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She asked him one day whether he had nearly brought his grand opera of "Armide" to a conclusion, and whether it pleased him. Gluck replied very coolly, in his German accent, "Madame, it will soon be finished, and really it will be superb." There was a great outcry against the confidence with which the composer had spoken of one of his own productions.
When Lully was giving opera to France he secured the co-operation of Marthe le Rochois, a gifted student of declamation and song at the Paris Académie Royale de Musique, for whose establishment he had obtained letters patent in 1672. So great was his confidence in her judgment that he consulted her in all that pertained to his work. Her greatest public triumph was in his "Armide."
In those days I was frequently called to the other side of the Rhine to play in concerts, and I watched for a chance to see one of these masterpieces which had been forgotten in France. So it was with the liveliest joy that one day I entered one of the leading German theaters where they were giving Armide. What a hollow mockery it was!
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."
When the Italian arrived in Paris, Gluck was in full sway, the idol of the court and public, and about to produce his "Armide." Piccini was immediately commissioned to write a new opera, and he applied to the brilliant Marmontel for a libretto.
She had seen Gluck's Armide that year, and played from memory the music of the enchanted garden the music to which Renaud approaches, beneath the light of an eternal dawn, the music that never gains, never wanes, but ripples for ever like the tideless seas of fairyland.
One or two were given elsewhere with some success; but, with regard to Armide, he wrote stating his view that his operatic works should not be given at all save in the conditions for which they were composed. Those conditions have now for ever passed away, and excepting as curiosities the operas will never be heard again.
It is only fair to say that Gluck, from some inexplicable caprice, did not give the same care to the instrumentation of Armide that he did to Orphée, Alcesti, and the Iphigenies. The trombones do not appear at all and the drums and flutes only at rare intervals.
It is said the Gluck composed "Armide" in order to praise the beauty of Marie Antoinette, and she for her part showed the deepest interest in the success of the piece, and really "became quite a slave to it." Gluck often told her he "rearranged his music according to the impression it made upon the Queen."
On one occasion the singer Rochis, being in a condition that compelled a postponement of "Armide," he demanded, angrily, "Qui t'a fait cela?" and gave her a kick qui lui fit faire une fausse couche.
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