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Updated: August 18, 2024
Massenet's "Elegie," Moszkowski's "Serenata," a transcription, and then the aria from Lucia. Not compositions professional violinists would have selected. Cutty felt his spine grow cold as this aria poured goldenly toward heaven. He understood. Hawksley was telling him that the shade of his glorious mother was in this room. The boy was right. Some fiddles had souls.
The Prior bows in awe before this manifestation of divine graciousness and the juggler dies in the odour of sanctity. Massenet's music catches the spirit of the story with admirable art. As regards melodic invention it is rather thin, but the workmanship is beyond praise.
'Le Portrait de Manon, a delicate little sketch in one act, and 'Thaïs, a clever setting of Anatole France's beautiful romance, both produced in 1894, will not be likely to add much to Massenet's reputation. 'La Navarraise, produced during the same year in London, was apparently an attempt to imitate the melodramatic extravagance of Mascagni.
Massenet's music is a happy combination of Wagner's elaborate system of guiding themes with the sensuous beauty of which he himself possesses the secret. As regards the plan of 'Esclarmonde' his indebtedness to Wagner was so patent, that Parisian critics christened him 'Mlle. Wagner, but nevertheless he succeeded in preserving his own individuality distinct from German influence.
Listen to Beethoven's Fourth and Eighth Symphonies, Il Barbiere again, Die Meistersinger.... But do not be misled: Massenet's Don Quichotte is light music; so is Mascagni's Lodoletta.... Is music to be prized and taken to our hearts because it is contrapuntal and complex? He is the one composer, indeed, who can never be played with one finger!
The young man made a brilliant dash of it, despite a lagging, scrambling accompaniment by the conservative pianist. This time we both applauded him vigorously and again, as he bowed, he swept us with his eye. The usual repertory of restaurant music followed, varied by a charming bit from Massenet's "Manon," then little known in this country.
I don't wonder he is such a lady-killer, and that no woman can resist him; even my father-in-law stayed in the salon, being completely hypnotized by Liszt, who ought to consider this as one of his greatest triumphs, if he only knew. I sang some of Massenet's songs, accompanied, of course, by Massenet. Liszt was most attentive and most enthusiastic.
She is already exhausted by ill-treatment and fatigue, and dies in his arms. Massenet's dainty score reproduces the spirit of the eighteenth century with rare felicity. A note of genuine passion, too, is not wanting, and an ingenious use of guiding themes binds the score together into a harmonious whole. A novelty in its arrangement is the plan of an orchestral accompaniment to the dialogue.
They say that he every one thinks it's a he will take Massenet's place as a lyrical composer. I found her out by accidentally coming on the manuscript of a Melvin song that I knew. That's her secret that I spoke of. Do you mind my having told you?" "Why, no. It'll never go any further. I wonder why she never told me. And why she keeps so shut off from the world here."
Mention must be made, for the sake of completeness, of the performance at Nice in 1903 of Massenet's thirty year old oratorio, 'Marie Magdeleine, in the guise of a 'drame lyrique. French taste, it need hardly be said, is very different from English with regard to what should and should not be placed upon the stage, but once granted the permissibility of making Jesus Christ the protagonist of an opera, there is comparatively little in 'Marie Magdeleine' to offend religious susceptibilities.
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