Chapter Four
Berlioz’s Directorship of the Théâtre-Italien
Regardez le plus souvent possible les mouvements de votre chef!
—Berlioz, Lélio ou Le Retour à la vie
Berlioz, I confess, never became director of the Théâtre-Italien. That he nearly occupied this position, however, seems worth a few minutes’ traffic upon this stage, for the tale speaks in a way that others do not to the composer’s standing in the artistic world of the eighteen-thirties and to his relationship at the time with French officialdom. Indeed, the tale overlaps with the most fateful episode of his career, the failure at the Opéra, in 1838–1839, of the “opéra semi-sérieux” Benvenuto Cellini. If the reasons for that failure were partly political, it was politics pure and simple that led to Berlioz’s non-directorship of the Théâtre-Italien. It is my intention in these pages to review the story in the light of documents previously unnoticed or unmentioned in the standard literature.
After a performance of
Don Giovanni, on Sunday, January 14, 1838, a terrible fire broke out in the Salle Favart, home to the Théâtre-Italien since November 1825, when the building was purchased and refurbished at the expense of the government of King Charles X. Attempting to leap to safety from the balcony that gave on to the Place des Italiens, Carlo Severini, co-director of the company, hit his head, broke his back, and died moments later at the Hôtel des Italiens next-door. Severini’s partner, Édouard Robert, escaped by the skin of his teeth. Others living in the building, or owning adjoining boutiques, saw their properties incinerated. “Hardly had the smoke dissipated,” writes D. Kern Holoman in his perceptive biography of the composer, “than [Berlioz] was writing to the Ministry [of the Interior] to secure the privilege of reorganizing the theater.” Berlioz’s proposal was “on the verge of ministerial approval,” even though the composer, in Holoman’s view, was an artist “ill equipped for such tedious and ultimately trivial pursuits.”
1 Holoman, Berlioz, 187. Here Holoman echoes Jacques Barzun, who suggested that Berlioz’s failure to obtain the directorship of the Théâtre-Italien was a “blessing in disguise,” for it spared him “endless worries of an alien kind.”
2 Barzun, Berlioz and the Romantic Century, 1:291. Similar sentiments were earlier expressed by Adolphe Boschot, whose hard-to-explain cynicism toward the composer so often mars his otherwise important work. Indeed, Boschot’s account of the matter of the “Italiens,” flawed though it is, is rather more detailed than those of Berlioz’s two great modern biographers: their two-page treatments confirm an admirable preference for art over administration.
3 Barzun, 1:290–291; Cairns, Berlioz, 2:158–159.From my perspective, however, Berlioz’s adventure with the Théâtre-Italien—the name is often conflated with the building it inhabited but refers first and foremost to the Italian opera
company—was not “alien,” because his talents as an impresario had to have been formidable. And the pursuit of the directorship of what was arguably the then most elegant and successful theater of the French capital, despite Holoman’s witty allusion to the popular parlor game, hardly seems to merit the epithet “trivial.” The venue of the revivals in the eighteen-thirties of major works by Bellini and Donizetti, and of the premières of newly commissioned works by Bellini (
I Puritani;
1835), Donizetti (
Marina Faliero;
1835), and Mercadante (
I Briganti;
1836), was no out-of-the-way outfit: these works, beyond their intrinsic merits, “helped set the stage,” as Philip Gossett long ago put it, “for the advent of Giuseppe Verdi.”
4 Gossett, “Music at the Théâtre-Italien,” in Bloom, Music in Paris, 363. Privileged to give Italian opera three times a week six months a year, the director of the Théâtre-Italien was furthermore permitted to give foreign works of a different sort during the remaining six months: German opera, for example, highlighting works by Beethoven and Weber, and English drama—something hardly insignificant to the husband of an Anglo-Irish actress whom the French had much admired and whose career Berlioz at the time was still attempting to advance. As director of the Théâtre-Italien, then, Berlioz might have overseen performances of a
variety of works beyond those by Rossini, Bellini, and Donizetti that we tend too facilely to say were antithetical to the French composer’s taste and aesthetic; he might have secured a generous income that would have allowed him greater freedom to compose; and he might have found a setting for the display of the talents of his wife, who, had she flourished, would have been a partner more satisfied and more satisfying than she was soon to become.
In the aftermath of the fire, the surviving director, Édouard Robert, newly associated with Louis Viardot (the respected man of letters who would marry Pauline Garcia, two years later, in 1840), immediately began an effort to maintain control of the company. On February 6, 1838, Robert, who had rapidly managed to get his operation up and running in the Théâtre-Ventadour, wrote to Rossini:
Nothing has as yet been decided as concerns the future of the Théâtre-Italien. The Commission de Surveillance de l’Opéra has been asked by the Minister of the Interior to review the matter, and you surely know the make-up of that group. Most of them are mortal enemies of the Théâtre-Italien. Two days ago, however, Viardot appeared before them on my behalf, because, with my recent injuries and my gout, I am still confined to my bed. He distinguished himself by the force of his argumentation and explained perfectly the validity of my right [to maintain the
privilège of the theater]. He put me very much in contention and thus left the members of the commission uncertain as to how to proceed.
5 AnF, AJ13 1160. The letter is printed in Soubies, Le Théâtre-Italien, 101–102.Édouard Robert and Louis Viardot were eventually successful, during the course of the 1838–1839 season, in maintaining the directorship of the Théâtre-Italien. But this outcome, the
raison d’être of the present chapter, was for some time in doubt. The Minister of the Interior, Comte de Montalivet, did indeed call upon the Commission de Surveillance de l’Opéra to advise him as to the long-term future of the theater. This powerful group oversaw the contracts of the several directors to whom an exclusive
privilège or commercial concession had been granted, in a system created by Napoléon, in 1806, that was devised to ensure financial success by drastically limiting the number of theaters officially permitted to offer dramatic entertainments in the capital city. Established on January 29, 1831, the current Commission Spéciale acted as the administrative overseer, not only for the Théâtre-Italien, but also for the Opéra and the other royal theaters as well as for the Conservatoire, serving as intermediary, as it were, between those in music and those in power, and establishing the relative magnitude of these institutions by establishing the magnitude of the budget of each.
6 AnF, F21 4633 (the minutes of the Commission Spéciale).In early January and February of 1838, Berlioz argued against the possible reunion of the Théâtre-Italien and the Opéra, submitted requests to obtain the
privilège of the Théâtre-Italien, and made a detailed proposal to exploit it in a newly renovated Salle Ventadour.
7 CG 2:404–405, 409–410, 414–420, 731–735. (In the letter to Rossini cited above, Édouard Robert suggests that the favored candidate—who would rebuild the Salle Favart—was François-Louis Crosnier, at the time co-director with Alphonse-Théodore Cerfbeer of the Opéra-Comique.) The several letters Berlioz addressed to the Minister of the Interior, on January 16, February 5, and February 10, and the documents specifying the changes he would make and the economies he would achieve, have been available since the publication in 1975 of the second volume of Berlioz’s
Correspondance générale.
According to the report in
Le Figaro of February 16, 1838, there were, in addition to Berlioz, Robert, and Crosnier and Cerfbeer, four other candidates for the directorship of the Théâtre-Italien: Henri Duponchel, director of the Opéra; Charles-Gaspard Delestre-Poirson, director of the Gymnase-Dramatique; the playwright Ferdinand de Villeneuve, director of the Théâtre de la Renaissance; and the music publisher Maurice Schlesinger. On March 19, 1838, Berlioz explained his hopes to his father: “The businessmen who selected me and who have asked for the directorship in my name have promised me a fixed salary of ten thousand francs and one fifth of the revenues produced by the theater.”
8 CG 2:430. On March 29, 1838, Berlioz suggested to the Minister (the letter has not been preserved) that if objection were raised to his plan of renovating the Salle Ventadour, he and his associates (whose names, with one exception, we simply do not know) would agree to construct an entirely
new theater.
9 CG 2:442n. Shortly thereafter, however, Berlioz, like Crosnier before him, proposed to rebuild the burnt-out Théâtre Favart. This is the proposal that Comte de Montalivet determined to support.
Montalivet had been Minister of the Interior, briefly, in the autumn of 1830; he assumed the office twice again in 1836 and 1837–1839. He was the first Minister to take charge of the operatic affairs of the capital after the Revolution of 1830, when the former director of the department of fine arts, Sosthène de La Rochefoucauld, was obliged to resign, and was thus not unfamiliar with such reorganizational matters. It was Montalivet, for example, who negotiated the government’s agreement with the most famous impresario of the decade, Louis Véron;
10 AnF, AJ13 180, II, and 187, I. and it was Montalivet who established the first Commission de Surveillance de l’Opéra, in February 1831. Montalivet was an early supporter of the July Monarchy, remained a devout
orléaniste, became one of those who accompanied Louis-Philippe out of Paris in 1848, and watched over the royal family’s interests for some years to come. Berlioz may have made Montalivet’s acquaintance through his uncle, Félix Marmion, who knew the man and found him sympathetic when Berlioz was stunned—as we know from his revenge fantasy,
Le Premier Opéra—by the sudden cancellation, in July 1837, of the performance of the
Requiem.11 CG 2:358n. In his letter to Rossini of February 6, 1838, mentioned above, Édouard Robert implies that Laure Cinti-Damoreau, the celebrated soprano, was Montalivet’s mistress (Montalivet was “sous l’influence de la Damoreau”)
12 Soubies, Le Théâtre-Italien, 102. and that she was no friend of Robert’s. She was presumably fond of Berlioz, however; his reviews of her performances in 1838 are very positive indeed.
The specific clauses of the contractual agreement that Montalivet proposed to Berlioz, and for his signature to Louis-Philippe, have rarely appeared in print and never in English. Furthermore, the details of the story I tell here are ignored by Albert Soubies, whose history of the Théâtre-Italien remains more than a century later one of our few authoritative sources. Those clauses form the content of the proposition that was eventually sent to the legislative assembly. The document, officially a
cahier des charges, that is (in this case) a statement of the parties’ contractual obligations, was apparently drafted in Berlioz’s behalf by Edmond Blanc, secretary to Montalivet (as well as to the once and future Prime Minister, Adolphe Thiers). It was first to be reviewed and approved by the Commission Spéciale that I have mentioned, then by a committee of elected representatives, then by the full legislative assembly.
13 I derive this from a note in the minutes of the Commission. AnF, F21 4633 [7]. I have made a good faith effort to render in English the import of the articles, in order to communicate the essence of the agreement, but lawyerly readers will of course want to consult the original legalese.
Ministry of the Interior
We, Pair de France, Secretary of State Minister of the Interior, in view of the various propositions that have been made to us for the reconstruction of the venue known as the Salle Favart, reserved for exploitation by the Théâtre-Italien, have decreed and hereby decree the following:
Article 1
The concessionaire pledges to execute and complete, within a six-month period, at his risk and peril, and for an amount not to exceed one million two hundred thousand francs, all of the repairs necessary for the complete and total reconstruction of the venue known as the Salle Favart. The said six-month time period shall commence on the day upon which the architectural plans and cost estimates—which shall be submitted to the Administration during the month of the passage of the statute that will ratify the present authorization—shall have been corrected as necessary and approved.
The work of reconstruction shall be supervised solely by the concessionaire, with the understanding that the Administration will reserve the right to ensure that the work corresponds faithfully to the architectural plans and cost estimates that will have been submitted.
It is required that the new construction be as solid of structure and as elegant of design as the former Salle Favart. It is furthermore required that the construction support a fully iron roof, and that it follow all extant specifications as prescribed by the competent architectural authorities.
The concessionaire shall be required to respect all easements that may currently encumber the building, and to respect and to maintain in their entirety, throughout the duration of the present authorization, the ownership of or access to the loges as these are at present constituted and uncontested.
In the interior of the building, there shall be no lodgings established other than those strictly necessary for the managerial and custodial staff. On the exterior of the building, the establishment of even a single boutique is strictly forbidden.
If the cost estimates appended to the architectural plans and approved by the Administration do not rise to the agreed upon sum of one million two hundred thousand francs, the number of years of the present authorization shall be reduced proportionally at the time of the approval of the said architectural plans and cost estimates.
The concessionaire pledges to provide the auditorium with all such mechanical materials and furnishings as are required for dramatic productions.
Article 2
The sum of two hundred thousand francs, the value of the insurance policy previously taken out with insurance company, the Compagnie française du Phénix, is [as a result of the fire that destroyed the building] to be paid to the [new] concessionaire. The Administration shall guarantee the recovery of this debt. Any and all legal action against the insurance company, should this become necessary, shall be undertaken at the request, effort, and expense of the Administration.
Article 3
The concessionaire is authorized to make use of all extant appurtenances in or belonging to the Salle Favart, whether currently on the premises or on deposit in the warehouses of the Administration.
When the concessionaire’s authorization shall have expired, the Administration shall remit to the concessionaire the monetary value of all currently extant furnishings as well as of those purchased by the insurance company, furnishings that Monsieur Robert [the current concessionaire] is now required to itemize for the Administration.
For those furnishings used by the current concessionaire [Monsieur Robert] and belonging to him, the new concessionaire [Berlioz and Company] is required to reimburse the said owner, Monsieur Robert, an amount equal to their value as determined by the expert assessors.
Article 4
Acceptance of the new construction, on completion, shall be approved at common expense by the architects and the experts jointly selected.
Also at common expense, there shall be prepared a detailed description of the [new] premises and furnishings associated with the theater in order that the [new] concessionaire or his designated beneficiaries may be properly discharged at the time of the expiration of this authorization.
Article 5
In order that the concessionaire be compensated for the expense of the reconstruction that he has agreed to undertake, in accordance with the present contractual obligations, with the express condition that these obligations shall be followed to the letter, and with the understanding that the premises shall be used solely and uniquely for dramatic representations, the Administration grants to the said concessionaire the permission to exploit the Salle Favart for a period of thirty-one years, as from the first of October 1840.
The Salle Favart shall be accorded free of charge to Monsieur Robert for the period extending from the first of February 1839 [when the proposed new construction is scheduled for completion] to the thirtieth of September 1840 [the date of the expiration of Robert’s contract], under penalty of monetary damages to be paid to Monsieur Robert.
The warehouse in the rue Louvois currently housing appurtenant theatrical materials and decorations shall continue to serve the needs of the Salle Favart. The Administration agrees to permit the future concessionaire to use the present warehouse or a different warehouse of satisfactory dimensions in equally convenient proximity to the theater.
Article 6
From the first of February 1839 until the expiration of his authorization, the [new] concessionaire shall be required a) to pay all taxes and local charges associated with this kind of property; and b) to maintain and secure the premises in accordance with all provisions of the law as it pertains to such concessionaires.
Article 7
As pertains to fire insurance, the concessionaire is required to pay all insurance premiums, whether in France or abroad, up to but not exceeding the amount of ten thousand francs per year. Should the premiums themselves not rise to this amount, the concessionaire shall each year deposit the difference between the total premiums to be paid and ten thousand francs into the Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations as an additional guarantee in case of fire. On the expiration of the current authorization, and on proper deliverance of the building, the sum total of these supplementary deposits shall be remitted to the concessionaire.
Should the building suffer irreparable damage or destruction, the concessionaire shall not profit from the above-stated clause, unless he wishes immediately to proceed to reconstruction at his own expense, in which case he shall benefit from a one-year extension of his authorization [to exploit the theater].
Article 8
The concessionaire shall be obliged to furnish, as a guarantee against the costs associated with the use of the facility, a deposit of sixty thousand francs.
The concessionaire may cede to another, in part or in full, the rights confirmed upon him by the present contract, but he is strictly forbidden to organize a corporation or a joint stock company [for the operation of the theater].
Article 9
At the time of the conclusion of each contract authorizing the exploitation of the Salle Favart by the Théâtre-Italien, the concessionaire or his designated beneficiaries shall be required to remit the Salle Favart and its dependent structures to the entrepreneur who shall be designated by the Minister of the Interior for the continued exploitation of the building by the Théâtre-Italien or by a foreign theatrical company assigned uniquely to the said building, and this at an annual rental fee fixed at a minimum of seventy thousand francs and a maximum of one hundred six thousand francs. This annual rental fee, the amount of which shall be established by mutual agreement or by arbiters selected by the concessionaire and the incoming entrepreneur, shall be the sole imbursement imposed by the concessionaire upon the incoming entrepreneur.
Article 10
At the time of the expiration of this authorization, the concessionaire or his designated beneficiaries shall remit the Salle Favart and its associated structures to the Administration in an excellent state of repair in conformance with the detailed description of the premises as stipulated in Article 4.
Repairs as needed, in conformity with the document stipulated in Article 4, shall be undertaken by specialists.
The concessionaire or his designated beneficiaries shall be held responsible for the value of all objects determined to be missing as per the document prescribed in Article 4.
As concerns musical instruments, scores, decorations, costumes, and all other furnishings that are the property of the concessionaire, the Administration shall reserve the right to retain them in full or in part, promising at the same time to compensate the concessionaire by a sum equal to their value as determined by specialists.
Article 11
The concessionaire, during the eight-day period that shall follow the presentation of the statute that will confirm the present authorization, shall be required to make a security deposit at the Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations in the form of a subscription to French Government Securities in the amount of two hundred thousand francs.
This security deposit shall be remitted in full to the concessionaire, as per a special authorization to be delivered by the Administration, at the time of the completion and approval of the construction.
Article 12
The present contract shall take effect only after it has been established by the concessionaire, in the presence of the members of the Commission Spéciale des Théâtres Royaux, that he is in possession of the financial means necessary for the execution of the articles of the present contract.
Article 13
The present authorization shall take effect only after passage of the associated statute, at which time it will be subject, at the time of registration, to a fee fixed at one franc.
Signed and sealed at Paris on this day, June 2, 1838.
[signed:]
Montalivet
[Berlioz’s hand:]
Accepté le présent cayer [sic] des charges dans toute sa teneur.
[These specifications are accepted in their entirety.]
Paris, June 4, 1838
[signed:] Hector Berlioz
14 AnF, C 794 (archives of the Assemblée Nationale for the year 1838), later published in Procès-verbaux des séances de la Chambre des Députes, Session de 1838 (Paris: A. Henry, 1838), 590–596.Shortly after signing this document, Berlioz and his associates did indeed satisfy the Commission Spéciale that their finances were in order, and did indeed submit a bond to guarantee the good faith of their negotiations. Meanwhile, on the day Berlioz affixed his signature to the
cahier des charges, Louis-Philippe—by no means indifferent to the fate of the theater, especially in that his government had been supporting the company with a generous subvention smaller only than those offered in the eighteen-thirties by the Maison du Roi to the Académie Royale de Musique, the Opéra-Comique, and the Comédie-Française, and aware that the new arrangement with Berlioz required
no subvention from the State
15 Barbier, Opera in Paris, 178.—simultaneously affixed his own signature to the official draft bill or
projet de loi.
Article 1
The proposition made by Messieurs Berlioz and Company to reconstruct the Salle Favart and its dependent structures is accepted.
Consequently, all of the clauses and conditions, whether those that are the responsibility of the Administration or those that are the responsibility of Messieurs Berlioz and Company, as stipulated in the cahier des charges signed and sealed on June 2, 1838, by our Secretary of State Minister of the Interior, and accepted on June 4, 1838, by Messieurs Berlioz and Company, shall be executed in full.
Article 2
The
cahier des charges and its acceptance by Messieurs Berlioz and Company shall be affixed in annex to the present statute.
16 AnF, C 794, no. 47.It needs here to be said in no uncertain terms that in an earlier period, the will of the Emperor, or the King, as expressed here, would have become the law of the land: Berlioz et Compagnie, despite the fact that that business-like appellation will forever sound odd to those of us who inhabit the world of music, would have been awarded the contract.
In contemporary correspondence, Berlioz speaks rather obliquely of his “associates” in his effort to secure the privilège of the Théâtre-Italien. We have only circumstantial evidence that points to the members of the Bertin family and their bankers as his principal protectors. Here is what we find on the front page of Le Constitutionnel of June 5, 1838:
Who would have thought that Monsieur Berlioz, music critic for the Journal des débats, Monsieur Berlioz, poet, Monsieur Berlioz, composer, would one day assume coram populo [in the presence of the people] the purely commercial title of Berlioz et Compagnie?
In fact we believe that Monsieur Berlioz has in this case allowed himself under pressure to serve as an intermediary for a powerful family that would like to control the theaters as it does the ministers of the Administration, and has thus compromised his authority by employing it in the service of a young woman whose talent, full of promise for the future, ought not to be fostered in this way. Mademoiselle Bertin’s success, as the composer of Faust and La Esmeralda, has already been compromised by the political influence that has been foisted upon her, and now Monsieur Berlioz, already solicited to conduct the rehearsals of La Esmeralda at the Opéra, will yet again be accused of directing a theater uniquely in order to promulgate the works of Mademoiselle Bertin. These accusations, which we dare without trepidation to put forth in print, will come from all corners.
In as much as we believe, in these circumstances, that Monsieur de Montalivet has imposed upon Monsieur Berlioz and Company requirements that are particularly severe, precisely because he has as his patrons the greatest friends of “le 15 avril” [that is, the Bertin family, who patronized those who were restored to power on April 15, 1837, including Montalivet, serving for the fourth time as Minister of the Interior], we fear for the future of this young woman, whose talent without political influence would have had a meaningful impact in our own musical era, and yet who, even favored with too much political influence, has yet to find on any stage the warm recognition that she rightfully deserves.
The director of
Le Constitutionnel,
Charles-Guillaume Étienne, was a centrist associated with the figure of Adolphe Thiers, who wished to rein in the excesses of the monarchy. The composer’s support for Louise Bertin’s
La Esmeralda,
premièred at the Académie Royale de Musique in September 1836, is well-known: Berlioz respected her musicianship, suggested a limited number of corrections, and regretted the politics that caused the work to fail. If, in return, the Bertin family supported Berlioz’s endeavor with the Théâtre-Italien (in its eventual report on the failure of Berlioz’s effort, the
Gazette de France, too, on June 12, 1838, reported, with revealing ellipses, that the
Journal des débats had been “particularly interested in this matter…”), he certainly did not speak about it. The single associate Berlioz names is Vicomte Henri-Catherine-Camille de Ruolz-Montchal, a composer from an ancient aristocratic family who had studied composition with Henri Berton, Ferdinando Paër, Jean-François Lesueur, and Gioachino Rossini. Ruolz’s career as musician and critic was preceded and succeeded by scientific studies. In a document dated July 5, 1840, he tells us that he had been “a member of the faculties of letters, law, medicine, and science” and that he had “abandoned a scientific career in order to concentrate entirely on musical composition.”
17 AnF, F21 953—a proposal for the reorganization of musical instruction in France. As a chemist, Ruolz invented a process that would bear his name: the process, eventually sold to the celebrated Maison Christofle, permitted the gold- and silver-plating of metal by submersion in a bath charged with voltaic (chemically produced) electricity. Apparently known to the Queen and to Madame Adélaïde (Louis-Philippe’s sister), Ruolz had friends in high places both in politics and in the arts, including Fromental Halévy, who on one occasion—playing on the synonymy of his name and his invention—wrote to him as “Mon mol ami, mon fondant Henri, mon fluide Ruolz”—“My soft friend, my melting Henri, my fluid Ruolz.”
18 Tiersot, Lettres de musiciens écrites en français, 2:97–98.In 1836, when he began a four-year stint as music critic for
Le Messager des chambres,
Ruolz came into competition with Berlioz for a commission from the Opéra, the one proposing
La Vendetta,
on a libretto by Léon Pillet and Adolphe Vaunois,
the other,
Benvenuto Cellini. Not long after the première of
La Vendetta, on September 11, 1839—
Cellini had opened one year earlier, on September 10, 1838—Ruolz’s erstwhile business partner penned a review. Berlioz criticizes the melodies, the harmony, and the orchestration of the new opera, but tries to soften the blow by inventing an amusing dialogue, in which he has Ruolz say to his negative critic: “I didn’t realize that I was such a good friend of yours!” (Berlioz attributes the ironic comment to Lucullus, but he was actually remembering Jean-Baptiste-Louis Crevier’s
Histoire des empereurs romains, of which he would have seen the edition of 1824. Here, it is the Emperor Augustus who, on being treated to an ill-prepared collation, approaches his host to say, ironically, “Je ne croyais pas être si fort de vos amis!”)
19 Journal des débats (September 14, 1839); Crevier, Histoire des empereurs romains, 1:80. Still, in 1838, Ruolz’s qualifications as a musician and as a man of grand social standing were surely what led him to seek, with Berlioz, the directorship of the Théâtre-Italien. It is furthermore difficult to imagine that Berlioz would have wished to associate with someone who was ill prepared for the task.
Berlioz and Ruolz appeared before the Commission de Surveillance on April 18 and 20. Then, on May 8, 1838, Montalivet called them in “to ask for some new information regarding our plans and intentions,” as Berlioz told his sister Adèle on the 10th, “which is a very good sign.” He then offers some information that the biographers have skipped over:
In fact it is a
compatriot who is thwarting my efforts, a friend of my uncle’s, Monsieur Félix Réal, from Grenoble, a representative who does not beat around the bush when it comes to pursuing his own private interests. The fact of the matter is that his children are in line to inherit the fortune of the former director [of the Théâtre-Italien], Robert, a relative of Réal’s, so Réal is moving heaven and earth to have this “poor fellow” regain the directorship. All of our other competitors are out of contention, so that, were it not for the influence of this accursed representative from the Isère, I would be named director right away, and I would be assured of annual income, for fifteen years, of thirty thousand francs. The whole matter will be decided in the very near future.
20 CG 2:436–437.We know little about the non-administrative life of Félix-Martin Réal (1792–1864), who served as a representative from the Isère throughout the July Monarchy, from 1830 to 1848, who was a supporter in the eighteen-thirties of the political alliance led by Louis-Matthieu, Comte Molé, and Montalivet, both ardent defenders of Louis-Philippe, and who in 1837 was named to the Conseil d’État. Before 1830 he had been Avocat général près la cour de Grenoble, which means that the “uncle” Berlioz mentions could have been his father’s younger brother, Victor-Abraham Berlioz, who was likewise a senior officer of the law in in Grenoble, although it was more likely his mother’s brother, Félix Marmion, who, like Réal, was often in Paris. Considering the eventual outcome of the deliberations, it is clear that Réal carried real weight in the legislature, more, it would seem, than the momentarily optimistic Berlioz seems to have imagined, and more, even, than the Minister of the Interior himself.
Ten days later, to his sister, Berlioz continued the story:
The director of the Théâtre-Italien has not yet been selected. Five days ago, Félix Réal thought he had won the game, that he was going to be able to have his cousin [Édouard] Robert nominated. But today Robert’s stock is falling, we have given him a ducking [“une passade”], as we say in the world of natation, so we will have to see if he manages to return to the surface.
21 CG 2:439.We do not know the nature of this “ducking,” but by late May, Robert’s candidacy, supported by Réal (who was a friend of Rossini, all powerful at the time), had been set aside in favor of Berlioz’s, presumably because of the overwhelming weight of the fact that Berlioz and Ruolz were seeking no government subsidy for their proposed operation.
Montalivet presented his bill to the Chambre des Députés on June 4, 1838, the day it was signed by the King. He spoke in terms highly favorable to Berlioz, and concluded:
You are already aware, Messieurs, that the new agreement with Monsieur Berlioz, for the future exploitation of the Théâtre-Italien, stipulates that the company shall receive no government subvention. Thus, as from the month of January 1841, the budget of the Administration will be reduced by seventy thousand francs. Please allow me to express my particular satisfaction with this result while at the same time suggesting to you that the subventions provided to the royal theaters, which have at times been criticized by members of this body, have on occasion been advantageous in ways that are not immediately obvious. No one can deny the positive influence that has up until now been generated by the Théâtre-Italien, both upon the prosperity of the capital and upon the development of the art of music in France. The forward-looking munificence of the government has thus not been without profit, for it is precisely that munificence which has led, at considerable cost, to the remarkable assemblage of artists of the first order whom we have here, something that is the envy of all the capitals of Europe, and that has led to the renown of our Théâtre-Italien and its audience. And because non-native music has triumphed on our shores, and has conquered a wealthy and abundant clientele, this magnificent company will now be able to prosper on its own, without a subvention; it will be able to cover, via annuities, the enormous cost of the reconstruction of the theater; and it will be able fruitfully to continue to pursue its mission.
22 Procès-verbaux des séances de la Chambre des Députés, Session de 1838, 6:211–216.Berlioz’s proposal, taken by some of the patriarchs of the press as a
fait accompli, was reviewed by a special legislative commission whose nine members included the aforementioned Edmond Blanc, the representatives Jean-Jacques Berger, from the department of Puy-de-Dôme; Eugène Janvier de la Motte, from Tarn-et-Garonne; Pierre-Paul-Désiré-François Pérignon, from La Marne; Laurent-Pierre de Jussieu, from La Seine; Marc (known as Saint-Marc-Girardin), from Haute-Vienne; Pierre-Chaumont Liadières, from Basse-Pyrénées; Alphée Bourdon de Vatry, from Moselle; and, lastly, Jules-Étienne-François Muteau, from La Côte d’Or, who acted as reporting secretary. Muteau was an appropriate choice, he knew something about music, and would be crucial to the establishment of the Conservatoire de Dijon, in 1845, as a branch of the Conservatoire de Paris.
23 See http://www2.assemblee-nationale.fr/sycomore/fiche/(num_dept)/17254 (consulted February 20, 2020).As reported in Le Constitutionnel on June 8, 1838, an opponent of Berlioz’s nomination proposed that the Théâtre-Italien be strictly forbidden to stage operas by French composers, in this way ensuring, he believed, that the theater would not be used for the personal benefit of Monsieur Berlioz. As reported in Le Siècle on the same day, the deputy from Le Doubs, Théodore-Simon Jouffroy, expressed his concern that the burdens placed upon Messieurs Berlioz and Company were too onerous. Others felt that the cahier des charges was too generous, especially in awarding to the new directors (rather than to the Administration) the insurance payment mentioned above in Article 4.
As reported in
Le Figaro on June 12—the day on which the Minister of the Interior informed Berlioz that he should indeed proceed to make the required deposit of two hundred thousand francs, as stipulated in Article 11
24 CG 2:440.—only one member of the special commission, Edmond Blanc himself, the man who had drafted the
cahier des charges in the first place, expressed approval of the proposal as it stood on that day. The remaining eight members apparently expressed hostility. It thus became rumored that Montalivet was preparing to withdraw the proposal. Berlioz and Company nonetheless proceeded to make the security deposit, and in the days the followed, the legislative subcommittee established to review the proposal met to do its work.
François Muteau delivered the Committee’s report to the legislative assembly on June 19, 1838. On the following day, his remarks were variously cited in the newspapers of the capital, among them La Presse, Le Siècle, Le Constitutionnel, and the Journal des débats, whose article reads as follows:
Monsieur le Président reads the text of the proposed statute authorizing Messieurs Berlioz et Compagnie to undertake at their risk and peril the reconstruction of the Salle Favart and its dependent structures, therein to operate the Théâtre-Italien.
Monsieur Muteau, reporter: I believe I must review the reasons that the Commission has voted to reject the proposition as it stands because of the impossibility of evaluating the expenses that it would in fact occasion.
The first task of your Commission was to examine the proposed plans and cost estimates in order to understand the charges that would impute to the Administration, thus determining whether the government would renounce control of the building for a certain number of years, or whether the government would procure from the treasury the sum necessary for the restoration of the theater, two eventualities that in monetary terms would in the end amount to the same thing.
However, no plans and no cost estimates were provided to the Commission. The only information that was provided was the approximate figure of one million two hundred thousand francs applicable to the reconstruction of the theater, and notice that the guarantees to be given by the concessionaire to the Administration were subject to the approval of the Minister of the Interior subsequent to passage of the statute.
Put in such a position, your Commission, not wishing to offer blind approval, had little choice but to reject the proposal.
It is unnecessary to point out to you the various contradictions and irregularities that mark the various clauses of the proposed statute, for it is unacceptable in its entirely, and it would be an abuse of your patience to discuss them in detail.
Our aim has been to require the Administration to put forth, between now and the beginning of the next session of the legislature, a proposition that is better prepared than the present one, a proposition improved by the advantages that healthy competition for the directorship should provide. It is my hope that the Minister of the Interior will in fact agree with the conclusions of the Commission.
Monsieur le Ministre de l’Intérieur: I do not wish to disagree with the Commission’s decision.
Monsieur Delaborde: There are in the project presented by the Administration very serious flaws that will need to be corrected if it is to presented again during the next session. I find it perfectly acceptable that the new concessionaire be granted a lengthy period of exploitation in order to reconstruct the theater at his own expense and at no cost to the government. But I should prefer that the period of exploitation be even longer in order to require that the concessionaire refashion a façade that is in no way monumental and that is currently in very poor taste. You have simply no idea how many foreigners, among whom are many with exquisite taste, accuse us of having no artistic sensibility whatsoever!
According to the newspaper accounts, the remarks made by Comte Alexandre Delaborde, the representative from La Seine, caused a stir in the chamber. From those accounts, we learn that there was particular opposition to the notion of passing along to Berlioz the extant furnishings of the theater as well as the indemnity of two hundred thousand francs for damages incurred by the fire, which the insurance company, as noted, would normally have paid to the Administration. Opposition was also expressed because the statute as proposed was not open to amendment, something that in and of itself, some thought, was a reason to reject it out of hand.
The two articles of the proposed statute presented by the Administration were then put to a vote. The number of those voting was 232; the necessary majority was 117; the number of ayes [boules blanches] was 36; the number of nays [boules noires] was 196. The measure was rejected. The meaning of the rejection is not that Berlioz and Company were forever denied the direction of the Théâtre-Italien. It is that they were invited to present a second, more complete application at a future time, and in competition with others who would do the same.
On June 21, Montalivet informed Berlioz that, because of this rejection, he had authorized the return of the deposit of two hundred thousand francs that Berlioz and Company had made to the Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations.
25 CG 2:442. On the same day, the
Gazette de France offered a commentary on the comportment of the Minister of the Interior, who might have but did not excoriate the judgement of Monsieur Muteau and the Commission, which had so negatively judged his proposition:
The preferred candidate [Berlioz] must surely have thought, on the model of a certain proverbial Automedon, that the censure of the Chambre des Députés much resembles that of earlier parlements. In fact it is not the preferred candidate whom we most criticize here, for he disdains the Chambre, and he may be correct in doing so, because the Chambre has no notion of how to make itself respected. The proposed statute was thus rejected by common accord. If Monsieur de Montalivet had been a representative, he, too, would surely have voted against the proposition. Such inconsequential actions, such frivolities, are these days all too common, and all too indicative of the low point to which for the moment the sincerity and dignity of representative government have fallen.
The mention of Automedon, Achilles’ charioteer, presumably refers to Berlioz’s role as orchestra conductor and conductor of the present project regarding the Théâtre-Italien. The reference to Berlioz’s disdain for representative government is more revealing: this is not at all criticized by the journalist, because he was writing for what was one of the July Monarchy’s leading legitimist newspapers, openly advocating the return of the Bourbons (who had their run-ins with parlements past) in the person of Charles X’s grandson, Comte de Chambord, the would-be Henri V.
On June 28, in a letter to his always-sympathetic sister Adèle, Berlioz composed an explanation of what had transpired.
If I have not written sooner about the matter of the Théâtre-Italien, it is because it was still up in the air. What happened proved the point:
the Chambre des Députes rejected the statute put forth by the Minister of the Interior. All of that hue and cry caused me so much irritation and aggravation that I have decided that, next year, I will not chase that hare. I was not born to occupy myself with financial matters, and the question of the
reconstruction of the building, which the Administration insists that the future director undertake, is one that is both very serious and very complicated. Montalivet is very angry, even angrier than I, about the rejection of his proposed bill, even though
he is the sole reason for its defeat. He seems to have every intention of compensating me for my efforts. We shall see what happens in that regard. Meanwhile, my head is spinning because of all of my rehearsals [for
Benvenuto Cellini], which keep me busy from morning until night.
26 CG 2:444.In a sense, Berlioz was compensated for his efforts. As of the first of January 1839, he began his service as “sous-bibliothécaire” or associate librarian at the Conservatoire, a position, which some scholars have described as a sinecure, that he would hold until the end of his life. (In 1850 he became head librarian, and on April 4, 1866, he would assume the directorship of the instrument museum at the Conservatoire.) On May 5, 1839, Louis-Philippe, whose action Berlioz foreshadowed in his letter to his sister of May 20, 1838, appointed the composer Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur. (On August 12, 1864, he would be promoted to Officier de la Légion d’honneur.) In April 1840, he would receive word of the commission for what became the Symphonie funèbre et triomphale (the subject here of chapter 5). Berlioz would almost always be granted leaves from the library, with pay, to pursue his concert tours abroad. But never did he obtain an administrative position, such as the directorship of the Théâtre-Italien, that would have made him wealthy. My own view—since there is no evidence that Berlioz was a lazy man, and there is plentiful evidence that he gave countless concerts on shoestring budgets without being sentenced to debtors’ prison—is that he would have been able excellently and energetically to balance the financial considerations of a for-profit enterprise such as the Théâtre-Italien with the artistic requirements of the company, and to do so with the inventive imagination that made him the finest French composer-critic-conductor of the day.
To conclude this chapter, I should like to comment on three points in particular. First, it needs to be said, if it is not self-evident, that the Administration desired a person who was French to stand at the helm of the capital’s Italian Theater. The political realities of the day, in which power was shared by the King and the Chambre des Députés (something Berlioz regretted, as the journalist for the
Gazette de France surmised), were such that objection would surely have been strenuous had the government paid a subvention of some seventy thousand francs and offered other financial advantages to an enterprise entirely controlled by “foreigners.” Indeed, according to a police report to the Minister of the Interior, the reason that Édouard Robert was hired in the first place—since it was clear that Rossini was the
de facto director at the time—had largely to do with his good French name.
27 AnF, F21 1113 (report dated May 21, 1836). See also Janet Johnson, “Rossini, Artistic Director,” 608. (Having served in the Napoleonic army, Carlo Severini, Robert’s future co-director, may also have become a naturalized Frenchman.) Apprehension about a “cultural invasion” from Italy can be felt from writings by Jean-Toussaint Merle, Henri Berton, and Jean-François Gail,
28 Merle, Lettre à un compositeur français sur l’état actuel de l’opéra (Paris: Barba, 1827); Berton, De la musique mécanique et de la musique philosophique (Paris: Alexis Aymery, 1826); Gail, Réflexions sur le gout musical en France (Paris: Paulin, 1832). among others, who advocated the continuing development of a
French lyric theater, with libretti standing on their own as dramatic constructions and sung by men and women capable of singing, acting, and proper French pronunciation! Still, if there was a certain resentment against the high-society elitism of the audience at the Théâtre-Italien—something Berlioz had hoped to maintain—there were nonetheless many within and without the government who recognized the positive influence the institution had had on French musical culture as “an operatic school of the first order.”
29 AnF, AJ13 1163, a report cited by Nicole Wild, “Le Spectacle lyrique au temps du grand opéra,” in Bailbé, La Musique en France, 48.Second, it needs to be said that Berlioz was not so prejudiced against Italian music as one might suppose on reading chapter 14 of the
Mémoires, where he imagines blowing to bits the Théâtre-Italien and with it “its entire Rossinian population.”
30 Mémoires, 201. One of his early musical heroes was, after all, Gaspare Spontini, and in 1829 he became a proofreader of the score of
Guillaume Tell, which he admired, as he did the singing of Laure Cinti-Damoreau, among others, who by all accounts had thoroughly mastered the Italian vocal style. The settings of
most of Berlioz’s mature works (
Harold en Italie,
Benvenuto Cellini,
Roméo et Juliette,
Les Troyens,
Béatrice et Bénédict) are marked by his rich Italian experience: he had virtually roamed the Italian countryside as boy, reading the
Aeneid,
and when he first stepped outside of France, it was upon Italian soil. The
Requiem was handsomely printed by the Casa Ricordi, with which house Berlioz long maintained cordial relations, including the period in which the famous Milanese publisher brought out Alberto Mazzucato’s fine translation of the
Traité d’instrumentation. Not only had the composer learned enough Italian to write the choral text of the
Ouverture de la Tempête before going to Italy (he had begun studying the language in 1826), but in 1833, after his
viaggio a Roma,
he considered writing in Italian what years later became
Béatrice et Bénédict. At the same time, he also thought of having his earlier
Francs-Juges translated into Italian: “I shall make my début at the Théâtre-Italien,” he told his sister Adèle on January 23, 1833; “I have excellent relations with the Administration there.”
31 CG 2:109, 68, 69. Further, while Berlioz denigrated the
rossinistes, he appreciated “the sparkling qualities” not only of
Guillaume Tell,
but also of Bellini’s
I Capuleti e i Montecchi, for the score of which (but not the libretto) he has kind words, in the
Mémoires,
and Donizetti’s
Marino Faliero,
for which, in
Le Rénovateur of March 29, 1835, he expresses genuine enthusiasm. French conventions exerted a powerful influence upon the Italian style as it was on view at the Théâtre-Italien—Philip Gossett has demonstrated this in detail
32 Gossett, “Music at the Théâtre-Italien” (see note 4).—and there is no reason to believe that Berlioz, had he become a prolific composer of operas with the stage of the Théâtre-Italien at his disposal, preposterous as that now sounds, could not have effected a further synthesis of French dramatic urgency with Italian formal principles and lyricism. To my ear, there are moments in the early
Waverley Overture and
Ouverture de La Tempête that sound distinctively like the overtures of Rossini. The Rossini scholar Janet Johnson finds characteristic Italianate elements in
Benvenuto Cellini,
in the
strophes of
Roméo et Juliette, and in some of the arias and ensembles of
Béatrice et Bénédict.33 In private correspondence, for which I am very grateful indeed. In this regard it is relevant to remember how assiduously Berlioz worked, in 1859, on a fusion of the French and Italian versions of Gluck’s
Orphée as a vehicle for the still resplendent talents of Pauline Viardot.
Finally, it should be recalled that from the inception of his public career to the present day, critics and commentators have understandably attempted to read the “facts” of Berlioz’s biography as they might be found in the fictional spaces of his music and his prose, much of which, taking a cue from the
Symphonie fantastique,
could be labelled “Épisodes de la vie d’un artiste.” In view of the particular perch that he occupies in the musical world, this “romantic” artist, who coolly and self-consciously intermingled life and art, seems in retrospect to have been an unlikely candidate for the mundane reality of theatrical management. And yet it was Berlioz’s mission, as David Cairns rightly suggested in the first volume of his great biography of the composer, “to seize hold of reality and bend it to his ideals.”
34 Cairns, Berlioz 1:558. I should like to think that he would have made an exceptional imprint on Parisian musical life as director of the Théâtre-Italien—contracting, casting, conducting, commissioning, and, despite his reticence, calculating incomes and outflows with what was, after all, a lifelong passion for the exact. He might also have composed a fantastical
Schauspieldirektor, in French or Italian, modeled partly on himself, with a lightness and verve that we might have found to be Mozartian.