate to call them to me. But, would they wish it?
     “Just before departing for the abode which I now inhabit I wrote my last wishes, (an unhappy husband has profited by this testamental occasion to pen with glee these words, `My first wishes.’) I had especially directed that I wanted to be buried at Egreville, near the homestead in which I had so long dwelt. Oh! what a fine graveyard, right in the open field and in a silence that is characteristic of the inhabitants thereof!
     “I had requested that they refrain from hanging on my door those black trappings worn threadbare at former funerals. I had desired that any convenient vehicle should bear me from Paris, and that the trip, with my full consent, should begin at 8 a.m.
     “An evening paper, possibly two, had believed it their duty to inform their readers of my demise. A few friends-I had, some yesterday-came to ask my janitor if the news were true, and he replied:
     “ ‘Alas! Monsieur has departed without leaving his address!’
     “And he answered truly, for he did not know where the obliging vehicle was bearing me.
     “At the hour of luncheon, some acquaintances honored me among themselves with their pity; it was the same during the day-here and there and in the theatres people talked of the affair.
     “ ‘Now that he is dead, they will play him less; is it not so?’
     “ ‘Do you know whether he has left another piece? His final touches won’t annoy us then.’
     “ ‘Ah! How fond I was of him. I always had so much success with his rôles.’
     “It was a pretty feminine voice that said this.
     “At my publishers they wept, for they had loved me much.
     “At my home, in the Rue du Vaugirard, my wife and daughter, my grandchildren, and my great-grandchildren, had come together and in their sobs almost found consolation.
     “That same evening the family must arrive at Egreville-the eve of the burial.
     “And my soul, for the soul survives the body, listened to all the noises of the city I was leaving. And as the vehicle bore me further and further away the words and noises became more and more indistinct, and I knew-having some time before caused my tomb to be built-that the heavy stone, when once sealed down, would be, a few hours hence, the door to oblivion.”
     Massenet, who was born in 1842, at Montaut, near St. Etienne, was taught the habit of keeping a diary by his mother at the age of 6. She would look over every evening what he had written and would punish or reward him according as he had confessed in his little book. That year, 1848, was the year of the revolution which saw the abdication of Louis Philippe and the proclamation of the Second Republic, but the young Massenet had but vague remembrances of these stirring events. “What I do remember,” he wrote, “was that the revolutionists won, and that the revolution unfolded itself, shattering the throne of the most kindly of kings.”
     At this period he took his first music lessons by sitting at a table and tapping with his fingers the notes marked out on a strip of paper by his mother. Piano lessons followed and three years later he was entered for instruction in piano at the Conservatoire. He described the scene of his entrance examination as follows:
     “When my name was called I went all trembling on to the platform. I was nine years of age and I must execute the Sonata of Beethoven, Op. 29. What ambition!
     “When I had played two or three pages, according to custom, I heard the voice of Mr. Auber calling me before the jury. To get down there were four or five steps to take. Almost fainting I had not noticed them, and was on the point of falling when M. Auber said kindly: `Look out, young fellow; you are going to fall.’ Then he instantly asked me where I had learned to do such excellent pieces. After having answered him, not without certain pride, that my mother had been my sole professor, I hurried away quite overcome, for he, the great Auber, had actually spoken to me! The following morning my mother received the official letter. I was a student of the Conservatoire!”
     Once enrolled the lessons at home were continued. The mother watched over the future composer’s time with a jealous eye and allowed him few recreations.
     “In spite of the touching watchfulness of my mother, one evening I slipped out of the house. I had learned that Berlioz’s `Childhood of Christ’ was being given at the Opéra Comique, Rue Favart, and that the great composer was directing it in person.
     “Although I was not able to pay for my admission, I was seized with an irresistible desire to hear the work of one over whom our youth was so enthusiastic, and I asked my comrades, who took part in the children’s chorus, to take me and hide me among them. I must also confess that I had a secret desire to get behind the scenes at a theatre.
     “This escapade, you may guess, my dear children, was not without worry for my mother. She waited up for me till past midnight, believing me lost in great Paris.
     “When I went home, all penitent and sorry, I don’t have to say that I was roundly lectured. After two attacks I let the storm pass. If it be true that the anger of women is like the forest shower which falls twice, the heart of a mother, at least, does not know how to perpetuate it. I went to bed easy on that point. Still, I could not sleep. I reviewed in my little head all the beauties of the piece I had heard, and I saw again the proud form of Berlioz majestically directing this wonderful execution.
     “Still, my life continued happy and full of work. But that was not to last.
     “The first real unhappiness came to Jules Massenet when his parents took him away from Paris to Chambéry on account of his mother’s ill-health. They lived there two “long years.” Meanwhile, he found some odd pieces of Schumann and practiced on them until the neighbors bade him stop. When he could bear Chambéry no longer he went back to Paris to live with a married sister, who, from all accounts, must have been very fond of him. In two hears, he said, he had regained all that he had lost in the country.
     At the age of 17 he won the first prize for counterpoint and fugue at the Conservatoire, and then at the age of 21 the Grand Prix de Rome with his cantata, “David Rizzo,” which enabled him to study at the Villa Medicis in the Eternal City. When in competing for the grand prize he found himself among the last five he was almost overwhelmed. At last it was over, and he wandered about the streets while awaiting the verdict. Timidly he approached the School of Fine Arts.
     “I heard 5 o’clock strike. My anxiety was great. `All ought to be over by now,’ I said to myself. I had made a good guess, for all at once I saw under the arch a group of three persons, who were chatting together, and whom I recognized to be Berlioz, Ambroise Thomas, and M. Auber.
     “Flight was impossible. They were before me so as almost to bar my route. Mt beloved teacher, Ambroise Thomas, came to me and said: `Embrace Berlioz, for you owe your prize most to him.’
     “ ‘The prize!’ I cried, my face shining with joy, `I have the prize?’
     “I embraced Berlioz with inexpressible emotion, then my teacher, and then M. Auber. The latter braced me up. Did I have need of it? Then he said to Berlioz in indicating me:
     “ ‘That chap will do well when he shall have less experience’
     “Massenet rather enjoyed himself at the Villa Medicis in Rome, where he was sensitive and responsive to the ruins and the atmosphere. It was in the Eternal City that he met the lady who was to be his wife.
     “It was on Christmas Eve. A party was gotten up to go the rounds of the churches for the midnight mass. The ceremonies at the Santa Maria Maggiore and the San Giovanni in Laterano pleased me most. The shepherds with their flocks-cows, goats, sheep, and swine-were in the public square as though to receive the blessings of the Saviour, of Him whose birth in a manger you recall. The touching simplicity of these believers deeply moved me and I entered the Santa Marie Maggiore with a pretty goat, which I embraced, and which did not want to leave me. This did not astonish the crowd gathered within.
     “On the following day while mounting the 300 steps which lead to the Ara Coeli, I met two women who struck me as being elegant foreigners. My glance was particularly charmed with the face of the younger.
     “A few days after this meeting I was at Liszt’s house, and recognized among the guests of the illustrious master the two women I had seen at the Ara Coeli. I learned almost immediately that the younger had come to Rome with her family and that she had been referred to Liszt so that he might suggest a musician capable of directing her musical studies, which she did not wish to interrupt away from Paris. Liszt immediately sent her to me.
     “You have already guessed, my dear children, that this exquisite young girl was she who, two years later, was to become my loving wife, the attentive and at times worried companion of my days, the witness of my frailties and my strength, of my sadness and joys.”
     Still, he was glad to get away from Rome for he knew he would see her again-and return to feverish and palpitating Paris. Ere long he had an attack of cholera which nearly anticipated the 13th of August 1912. On his recovery he married the lady of the Ara Coeli.
     His d‚but with opera was made at the Opéra Comique in 1867 with “La Grand’ Tante.” After his first success he worked hard until the Franco-Prussian war. Of that conflict he says not a word. There is a line of starts across the page and then: “I shall take up my memories after the end of the terrible year.”
     “Scarcely had I returned to Paris than I met Emile Bergerat, the delicate and delightful poet, who became the son-in-law of Théophile Gautier. Théophile Gautier! What a dear name to French letters! What shining glory has he not given them, this illustrious Benvenuto of style, as we have called him.
     “Once when Bergerat made a call on his future father-in-law he took me with him. What an emotion I felt on approaching this great poet! He was not then in the full flush of life, but still, what richness in the images with which his smallest words were garnished! What a vast variety of knowledge!”
     The day following the première of “Marie Magdeleine,” Massenet and his wife departed for Italy. At Naples he received the following letter from his old teacher, Ambroise Thomas, dated Paris, April 12, 1873:
     “Being obliged to go today to my country place, I shall possibly have the regret of not seeing you before your departure, in which case I don’t wish to delay, my dear friend, to tell you of all the pleasure I had last evening, and how happy I was with your beautiful success.
     “It is a serious work, both noble and touching. It is, indeed, of `our times,’ but you have shown how to walk in the path of progress while remaining lucid, sane, and circumspect. You know how to move, for you yourself have emotions. I was fascinated like everybody, and more than everybody.”
     You have rendered with charming felicity the adorable poetry of this sublime drama.
     “In a mystical subject, when one is prone to fall into the abuse of sombre tones and a certain grossness of style, you have shown yourself a colorist while preserving all charm and light.” Be satisfied, your work will be repeated and will remain.***
    “Here is what Gonoud wrote Massenet after the first production of “Eve.” It bears the date of March 21, 1875:
     “If I had not mislaid your card, and consequently your address, for which I searched for a full quarter of an hour among the mess of my papers. I would have told you yesterday of my real joy and deep emotion at the hearing and success of your `Eve’
     “The triumph of the elect ought to be a fête for the church. You are of the elect, my dear friend-Heaven has marked you with the sign of its children. I feel all that your beautiful work has aroused in my heart.
     “Prepare yourself for the rôle of a martyr. It enraptures those from above and torments those from below. Do you remember when God said, `Here is the urn for the elect,’ and added `and I will show how much one must suffer for my name’s sake?’
     “With this token, my friend, boldly spread your wings and confide yourself without fear to those celestial realms, where the lodestone of earth cannot touch the bird of heaven.”
     Massenet, did not produce at the Opéra, owing to internal jealousies, until April, 1877, with “Roi de Lahore.” Later in the year, when full of honors, Massenet passed several months in Rome, and called first on the Pope and then on the King, as is still the customary sequence of visits. The composer here paid a most touching tribute to Ambroise Thomas and to Sibyl Sanderson, of whom he wrote:
     “Sibyl Sanderson it is not without painful emotion that I recall this artiste clutched by pitiless death in her full beauty and the expanding glory of her talent. An ideal Manon at the Opéra Comique, a memorable Thaïs at the Opéra, these rôles identified with temperament and soul in one of the most magnificently gifted persons I have ever known.” And of la Cavalieri he wrote:
     “I have refrained until now from speaking of Lina Cavalieri, for she was the first singer in the rôle [Thaïs] in Milan in October 1903. Her creation was occasion, of my last journey to Italy.” From Mary Garden to Mme. Kousnesoff, from the creators of rôles in “Sapho,” “Le Jongleur de Notre Dame,” “Ariane,” and “Don Quichotte,” all are recalled, if only with a phrase or a word. And, as has been said, some of their tributes are to be found at the end of “My Memories,” together with the few public speeches the composer made and that curious posthumous ante-mortuary [scene] which has been translated near the beginning of this sketch.

Last updated December 30, 2006