Part 4

François Joseph Bélanger, the architect in question, was a charming man. He was then about thirty years of age, handsome, good-tempered, witty, and one of the most rising members of his profession.[34] Sophie loved him dearly--for a time at least--though this did not prevent her indulging in various passing fancies. Once, when he was temporarily out of favour, she sent him his _congé_, and, at the same time, wrote to an actor named Florence, inviting him to take the vacant place in her affections. Bélanger, however, happening to call at her house at a time when she was not at home, found the two letters on her desk, read them, and promptly changed the envelopes. The result was that Florence received the _congé_, instead of the avowal of love, and naturally became very cold in his manner towards Sophie, who, deeply mortified, turned for consolation to her faithful architect.

At one time a rumour was current that Sophie was about to become Madame Bélanger, and, when questioned on the matter, the lady replied: “What would you have? So many people are endeavouring to destroy my reputation that I need some one who can restore it. I could not make a better choice, since I have selected an architect!” The marriage, however, did not take place, though that would not appear to have been the fault of Bélanger. Notwithstanding the fact that a lady with so romantic a past, and three fine children to prevent people forgetting it, was hardly the kind of wife for a rising professional man, the architect would have been only too willing to regularise their connection. But Sophie had no mind to marry any one who was unable to satisfy all her caprices; and it is probable that the rumour referred to was started and circulated by her with the object of giving the lie to another, which was occasioning her intense annoyance.[35]

Sophie’s insolence and pride in this the heyday of her prosperity knew no bounds. She insulted the Lieutenant of Police and was, in consequence, placed under arrest for twenty-four hours; she made biting epigrams about Ministers and other distinguished persons, which, no doubt, duly reached her victims’ ears; she behaved with such “unexampled audacity” and “essential want of respect” towards Madame du Barry, on the occasion of a performance before the Court, at Fontainebleau, that, but for the intervention of the injured lady--the most sweet-tempered left-hand queen who ever degraded a throne--she would have spent the next six months as a prisoner in the Hôpital,[36] and she drove the unfortunate directors of the Opera to the verge of distraction with her whims and caprices.

The race of prime donne is proverbially a capricious one; the profession of an impresario one of the most trying which can fall to the lot of man. Yet, it may be doubted whether any queen of song since opera was invented can have occasioned her managers anything approaching the anxiety and annoyance caused by Mlle. Sophie Arnould. She knew she was necessary, well-nigh indispensable, and she abused her position. Dearly did the administration pay for the increased receipts which her popularity brought them. Every day she had some new grievance, some unexpected whim. She wished to sing and she did not wish to sing, she retired and she reappeared. Sometimes she would create a part in an opera, sing divinely to crowded houses for three or four nights, then suddenly discover that it was unsuited to her or made too great demands upon her strength, and insist upon another singer taking her place for the remainder of the run of the piece. A few evenings later, jealous perhaps of the applause which her successor was receiving, she would come down to the theatre and announce her intention of resuming her part, only to throw it up again so soon as she considered that she had asserted her superiority.

To revive an opera in which she had scored a success was often as risky a venture as to produce a new one, since it might, and very often did, happen, that Mlle. Arnould--who, it should be mentioned, unlike the majority of public performers, cared very little for applause--would be indisposed, that is to say, indisposed to exert her full powers, with the result that the once popular piece would be received in comparative silence. In February 1769, _Dardanus_ was revived. Iphise, the heroine, was one of Sophie’s greatest rôles, but on the first night she either could not or would not sing, and the opera became, in consequence, “almost a burlesque.”

It is only, however, fair to say that she made ample atonement on the following evening. Thinking perhaps, as one of her biographers suggests, that any one was good enough to sing with a voiceless prima donna, the management entrusted the part of Dardanus to a new tenor named Muguet, “who had neither voice, figure, nor expression.” The audience not unnaturally resented the experiment, and M. Muguet and the opera with him were in a fair way to be hissed off the stage, when Sophie came to the rescue and, by superb singing and impassioned acting, restored the house to good humour and converted a complete failure into something approaching a success.

Seeing that the ladies of the Opera were the King’s servants in the literal sense of the phrase, and that misbehaviour on their part was wont to be construed as disobedience to his Majesty’s commands and punished accordingly, why, it may well be asked, was such conduct tolerated? Why did not the chief of the King’s Household intervene with one of those _lettres de cachet_ which were generally so efficacious in bringing contumacious artistes to their senses? The answer is that Sophie had so many noble admirers always ready to espouse her cause that to punish her as she deserved could not have failed to create a great deal of unpleasantness; for which reason, though the directors appealed again and again to the Comte de Saint-Florentin to exercise his authority, their representations were without effect. Here is an instance:

On March 24, 1772, Sophie, who was announced to take the part of Thélaïre, in Rameau’s _Castor et Pollux_, had not arrived when the time came for the opera to begin, and her place was, therefore, taken by her understudy, Mlle. Beaumesnil. As no intimation of her inability to appear that evening had reached them, the directors naturally concluded that she had been suddenly taken ill, and their astonishment and indignation may be imagined when they presently espied the lady in a box, laughing and talking with several of her admirers, and, seemingly, in the best of health and spirits. A message demanding an explanation of what she meant by appearing in the front of the house when she was “billed” to play a part produced the impertinent reply that she had come to take a lesson from Mlle. Beaumesnil! The angry directors thereupon appealed to the chief of the King’s Household and begged him to send the recalcitrant actress to For l’Évêque. But the Prince d’Hénin, or some other influential adorer, interceded on her behalf, and the only punishment she received was “a severe reprimand.”

Such misplaced leniency, Bachaumont tells us, was highly displeasing to a certain section of the Opera’s patrons, and when, an evening or two later, Mademoiselle did condescend to appear, a number of people came to the theatre “with the intention of humiliating her by hissing.” Sophie, however, perhaps desirous of making atonement to the public for its previous disappointment, put forth all her powers and sang and acted so admirably that the malcontents’ courage failed them, and, finally, forgetting the object which had brought them thither, they joined heartily in the general applause.[37]

Owing to the cares of maternity and other causes, chief of which would seem to have been a pronounced antipathy to hard work, Sophie’s appearances at the Opera were very irregular, and sometimes her name did not find a place in the bills for several months together. Thus, she was absent from October 1761 to the following February; again from November 1766 to August 1767; while in 1770 she does not appear to have sung at all. A less popular actress, or one whose life outside the theatre was less notorious, might have incurred some risk of finding herself forgotten. But Sophie’s admirers were numerous and faithful, and when she had a part which suited her, and was in the humour to do herself justice, her singing and, more especially, her acting were so superior to her rivals that the house was invariably crowded. Among her triumphs may be mentioned: Thisbé, in _Pyrame et Thisbé_; Oriane, in _Amadis de Gaule_;[38] Aline, in _Aline, Reine de Golconde_,[39] “which,” says Bachaumont, “she endowed with all the delicate graces of sentiment, beauty, and talent”; Psyché, in _L’Amour et Psyché_; Iphise, in _Dardanus_, and Thélaïre, in _Castor et Pollux_, when the critic of the _Mercure_ declared that she was “not a character of the piece, but Thélaïre herself, and that the feelings she depicted passed involuntarily into the souls of the spectators.”[40]

* * * * *

Although Bélanger was Mlle. Arnould’s _amant de cœur_, the Prince d’Hénin remained her titular protector. The prince was an exceedingly dull and fatuous person, with the most absurdly exaggerated idea of his own importance, and bored the lady insufferably, although financial considerations compelled her to tolerate him. At the same time, she was at no pains to conceal from her friends the _ennui_ which his visits occasioned her, and when, at the beginning of the year 1774, the Comte de Lauraguais, with whom she still maintained friendly relations, returned from a lengthy visit to England, she hastened to pour her troubles into his sympathetic ear. Perhaps Lauraguais would have been not unwilling to resume his connection with Sophie, had there been no Prince d’Hénin in the way, and cherished a grudge against that nobleman for taking the place which had so long been his own. Perhaps he had some other grievance against him, for the prince was by no means universally beloved. Any way, he determined to have a little diversion at his expense. We read in the _Mémoires secrets:_

“February 19, 1774.--The Comte de Lauraguais, that amiable nobleman, whose inextinguishable gaiety is so marvellously seconded by his lively imagination, after having amused London, has come to enliven this capital with his sallies and ingenious pleasantries, of which one relates a charming instance: Some days ago, he summoned four doctors of the Faculty of Medicine to a consultation, in order to know whether it were possible for any one to die of _ennui_. They replied in the affirmative and, after a long preamble, setting forth the reasons for their decision, signed a paper to that effect, in all good faith. The family of Brancas is so generally composed of lunatics, hypochondriacs, hysterical and melancholy persons, and so forth, that they imagined that the question put to them concerned some relative of the consultant, and agreed that the only means of effecting a cure was to remove out of the patient’s sight the object which occasioned this condition of inertia and stagnation.

“Armed with this document duly signed and witnessed, the facetious nobleman proceeded to lay it before a Commissary of Police and, at the same time, to lodge a complaint against the Prince d’Hénin, who, by his continual _obsession_ of Mlle. Arnoux (_sic_), would infallibly cause that actress to perish of _ennui_, and the public to lose one whom it valued highly, and whom he especially desired to preserve.”

Needless to say, the commissary did not issue the warrant demanded; but, equally needless to say, he related the jest to every one he happened to meet that morning, with the result that, in a very few hours, this “charming instance of the inextinguishable humour of the Comte de Lauraguais” was the talk of Paris, and was voted the best comedy that had been played for many a long day. The Prince d’Hénin naturally did not look at the matter in quite the same light, and talked about sending the count a challenge. According to one account, he actually did so, and a bloodless duel followed. But since, as we shall presently see, he was a nobleman by no means remarkable for his courage, it is more probable that he ultimately decided to pocket the affront.

In the course of that same month, Sophie Arnould determined to withdraw altogether from the Opera and, accordingly, sent in her resignation, giving as her reason the unsatisfactory state of her health. The Duc de la Vrillière, however, declined to accept it, at the same time assuring her, in a courteous letter, that, “under no circumstances would more be required of her than her strength would permit of her undertaking.” Although it would appear that Sophie was really somewhat out of health at that time--so that Lauraguais’s charge against the poor Prince d’Hénin was not without a basis of truth--her resolution to quit the scene of her many triumphs was dictated by a very different reason. The fact of the matter was that the Sophie Arnould of 1774 was not the Sophie Arnould of 1758--not the singer who had charmed all Paris in _Les Amours des Dieux_ and _Énée et Lavinie_. Her voice, always more expressive than powerful, was becoming perceptibly weaker. Her beauty, though she was still very attractive, had lost its freshness. Her frequent absences, her endless caprices, her arrogance and insolence, so long tolerated, had begun to weary not only the long-suffering directors of the Opera, but the public and the critics who influenced it. Where there had been applause, there was now silence. Where there had been praise, there was now criticism, and criticism sometimes of a peculiarly galling kind. In a word, Sophie’s long reign was drawing to a close. And Paris was eagerly awaiting the arrival of a new composer. Gluck, who was to revolutionise opera in France, was coming, at the invitation of Marie Antoinette, to give a series of “musical dramas”--as he himself called them--reconstructed from those which had delighted Vienna and Italy. Supported as he would be by the young Dauphiness and the Court, his success was a foregone conclusion. What unthinkable humiliation for her if, when the principal parts came to be allotted, she should be passed over in favour of one of her youthful competitors: Mlle. Laguerre or, worse still, Rosalie Levasseur, the mistress of Mercy-Argenteau, the Austrian Ambassador, between whom and herself the bitterest rivalry existed! Rather than incur such a risk, she would retire of her own accord, while her laurels were still untarnished, while her sovereignty was still acknowledged.

But, as we have just seen, her resignation was not accepted, and when Gluck arrived in Paris, he appears to have had little difficulty in deciding to entrust the title-part in his _Iphigénie en Aulide_ to her, though his choice was probably influenced more by Sophie’s histrionic than her vocal capabilities, for while her voice was neither so powerful nor so fresh as those of the two ladies mentioned above, her acting was immeasurably superior to theirs.

We are inclined to think, however, that even if Sophie had been much less fitted than she was to undertake the difficult rôle of Iphigénie, Gluck would still have hesitated before passing her over, since to have done so would have been certain to arouse a storm of hostile criticism, a singularly inauspicious opening to his Paris campaign. As matters stood, his position was, at first, far from an easy one. The musical world of Paris was the most critical and contentious of any capital in Europe, and the advent of a foreign operatic troupe or a new composer was invariably the sign for the amateurs of music to range themselves into hostile camps and to discuss the merits and demerits of the innovation with as much warmth as, in the present day, rival schools of politicians might debate a question of international importance. Just as in 1752, when an Italian troupe came to perform the _Serva Padrona_ of Pergolese and other works of the Italian buffo order, all musical Paris was divided into Buffonists and anti-Buffonists; so now, immediately on Gluck’s arrival, two parties were formed, one prepared to laud to the skies everything the master might compose, the other resolved to uphold the traditions of the old French opera at all costs and to drive the daring reformer from the field.[41]

Gluck found the task of producing _Iphigénie_ the most difficult of any which he had yet undertaken. What he saw and heard at the Palais-Royal disgusted as much as it astonished him; orchestra, singers, chorus, ballet--all were lamentably inefficient, and it was obvious that a course of the most rigorous training would be required ere they would be competent to do his work anything like justice. The state of the Paris Opera at this time was indeed almost incredible. “Disorder, abuse, caprice, routine, inertia,” says Desnoiresterres, “were despotically enthroned there, without a protest from any one. If reform were urgent, so many persons were interested in the _statu quo_ that there was scarcely any hope of obtaining from the administration, from this ignorant and prejudiced crowd, any improvement that was at all practical. In the midst of all the pomp and expenditure was a carelessness, an anarchy, a disorder past all belief. Actors and actresses pushed indecency to such a point as to appear outside the _coulisses_, the latter in white camisoles with a _culotte d’argent_ and a band across the forehead; the former in a simple peignoir. It was not an infrequent sight, while the foreground was occupied by Jupiter or Theseus, to see, through the scenes, the dancers moving and fluttering about, they having actually chosen the background of the stage to practise their steps and make their _jetés-battus_.”[42] The choruses drew themselves up in a semi-circle, impassive, without a gesture, like grenadiers on guard, and evinced not the slightest interest either in the words they had to sing or in the action of the principal performers. The latter went to the opposite extreme. “One sees the actresses, almost in convulsions, violently tear the yelps out of their lungs, their fists clenched against their chest, the head thrown back, the face inflamed, the veins swollen, the stomach heaving; one does not know which is the more disagreeably affected, the eye or the ear; their exertion gives as much pain to those who see them as their singing does to those who hear them.”[43]

The orchestra, which in winter was in the habit of performing in gloves, is compared by Mercier, the author of _Le Tableau de Paris_, to “an old coach drawn by consumptive horses and led by one deaf from his birth,” and besides being careless and indifferent, was continually at variance with the singers on the question whether the latter should follow the musicians or the musicians follow them. Grétry relates the following conversation, which took place between Sophie Arnould and Francœur, the conductor of the orchestra, during a rehearsal of his own opera of _Céphale et Procris_, in 1773:

“What is the meaning of this, Monsieur? The orchestra seems in a state of rebellion?”

“What do you mean by rebellion, Mademoiselle? We are all here for the service of the King, and we serve him zealously.”

“I should like to serve him also, but your orchestra puts me out and spoils my singing.”

“Nevertheless, Mademoiselle, we play in time.”

“In time! _Quelle bête est-ce là?_ Follow me, Monsieur, and understand that your accompaniment is the very humble servant of the actress who is reciting!”

As the Goncourts point out, under the apparent insolence of her claim, Sophie was here asserting the rights of the dramatic vocalist before the musical revolution, of which Gluck was the pioneer, when opera-singers were regarded merely as men and women reciting musical tragedy with intonations indicated by a musician. Until then they had enjoyed the most complete independence as to the manner of presenting their phrases. Until then they had been at liberty to hurry or slacken the time, to pause on or shorten any particular note, according to the inspiration of the moment, or even as they felt more or less fatigued, the orchestra following as best it could. “‘_Quelle bête est-ce là?_’ Sophie had but little doubt when she uttered these words that _cette bête_ was on the eve of reducing her talent and reputation to nothing.”[44]

The pretension, however, was one which a composer, like Gluck, “who took the trouble to note not only the inflections of the voice, but also the long notes and the short ones, the accent and the time,” could not for one moment tolerate; and his insistence on its abandonment was the cause of endless wrangling at rehearsals, where the principal vocalists roundly declared that, if he refused them the liberty which had so long been theirs, their talent would become superfluous and they would be reduced to the level of mere chorus-singers.

These disputes were chiefly with the lady members of the troupe, though the male singers did not fail to occasion the composer an infinity of trouble. Legros, who had been cast for the part of Achilles, had an admirable voice, but his singing was totally lacking in expression, while his movements on the stage were stiff and awkward; and though Gluck laboured unceasingly to remedy these faults, it was some months ere he succeeded. Larrivée, to whom had been entrusted the rôle of Agamemnon, was even more difficult to deal with, being so obstinate and self-opinionated that to remonstrate with him seemed almost waste of breath. Once the composer was forced to tell him that he seemed to have no comprehension of his part, and to be unable to enter into the spirit of it. “Wait till I put on my costume,” answered the singer complacently; “you won’t recognise me then.” At the general rehearsal Gluck took his seat in a box. Larrivée reappeared, in the costume of Agamemnon, but his interpretation remained the same. “Ah, my friend!” cried the composer, “I recognise you perfectly!”[45] Finally, Gluck had to contend with the ballet, and, in particular, with its chief, the celebrated Gaetano Vestris--“_le dieu de la danse_”--who once observed that there were only three great men in Europe: Frederick II., Voltaire, and himself! Vestris naturally considered the dancing by far the most important feature of an opera, and, although there were already several ballets in _Iphigénie_, wanted yet another. Gluck angrily refused.

“_Quoi!_” stammered Vestris; “_moi! le dieu de la danse!_”

“If you are the God of Dancing, Monsieur,” replied the composer, “dance in heaven, not in my opera!”[46]

When, some months later, _Orphée_ was being rehearsed, the ballet-master asked Gluck to write him the music of a chaconne. The latter, who had strongly objected to the introduction of any dancing whatever into _Orphée_, being of opinion that it would interfere with the seriousness and pathos of the general action, was horrified.

“A chaconne!” he cried. “Do you suppose, Monsieur, that the Greeks, whose manners I am endeavouring to depict, knew what a chaconne was?”

“Did they not?” rejoined the God of Dancing. “Then they are much to be pitied!”