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Updated: June 5, 2025
At the close of the Paris season she proceeded to Vienna, where her artistic gifts were highly appreciated, and thence to Berlin, where Meyerbeer was then engaged in composing his "Prophète." The dramatic conception of Fides, it may be said in passing, was expressly designed for Pauline Viardot by the composer, who had the most exalted esteem for her genius, both as a musician and tragedienne.
It is only necessary to call attention to a few prominent numbers, for this opera has not as many instances of these characteristics as those which followed and which are elsewhere described. The third act contains two great arias. The closing act is specially remarkable for the great terzetto in its finale, which is one of the most effective numbers Meyerbeer has written.
But all was of no use, Meyerbeer insisted on TWO crotchets. They parted very angrily. I found it anything but agreeable to have been a witness of this angry scene. Chopin disappeared into his cabinet without taking leave of me. The whole thing lasted but a few minutes.
On the other hand, that which now grandiloquently assumes the title of 'German culture' is a sort of cosmopolitan aggregate, which bears the same relation to the German spirit as Journalism does to Schiller or Meyerbeer to Beethoven: here the strongest influence at work is the fundamentally and thoroughly un-German civilisation of France, which is aped neither with talent nor with taste, and the imitation of which gives the society, the press, the art, and the literary style of Germany their pharisaical character.
Yet Meyerbeer rose to occasions with a force that was something gigantic. Once his work was clearly defined in a mind not powerfully creative, he expressed it in music with such vigor, energy, and warmth of color as can not be easily surpassed.
He was an obscure German kapellmeister, and had never been conductor in a theatre which did not suffer bankruptcy or where something worse did not occur. Meyerbeer had certainly never heard his name, and Wagner was aware of his: he had heard of Meyerbeer's name, and even if he had not admired the musician he cannot at that period have been insensible to the man's supremacy in the opera trade.
The repetition of the Domine Salvum at the end of the scene, which bursts forth abruptly in a different key, is full of color and character. The story of Le Pardon de Ploërmel is interesting. It was first called Dinorah, a name which Meyerbeer picked up abroad.
'Ah! that Meyerbeer, monsieur, the overture of "Struensee," that funereal strain, and then that peasant dance, so full of dash and colour; and then the mournful burden which returns, the duo of the violoncellos. Ah! monsieur, the violoncellos, the violoncellos! 'And Berlioz, madame, the festival air in "Romeo." Oh! the solo of the clarionets, the beloved women, with the harp accompaniment!
For several years, Karl was obliged to lead the same shifting, nomadic sort of life, never stopping long, but dragged hither and thither in obedience to his father's vagaries and necessities, but always studying under the best masters who could be obtained. At the age of seventeen he became the pupil of the great teacher Abbé Vogler, under whose charge also Meyerbeer was then studying.
"And these musicians?" said I, pointing out some works of Weber, Rossini, Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, Meyerbeer, Herold, Wagner, Auber, Gounod, and a number of others, scattered over a large model piano-organ which occupied one of the panels of the drawing-room.
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