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Updated: May 26, 2025
"I have been given a seat for the Opéra-Comique to-night. It would be a pity to waste it." Before leaving the house, Ligny asked Madame Simonneau: "Where have you put him?" "In the bed," replied Madame Simonneau. "It was more decent."
She counted on Roussin to procure her an engagement at the Opera or the Opera-Comique: and Roussin, who asked nothing better, had seen in the performance of David an opportunity of revealing to the Parisian public at no very great risk the lyrical gifts of the new tragedienne, in a part which called for no particular dramatic acting, and gave her an excellent opportunity of displaying the elegance of her figure.
Massenet has told us that he borrowed right and left from his unpublished score, La Coupe du Roi de Thulé. That is what Gluck did with his Elena e Paride which had little success. I may as well confess that one of the ballets in Henry VIII came from the finale of an opéra-comique in one act.
Besides these additions he had written the words which Barbier and Carré should have done. The rehearsals were tedious. Meyerbeer wanted Faure and Madame Carvalho in the leading rôles but one was at the Opéra-Comique and the other at her own house, the Théâtre-Lyrique. The work went back and forth from the Place Favart to the Place du Châtelet.
In France we have never had apart from a few attempts in opéra-comique a recitative that exactly expressed our natural speech. Lully and Rameau took for their model the high-flown declamation of the tragedy stage of their time.
The original Paris cast was as follows: Pelléas, M. Jean Périer; Mélisande, Miss Mary Garden; Arkël, M. Vieuille; Golaud, M. Dufrane; Geneviève, Mlle. Gerville-Réache; Le petit Yniold, M. Blondin; Un Médicin, M. Viguié. M. André Messager was the conductor. The work was admirably mounted under the supervision of the Director of the Opéra-Comique, M. Albert Carré.
Would it not be niggardly to assign it two hours only, and give up the rest of the performance to opera-comique or farce? to cut Shakespeare for Bobèche? And do not imagine that, if the plot is well adjusted, the multitude of characters set in motion will cause fatigue to the spectator or confusion in the drama.
Such a theatre no longer counts in the history of French music; and its next directors will need a vast amount of ingenuity and energy to get a semblance of life into such a dead colossus. But it is quite another affair with the Opéra-Comique. This theatre has taken a very active part in the development of modern music.
The founder of the first school of French opera, Lulli, was Florentine; the founder of the second school, Gluck, was German; the two founders of the third school were Rossini, an Italian, and Meyerbeer, a German; the creators of opéra-comique were Duni, an Italian, and Gretry, a Belgian; Franck, who revolutionised our modern school of opera, was also Belgian.
When that frightful crisis was at an end, the dancer was re-engaged. The parts were read to the artists, and the next day Amédé Achard threw up his rôle, declaring that it belonged to grand opera and was beyond the powers of an opéra-comique tenor. It is well known that he ended his career at the Opéra. Another tenor had to be found, but tenors are rare birds and we were unable to get one.
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