Читать книгу The Life of Hector Berlioz as Written by Himself in His Letters and Memoirs - Hector Berlioz - Страница 18

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Having secured orchestra, hall, chorus and parts, I only wanted soloists and a conductor. Bloc, of the Odéon, kindly accepted the latter post, and Alexis Dupont, although very unwell, took under his wing my Orpheus, which he had promised to sing before the jury of the Institute, had it been passed.

But unluckily his hoarseness got so much worse that, when the day came, he was unable to sing at all, so I was deprived of the wicked joy of putting on the programme, “Death of Orpheus; lyric poem, judged impossible of execution by the Académie des Beaux Arts, performed May 1828.”

A concert at which most of the executants helped for love and not for money naturally came off poorly in rehearsals; still, at the final rehearsal the overtures went fairly well, the Francs-Juges calling forth warm applause from the orchestra; the finale of the cantata being even more successful.

In this, after the Bacchanal, I made the wind carry on the motif of Orpheus’ love-song to a strange rushing undertone accompaniment by the rest of the players, while the dying wail of a far-off voice cries:

“Eurydice! Eurydice! hapless Eurydice!”

The wild sadness of my music-picture affected the whole orchestra, and they hailed it with wild enthusiasm. I am sorry now that I burnt it, it was worth keeping for those last pages alone.

With the exception of the Bacchanal—the famous piece in which the Conservatoire pianist got hung up—which was given with magnificent verve, nothing else in the cantata went very well and, thanks to Dupont’s illness, it was withdrawn. No doubt Cherubini preferred to say that it was because the orchestra could not play it.

In this cantata I first noticed how impossible conductors, unused to grand opera, find it to give way to the capricious and varied time of the recitative. Bloc, only accustomed to songs interspersed with spoken dialogue, was quite confused and, in some places, never got right at all, which made a learned periwigged amateur, who was at rehearsal, say, as he shook his head at me:

“Give me good old Italian cantatas! Now that’s the music that never bothers a conductor. It plays itself, it runs alone.”

“Yes,” I said dryly, “just as old donkeys plod round and round their treadmill.”

That is how I set about making friends.

Much against the grain I replaced Orpheus by the Resurrexit from my mass, and finally the concert came off.

Duprez, with his sweet, weak voice, did well in the aria; the overtures and Resurrexit were also a success, but the trio with chorus was a regular failure.

Not only was the trio miserably sung, but the chorus missed its entry and never came in at all!

I need hardly say that, after paying expenses, including the chorus that held its tongue in such a masterly manner, I was completely cleaned out.

However, the concert was a most useful lesson to me.

Not only did I become known to artists and public, which (pace Cherubini!) was a necessity, but, by doggedly facing the innumerable difficulties of a composer, I gained most valuable experience.

Several of the papers praised me, and even Fétis—Fétis, who afterwards[4] ... spoke of me, in a drawing-room, as a coming man.

But what of Miss Smithson?

Alas! I found out that, absorbed in her own engrossing work, of me and my concert she never heard a whisper!

To Humbert Ferrand.

“6th June 1828.—Are you parched with anxiety to know the result of my concert? I have only waited in order to send you the papers too. Triumphant success! After the applause at the general rehearsals of Friday and Saturday I had no more misgivings.

“Our beloved Pastoral was ruined by the chorus that only found out it had not come in just as the whole thing finished. But oh, the Resurrexit! and oh, the applause! As soon as one round finished another began until, being unable to stand it all, I doubled up on the kettle-drum and cried hard.

“Why were you not there, dear friend, faithful champion? I thought of and longed for you.

“At that wild trombone and ophicleide solo in the Francs-Juges, one of the first violins shouted:

“‘The rainbow is the bow of your violin, the winds play your organ and the seasons beat time!’

“Whereupon the whole orchestra started applauding a thought of which they could not possibly grasp the extent. The drummer by my side seized my arm, ejaculating, ‘Superb—sublime,’ while I tore my hair and longed to shriek:

“‘Monstrous! Gigantic! Horrible!’

“All the opera people were present, and there was no end to the congratulations. The most pleased were Habeneck, Dérivis, Dupont, Mademoiselle Mori, Hérold, etc. Nothing was lacking to my success—not even the criticisms of Panseron and Brugnières, who say my style is new and bad, and that such writing is not to be encouraged.

“My dear, dear fellow! in pity send me an opera. How can I write without a book? For heaven’s sake finish something!”