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The next prominent event in the great tenor's career was his creation of the character of John of Leyden in Meyerbeer's Prophète. There is something very charming in the naïve delight and enthusiasm with which he speaks of this, the crowning glory of his life.
However, that did not hinder her from being superb the other evening at 'Polyeucte'." "So you only go to see 'Polyeucte'?" said Jacqueline, making a little face as if she despised that opera. "Yes, I have seen it twice. Mamma lets me go to 'Polyeucte' and 'Guillaume Tell', and to the 'Prophete', but she won't take me to see 'Faust' and it is just 'Faust' that I want to see.
In 'Le Prophète' Meyerbeer chose a subject which, if less rich in dramatic possibility than that of 'Les Huguenots, has a far deeper psychological interest. Unfortunately, Scribe, with all his cleverness, was quite the worst man in the world to deal with the story of John of Leyden.
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 production of "Le Prophète" saved the fortunes of the struggling new Italian Opera House, which had been floundering in pecuniary embarrassments. The last season of Mme. Viardot in England was in 1858, during which she sang to enthusiastic audiences in many of her principal characters, and also contributed to the public pleasure in concert and the great provincial festivals.
The other day he said to me, "Cousin Lillie, I will take you out for a walk in recess." I said, "Nothing I should like better, but I can't go." "Why not?" said he. "Because I must go and be a beggar." "What do you mean?" he asked. "I mean that there is a duet that Mrs. Agassiz favors just now, from Meyerbeer's 'Le Prophete, where she is beggar number one and I am beggar number two." He laughed.
He is sitting in semi-darkness in the parquet at the Royal Opera House. "Le Prophète" is in rehearsal, and it is the last act, in which there is a powder cask, ready to blow everything to atoms, standing outside the cathedral. Fraulein Frieda Hempel, as the heroine, appears with a lighted torch and is about to take her seat on the cask.
Who would have predicted that the day would come when it would be necessary to come to the defense of the author of Les Huguenots and Le Prophète, of the man who at one time dominated every stage in Europe by a leadership which was so extraordinary that it looked as though it would never end?
The general colors of the buildings, roofs, and churches are light, gay, and sparkling, so that the whole, taken in one sweep of the eye, presents an exceedingly brilliant appearance, more like some well-contrived and highly-wrought optical illusions in a theatre such, for example, as the fairy scenery of the "Prophete" than any thing I can now remember.
Similar changes are understood to have been made in "Le Prophète" by advice of Nourrit, whose poetical insight seems to have been unerring. It was left to Duprez, Nourrit's successor, however, to be the first exponent of John of Leyden.
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