Chapter XI: Modern France (2)

Mention must be made, for the sake of completeness, of the performance at Nice in 1903 of Massenet's thirty--year--old oratorio, 'Marie Magdeleine,' in the guise of a 'drame lyrique.' French taste, it need hardly be said, is very different from English with regard to what should and should not be placed upon the stage, but once granted the permissibility of making Jesus Christ the protagonist of an opera, there is comparatively little in 'Marie Magdeleine' to offend religious susceptibilities. The work is divided into four scenes: a palm-girt well outside the city of Magdala, the house of Mary and Martha, Golgotha, and the garden of Joseph of Arimathea, where occurs what a noted French critic in writing about the first performance described as 'l'apparition très réussie de Jésus.'

In 'Chérubin' (1905) Massenet returned to his more familiar manner. The story pursues the adventures of Beaumarchais's too fascinating page after his disappearance from the scene of 'Le Mariage de Figaro.' What these adventures are it is needless to detail, save that they embrace a good deal of duelling and even more love-making. Massenet's music is as light as a feather. It ripples along in the daintiest fashion, sparkling with wit and gaiety, and if it leaves no very definite impression of originality, its craftsmanship is perfection itself. 'Ariane' (1906) is a far more serious affair. It is a return to the grander manner of 'Hérodiade' and 'Le Cid,' and proves conclusively that the musician's hand has not lost its cunning. Catulle Mendès's libretto is a clever embroidery of the world-old tale of Ariadne and Theseus, the figure of the gentle Ariadne being happily contrasted with that of the fiery and passionate Phædra, who succeeds her sister in the affections of the fickle Theseus. The death of Phædra, who is crushed by a statue of Adonis which she had insulted, is followed by a curious and striking scene in Hades, whither Ariadne descends in order to bring her sister back to the world of life. The opera, according to tradition, ends with the flight of Theseus and Phædra, while the deserted Ariadne finds death in the arms of the sirens, who tempt her to seek eternal rest in the depths of the sea. Massenet's music is conspicuous for anything rather than novelty of invention or treatment, but though he is content to tread well-worn paths, he does so with all his old grace and distinction of manner, and many of the scenes in 'Ariane' are treated with an uncommon degree of spirit and energy.

Massenet's latest work, 'Thérèse' (1907), is a return to the breathless, palpitating style of 'La Navarraise.' It is a story of the revolution, high-strung and emotional. Thérèse is the wife of the Girondin Thorel, who has bought the castle of Clerval, in the hope of eventually restoring it to its former owner, Armand de Clerval. Armand returns in disguise, on his way to join the Royalists in Vendée. He and Thérèse were boy-and-girl lovers in old days, and their old passion revives. Armand entreats her to fly with him, which after the usual conflict of emotions she consents to do. But meanwhile Thorel, who has been amiably harbouring the émigré, is arrested and dragged to the scaffold. This brings about a change in Thérèse's feelings. She sends Armand about his business and throws in her lot with Thorel, defying the mob and presumably sharing her husband's fate. Massenet's music is to a certain extent thrust into the background by the exciting incidents of the plot. The cries of the crowd, the songs of the soldiers and the roll of the drums leave but little space for musical development. Still 'Thérèse' contains many passages of charming melody and grace, though it will certainly not rank among the composer's masterpieces, Massenet is one of the most interesting of modern French musicians. On the one hand, he traces his musical descent from Gounod, whose sensuous charm he has inherited to the full; on the other he has proved himself more susceptible to the influence of Wagner than any other French composer of his generation. The combination is extremely piquant, and it says much for Massenet's individuality that he has contrived to blend such differing elements into a fabric of undeniable beauty.

Alfred Bruneau is a composer whose works have excited perhaps more discussion than those of any living French composer. By critics who pretend to advanced views he has been greeted as the rightful successor of Wagner, while the conservative party in music have not hesitated to stigmatise him as a wearisome impostor. 'Kérim' (1887), his first work, passed almost unnoticed. 'Le Rêve,' an adaptation of Zola's novel, was produced in 1891 at the Opéra Comique, and in the same year was performed in London. The scene is laid in a French cathedral city. The period is that of the present day.

Angélique, the adopted child of a couple of old embroiderers, is a dreamer of dreams. All day she pores over the lives of the saints until the legends of their miracles and martyrdoms become living realities to her mind, and she hears their voices speaking to her in the silence of her chamber. She falls in love with a man who is at work upon the stained glass of the Cathedral windows. This turns out to be the son of the Bishop. The course of their love does not run smooth. The Bishop, in spite of the protestations of his son, refuses his consent to their marriage. Angélique pines away, and is lying at the point of death when the Bishop relents, and with a kiss of reconciliation restores her to life. She is married to her lover, but in the porch of the Cathedral dies from excess of happiness. The entire work is rigorously constructed upon Wagner's system of representative themes. Each act runs its course uninterruptedly without anything approaching a set piece. Two voices are rarely heard together, and then only in unison. So far Bruneau faithfully follows the system of Wagner. Where he differs from his master is in the result of his efforts; he has nothing of Wagner's feeling for melodic beauty, nothing of his mastery of orchestral resource, and very little of his musical skill. The melodies in 'Le Rêve'--save for an old French _chanson_, which is the gem of the work--are for the most part arid and inexpressive. Bruneau handles the orchestra like an amateur, and his attempts at polyphony are merely ridiculous. Yet in spite of all this, the vocal portions of the work follow the inflections of the human voice so faithfully as to convey a feeling of sincerity. Ugly and monotonous as much of 'Le Rêve' is, the music is alive. In its strange language it speaks with the accent of truth. Here at any rate are none of the worn-out formulas which have done duty for so many generations. In defence of Bruneau's work it may be urged that his dreary and featureless orchestration, so wholly lacking in colour and relief, may convey to some minds the cool grey atmosphere of the quiet old Cathedral town, and that much of the harshness and discordance of his score is, at all events, in keeping with the iron tyranny of the Bishop. 'Le Rêve' at any rate was not a work to be passed over in silence: it was intended to create discussion, and discussion it certainly created.

In 'L'Attaque du Moulin' (1893), another adaptation of Zola, Bruneau set himself a very different task. The contrast between the placid Cathedral close and the bloody terrors of the Franco-Prussian war was of the most startling description. 'L'Attaque du Moulin' opens with the festivities attendant upon the betrothal of Françoise, the miller's daughter, to Dominique, a young Fleming, who has taken up his quarters in the village. In the midst of the merry-making comes a drummer, who announces the declaration of war, and summons all the able-bodied men of the village to the frontier. In the second act, the dogs of war are loose. The French have been holding the mill against a detachment of Germans all day, but as night approaches they fall back upon the main body. Dominique, who is a famous marksman, has been helping to defend his future father-in-law's property. Scarcely have the French retired when a division of Germans appears in the courtyard of the mill. The captain notices that Dominique's hands are black with powder, and finding that, though a foreigner, he has been fighting for the French in defiance of the rules of war, orders him to be shot. By the help of Françoise, Dominique kills the sentinel who has been set to watch him, and escapes into the forest; but the German captain, suspecting that the miller and his daughter have had a hand in his escape, orders the old man to be shot in Dominique's place. Dominique creeps back in the grey dawn from the forest, and Françoise, torn by conflicting emotions, knows not whether she should wish him to stay and face his sentence or escape once more and leave her father to his fate. The miller determines to sacrifice himself for his daughter's lover, and by pretending that his sentence has been revoked induces Dominique to depart. The old man is shot by the Germans just as the French rush in triumphant with Dominique at their head.

'L'Attaque du Moulin' was received with more general favour than 'Le Rêve.' In it Bruneau shows an inclination to relax the stern principles of his former creed. The action is often interrupted by solos and duets of a type which approaches the conventional, though for the most part the opera follows the Wagnerian system. The result of this mixture of styles is unsatisfactory. 'L'Attaque du Moulin' has not the austere sincerity of 'Le Rêve,' and the attempts to bid for popular favour are not nearly popular enough to catch the general ear. Bruneau has little melodic inspiration, and when he tries to be tuneful he generally ends in being merely commonplace. The orchestral part of the opera, too, is far less satisfactory than in 'Le Rêve.' There, as has already been pointed out, the monotony and lack of colour were to a certain extent in keeping with the character of the work, but in 'L'Attaque du Moulin,' where all should be colour and variety, the dull and featureless orchestration is a serious blot. 'Messidor' (1897) and 'L'Ouragan' (1901) had very much the same reception as the composer's earlier operas. The compact little phalanx of his admirers greeted them with enthusiasm, but the general public remained cold. 'Messidor,' written to a prose libretto by Zola, is a curious mixture of socialism and symbolism. The foundation of the plot is a legend of the gold-bearing river Ariège, which is said to spring from a vast subterranean cathedral, where the infant Christ sits on his mother's lap playing with the sand which falls from his hands in streams of gold. Intertwined with this strange story is a tale of the conflict between a capitalist and the villagers whom his gold-sifting machinery has ruined. There are some fine moments in the drama, but the allegorical element which plays so large a part in it makes neither for perspicacity nor for popularity. 'L'Ouragan' is a gloomy story of love, jealousy, and revenge. The scene is laid among the fisher-folk of a wild coast--presumably Brittany--where the passions of the inhabitants seem to rival the tempests of their storm-beaten shores in power and intensity. It contains music finely imagined and finely wrought, and it is impossible not to feel that if Bruneau's sheer power of invention were commensurate with his earnestness and dramatic feeling he would rank very high among contemporary composers. In 'L'Enfant Roi' (1905), a 'comédie lyrique' dealing with _bourgeois_ life in modern Paris, which plainly owed a good deal to Charpentier's 'Louise,' the composer essayed a lighter style with no very conspicuous success, but his latest work,'Naïs Micoulin' (1907), a Provençal tale of passion, revenge and devotion seems to contain more of the elements of lasting success.

Bruneau's later works can hardly be said to have fulfilled the promise of 'Le Rêve,' but they unquestionably show a fuller command of the resources of his art. He is a singular and striking figure in the world of modern music, and it is impossible to believe that he has spoken his last word as yet. His career will be watched with interest by all who are interested in the development of opera.

Of the younger men the most prominent are Vincent d'Indy, Gustave Charpentier, and Claude Debussy. Vincent d'Indy's 'Fervaal' was produced at Brussels in 1897 and was given in Paris shortly afterwards. It is a story of the Cevennes in heroic times, somewhat in the Wagnerian manner, and the music is defiantly Wagnerian from first to last Clever as 'Fervaal' unquestionably is, it is valuable less as a work of art than as an indication of the real bent of the composer's talent. The dramatic parts of the opera suggest nothing but a brilliant exercise in the Wagnerian style, but in the lyrica scenes, such as the last act in its entirety, there are evidences of an individuality of conspicuous power and originality. 'L'Étranger' (1903) hardly bore out the promise of 'Fervaal,' in spite of much clever musicianship. The plot is an adaptation of the legend of the Flying Dutchman, and the unmitigated gloom of the work prevented it from winning the degree of favour to which its many merits entitled it. Gustave Charpentier's 'Louise,' produced in 1900, hit the taste of the Parisian public immediately and decisively. It tells the story of the loves of Louise, a Montmartre work-girl, and Julien, a poet of Bohemian tendencies. Louise's parents refuse their consent to the marriage, whereupon Louise quits her home and her work and follows Julien. Together they plunge into the whirl of Parisian life. Louise's mother appears, and persuades her daughter to come home and nurse her sick father. In the last act, the parents, having, as they think, snatched their child from destruction, do all in their power to keep her at home. At first she is resigned, but afterwards revolts, and the curtain falls as she rushes out to rejoin Julien with her father's curses ringing in her ears. The strongly marked Parisian flavour of the libretto ensured the success of 'Louise' in Paris, but the music counts for a good deal too. Charpentier owes much to Bruneau, but his music is more organic in quality, and his orchestration is infinitely superior. Nothing could be more brilliant than his translation into music of the sights and sounds of Parisian street life. The vocal parts of 'Louise' are often ugly and expressionless, but they are framed in an orchestral setting of curious alertness and vivacity. It remains to be seen how Charpentier's unquestionable talent will adapt itself to work of a wider scope than 'Louise.'

The fame of Claude Debussy is a plant of recent growth, and dates, so far as the general public is concerned, from the production of his 'Pelléas et Mélisande' in 1902, though for some years before he had been the idol of an intimate circle of adorers. 'Pelléas et Mélisande' is founded upon Maeterlinck's play of that name, the action of which it follows closely, but not closely enough, it seems, to please the poet, who publicly dissociated himself from the production of Debussy's opera and, metaphorically speaking, cursed it root and branch. Golaud, the son of King Arkel, wandering in the wood finds the damsel Mélisande sitting by a fountain. He falls in love with her and carries her back to the castle as his wife. At the castle dwells also Pelléas, Golaud's brother, whose growing love for Mélisande is traced through a succession of interviews. In the end, Golaud kills the lovers after a striking scene in which, as he stands beneath the window of the room in which Pelléas and Mélisande have secretly met, he is told what is passing within by a child whom he holds in his arms. The story is of course merely that of Paolo and Francesca retold, but placed in very different surroundings and accompanied by music that certainly could never have been written by an Italian, of Dante's or any other time.

Debussy has aimed at creating a musical equivalent for the Maeterlinck 'atmosphere,' The score of 'Pelléas et Mélisande' is a pure piece of musical impressionism, an experiment in musical pioneering the value of which it is difficult to judge offhand. He has wilfully abjured melody of any accepted kind and harmony conforming to any established tradition. His music moves in a world of its own, a dream-world of neutral tints, shadowy figures, and spectral passions. The dreamy unreality of the tale is mirrored in the vague floating discords of the music, and whatever the critics may say the effect is singularly striking and persuasive. At present there are no rumours of a successor to 'Pelléas et Mélisande,' but whatever the future of Debussy may be, he at any rate deserves the credit of striking a note entirely new to the history of music.

There are many other living French composers who, if not destined to revolutionise the world of opera, have already done admirable work, and may yet win a more than local reputation. Charles Marie Widor has recently in 'Les Pêcheurs de Saint Jean' (1905) given a worthy success to his twenty-year-old 'Maître Ambros.' Navier Leroux, a pupil of Massenet, has carried on his master's traditions, somewhat Wagnerised and generally speaking brought up to date, in 'Astarté' (1900), 'La Reine Fiammette' (1903), 'William Ratcliff' (1906), and 'Théodora' (1907). Remarkable promise has been shown by Paul Dukas in 'Ariane et Barbe-Bleue' (1907); by Camille d'Erlanger in 'Le Fils de l'Étoile' (1904) and 'Aphrodite' (1906); by Georges Marty in 'Daria' (1905); by Georges Hüe in 'Titania' (1903), and by Gabriel Dupont in 'La Cabrera (1905), while a characteristic note of tender sentiment was struck by Reynaldo Hahn in 'La Carmélite' (1902).

André Messager's name is chiefly associated in England with work of a lighter character, but it must not be forgotten that he is the composer of two of the most charming opéras comiques of modern times, 'La Basoche' (1890) and 'Madame Chrysanthème' (1893).

This is perhaps the most convenient place to refer to the remarkable success recently achieved by the Flemish composer Jan Blockx, whose 'Herbergprinses,' originally produced at Antwerp in 1896, has been given in French as 'Princesse d'Auberge' in Brussels and many French towns. The heroine is a kind of Flemish Carmen, a wicked siren named Rita, who seduces the poet Merlyn from his bride, and after dragging him to the depths of infamy and despair, dies in the end by his hand. The music, though not without a touch of coarseness, overflows with life and energy, and one scene in particular, that of a Flemish Kermesse, is masterly in its judicious and convincing use of local colour. Jan Blockx's later works, 'Thyl Uylenspiegel' (1900), 'De Bruid van der Zee' (1901) and 'De Kapelle' (1903) do not appear to have met with equal success. Another Belgian composer, Paul Gilson, has of late won more than local fame by his 'Princesse Rayon de Soleil,' produced at Brussels in 1905.

In modern times the stream of opéra comique has divided into two channels. The first, as we have seen, under the guidance of such men as Bizet, Delibes, and Massenet, has approached so near to the confines of grand opera, that it is often difficult to draw the line between the two _genres_ The second, under the influence of Offenbach, Hervé, and Lecocq, has shrunk into opéra bouffe, a peculiarly Parisian product, which, though now for some reason under a cloud, has added sensibly to the gaiety of nations during the past thirty years. The productions of this school, though scarcely coming within the scope of the present work, are by no means to be despised from the merely musical point of view, and though the recent deaths of Audran, Planquette and other acknowledged masters of the _genre_ have left serious gaps in the ranks of comic opera writers, there seems to be no valid reason for despairing of the future of so highly civilised and entertaining a form of musical art.