All felt themselves in the presence of a new art." In ten years Italian opera reached its full growth, thanks chiefly to a composer of genius, Monteverde, whose _Ariane_ caused an audience of more than six thousand persons to burst into sobs on its first representation.
The art of singing had marched side by side with dramatic music and attained its height almost at once. A famous soprano, Vittori, threw the public into almost inconceivable transports. "Many persons were suddenly forced to loosen their garments in order to breathe, so suffocated were they with emotion."
Everywhere musical theatres were erected. The large cities built several; Venice alone had five, and this number was not sufficient. The opera was given in palaces and private salons; "Bologna possessed more than sixty private theatres, without mentioning the convents and colleges." The clergy were caught in the whirlwind; monks and nuns chanted operas, cardinals became stage managers of scenes, a future pope wrote librettos. It was an epidemic, a frenzy, and Italy did not go mad with impunity. In its beginning, the opera is responsible for grave disorders, both nervous and moral; it became _too_ much of a pa.s.sion.
Mazarin already possessed this taste before his establishment in France.
He wished to initiate his adopted country into the joys, almost to be dreaded, which had so suddenly enriched human life, and he brought from Italy one after the other four Italian troupes, the first in 1645, the last a short time before his death.
The result was easy to predict. A spectacle patronised by the Cardinal became a matter of politics. Applauded by the partisans of the minister, derided by his adversaries, the Italian opera met with so strong an opposition that it was necessary to renounce it for the time, but the lesson was not lost.
French composers heretofore devoted to ballets and masquerades had not received unheedingly the revelation of the dramatic style; their ambition was also aroused to express the tempests of the soul, and they began to grope along the new path.
The attempt was not at once successful; but their efforts familiarised the public with the idea of a musical language of pa.s.sion. In 1664, the song was considered the natural interpreter of love. Moliere fixes the date in his _Princesse d"Elide_, in which Moron does not succeed in gaining the ear of Philis because he speaks, instead of singing his declaration. Philis flees and Moron cries out: "Behold how it is: if I had been able to sing, I should have done better. Most women of to-day only let themselves be courted through the ears; this is the reason that the entire world has become musical, and one can succeed with the fair only by making them listen to little songs and verses. I must learn to sing like others."
It was indeed somewhat different in 1671, when French opera arrived on the scene.[188] It had hardly seen the light when it became, as a result of the a.s.sociation of Quinault with Lulli, a counsellor of voluptuousness.
While the decorations and the dances charmed the eyes, as the "machines"
amused by their complications, the words and music, outdoing the _Princesse d"Elide_,[189] murmured unceasingly with the same caressing languor that no youthful beings have the right, for any motive whatever, to deny to themselves the duty of loving. "Yield, give yourselves up to transports," chants a chorus of _Amadis_. The thirteen "lyrical tragedies" given by Quinault and Lulli from 1673 to 1686 are all constructed upon this one theme. They gave expression to the one single idea; "Yield! surrender yourselves!" and resulted in producing a certain eloquence from their monotony. When these lyrics are played on the piano,[190] a better means of hearing them failing, one cannot but feel that in spite of their insipidity the continuous appeal to the senses might produce in the end, particularly in the atmosphere of a theatre, a strong effect.
[Ill.u.s.tration: =JEAN BAPTISTE DE LULLI= After a contemporary print by Bonnart]
Moralists recognised this. All will remember the violent attack of Boileau upon the opera. To-day we consider this attack as having been too narrowly virtuous, even a little ridiculous. It can be explained, however, in considering what a novelty it was to see people seized with nervous attacks and fits of weeping while listening to singing. Was it the "loose morals" of Quinault which caused these? Was it the new music?
In either case, the worthy Boileau was excusable for his alarm.
France had not yet reached the point of excitability which existed in Italy. The French are not a sufficiently musical race for this; but in a less degree, the country submitted to the extraordinary power of the dramatic style. It is known through Mme. de Sevigne that if the French listeners did not invariably "burst into sobs" or "suffocate with emotion," more than one auditor, including herself, wept silently in hearing the fine pa.s.sages.
Fashion also swayed affairs, and we know of what fashion is capable in France.
Saint Evremond has written a comedy ent.i.tled _The Operas_. In the list of _dramatis personae_, one reads: "Mlle. Crisotine become mad through the hearing of operas. Tirsolet, a young man from Lyons, also became mad through operas." A third person relates that "nothing else is spoken of in Paris. Women and even young children knew the operas by heart, and there is hardly a house in which entire scenes are not sung." How nearly France and Italy are approached in this. The Louvre party caught the fashion, the courtiers, being eager to imitate the King, a great admirer of Lulli.
It had happened that Louis remarked during the rehearsals of _Alceste_ "that if he were at Paris when the opera should be played, he would go every day." "This phrase," adds Mme. de Sevigne "is worth a hundred thousand francs to Baptiste."[191] This was no affectation on the part of the King; he really loved music, as can be recognised through unmistakable signs. Louis XIV. had throughout his life the taste and more than a taste for music; to which he added a longing to be himself a performer, a desire that can never be satisfied with the most skilled professional entertainments. As a youth, he played the guitar and took part in ensemble playing. As a man, he found that he had a good voice, and knew how to use it in amateur reunions.
It can even be said that he sang not only at suitable but also at unsuitable moments: the day after the death of his son, the Grand Dauphin, the ladies of the Palace heard with surprise the King singing opera prologues. During his later years, when it was difficult to amuse him, Mme. de Maintenon organized musicales in her salon and Louis always enjoyed these. One evening when she subst.i.tuted vespers[192] for the scores of Lulli, the King made no criticism and even intoned the vespers. Provided it was music, all kinds were good; but the King showed a certain predilection for the kind which he had seen created, already so rich in new emotions and which bore rare promise for the future of the artistic world, and the monarch possessed all the qualities needed to enjoy it profoundly.
The reader cannot fail to perceive through the witness of his frequent bursts of tears that Louis was of a nervous disposition, somewhat concealed under the cold and calm exterior which he had imposed upon himself. In advancing age, this tendency to tears became almost a malady. Mme. de Maintenon, in a letter dated 1705, writing to a friend of the "vapours" of the King and of his sombre humour, makes the remark that he is "sometimes overcome with weeping which he cannot restrain."
He was a sensualist to whom themes of love were always attractive.
"Yield! Surrender!" the King never ceased to repeat on his own behalf to the pretty women of his Court. For the rest, Quinault and Lulli made him choose the subjects for their operas; and Louis had therefore a responsibility for the voluptuousness which exhaled from their works.
Dramatic music has now established itself. The civilised world discovers with delight that this art has an unlimited capacity for expressing pa.s.sion, and all the pa.s.sions, even the highest, the purest, and this latter includes love. It has also been recognised that music can speak in its own words outside of the theatre, in a symphony, in a simple sonata, and that there exists no art so benevolent, so reposeful, and so rea.s.suring to troubled souls. In spite of this, in spite of all, moralists have never been willing to throw down their weapons before music. Emanuel Kant was clearly hostile to it; he said, "It enervates man,"[193] and he turned away his disciples from its joys. Tolstoi has been unkind to it in the _Kreutzer Sonata_.
All forces can become dangerous; it depends on the "use made of them,"[194] and also upon the souls which receive the impulse; they must be of the calibre to support its force.
The action of music upon French society has never, so far as I know, been methodically studied in relation to its effects, both physical and moral. If a historian be found, he will issue from the psychological laboratories, scientifically equipped, in which the observer conceals the physician: on this condition only can he speak with authority.
[Ill.u.s.tration: =BOILEAU= After the painting by H. Rigaud]
The Grande Mademoiselle cared but little for music. Nevertheless she extols Lulli in her _Memoires_: "He makes the most beatific airs in the world." The glory of Baptiste touched her because he was "her own,"
arriving from Italy some time before the Fronde. "He came to France with my late uncle the Chevalier de Guise. I had prayed him to bring me an Italian, with whom I could speak and learn the language."
Lulli was only a boy of thirteen at the time that he was brought to France. Between the Italian lessons, he filled the office of cook.
Later, admitted among the violins of Mademoiselle, it is related that he was chased away for having satirised his mistress in song. This recalls other events:
I was exiled: he did not wish to live in the country: he demanded leave to go away: I accorded it, and since he has made his fortune, for he is a great merry-andrew.
Lulli always remained a buffoon in the mind of Mademoiselle, although she a.s.sisted at his triumphs and survived him.
Mademoiselle preserved the taste for literature formed at Saint-Fargeau.
Her name is a.s.sociated with several incidents, great and small, of the literary history of the times. In 1669, when _Tartuffe_ was definitely authorised, she wished to have it performed in her salon. This fact is noteworthy as the Church still forbade its representation. On August 21, Mademoiselle gave a fete. When most of the guests had departed, "_Tartuffe_, the fashionable piece, was played before twenty women and numbers of men."[195] Did the end of the phrase contain a slight excuse--"which was the fashionable piece"? However this may be, Mademoiselle could boast to her confessor that she had been "economical"
with Moliere. The entertainment at the Luxembourg was paid for with three hundred francs given to the actors, the current price being for such a performance five hundred and fifty francs. Thus the virtuous homes evidenced their piety!
On another occasion, Mademoiselle had the honour, if the Abbe d"Olivet may be believed, of supplying Moliere with an entire scene ready made: and what a scene! Among the _habitues_ of the salon figured one of the victims of Boileau, the impudent Abbe Cotin, who not finding himself sufficiently _etrille_ (thrashed) had provoked new retaliations in gossiping about Moliere.
One day he brought some verses of his own composition to the palace of the Luxembourg to read them to Mademoiselle. In the midst of her admiration another writer, supposed to be Menage, entered. Mademoiselle committed the error of showing the verses of the Abbe and, without mentioning the name of the author, of defending the expressed opinions.
The result was the scene between Vadius and Trissotin (at first named "Tricotin" lest one should be deceived). It was only needful for Moliere to give the touch of genius as in the sonnet to the Princess Uranie and in the verses upon the _Carosse Amarante_. In these two cases, it is well known that the lines are copied word for word from a volume written by the Abbe Cotin.[196]
Many echoes of the grand literary battle of the century[197] still resounded in the Luxembourg. The success of the first tragedies of Racine irritated that portion of the public, always large, which has a horror of being disturbed in its habits of thought by importunate novelties. Such a disturbance is a punishment to many persons, whether the moving force comes from literature, science, or art. There are many examples of this fixed state of mind to be found in the past century: it will suffice to recall the struggles hardly yet quieted between Pasteur and Wagner.
Racine appeared on the scene as a revolutionary force. He and Moliere, sustained by their friend Boileau, presented a dramatic art absolutely new, which was separated by a gulf from that of Corneille and for which nothing had prepared the way. Corneille"s predecessors were Mairet, the du Ryers and many others: Racine stood alone. He was the first and the last to make tragedy realistic, with the subject simple, the characters scrupulously true to nature, and the language often audaciously familiar.
Louis XIV. applauded. Racine and the King well comprehended each other.
Heinrich Heine has given the reason for this in one of those phrases which throw light upon an entire period: "Racine is the first modern poet, as Louis XIV. was the first modern King."
The young Court applauded cordially with the King. It also belonged to the new regime; but for the old Court, for the survivors of the Hotel Rambouillet, the tragedy of Racine was as shocking, as displeasing, as were the first realistic romances to the faithful adherents of romanticism, and for the same reasons. In spite of the difficulty so many have, of sympathising with the ideas of the one called a little disdainfully "the gentle Racine," "the elegant Racine," this writer appeared neither gentle nor elegant to three-fourths of the salon, to the "old Court" of the Grande Mademoiselle. The _Pyrrhus_ seemed to them "brutal," the Phedre, a "madwoman" "the blackness" of Nero or Narcisse entirely beyond what should be permitted on the stage.
Not that the personages of Corneille or of his predecessors acted less wickedly, but their brutes and villains were nevertheless "heroes" and that made all the difference. The personages created by Racine were only "men," simple men, who used words "low and grovelling," bourgeois words, expressions such as "Quoi qu"il en soit, que fais je, que dis-je!"[198] and did not even realise the sense: more than three hundred improper terms have been counted in _Andromaque_. Racine would have fared better if his poetic methods had not been in some way a criticism upon the cleverness of Corneille. This was the real grievance, obliging the adorers of the old poet to condemn the insolent one.
Mme. de Sevigne, who could not always prevent herself, although "mad with Corneille," from admiring Racine, or from letting him perceive it, hastened to correct herself when this happened. She wrote to her daughter, "_Bajazet_ is beautiful," and added six lines further on, as a person who has a reproach to make, "Believe me, nothing will approach (I do not say surpa.s.s) some divine pa.s.sages of Corneille." Having thus regulated her conscience, she returned to _Bajazet_ to avow that she had "wept more than twenty tears" (letter dated January 15, 1672), but her letter evidently left her with a slight feeling of discomfort. Two months later, she attenuated the praise of the new piece, to which she now accorded only "agreeable things," and declared Corneille to be another order of genius: "My daughter, let us take care not to compare Racine with him, let us well perceive the difference!"
Almost all of Mademoiselle"s generation showed themselves as jealous as Mme. de Sevigne for the glory of Corneille. To the admiration inspired by his genius is added the tender grat.i.tude that we guard for works in which live again the ideals of our youth. It is our own thoughts, our fine dreams of early days, that we love in these productions.
The tragedy of Racine signified that the day of Corneille had pa.s.sed; its success indicated the inroad of new ideas and pointed definitely to the fact that those faithful to the ancient worship had really been relegated to the position of old fogies. This is never an agreeable position when one feels still alive and with no very active realisation that old age is approaching. People of letters are the first to suffer from these revolutions of taste which leave surviving only works of the first rank while the rest are cast away into oblivion.
As we know, the _litterateurs_ who frequented the salon of Mademoiselle were all enemies of Racine, half on account of loyalty to Corneille, half on their own behalf, through an instinct of self-preservation.
Besides Menage and the Abbe Cotin, whom we have lately encountered speaking frankly to each other, besides the amiable Segrais whose literary powers were too light to lead him far, there was the Abbe Boyer, whose tragedies Segrais desired to be pardoned, because he was a "sufficiently good academician," and that worthy old man De Chapelain, ill.u.s.trious until the day upon which his verses went to press. There was some reason for accusing Mademoiselle of having been the "centre of the opposition to the new poetry."[199] To say this is, however, to exaggerate her role. We shall see later that she was far too occupied in living through her own tragedy to be actively interested in those being enacted upon the boards. Loaded with injuries and calumnies by the Vadius and the Trissotins, menaced with thrashings by the aristocratic protectors of these great men of the salon, Racine ran the risk of being crushed, and was saved only by the signal favour of the King. Neither he nor Moliere would have accomplished their work if Louis XIV. had not sustained them against all critics. This is a service for which we should not limit our grat.i.tude. The reflection upon this great debt arouses a tenderness towards a Prince with whom we are otherwise not always sympathetic.
It is possible that there was some politics in his att.i.tude. The success of writers so new fell in well with his design of making a _tabula rasa_ of the detested past: but after all the main reason for which protection was accorded was affection.
When Louis XIV. laughed "even till his sides ached"[200] over the _ecole des Femmes_, at which amus.e.m.e.nt the devots and prudes were indignant, when he saved the _Plaideurs_, almost hissed in the Hotel de Bourgogne, by "bursts of laughter, so great that the Court was astonished,"[201]
there was no calculation: he was honestly amused, like any one else. It was also a true and frank admiration which caused him to dry his tears at _Iphigenie_, and to order the repet.i.tion of _Mithridate_. He loved the "new" for two reasons: because he had good taste, and because the heroes of the later writers were of the kind needful for his generation.
It has been seen how marvellously Moliere and the King understood each other, and the mention of Racine recalls to us the profound phrase of Heine. Racine revealed himself in the _Andromaque_ as the "first modern poet." Hermione and Oreste have only a distant relationship with the heroes of Corneille. They are already "those possessed by love, the great pa.s.sionates with whom love becomes a malady, who love to the brink of crime, and even till death."
With these characters, it can be said that modern love, profound, tender, melancholy, impregnated with soul, and at the same time troubled by the obscure influences of the nervous life, makes its entrance into French literature. Oreste shows a sadness, a despair, a madness, which a century and a half later burst forth in love romances. Louis XIV. had not waited for Racine for his education in pa.s.sion. When Marie Mancini fascinated him, he was one of the first examples of the modern type of those "possessed by love," and he had never forgotten this crisis; in fact he never forgot anything. This episode in the life of the young King had been a good apprenticeship for the comprehending of the love of Oreste or of Phedre as the true love malady, as a fatality against which our single will is only a feeble weapon.
Around the King, Mme. Henriette, Mme. de Montespan, all the young Court and some shrewd spirits of the old, with Conde at the head, rendered justice to the truth of the "anatomies of the heart," in the tragedy of Racine. Mademoiselle was incapable of this; she believed too firmly in the superhuman strength of the heroes of Corneille, with whom the will laughs at resistance, whether the opposition arises in the soul or in the exterior world, to admit the fatality of pa.s.sion. Nevertheless, it was the Grande Mademoiselle herself who was going to demonstrate clearly to all France that it was impossible to escape fate, when this fate points to love. Here we meet the great misfortune of her life!
An atmosphere of pa.s.sion, and an intimacy with people whose sole occupation was to render themselves attractive, was somewhat dangerous for an old maid, sensitive without realising it. Mademoiselle had the singular desire, which later cost her dearly, to make an ally of Mme. de Montespan and thus to form a part of the chosen society of the Court.
She sought the company of the mistress and received service from her.
Mme. de Montespan was her interpreter with the King. In return Mademoiselle endeavoured to calm M. de Montespan who, for serious or for trivial reasons[202] "flew into pa.s.sions," like a "madman" or "wild person," against Madame his wife. "He is my relative and I scolded him," says the _Memoires_ of Mademoiselle. As a connoisseur, Mademoiselle hugely enjoyed the original wit of Mme. de Montespan. The pleasure found in returning the ball in conversation was the foundation of the intimacy.