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I could not help looking at the full house and wondering how so many decent Englishmen and women could sit through such a spectacle.... The impression made upon me by the subject of Meyerbeer's celebrated opera appears to have entirely superseded that of the undoubtedly fine music; but I never was able to enjoy the latter because of the former, and the only shape in which I ever enjoyed "Robert the Devil" was in M. Levassor's irresistibly ludicrous account of it in the character of a young Paris badaud, who had just come from seeing it at the theater.
Fredrika Bremer and Hans Christian Andersen on the Young Singer. Her Début in Berlin. Becomes Prima Donna at the Royal Theatre. Beginning of the Lind Enthusiasm that overran Europe. She appears in Dresden in Meyerbeer's New Opera, "Feldlager in Schliesen." Offers throng in from all the Leading Theatres of Europe. The Grand Furore in Every Part of Germany.
The orchestra was playing Meyerbeer's "Prophete," and my neighbour was asleep, snoring softly. Sleep had not disfigured him his little white moustache was still brushed up, his lips closed; a very good and gentle expression hovered on his face.
The first day there was a visit to the fortress overhanging the town, which looks as far away as the sea of trees, the Thuringerwald. It has Luther's room, with his chair and part of his bed. In the evening the Queen went to the perfect little German theatre, where Meyerbeer's Huguenots was given, and the audience sang "God save the Queen" to German words.
The riturnello of Sélika's aria, which should be performed with lowered curtain as the queen gazes over the sea and at the departing vessel far away on the horizon, became a vehicle for encores the last thing that was ever in Meyerbeer's mind. But the worst was the liberty Fétis took in retouching the orchestration.
"Douarnenez, for Audierne, Brittany," was the legend written in Meyerbeer's note-book. And after that: "Journey twenty hours change at Rennes, Redon, and Quimpere." "Too far. I've enough for now," said Meyerbeer, chuckling, as he walked away. "But I'd give five hundred dollars to know who Zoug-Zoug is. I'll make another try." So he held his sensation back for a while yet.
With a musician of Meyerbeer's known eclecticism, it might be supposed that a work of which the composition extended over so long a period would exhibit the strangest conglomeration of styles and influences. Curiously enough, 'L'Africaine' is the most consistent of Meyerbeer's works.
The plot was slight enough; yet, described in exquisite verse, and scattered throughout with the daintiest songs and dances, it merited a considerably higher place in musical records than such works as Meyerbeer's "Dinorah," or Verdi's "Rigoletto."
We do not find Wotan, like the dragon or the horse, or, for the matter of that, like the stage demon in Weber's Freischutz or Meyerbeer's Robert the Devil, with one fixed theme attached to him like a name plate to an umbrella, blaring unaltered from the orchestra whenever he steps on the stage. Sometimes we have the Valhalla theme used to express the greatness of the gods as an idea of Wotan's.
She had often told me of Mozart's operas and Meyerbeer's, and I could remember hearing her sing, years ago, certain melodies of Verdi's.
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