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This involved me in excursions into their district, and I had an opportunity of witnessing young Weisheimer's talent as an orchestral conductor at a performance of Offenbach's Orpheus in the theatre at Mayence, where he had hitherto occupied a subordinate position.
Offenbach's works which were given at the Opéra-Comique Robinson Crusoé, Vert-Vert, and Fantasio are much inferior to La Chanson de Fortunio, La Belle Hélène and many other justly famous operettas. There have been several unprofitable revivals of La Belle Hélène. This is due to the fact that the rôle of Hélène was designed for Mlle. Schneider.
This woman, La Perichola, whose caricatured likeness we see in the most agreeable of Offenbach's operas, and whose deeds of mercy and edifying end in a convent entitle her to some charitable consideration, persuaded her royal lover to operate on the natives with missionaries and teachers rather than with fire and sword. Antonio Amat yielded, and the Indians have survived.
This English burlesque, this child of M. Offenbach's genius, and the now somewhat faded spectacular muse, flourished at the time of which I write in three of our seven theatres for months, five, from the highest to the lowest being in turn open to it, and had begun, in a tentative way, to invade the deserted stage even so long ago as the previous summer; and I have sometimes flattered myself that it was my fortune to witness the first exhibition of its most characteristic feature in a theatre into which I wandered one sultry night because it was the nearest theatre.
Girls and young married women flew round over the polished floor on the arms of well-dressed men, mostly officers, spinning and whirling round to Offenbach's dance music, led with bacchanalian fire by a small but distinguished conductor from a red covered platform.
The company had scarcely seated itself, before a strange light began to illuminate that end of the room at which the stage stood, and immediately the curtain rose to the overture of M. Offenbach's Orphee aux Enfers, the pianist continuing with great spirit until a round of applause greeted the entrance of the two spectral performers. Its effect upon them was in the highest degree disconcerting.
In time, of course, his luck turned; he had plays performed and stories published; and at last he met M. Henri Meilhac, and entered on that collaboration of nearly twenty years' duration to which we owe "Froufrou" and "Tricoche et Cacolet," on the one hand, and on the other the books of Offenbach's most brilliant operas "Barbebleue," for example, and "La Périchole."
The following anecdote may remind the reader of the amusing scene in Offenbach's "Grand Duchesse of Gerolstein," where the Grand Duchess, talking to the guardsman whose athletic proportions she admires, addresses him with a rising scale of "corporal" ... "sergeant" ... "lieutenant" ... "captain" ... "colonel," and so on, as she talks, only, however, later cruelly to re-descend the scale to the very bottom when her courtship is ineffectual.
"You don't mean to say you've never heard of Bluebeard?" "I've heard of Bluebeard, of course," said she. "Who hasn't?" "I mean the opera Offenbach's." She shook her head, scarce knowing even what an opera was. "Well, well! What next?" He implied that such ignorance stood alone in his experience. Really he was delighted at the cleanness of the slate on which he had to write.
That was thirty pounds a week gone; and the woman sang so fearfully out of tune that she was hissed a pity, for the piece contained some of Offenbach's best music.
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