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Page 75
The failure of Bizet's "Carmen" is said to have hastened the
composer's death, which took place within three months after
the first performance of the opera. As Saint-Sa�ns wrote at
the time, in his disgust at the French public: "The fat, ugly
bourgeois ruminates in his padded stall, regretting separation
from his kind. He half opens a glassy eye, munches a bonbon,
then sleeps again, thinking that the orchestra is a-tuning." And
yet, even Saint-Sa�ns, whose name became known chiefly through
Liszt's help, and whose operas and symphonies were given
in Germany before they were known in France, even he is one
of the most ardent adherents to the "anti-foreigner" cry in
France. In my opinion, this respect for and attempt to please
this grossly ignorant French public is and has been one of the
great devitalizing influences which hamper the French composer.
Charles Gounod was born in 1818, in Paris. His father was
an engraver and died when Gounod was very young. The boy
received his first music lessons from his mother. He was
admitted to the Conservatoire at sixteen, and studied with
Hal�vy and Lesueur. In 1839 he gained _the Prix de Rome_,
and spent three years in Rome, studying ecclesiastical
music. In 1846 he contemplated becoming a priest, and wrote
a number of religious vocal works, published under the name
Abb� C. Gounod. In 1851 the article I referred to appeared,
and such was its effect on Gounod, that within four months his
first opera "Sapho" was given (April, 1851). A year later this
was followed by some music for a tragedy (Poussard's "Ulysse"
at the Com�die Fran�aise), and in 1854 by the five-act opera "La
nonne sanglante." These were only very moderately successful;
and so Gounod turned to the op�ra comique, and wrote music to
an adaptation of Moli�re's "Medecin malgr� lui." This became
very popular, and paved the way for his "Faust," which was
produced at the Op�ra Comique in 1859. In the op�ra comique,
as we know, the singing was always interspersed with spoken
dialogue. Thus, this opera, as we know it, dates from its
preparation for the Grand Opera ten years later, 1869. Ten
months after "Faust" was given he used a fable of Lafontaine
for a short light opera, "Philemon and Baucis."
In the meantime, "Faust" began to bring him encouragement,
and his next opera was on the subject of the "Queen of Sheba"
(1862). This being unsuccessful, he wrote two more light operas,
"Mireille" and "La colombe" (1866). The next was "Romeo et
Juliette" (1867). This was very successful, and marks the
culmination of Gounod's success as an opera composer. In
1870 he went to London, where he made his home for a number
of years. His later operas, "Cinq-Mars" (1877), "Polyeucte"
(1878), and "Le tribut de Zamora" (1881), met with small
success, and have rarely been given.
In his later years, as we know, he showed his early predilection
for religious music; and his oratorios "The Redemption,"
"Mors et Vita," and several masses have been given with
varying success. Perhaps one of the greatest points ever made
in Gounod's favour by a critic was that by Pougin, who asks what
other composer could have written two such operas as "Faust" and
"Romeo et Juliette" and still have them essentially different
musically. The "Garden Scene" in the one and the "Balcony Scene"
in the other are identical, so far as the feeling of the play
is concerned; also the duel of Faust and Valentine and Romeo
and Tybalt.
Ambroise Thomas's better works, "Mignon" and "Hamlet," may
be said to be more or less echoes of Gounod; and while his
"Francesca da Rimini," which was brought out in 1882, was by
far his most ambitious work, it never became known outside of
Paris. Ambroise Thomas was born in 1811, and died within a year
of Gounod. His chief merit was in his successful direction
of the Conservatoire, to which he succeeded Auber in 1871.
Georges Bizet (his name was Alexander C�sar Leopold) was born in
1838, in Paris. His father was a poor singing teacher, and his
mother a sister-in-law of Delsarte; she was a first-prize piano
pupil of the Conservatoire. As a boy, Bizet was very precocious,
and entered the Conservatoire as a pupil of Marmontel when he
was ten. He took successively the first prizes for solf�ge,
piano, organ, and fugue, and finally the _Prix de Rome_ in
1857, when he was nineteen years old. The latter kept him
in Rome until 1861, when he returned to Paris and gave piano
and harmony lessons and arranged dance music for brass bands,
a _m�tier_ not unknown to either Wagner or Raff.
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