XXVIII A COLOSSAL CONCERT

When I got back to Paris, I found M. Pillet planning a revival of Der Freyschütz. Now, by the rules of the Opera every word must be sung and as there are spoken dialogues in Weber’s opera he engaged me to set them in the form of recitations.

“It is all wrong,” I said, “but as that is the only condition on which it will be played and as, if I don’t do it, you will give it to someone who does not know Weber as I do, I accept but with one stipulation—that you change neither music nor libretto.”

“Certainly,” he replied, “do you suppose I would revive Robin des Bois?”

“Very well, then I will get to work at once. How are you arranging the parts?”

“Madame Stolz, Agatha; Mdlle. Dobré, Annette; Duprez, Max.”

“I bet he won’t take it,” I said.

“Why not?”

“You will see soon enough.”

“Bouché will do well for Gaspard.”

“And the Hermit?”

“Oh—well—” said he, awkwardly, “you know the Hermit isn’t much use, I was going—to cut him out.”

“H’m! Really? Yet you are going to act Freyschütz and not Robin des Bois. Evidently, since we sha’n’t agree, it is better for me to retire at once for I can’t stand that sort of correction.”

“Dear me! how wholesale you are in your notions. Very well, we will keep the Hermit, we will keep everything, lock, stock, and barrel.”

Then my troubles began. The actors would make their recitations as slow and stately as a tragedy; Duprez,—as I foretold—although ten years before he had been a light tenor and had managed Max perfectly—found it impossible to adapt his fine tenor voice to the music and demanded all sorts of unheard-of transpositions and alterations. I cut them short by refusing to disintegrate the rôle and it was handed over to Marié.

Then nothing would do but they must have a ballet, and as I could not stop it I tried to arrange a sort of scene from Weber’s Invitation to the Waltz; but that was not enough, so the dancers themselves took it into their heads that some bits out of my symphonies would come in nicely.

Pillet agreed. I did not; and, to stop discussion, I said:

“Now look here! I entirely object to introducing into Der Freyschütz music that is not Weber’s. To prove that I am not unreasonable, go and ask Dessauer, who is over there; I will abide by his decision.”

At Pillet’s first words Dessauer turned sharply to me:

“Oh, Berlioz! don’t do that!”

That ended the matter for the time and the opera was a success. But when I went to Russia they cut and chopped and gnawed it until it was simply a deformity.

And how they play what is left now! What a conductor! What a chorus! What utterly sleepy, disgraceful ineptitude and misinterpretation of everything by everybody!

When will a new Christ come to purge our temple and drive out the money changers with a scourge!

I returned to my treadmill—journalism—once more, and oh! the horror of it!

The misery of writing to order an article on nothing in particular—or on things that, as far as I was concerned, simply did not exist since they excited in me no feeling of any description whatsoever. Long ago I remember spending three days over a critique without being able to write one word. I cannot remember the subject but I well remember my torments.

I strode up and down, my brain on fire; I gazed at the setting sun, the neighbouring gardens, the heights of Montmartre—my thoughts a thousand miles away.

Then, as I turned and saw that confounded white paper without a line on it, I flew into the wildest rage.

My unoffending guitar leant against the wall. I kicked it to bits; my pistols stared at me from the wall with big round eyes. I gazed back, then, tearing my hair, burst into burning tears.

That soothed me somewhat, I turned those staring pistols face to the wall and picked up my poor guitar which gave forth a plaintive wail. Then my six-year-old boy, with whom I had unjustly found fault, tapped at the door. As I did not answer he cried:

“Father, is you friends?”

“Yes, yes, my boy, I is friends!” and I flew to let him in. I took him on my knee and laid his fair head on my shoulder; we dropped asleep together and my article was forgotten. Next morning I managed to write something. That is fifteen years ago and my martyrdom still lasts! It is not that I mind work. I can grind at rehearsals for hours at a time; can spend my nights in correcting proofs; can and will do anything and everything that pertains to my work as a musician.

But to eternally pamphleteer for a living! It is cruel!

To Humbert Ferrand.

“3rd October 1844.—I read in the Débats of your splendid agricultural success and can imagine how much work and perseverance it involves. You are a kind of Robinson Crusoe in your island,[20] and when the sun shines I long to be with you, to breathe the spicy air, to follow you from field to field, to listen with you to the sweet silence of your lonely groves—our affection is so sure, so whole-hearted, so perfect!

“Yet when dull days come and mists rise, the fever of Paris seizes me once more and I feel that here only is life possible. But can you believe that a strange sort of torpid resignation with regard to things musical has taken possession of me? It is as well, for this indifference saves my strength for the time when a passionate struggle may become necessary.

“You have doubtless heard of the marvellous success of my Requiem in St Petersburg. Romberg most bravely tackled the enormous expense and, thanks to the generosity of the Russian aristocracy, made a profit of five thousand francs. Give me a despotic government as nursing mother of Art!

“If you could but be here this winter! I long to see you. I seem to be going down hill so rapidly, life is so short! The end is often before my eyes now and I clutch with frenzied eagerness at the flowers beside my path as I slip quickly past.

“There was a rumour that I was to succeed Habeneck at the Opera, it is a dictatorship that I should enjoy in the interests of Art. But, for that, Habeneck would have to be translated to the Conservatoire, where Cherubini still goes to sleep. Perhaps when I am old and incapable I shall go to the Conservatoire. At present I am too young to dream of it!”

I was railing more than usual at my hard fate when Strauss proposed that we should give a concert at the close of the 1844 Exhibition, in the empty building.

It was a tremendous undertaking, for his original intention was to have also a ball and a banquet to the exhibitors. But, owing to the fixed idea of M. Delessert, chief of the police, that plots and risings were in the air, we were forced to reduce it to a classical concert for me and a popular promenade concert next day for Strauss.

Rushing all over Paris I engaged nearly every musician of any consequence and gathered a body of 1022 performers—all paid except the singers from the lyric theatres, who helped me for love of music.

The rehearsals and general arrangements were most arduous and my anxiety lest we should fail nearly killed me. The great day, the 1st August, came and at noon (the concert began at one o’clock) I went to the Exhibition, noticing with pleasure the stream of carriages all converging on the Champs Elysées. Everything inside the building was in perfect order, everyone in his or her appointed place, and my good friend and indefatigable librarian, M. Rocquemont, assured me that all would go perfectly.

Musical delirium seized me, I thought no more of public, receipts or deficit, but was just raising my baton to begin when a violent smashing of wood announced that the people had burst the barriers and filled the hall. This meant success and I joyfully tapped my desk, crying:

“Saved!”

To direct my mass of performers I had Tilmant to conduct the wind, Morel[21] the percussion instruments, and five chorus-masters, one in the centre and four at the corners to guide those singers who were out of my range. Thus there were seven deputy-conductors, whose arms rose and fell with mine with incredible precision.

The Blessing of the Daggers from the Huguenots was given with an imposing effect that surpassed my expectations. I wished Meyerbeer could have heard it. It worked upon me so that my teeth chattered and I shook with nervous ague. The concert had to be stopped while they brought me some punch and a change of clothes, and by making a little screen of the harps in their linen covers, I was enabled to dress right before the audience without being seen.

The concert finished triumphantly with the utmost satisfaction to artists and audience but, as I went out, I had the gruesome pleasure of seeing the hospital authorities counting our receipts and walking off with the eighth gross—that is, four thousand francs—which left me, when all was paid, with eight hundred francs for all my trouble and anxiety.

This mad experiment was hardly over when M. Amussat, my anatomy master and friend, called.

“Why, Berlioz!” he said, “what on earth is the matter? You are as yellow as a guinea and look thoroughly overdone.”

He felt my pulse.

“You are on the verge of typhoid and must be bled.”

“Very well, do it now.”

He did, and then said:

“You will please leave Paris at once and go to the Riviera or somewhere south by the sea and forget all these exciting topics. Be off at once.”

With my eight hundred francs I went to Nice. It moved me strangely to see those haunts of thirteen years earlier—the days of my youth.

I bathed, explored the well-known cliffs, paid my respects to the old cannon, still asleep in the sun; the room in which I wrote King Lear was let to an English family so I found shelter in an old tower adjoining the Ponchettes Rocks. After a month’s lotus-eating I turned my face once more to Paris and took up again my Sisyphus burden.

After giving some concerts in the circus of the Champs Elysées, which fatigued me greatly I again took a rest on the Mediterranean shores then gave some more concerts in Marseilles, Lyons and Lille of which I have given a full account in my Grotesques de la Musique. Shortly afterwards I started on my tour through Austria, Bohemia and Hungary.