CLAUDE DEBUSSY

The first performance of Pelléas et Mélisande in Paris, on April 30th, 1902, was a very notable event in the history of French music; its importance can only be compared with that of the first performance of Lully's Cadmus et Hermione, Rameau's Hippolyte et Aricie, and Quick's Iphigénie en Aulide; and it may be looked upon as one of the three or four red-letter days in the calendar of our lyric stage.[199]

The success of Pelléas et Mélisande is due to many things. Some of them are trivial, such as fashion, which has certainly played its part here as it has in all other successes, though it is a relatively weak part; some of them are more important, and arise from something innate in the spirit of French genius; and there are also moral and aesthetic reasons for its success, and, in the widest sense, purely musical reasons.

In speaking of the moral reasons of the success of Pelléas et Mélisande, I would like to draw your attention to a form of thought which is not confined to France, but which is common nowadays in a section of the more distinguished members of European society, and which has found expression in Pelléas et Mélisande. The atmosphere in which Maeterlinck's drama moves makes one feel the melancholy resignation of the will to Fate. We are shown that nothing can change the order of events; that, despite our proud illusions, we are not master of ourselves, but the servant of unknown and irresistible forces, which direct the whole tragicomedy of our lives. We are told that no man is responsible for what he likes and what he loves—that is if he knows what he likes and loves—and that he lives and dies without knowing why.

The cause of the artistic success of Pelléas et Mélisande is of a more specially French character, and marks a reaction that is at once legitimate, natural, and inevitable; I would even say it is vital—a reaction of French genius against foreign art, and especially against Wagnerian art and its awkward representatives in France.

Genius has a right to be what it will—to trample underfoot, if it wishes, taste and morals and the whole of society. But when those who are not geniuses wish to do the same thing they only make themselves ridiculous and odious. There have been too many monkey Wagners in France. During the last ten or twenty years scarcely one French musician has escaped Wagner's influence. One understands only too well the revolt of the French mind, in the name of naturalness and good taste, against exaggerations and extremes of passion, whether sincere or not. Pelléas et Mélisande came as a manifestation of this revolt. It is an uncompromising reaction against over-emphasis and excess, and against anything that oversteps the limits of the imagination. This distaste of exaggerated words and sentiments results in what is like a fear of showing the feelings at all, even when they are most deeply stirred. With Debussy the passions almost whisper; and it is by the imperceptible vibrations of the melodic line that the love in the hearts of the unhappy couple is shown, by the timid "Oh, why are you going?" at the end of the first act, and the quiet "I love you, too," in the last scene but one. Think of the wild lamentations of the dying Ysolde, and then of the death of Mélisande, without cries and without words.

From a scenic point of view, Pelléas et Mélisande is also quite opposed to the Bayreuth ideal. The vast proportions—almost immoderate proportions—of the Wagnerian drama, its compact structure and the intense concentration of mind which from beginning to end holds these enormous works and their ideology together, and which is often displayed at the expense of the action and even the emotions, are as far removed as they can be from the French love of clear, logical, and temperate action. The little pictures of Pelléas et Mélisande, small and sharply cut, each marking without stress a new stage in the evolution of the drama, are built up in quite a different way from those of the Wagnerian theatre.

But it is especially by the manner in which they conceive the respective relationships of poetry and music to opera that the two composers differ. With Wagner, music is the kernel of the opera, the glowing focus, the centre of attraction; it absorbs everything, and it stands absolutely first. But that is not the French conception. The musical stage, as we conceive it in France (if not what we actually possess), should present such a combination of the arts as go to make an harmonious whole. We demand that an equal balance shall be kept between poetry and music; and if their equilibrium must be a little upset, we should prefer that poetry was not the loser, as its utterance is more conscious and rational. That was Gluck's aim; and because he realised it so well he gained a reputation among the French public which nothing will destroy. Debussy's strength lies in the methods by which he has approached this ideal of musical temperateness and disinterestedness, and in the way he has placed his genius as a composer at the service of the drama. He has never sought to dominate Maeterlinck's poem, or to swallow it up in a torrent of music; he has made it so much a part of himself that at the present time no Frenchman is able to think of a passage in the play without Debussy's music singing at the same time within him.

But apart from all these reasons that make the work important in the history of opera, there are purely musical reasons for its success, which are of deeper significance still.[200] Pelléas et Mélisande has brought about a reform in the dramatic music of France. This reform is concerned with several things, and, first of all, with recitative.

In France we have never had—apart from a few attempts in opéra-comique—a recitative that exactly expressed our natural speech. Lully and Rameau took for their model the high-flown declamation of the tragedy stage of their time. And French opera for the past twenty years has chosen a more dangerous model still—the declamation of Wagner, with its vocal leaps and its resounding and heavy accentuation. Nothing could be more displeasing in French. All people of taste suffered from it, though they did not admit it. At this time, Antoine, Gémier, and Guitry were making theatrical declamation more natural, and this made the exaggerated declamation of the French opera appear more ridiculous and more archaic still. And so a reform in recitative was inevitable. Jean-Jacques Rousseau had foreseen it in the very direction in which Debussy[201] has accomplished it. He showed in his Lettre sur la musique française that there was no connection between the inflections of French speech, "whose accents are so harmonious and simple," and "the shrill and noisy intonations" of the recitative of French opera. And he concluded by saying that the kind of recitative that would best suit us should "wander between little intervals, and neither raise nor lower the voice very much; and should have little sustained sound, no noise, and no cries of any description—nothing, indeed, that resembled singing, and little inequality in the duration or value of the notes, or in their intervals." This is the very definition of Debussy's recitative.

The symphonic fabric of Pelléas et Mélisande differs just as widely from Wagner's dramas. With Wagner it is a living thing that springs from one great root, a system of interlaced phrases whose powerful growth puts out branches in every direction, like an oak. Or, to take another simile, it is like a painting, which though it has not been executed at a single sitting, yet gives us that impression; and, in spite of the retouching and altering to which it has been subjected, still has the effect of a compact whole, of an indestructible amalgam, from which nothing can be detached. Debussy's system, on the contrary, is, so to speak, a sort of classic impressionism—an impressionism that is refined, harmonious, and calm; that moves along in musical pictures, each of which corresponds to a subtle and fleeting moment of the soul's life; and the painting is done by clever little strokes put in with a soft and delicate touch. This art is more allied to that of Moussorgski (though without any of his roughness) than that of Wagner, in spite of one or two reminiscences of Parsifal, which are only extraneous traits in the work. In Pelléas et Mélisande one finds no persistent leitmotifs running through the work, or themes which pretend to translate into music the life of characters and types; but, instead, we have phrases that express changing feelings, that change with the feelings. More than that, Debussy's harmony is not, as it was with Wagner and all the German school, a fettered harmony, tightly bound to the despotic laws of counterpoint; it is, as Laloy[202] has said, a harmony that is first of all harmonious, and has its origin and end in itself.

As Debussy's art only attempts to give the impression of the moment, without troubling itself with what may come after, it is free from care, and takes its fill in the enjoyment of the moment. In the garden of harmonies it selects the most beautiful flowers; for sincerity of expression takes a second place with it, and its first idea is to please. In this again it interprets the aesthetic sensualism of the French race, which seeks pleasure in art, and does not willingly admit ugliness, even when it seems to be justified by the needs of the drama and of truth. Mozart shared the same thought: "Music," he said, "even in the most terrible situations, ought never to offend the ear; it should charm it even there; and, in short, always remain music."

Lastly, the orchestration is purposely restrained, light, and divided, for Debussy has a fine disdain for those orgies of sound to which Wagner's art has accustomed us; it is as sober and polished as a fine classic phrase of the latter part of the seventeenth century. Ne quid nimis ("Nothing superfluous")is the artist's motto. Instead of amalgamating the timbres to get a massive effect, he disengages their separate personalities, as it were, and delicately blends them without changing their individual nature. Like the impressionist painters of to-day, he paints with primary colours, but with a delicate moderation that rejects anything harsh as if it were something unseemly.

I have given more than enough reasons to account for the success of Pelléas et Mélisande and the place that its admirers give it in the history of opera. There is every reason to believe that the composer has not been as acutely conscious of his musico-dramatic reform as his disciples have been. The reform with him has a more instinctive character; and that is what gives it its strength. It responds to an unconscious yet profound need of the French spirit. I would even venture to say that the historical importance of Debussy's work is greater than its artistic value. His personality is not without faults, and the gravest are perhaps negative faults—the absence of certain qualities, and even of the strong and extravagant faults which made the heroes of the art world, like Beethoven and Wagner. His voluptuous nature is at once changeable and precise; and his dreams are as clear and delicate as the art of a poet of the Pleiades in the sixteenth century, or of a Japanese painter. But among all his gifts he has a quality which I have not found so evident in any other musician—except perhaps Mozart; and this quality is a genius for good taste. Debussy has it in excess, so that he almost sacrifices the other elements of art to it, until the passionate force of his music, even its very life, seems to be impoverished. But one must not deceive oneself; that impoverishment is only apparent, and in all his work there are evidences that his passion is only veiled. It is only the trembling of the melodic line, or the orchestration which, like a shadow passing before the eyes, tells us of the drama that is being played in the hearts of his characters. This lofty shame of emotion is something as rare in opera as a Racine tragedy is in poetry—they are works of the same order, and both of them perfect flowers of the French spirit. Anyone who lives in foreign parts and is curious to know what France is like and understand her genius should study Pelléas et Mélisande as they would study Racine's Bérénice.

Not that Debussy's art entirely represents French genius any more than Racine's does; for there is quite another side to it which is not represented there; and that side is heroic action, the intoxication of reason and laughter, the passion for light, the France of Rabelais, Molière, Diderot, and in music, we will say—for want of better names—the France of Berlioz and Bizet. To tell the truth, that is the France I prefer. But Heaven preserve me from ignoring the other! It is the balance between these two Frances that makes French genius. In our contemporary music, Pelléas et Mélisande is at one end of the pole of our art and Carmen is at the other. The one is all on the surface, all life, with no shadows, and no underneath. The other is below the surface, bathed in twilight, and enveloped in silence. And this double ideal is the alternation between the gentle sunlight and the faint mist that veils the soft, luminous sky of the Isle of France.

I want to show, by this simple account, the splendid efforts made by musicians in France since 1870, and the growth of the faith and energy that has recreated French music. Such an awakening seems to me a fine thing to look upon, and very comforting. But few people in France realise it, outside a handful of musicians. It is to the public at large I dedicate these pages, so that they may know what a generation of artists with large hearts and strong determination have done for the honour of our race. The nation must not be allowed to forget what she owes to some of her sons.

But you must not accuse me of contradicting myself if in another work, which will appear at the same time as this one,[203] I indulge in some sarcasm over the failings and absurdities of French music to-day. I think that for the last ten years French musicians have rather imprudently and prematurely proclaimed their victory, and that, in a general way, their works—apart from three or four—are not worth as much as their endeavours. But their endeavours are heroic; and I know nothing finer in the whole history of France. May they continue! But that is only possible by practising a virtue—modesty. The completion of a part is not the completion of the whole.

The nature of Paris is so complex and unstable that one feels it is presumptuous to try to define it. It is a city so highly-strung, so ingrained with fickleness, and so changeable in its tastes, that a book that truly describes it at the moment it is written is no longer accurate by the time it is published. And then, there is not only one Paris; there are two or three Parises—fashionable Paris, middle-class Paris, intellectual Paris, vulgar Paris—all living side by side, but intermingling very little. If you do not know the little towns within the greatTown, you cannot know the strong and often inconsistent life of this great organism as a whole.

And this barometer is registering what is happening just now in the world of music, where a movement has been making itself felt in France for several years, whose effect other nations—perhaps more musical nations—will not feel till later. For the nations that have the strongest artistic traditions are not necessarily those that are likely to develop a new art. To do that one must have a virgin soil and spirits untrammelled by a heritage from the past. In 1870 no one had a lighter heritage to bear than French musicians; for the past had been forgotten, and such a thing as real musical education did not exist.

The musical weakness of that time was a very curious thing, and has given many people the impression that France has never been a musical nation. Historically speaking, nothing could be more wrong. Certainly there are races more gifted in music than others; but often the seeming differences of race are really the differences of time; and a nation appears great or little in its art according to what period of its history we consider. England was a musical nation until the Revolution of 1688; France was the greatest musical nation in the sixteenth century; and the recent publications of M. Henry Expert have given us a glimpse of the originality and perfection of the Franco-Belgian art during the Renaissance. But without going back as far as that, we find that Paris was a very musical town at the time of the Restoration, at the time of the first performance of Beethoven's symphonies at the Conservatoire, and the first great works of Berlioz, and the Italian Opera. In Berlioz's Mémoires you can read about the enthusiasm, the tears, and the feeling, that the performances of Gluck's and Spontini's operas aroused; and in the same book one sees clearly that this musical warmth lasted until 1840, after which it died down little by little, and was succeeded by complete musical apathy in the second Empire—an apathy from which Berlioz suffered cruelly, so that one may even say he died crushed by the indifference of the public. At this time Meyerbeer was reigning at the Opera. This incredible weakening of musical feeling in France, from 1840 to 1870, is nowhere better shown than in its romantic and realistic writers, for whom music was an hermetically sealed door. All these artists were "visuels," for whom music was only a noise. Hugo is supposed to have said that Germany's inferiority was measured by its superiority in music.[204] "The elder Dumas detested," Berlioz says, "even bad music."[205] The journal of the Goncourts calmly reflects the almost universal scorn of literary men for music. In a conversation which took place in 1862 between Goncourt and Théophile Gautier, Goncourt said:

"We confessed to him our complete infirmity, our musical deafness—we who, at the most, only liked military music."

And he added:

It needed a complete upheaval of the nation—a political and moral upheaval—to change that frame of mind. Some indication of the change was making itself felt in the last years of the second Empire. Wagner, who suffered from the hostility or indifference of the public in 1860, at the time when Tannhäuser was performed at the Opera, had already found, however, a few understanding people in Paris who discerned his genius and sincerely admired him. The most interesting of the writers who first began to understand musical emotion is Charles Baudelaire. In 1861, Pasdeloup gave the first Concerts populaires de musique classique at the Cirque d'Hiver. The Berlioz Festival, organised by M. Reyer, on March 23rd, 1870, a year after Berlioz's death, revealed to France the grandeur of its greatest musical genius, and was the beginning of a campaign of public reparation to his memory.

The disasters of the war in 1870 regenerated the nation's artistic spirit. Music felt its effect immediately.[207] On February 24th, 1871, the Société nationale de Musique was instituted to propagate the works of French composers; and in 1873 the Concerts de l'Association artistique were started under M. Colonne's direction; and these concerts, besides making people acquainted with the classic composers of symphonies and the masters of the young French school, were especially devoted to the honouring of Berlioz, whose triumph reached its summit about 1880.[208]

At this time Wagner's success, in its turn, began to make itself felt. For this M. Lamoureux, whose concerts began in 1882, was chiefly responsible. Wagner's influence considerably helped forward the progress of French art, and aroused a love for music in people other than musicians; and, by his all-embracing personality and the vast domain of his work in art, not only engaged the interest of the musical world, but that of the theatrical world, and the world of poetry and the plastic arts. One may say that from 1885 Wagner's work acted directly or indirectly on the whole of artistic thought, even on the religious and intellectual thought of the most distinguished people in Paris. And a curious historical witness of its world-wide influence and momentary supremacy over all other arts was the founding of the Revue Wagnérienne, where, united by the same artistic devotion, were found writers and poets such as Verlaine, Mallarmé, Swinburne, Villiers de l'Isle Adam, Huysmans, Richepin, Catulle Mendès, Édouard Rod, Stuart Merrill, Ephraim Mikhaël, etc., and painters like Fantin-Latour, Jacques Blanche, Odilon Redon; and critics like Teodor de Wyzewa, H.S. Chamberlain, Hennequin, Camille Benoît, A. Ernst, de Fourcaud, Wilder, E. Schuré, Soubies, Malherbe, Gabriel Mourey, etc. These writers not only discussed musical subjects, but judged painting, literature, and philosophy, from a Wagnerian point of view. Hennequin compared the philosophic systems of Herbert Spencer and Wagner. Teodor de Wyzewa made a study of Wagnerian literature—not the literature that commentated and the paintings that illustrated Wagner's works, but the literature and the painting that were inspired by Wagner's principles—from Egyptian statuary to Degas's paintings, from Homer's writings to those of Villiers de l'Isle Adam! In a word, the whole universe was seen and judged by the thought of Bayreuth. And though this folly scarcely lasted more than three or four years—the length of the life of that little magazine—Wagner's genius dominated nearly the whole of French art for ten or twelve years.[209] An ardent musical propaganda by means of concerts was carried on among the public; and the young intellectuals of the day were won over. But the finest service that Wagnerism rendered to French art was that it interested the general public in music; although the tyranny its influence exercised became, in time, very stifling.

Then, in 1890, there were signs of a movement that was in revolt against its despotism. The great wind from the East began to drop, and veered to the North. Scandinavian and Russian influences were making themselves felt. An exaggerated infatuation for Grieg, though limited to a small number of people, was an indication of the change in public taste. In 1890, César Franck died in Paris. Belgian by birth and temperament, and French in feeling and by musical education, he had remained outside the Wagnerian movement in his own serene and fecund solitude. To his intellectual greatness and the charm his personal genius held for the little band of friends who knew and revered him he added the authority of his knowledge. Unconsciously he brought back to us the soul of Sebastian Bach, with its infinite richness and depth; and through this he found himself the head of a school (without having wished it) and the greatest teacher of contemporary French music. After his death, his name was the means of rallying together the younger school of musicians. In 1892, the Chanteurs de Saint-Gervais, under the direction of M. Charles Bordes, reinstated to honour and popularised Gregorian and Palestrinian music; and, following the initiative of their director, the Schola Cantorum was founded in 1894 for the revival of religious music. Ambition grew with success; and from the Schola sprang the École Supérieure de Musique, under the direction of Franck's most famous pupil, M. Vincent d'Indy. This school, founded on a solid knowledge, not only of the classics, but of the primitives in music, took from its very beginning in 1900 a frankly national character, and was in some ways opposed to German art. At the same time, performances of Bach and seventeenth-and eighteenth-century music became more and more frequent; and more intimate relationship with the artists of other countries, repeated visits of the great Kapellmeister, foreign virtuosi and composers (especially Richard Strauss), and, lastly, of Russian composers, completed the education of the Parisian musical public, who, after repeated rebukes from the critics, became conscious of the awakening of a national personality, and of an impatient desire to free itself from German tutelage. By turns it gratefully and warmly received M. Bruneau's Le Rêve (1891), M. d'Indy's Fervaal (1898), M. Gustave Charpentier's Louise (1900)—all of which seemed like works of liberation. But, as a matter of fact, these lyric dramas were by no means free from foreign influences, and especially from Wagnerian influences. M. Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande, in 1902, seemed to mark more truly the emancipation of French music. From this time on, French music felt that it had left school, and claimed to have founded a new art, which reflected the spirit of the race, and was freer and suppler than the Wagnerian art. These ideas, which were seized upon and enlarged by the press, brought about rather quickly a conviction in French artists of France's superiority in music. Is that conviction justified? The future alone can tell us. But one may see by this brief outline of events how real is the evolution of the musical spirit in France since 1870, in spite of the apparent contradictions of fashion which appear on the surface of art. It is the spirit of France that is, after long oppression and by a patient but eager initiation, realising its power and wishing to dominate in its turn.

It is not by any means the oldest and most celebrated musical institutions which have taken the largest share in this evolution of music in the last thirty years.

The Conservatoire national de Musique et de Déclamation, which dates from the last years of the Ancien Régime and the Revolution, was designed by its patriotic and-democratic origin to serve the cause of national art and free progress.[210]

It was for a long time the corner-stone of the edifice of music in Paris. But although it has always numbered in its ranks many illustrious and devoted professors—among whom it recognised, a little late, the founder of the young French school, César Franck—and though the majority of artists who have made a name in French music have received its teaching, and the list of laureates of Rome who have come from its composition classes includes all the heads of the artistic movement to-day in all its diversity, and ranges from M. Massenet to M. Bruneau, and from M. Charpentier to M. Debussy—in spite of all this, it is no secret that, since 1870, the official action with regard to the movement amounts to almost nothing; though we must at least do it justice, and say that it has not hindered it.[211]

But if the spirit of this academy has often destroyed the effect of the excellent teaching there, by making success in academic competitions the chief aim of the professors and their pupils, yet a certain freedom has always reigned in the institution. And though this freedom is mainly the result of indifference, it has, however, permitted the more independent temperaments to develop in peace—from Berlioz to M. Ravel. One should be grateful for this. But such virtues are too negative to give the Conservatoire a high place in the musical history of the Third Republic; and it is only lately, under the direction of M. Gabriel Fauré, that it has endeavoured, not without difficulty, to get back its place at the head of French art, which it had lost, and which others had taken.

The Société des Concerts du Conservatoire, founded in 1828 under the direction of Habeneck, has had its hour of glory in the musical history of Paris. It was through this society that Beethoven's greatness was revealed to France.[212] It was at the Conservatoire that the early important works of Berlioz were first given: La Fantastique, Harold, and Roméo et Juliette. It was there, nearer our own time, that Saint-Saëns's Symphonie avec Orgue and César Franck's Symphonie were played for the first time. But for a long time the Conservatoire seemed to take its name too literally, and to restrict its sphere to that of a museum for classical music.

In later years, however, the Société des Concerts, with M. Marty, began to consider new works. Its orchestra, composed of eminent instrumentalists, enjoys a classical fame; though it is now no longer alone in the excellence of its performances, and has perhaps lost a little the secret that it claimed to possess for the interpretation of great classical works. It excels in works of a neo-classic character, like those of M. Saint-Saëns, which are stronger in style and taste than in life and passion. The Conservatoire concerts have also a relative superiority over other concerts in Paris in the performance of choral works, which up to the present have been very second-rate. But these concerts are not easy of access for the general public, as the number of seats for sale is very limited. And so the society is representative of a little public whose taste is, broadly speaking, conservative and official; and the noise of the strife outside its doors only reaches its ears slowly, and with a deadened sound.

The influence of the Conservatoire is, in music especially, an influence of the past and of the Government. One may say much the same of the Opera. This ancient association, which bears the imposing name of Académie nationale de Musique and dates from 1669, is a sort of national institution which is more concerned with the history of official art than with living art. The satire with which Jean-Jacques describes, in his Nouvelle Héloïse, the stiff solemnity and mournful pomp of its performances has not lost much of its truth. What is lacking in the Opera to-day is the enthusiasm that accompanied its former musical struggles in the times of the "Encyclopédistes" and the "guerre des coins." The great battles of art are now fought outside its doors; and it has become by degrees a showy salon, a little faded perhaps, where the public is more interested in itself than in the performance. In spite of the enormous sums that it swallows up every year (nearly four million francs),[213] only one or two new pieces are produced in a year, and they are rarely works that are representative of the modern school. And though it has at last admitted Wagner's dramas into its repertory, one can no longer consider these works, half a century old, to be in the vanguard of music. The most esteemed masters of the French school, such as Massenet, Reyer, Chausson, and Vincent d'Indy, had to seek refuge in the Théâtre de la Monnaie at Brussels before they could get their works received at the Opera in Paris. And the classical composers fare no better. Neither Fidelio nor Gluck's tragedies—with the exception of Armide, which was put on under pressure of fashion—are represented; and when by chance they give Freischütz or Don Juan, one wonders if it would not have been better to let them rest in oblivion, rather than treat them sacrilegiously by adding, cutting, introducing ballets and new recitatives, and deforming their style so as to bring them "up to date."[214]

In spite of the changes of taste and the campaign of the press, the Opera has remained to this day as it was in the time of Meyerbeer and Gounod and their disciples. But it would be foolish to pretend that it has not its public. The receipts show well enough that Faust is in greater favour than Siegfried or Tristan, not to speak of the more recent works of the new French school, which cannot be acclimatised there.

Without doubt, the enormous stage at the Opera does not lend itself well to modern musical dramas, which are intimate and concentrated, and would be lost in its immense space, which is more adapted for formal processions like the marches in the Prophète and Aïda. Besides this, there is the conventional acting of the majority of the singers, the dull lifelessness of the choruses, the defective acoustics, and the exaggerated utterance and gestures of the actors, demanded by the great dimensions of the place—all of which is a serious obstacle to the conception of a living and simple art. But the chief obstacle will always lie in the very nature of such a theatre—a theatre of luxury and vanity, created for a set of snobs, whose least interest is the music, who have not enough intellect to create a fashion, but who servilely follow every fashion after it is thirty years old. Such a theatre no longer counts in the history of French music; and its next directors will need a vast amount of ingenuity and energy to get a semblance of life into such a dead colossus.

But it is quite another affair with the Opéra-Comique. This theatre has taken a very active part in the development of modern music. Without renouncing its classic traditions, or its delightful repertory of the old opéra-comiques, it has had understanding enough, under the judicious management of M. Albert Carré, to hold itself open for any interesting productions in dramatic music. It takes no side among the different schools; and the representatives of the old-fashioned light opera with their songs elbow the leaders of the advanced school. No association has done more important work, among musical dramas as well as musical comedies, during the last twenty years. In this theatre, which produced Carmen in 1875, Manon in 1884, and the Roi d'Ys in 1888, were played the principal dramas of M. Bruneau, as well as M. Charpentier's Louise, M. Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande, and M. Dukas's Ariane et Barbebleue. It may seem astonishing that such works should have found a place at the Opéra-Comique and not at the Opera. But if two musical theatres of different kinds exist, one of which pretends to have the monopoly of great art, while the other with a simpler and more intimate character seeks only to please, it is always the latter that has a better chance of development and of making new discoveries; for the first is oppressed by traditions that become ever stiffer and more pedantic, while the other with its simplicity and lack of pretension is able to accommodate itself to any manner of life. How many artists have revolutionised their times while they were merely looked upon as people who amused! Frescobaldi and Philipp Emanuel Bach brought fresh life to art, but were scorned by the so-called representatives of fine art; Mozart's opere buffe have more of truth and life in them than his opere serie; and there is as much dramatic power in an opéra-comique like Carmen as in all the repertory of grand Opera to-day. And so the Opéra-Comique theatre has become the home of the boldest experiments in musical drama. The most daring or the most violent ventures into musical realism, after the manner of Charpentier or Bruneau, and the subtle fantasies of a delicate art of dreams, like that of Debussy, have found a welcome there. It has also been open to various kinds of foreign art: Humperdinck's Hänsel und Gretel, Verdi's Falstaff, the works of Puccini, Mascagni, and the young Italian school, Richard Strauss's Feuersnot, Rimsky-Korsakow's Snégourotchka, have all been played. And they have even given the classic masterpieces of opera there: Fidelio, Orfeo, Alceste, the two Iphigénies; and taken more pains with them and mounted them with more pious zeal than they do at the Opera. The operas themselves are more at home there, too, for the size of the theatre is more like that of the eighteenth-century theatres. It is true that the stage rather lacks depth; but the ingenuity of the director and the admirable scenic artists he employs has succeeded in making one forget this defect, and accomplished marvels. No theatre in Paris has more artistic staging, and some of the scenery that has been designed lately is a masterpiece of its kind. The Opéra-Comique has also the advantage of excellent conductors, and one of them, M. Messager, who is now Director, has, by his clever interpretations, greatly contributed to the success of the works of the new school.