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But Meyerbeer and Scribe care nothing for that; such is not the effect either felt by the audience or intended by the poet. The latter had nothing higher in his mind than a grand spectacular effect, which may be omitted without the rest of the drama being any the worse, and the result is in the worst sense theatrical, but not poetic "effect without a cause."
Meyerbeer, unlike Garcia, promptly recognized in her voice "one of the finest pearls in the world's chaplet of song," and was determined to hear her under conditions which would fully test the power and quality of so delicious an organ.
He told me many comical things about Meyerbeer, and the impossibility of escaping from his flattery, which was dictated by his insatiable thirst for laudatory articles.
Besides the "hard, inartistic modulations, the startling progressions and abrupt changes of mood" that jarred on the old-fashioned Moscheles, and dipped in vitriol the pen of Rellstab, there is in the Mazurkas the greatest stumbling block of all, the much exploited rubato. Berlioz swore that Chopin could not play in time which was not true and later we shall see that Meyerbeer thought the same.
The allegro appassionato of the inter-act is played as usual, with a majestic deliberation which would have made Meyerbeer frantic, and all the majesty of which was appreciated by the Quiquendonian dilettanti. But soon the leader perceived that he was no longer master of his musicians. He found it difficult to restrain them, though usually so obedient and calm.
Thus, doubly armed with an Italian name and an Italian reputation, he returned to Germany, but was coldly welcomed. Even Weber charged him with being a renegade to the cause of German Art, and, while "Emma di Risburgo" was played at one of the Berlin theatres, had "The Two Caliphs" revived at another. Meyerbeer thus could have heard his two styles of composition exemplified in the same night.
Meyerbeer watched this arrow flight and shrugged her shoulders before lazily alighting. "Is all well?" asked Geoffrey. "No serious damage," smiled the lady, who is known in Deauville as Madame Cythère, "but you had better go and console her. I think she has seen the devil for the first time." He opened the door of their sunny bedroom, and found Asako packing feverishly, and sobbing in spasms.
In 1827 Meyerbeer married, and retired from public life for a while. He also wrote a collection of melodies, among them an elegy entitled "At the Tomb of Beethoven." But erelong the glorious old instinct for operatic composition returned. On the seventeenth of September, 1829, M. Lubbert, then director of the opera, received a letter couched in these terms: "17 Septembre, 1829.
And thus the constantly recurring rhythm in the score of Robert le Diable makes the work, as a whole, appear monotonous. As to the effect of the long trumpets, of which you speak, it has long been known in Germany; and what Meyerbeer offers us as a novelty was constantly used by Mozart, who gives just such a chorus to the devils in Don Giovanni."
Weber, indeed, always looked upon Meyerbeer's Italian operas as a sad falling away from grace, and in a letter written to his brother, Godefroy, the fourth of the little group of Darmstadt students, says, "Meyerbeer has promised on his return to Berlin to write a German opera. God be praised for it! I appealed strongly to his conscience in the matter."
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