My Recollections Part 27

In 1793 the palace belonged to the Gallifet family. Some of the members of that ill.u.s.trious house were guillotined, while others went abroad. It was determined to sell the building as the property of the people, but this was opposed by a servant of firm and decided character. "I am the people," he said, "and you shall not take from the people what belongs to it. I am in my own place here!"

When one of the surviving Gallifet emigres returned to Paris in 1798, his first thought was to go and see the family home. He was greatly surprised when the faithful servant whose vigorous speech had prevented its destruction received him and said, falling at his master's feet, "Monseigneur, I have taken care of your property. I give it back to you."

The text of _Therese_ was foretold. That revelation was its presentiment.

I had the first vision of the music of the work at Brussels in the Bois de la Cambre in November of that year.

It was a beautiful afternoon under a dim autumnal sun. One knew that the beneficent sap was slowly running down in the beautiful trees. The gay green foliage which had crowned their tops had disappeared. One by one at the caprice of the wind the leaves fell, dried up, reddened and yellowed by the cold, taking in the gold, irony of Nature! its very brilliance, and shadings and most varied tints.

Nothing resembled less the poor sorry trees of our Bois de Boulogne. In the mighty spread of their branches those magnificent trees remind one of those which are so much admired in the parks at Windsor and Richmond.

I walked on the dead leaves, scuffling them with my feet. Their rustling pleased me and were a delightful accompaniment to my thoughts.

I was closer to the heart of my work, "in the bowels of the subject,"

for among the four or five people with me was the future heroine of _Therese_.

I searched everywhere, greedily, for all that had to do with the horrible period of the Terror, in all the engravings which would give me the sinister dark story of that epoch, in order to make the scenes in the second act as true as possible, and I confess that I like it.

I returned to Paris to my room Rue de Vaugirard, and wrote the music of _Therese_ during the winter and spring (I finished it in the summer at the seash.o.r.e).

I remember that one morning the work on one situation demanded the immediate a.s.sistance of my collaborator, Jules Claretie, and that it unnerved me a good deal. I decided forthwith to write to the Minister of Posts, Telegraphs and Telephones and ask him to grant me an almost impossible thing: to place a telephone in my room before four o'clock.

Naturally the tone of my letter reflected that of a deferential pet.i.tion.

How could I have hoped for it? When I returned from my affairs, I found on my mantel a pretty telephone apparatus which was quite new.

The Minister, M. Berard, one of our most distinguished men of letters, had felt bound to interest himself in my capricious wish on the spot. He had sent a crew of twenty men with everything required for a rapid installation.

Dear, charming minister! I love him the more for his kindly word one day. "I was happy," he said, "to give you such pleasure, to you who have given me so much pleasure at the theater with your works."

_Pari pari refertur_, yes, it was returning like for like, but done with a grace and kindness which I appreciated highly.

h.e.l.lo!... h.e.l.lo! At the first attempt I was very clumsy of course. All the same I managed to hold a conversation.

I also learned, another useful kindness, that my number would not appear in the Annuaire. Consequently n.o.body could call me up. I was the only one who could use the marvellous instrument.

I did not wait long to call up Claretie and he was much surprised by the call from the Rue Vaugirard. I told him my ideas about the difficult scene which had brought about the installation of the telephone.

The difficulty was in the final scene.

I telephoned to him,

"Cut Therese's throat and it will be all right."

I heard an unknown voice crying excitedly (our wire was crossed):

"Oh, if I only knew who you were, you scoundrel, I would denounce you to the police. A crime like that! Who is to be the victim?"

Suddenly Claretie's voice:

"Once her throat is cut she will be put in the cart with her husband. I prefer that to poison."

The other man's voice:

"Oh, that's too much! Now the rascals want to poison her. I'll call the superintendent. I want an inquiry!"

A terrible buzzing ensued; then a blissful calm.

It was time; with a subscriber roused to such a pitch, Claretie and I ran the chance of a bad quarter of an hour! I still tremble at the thought of it.

After that I often worked with Claretie over the wire. The Ariane thread also took my voice to Persephone, I should say ... Therese, whom I let hear in this way this or that vocal ending, so as to have her opinion before I wrote down the notes.

One beautiful spring day I went to revisit the Garden at Bagatelle and its pretty pavilion, then still abandoned, which the Comte d'Artois had built under Louis XVI. I fixed thoroughly in my memory that delightful little chateau which the triumphant Revolution allowed to be exploited for picnic parties after despoiling its oldtime owner of it. When he got it back under the Restoration, the Comte d'Artois called it Babiole, Bagatelle or Babiole it's all the same; and this same pavilion was occupied almost to our own time by Sir Richard Wallace, the famous millionaire, philanthropist and collector.

Later on I wanted the scenery of the first act of _Therese_ to reproduce it exactly. Our artiste (Lucy Arbell) was especially impressed with the idea. It is well known that her ancestry makes her one of the descendants of the Marquis of Hertford.

When the score was finished and we knew the intentions of Raoul Gunsbourg, who wanted the work for the Monte Carlo Opera, Mme. Ma.s.senet and I were informed that H. S. H. the Prince of Monaco would honor our modest home with his presence, and with the chief of his household, the Comte de Lamotte d'Allogny, would lunch with us. We immediately invited my collaborator and Mme. Claretie and my excellent publisher and Mme.

Heugel.

The Prince of Monaco with his deep simplicity was good enough to sit near a piano I had got in for the occasion and listen to pa.s.sages from _Therese_. He learned the following detail from us. During the first reading Lucy Arbell, a true artist, stopped me as I was singing the last scene, where Therese gasps with horror as she sees the awful cart bringing her husband, Andre Th.o.r.el, to the scaffold and cries with all her might, _"Vive le Roi_!" so as to ensure that she shall be reunited with her husband in death. Just then, our interpreter, who was deeply affected, stopped me and said in a burst of rapture, "I can never sing that scene through, for when I recognize my husband who has given me his name and saved Armand de Clerval, I ought to lose my voice. So I ask you to _declaim_ all of the ending of the piece."

Only great artists have such inborn gifts of instinctive emotion.

Witness Mme. Fides Devries who asked me to re-write the aria of Chimene, _"Pleurez mes yeux_." She found that while she was singing it she thought only of her dead father and almost forgot her friend, Rodriguez.

A sincere touch was suggested by the tenor, Talazac, the creator of Des Grieux. He wanted to add _toi_ before _vous_ which he uttered on finding Manon in the seminaire of Saint Sulpice. Does not that _toi_ indicate the first cry of the old lover on seeing his mistress again?

The preliminary rehearsals of _Therese_ took place in the fine apartment, richly decorated with old pictures and work of art, which Raoul Gunsbourg had in the Rue de Rivoli.

It was New Year's and we celebrated by working in the salon from eight o'clock in the evening until midnight.

Outside it was cold, but a good fire made us forget that, as we drank in that fine exquisite atmosphere champagne to the speedy realization of our common hopes.

How exciting and impressive those rehearsals were as they brought together such fine artists as Lucy Arbell, Edmond Clement and Dufranne!

The first performance of _Therese_ came the next month, February 7, 1907, at the Monte Carlo Opera.

That year my dear wife and I were again the guests of the Prince in that magnificent palace my admiration for which I have already told.

His Highness invited us to his box--the one where I had been called at the end of the premiere of _Le Jongleur de Notre Dame_ and where the Prince of Monaco himself had publicly invested me with the Grand Cordon of the Order of St. Charles.

It is a fine thing to go to the theater, but it is an entirely different thing to be present at a performance and listen to it. So the evening of _Therese_ I again took my accustomed place in the Prince's salon.

Tapestries and doors separated it from the box. I was alone there in silence, at least I might expect to be.

Silence? The roar of applause which greeted our artists was so great that neither doors nor hangings could m.u.f.fle it.

At the official dinner given at the palace the next day our applauded creators were invited and feted. My celebrated confrere Louis Diemer, the marvellous virtuoso, who had consented to play the harpsichord in the first act of _Therese_, Mme. Louise Diemer, Mme. Ma.s.sent and I were there. To reach the banquet hall my wife and I had to go up the Stairs of Honor. It was near our apartment--that ideally beautiful apartment, truly a place of dreams.

For two consecutive years _Therese_ was played at Monte Carlo and with Lucy Arbell, the creator, we had the brilliant tenor, Rousseliere and the master professor, Bouvet.