The Sun.
London, England, 1864-05-24 00:00:00

Meyerbeer—A Character.

Among all those who have won an universal re•
putation in drametic music, Meyerbeer was the most
timid, the most insecure as to his own purposes,
with all his gigantic notions of effect. His operas
were not so much written as stuck together, bit by
bit, while the rehearsals of them were going on. If
a machinist under a paper cap crossed the stage,
and made some irreverent remark on the length of
this scene—or that other procession—the composer
shrank up, faltered, held council on the matter—
and after having been inexorable in his first pre-
tensions, conceded, with a humility which became
ignoble, in regard to the man under the paper cap.
He dtd not know what his effects were to be, or
Where they were to be made, but went on trying,
contriving, and like the bird that builds a nest,
bringing, hero a straw—there a bit of wood—anon,
a fragment of wood or stone—and, in the end, build-
ing not so much a nest as a habitation for musical
drama. No stone was left unturned by him to procure
—one might better say to force—a success. It may
be questioned whether so skilful an artist ever
existed, who employed with so elaborate a patience
every machinery of compliment and cajolery as he
did. He prepared for the first representations of
his operas by paying money right and left, with an
anxiety humiliating to think of, and on a scale of
expense impossible to any other who had not an
ample private fortune. No antechamber was too
mean for hint to be willing to wait in it, pro-
vided the master of the house had the slightest
shred of influence on press or public. He shared
Sir Robert Walpole's opinion that every man has his
price, and would return to attempt and to tempt every
imaginable assistance with a pertinacity nothing
short of whimsical, but which was rather distressing
to be exposed to. The Boulevard des Italiens, a sort
of French Rialto for musical rumour, streamed with
tales of his expedients, months before his operas
were painfully born. One year, said rumour, Meyer-
beer had been buying up all the stage organs, to
prevent his new organ effect being forestalled. There
Was a later tale how he had connived to the crip-
pling of the organ at the Grand Opera, when the
same was to help a great scene in Nieodemeyri's
" Stradella." Another year, would come simmering
stories of pilot banquets after the fashion of Lucullus
(and well did Meyerbeer understood the art of
dining, till ill health, and with it hypochondria,
claimed him). He had no objection to bespeaking
opera books at munificent prices, from the men of
feuilleton, home or foreign, though it did not follow
that the books were to be set. I can speak to his
face of puzzled inquietude, when one of the
fraternity ventured to decline a commission for such
a piece of work—in its very purpose, and by its
very essence, unproducible. Though he harrassed
everyone during his rehearsals to the point of exas
poration, by at first refusing the smallest concession,
when the hour of performance drew nigh he was
seined with a cowering terror, which would yield
or admit any change. Music lasting one hour and
a quarter was cut out of " Le Prophete" within a
very few weeks of its production :—and its great
situation—the one of fecination, in the fourth or
Cathedral act, would have possibly shared the same
fate, had not Madame Viardot, the original Fides,
backed by Ary Scheffer (how all this comes back
like a thing of yesterday !), pleaded to be allowed to
show what could be represented by such an actress
in such a situation.—Dickens's " All the Year I
Round."