excerpt from 'Thirty Years of Musical Life in London, 1870-1900' pp. 261-3 (572 words)
excerpt from 'Thirty Years of Musical Life in London, 1870-1900' pp. 261-3 (572 words)
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I went to Paris expressly to attend this most interesting premiere, which took place on November 28, 1888. Seats were not only at a high premium but virtually unobtainable, and I owed the possession of mine to the courtesy of Jean de Reszke. Many a time I have looked upon the heavily gilded and slightly sombre interior of the Paris Opera-house, but never when it contained such an audience, such a gathering of famous men, of elegant, jewel-bedecked women, as appeared there on that memorable night. The grandes dames of the French aristocracy were present, displaying a sartorial splendor that recalled the halcyon days of the Second Empire, and what that implied I can only leave my fair readers to guess. On taking the conductor's seat, Gounod was overwhelmed with acclamations. His calm, serene countenance wore an encouraging smile, and no one would have dreamed that the veteran composer was as anxious as though it were the first performance of a brand-new opera. At the outset, indeed, every one was nervous. Many years had elapsed since Mme. Patti had appeared at the Opera, and, often as she had enacted Juliette - this was the first time she had sung the part in French; in the waltz air — long one of her favorite concert-pieces — she did what was for her the rarest imaginable thing: she made a slip that carried her four bars ahead of the accompaniment (“Elle sautait quatre mesures!” as Gounod subsequently put it). Yet, thanks to her extraordinary presence of mind, the great prima donna regained her place so quickly that probably not twenty persons in the audience noticed the error. Moreover, she sang the whole waltz with such grace and entrain that an encore was inevitable, and on the repetition her rendering of it was the most brilliant I have ever heard her give. The youthfulness and charm of her assumption were astounding, while her fine acting in the more tragic scenes indicated a startling advance in histrionic force over her effort in the same opera ten years earlier. The new Romeo proved worthy of his association with this perfect Juliette. The mere fact that it was Jean de Reszke may be deemed sufficient guarantee of that to-day; it is not easy, however, to convey an idea of the striking revelation which his impersonation offered as, step by step, scene by scene, it unfolded itself for the first time upon the same plane with Patti's exquisite conception. Every attribute that distinguished the one arose, strong and clear-cut, in the other. Never before, at least in their operatic mold, had the hapless Veronese lovers been so faultlessly matched. Where was “monotony”, where was “tedium”, now? The interest of that delicious sequence of love-duets acquired a fresh intensity, and became “cumulative" in such a degree that the final scene in the tomb formed a veritable climax of musical as well as dramatic grandeur. The genius of Gounod stood in a new light; and his personal triumph on this occasion was a fitting corollary to that of the great artists who were his chief interpreters. Again and again did they appear before the curtain, hand in hand, an illustrious trio, — to be converted into an illustrious quartet after Edouard de Reszke had invested with his own unique organ notes the grateful phrases of Frere Laurent. From first to last, it was a historic performance. |
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