(c) THE FRENCH SCHOOL (RAMEAU TO AMBROISE THOMAS).

Rameau—Divergence of methods—The successors of Gluck and Piccini—Méhul—Cherubini and Spontini—Meyerbeer—Auber—Gounod—Bizet—Reasons for the popularity of Faust and Carmen—Offenbach—Délibes and Lalo—Thomas.

The Italian Lully had no small share in founding what afterwards became a school of Grand Opera in Paris. As we have already said, he was so jealous of his fame that he brooked no rivals; so powerful was he, too, at Court that he was instrumental in keeping in the background every other aspirant to fame in his own particular line. So that we have to wait for some years before we find any notable name in France so far as operatic development is concerned.

Rameau is the next composer to be mentioned. His fame is not so great as that of his predecessor Lully, nor are his works so full of vivacity and brightness. But he was a capable and skilled workman, and did much for French opera; his music is pompous and antique, nor does it compare in interest with that of the versatile Jean Jacques Rousseau, who wrote at least one work, Le Devin du Village, which enjoyed very many years of popularity.

The last-named work, moreover, did not pretend to belong to the genus “Grand Opera,” but was an “Opera Comique,” a branch of art in which the French have always excelled: indeed, from about this date (1760 circa) opera in France was diverging into two lines, one looking towards Grand Opera, and taking exalted, serious, or tragic themes for treatment, the other having the production of Comic Opera, with all its variety of scope and more human subjects of interest, as its aim; the course of these two must be followed, as indeed they ran to a great extent, side by side.

Much was due to the opening, in 1762, of the new “Opera Comique” Theatre in Paris, at which composers obtained a hearing, whose music was not fit for the Opera House proper, and who would not, moreover, have attempted work in the larger and more serious forms.

Such men were Monsigny (1729-1817), Grétry (1741-1813), and Philidor (1726-1797). They were at work in Paris shortly after the Gluck-Piccini contest, and wrote operas which pleased by their simplicity, brightness, and tunefulness; all of them being of the order of the German “Singspiel”—i.e., with spoken dialogue. But it must be remembered that these composers, although they flourished subsequent to Gluck, had not imbibed his principles; nor did the light forms of opera which they, in the main, set themselves to write, leave much room for the exemplification of such. Consequently, when the operas of Mozart, constructed with artistic unity of principle and upon logical lines, began to obtain a hearing in Paris, such works as theirs soon dropped out of fashion.

Of more importance is Méhul, who, while still writing in the main for the Opera Comique, did so in a thoroughly artistic manner, taking Gluck as his model. He was a man of considerable originality, who made the curious experiment of leaving out the violins of the orchestra throughout the whole of his opera Uthal, with the idea of giving a cold, vague effect. However successful in that respect, it may be safely prophesied that this was done by Méhul for the first and the last time. His most popular work was Joseph, a story dealing with the Bible narrative. One of its tunes is well known to pianists through the fact that Weber wrote a set of very interesting pianoforte variations upon it.

We must now turn our attention to two Italian composers, who belong to France through the fact of their having produced almost all their important works on the boards of either the Opera Comique or the Académie. Cherubini (1760-1842) wrote two or three great works, such as Les deux Journées (1800), Les Abencerages (1813), and Ali Baba (1833). The first-named, known in England as The Water Carrier, although classed as opera comique, approximates in its music more to what Beethoven wrote in Fidelio and Weber in Der Freischütz than to the ephemeral productions which were the fashion of the hour. Cherubini’s music is that of a man who preceded all composers of the “romantic” period, and therefore sounds antique and colourless to modern ears; nevertheless it is solid and good, and far superior to much of the same date.

Spontini (1774-1851) is spoken of by Naumann the historian in the following words:—“No other composer has succeeded in infusing into the music the spirit of heroism and glory which prompted the victorious exploits of Napoleon, in portrayal of which Spontini created a kind of artistic expression, the influence of which has extended to the present day.” His chief works, replete with grandeur and magnificence, are La Vestale (1807), Fernand Cortez (written at the request of Napoleon in 1809 on a Spanish subject, partly with the idea of conciliating the Spanish), and Olympia (1819).

Other composers of the period include Boieldieu (1775-1834), who wrote the world famous La Dame Blanche, Isouard (1777-1818), Adam, Halèvy, Hérold (the composer of Zampa), and many another. The names of these composers pale before that Titan of French Grand Opera, whose advent upon the scenes we must now note—Meyerbeer.

Meyerbeer, a German by birth, having first seen the light of day in Berlin, and, withal of Jewish origin, produced operas in Italy, Germany, and France; his choicest efforts were lavished upon his operas for the Paris Académie, and his name is now always classed with French music. He had wonderful gifts, which he sometimes abused, for his music seeks the effective, irrespective of its artistic unity or the reverse.

In his lifetime he was lauded to the skies, and afterwards just as bitterly denounced. Wagner, who really learned much from him, speaks of him as “a miserable music-maker, a Jew banker to whom it occurred to compose operas.” It must be admitted that Meyerbeer’s music is often vulgar and conventional, but his masterpiece, The Huguenots, contains some fine writing, and is specially noticeable for the clever and striking use made at several points in the progress of the story of Luther’s grand old hymn-tune, “Ein Feste Burg.” This chorale is used as a kind of leit-motif for the persecuted Huguenots, and forms a most effective foil to much of the other music of the opera.

The opening of the Chorale, from Meyerbeer’s “Les Huguenots.”

In his most famous works, Robert le Diable (1831), Les Huguenots (1836), Le Prophète (1849), Dinorah (1859), and L’Africaine (1864), Meyerbeer shows his knowledge of effect, both vocally and orchestrally. Although over-elaborate and pompous, these operas are still performed at fairly frequent intervals, seeing that they are effective from a stage point of view, and also extremely gratifying to the singers, without descending to that inanity which so often characterizes operatic music written to please vocalists.

Passing over that eccentric genius, Hector Berlioz, who made a few bids for popularity in operatic composition, with remarkable lack of success, we must notice the brilliant Auber, whose light-hearted music filled the Opera Comique audiences with delight for many years. Although only known to us in England by the overtures which are so popular with sea-side orchestras and amateur bands, his operas are still popular enough on the Continent. He wrote both for the Grand Opera and the Opera Comique, his most lasting successes being achieved in the latter field; of the larger type, Masaniello is the best known, and is important as inaugurating a new career for French grand opera, in so far as it breaks from the classic model of Gluck and his followers and incorporates elements of the newer romance school. Of the lighter works, Fra Diavolo is one of the most successful. Auber will be remembered not only for the vivacity and brightness of his music, but also for his fascinating and clever employment of the orchestra, for which he wrote with consummate ease and invariable excellence.

In Gounod we meet the composer of Faust, probably the most popular opera that the world has ever known. The reasons for its popularity are not hard to seek—an easily understood and well-known story, a succession of bright, melodious, and yet good musical numbers, and an amount of opportunity for the stage management beyond the average—all these things have tended to keep Faust constantly before the opera-goer.

Faust was produced in 1859, and although its orchestration may sound thin, and its melodies appear ultra-square to those who are accustomed to feast on the sonorous melody of Wagner, it yet pleases and is likely to please. It is the best of the Gounod operas, and quite outpaces other efforts by the same composer. Of these, Romeo and Juliet is the most often heard, but there are others, such as The Mock Doctor, Philémon and Baucis, and Mireille, which latter Gounod always said was his best opera.

If Faust holds first place for popularity with the masses, it is closely followed in this respect by the Carmen of Bizet, a work of greater dramatic power, and offering much that is fresh in its scoring and its ingenious use of Spanish colouring and rhythms. The performance of Faust or Carmen is fairly certain to fill any provincial opera-house, and we find these works to be very often the mainstay of the touring companies. Indeed, statistics show the number of performances of these works to exceed that of all other operas, and in 1881 the number of times Carmen had been performed exceeded, as was ascertained in Berlin, that of all the representations of Weber and Wagner’s works put together. But Wagner’s music enjoys so large a share of public attention at the present time that the proportion of performances of these operas is probably now considerably less.

Contemporary with Gounod and Bizet was Jules Offenbach, a composer of comparatively low aim but with a certain amount of musicianly skill and a sure knowledge of effect. His operas are mostly comic, but in their day they enjoyed a furore by no means limited to the Parisian public. His output was enormous, nearly seventy operas standing to his name; of these the most famous is Orphée aux enfers; his most ambitious effort, Les Contes d’Hoffmann, was only completed just before his death. Written only for the pleasure of the time, there is little of any lasting merit in his work.

Of higher standard, although his attention was in the main given to comic opera, is the music of Léo Délibes (1836-91), composer of the operas Le Roi l’a dit (1873), Lakmé (1883), and the ballet, Coppélia. Lalo (1823-92) is best known by his work, Le Roi d’ Ys, often staged and containing much good music. Victor Massé (1822-76) composed Paul et Virginie and many other works which gained popularity.

With brief mention of Ambroise Thomas, a musician much influenced by Gounod, who wrote two works at least of enduring quality, Mignon (1866) and Hamlet (1868) for the French opera, we must for the present leave this school of composition, returning to it anon to make mention of a number of brilliant men of talent still happily alive and at work to-day adding their quota to the fabric reared by their predecessors.