The Parisian Press on Werther in Vienna And/Or Performers
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The Parisian Press on Werther in Vienna Lesley Wright (The University of Hawai’i at Manoa) [email protected] On 16 January 1893, Werther finally had its Parisian premiere. Critics turned their attention to the libretto and its relationship to Goethe’s familiar tale, the score, the production, the performers, and more1. But they were also acutely aware that on this snowy evening Massenet’s opera was coming home, for the world premiere had taken place exactly eleven months earlier — in the home of Mozart and Beethoven: «Car c’est à Vienne que s’est donnée […] la vraie ‘première’ de Werther»2. In the later nineteenth century, this state of affairs had become increasingly common: «Comme pour Sigurd, comme pour Salammbô, comme pour Samson et Dalila, c’est sur un succès tout fait que le public parisien a dû se prononcer»3. And with a touch of irony, the journalist blames timorous directors for yet another premiere in an ‘exotic’ capital: «N’insistons pas sur cette situation, que nous vaut la ‘prudence’ des directeurs de théâtre ou leur singulière conception du métier. Quoi qu’il en soit, les Viennois nous ont envoyé Werther après avoir signé aux auteurs un chaleureux visa pour la gloire. Les interprètes, M. [Ernest] Van Dyck et Mlle [Marie] Renard, contribuèrent au triomphe exotique de notre compatriote»4. Forgiving the Viennese an earlier 1. See COLLART 1998. 2. LE TEMPS 1893. 3. Ibidem. Ernest Reyer’s Sigurd (1884) and Salammbô (1890), Emmanuel Chabrier’s Gwendoline (1886), and Benjamin Godard’s Jocelyn (1888), not to mention Massenet’s Hérodiade (1881), all had world premieres in Brussels at the Théâtre de la Monnaie. Saint-Saëns’s Samson et Dalila (1877), however, was first performed at the Hoftheater in Weimar; likeWerther , its libretto was translated into German. 4. Ibidem. Journal of Music Criticism, Volume 3 (2019), pp. 133-150 © Centro Studi Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini. All rights reserved. Lesley Wright lapse in judgment, the writer adds that this time Parisians have been pleased to ratify their judgment: «Nous voilà donc réconciliés avec les Viennois, si bons musiciens, dont l’enthousiasme pour Cavalleria rusticana nous avait, naguère, fortement surpris»5. By the beginning of the 1890s Massenet was a notable figure in French music — a professor at the Conservatoire, member of the Institut, and author of a series of successful operas, most notably Manon and Esclarmonde at the Opéra-Comique and Le Cid at the Opéra. Director Léon Carvalho’s decision in 1887 to refuse the somber Werther was widely known. Prosecuted and convicted for and then cleared of wrongdoing related to the disastrous fire at the Opéra- Comique in May 1887, he took over the helm once more in March 1891, after his successor Louis Paravey’s bankruptcy. The publisher’s and authors’ desire to take advantage of Carvalho’s return may well have stimulated increased efforts to utilize personal and professional networks in order to arrange for expanded press coverage of Werther’s successful premiere abroad6. Vienna was in any case recognized as a sophisticated capital of the German-speaking world, and what happened there mattered in Paris. As the correspondent for Le Gaulois put it: Entre Vienne et Paris, il y a des affinités que tout le monde connaît. Paris c’est Vienne, Vienne c’est Paris. Cette belle capitale des élégances autrichiennes — on pourrait dire cosmopolites — va avoir une «première» parisienne, une première de Massenet. D’ailleurs, elle se montre très fière de cette solennité, à laquelle figureront plusieurs Parisiens7. Examination of the Parisian press leading up to and several weeks beyond the date of Werther’s world premiere sheds light on matters related to cultural transfer and ‘pre-reception’, which helped prepare the ground for a Parisian homecoming in January 1893. Various articles in Parisian dailies and theatrical and/or musical publications — insertions, background pieces, telegrams, reviews, translations of the foreign press and so on — all play roles here. To different degrees these texts serve to relay information from the theater, publisher, authors 5. Ibidem. Mascagni’s opera had its Viennese premiere in January 1891, and its Parisian premiere in January 1892 at the Opéra-Comique. 6. Georges Hartmann (1843-1900), who was both Massenet’s librettist and publisher (until 1891), recruited the experienced librettist Édouard Blau (1836-1906), possibly in 1886, because Massenet was dissatisfied with the work of Paul Milliet (1848-1924). On Hartmann, see MACDONALD 2007. On Milliet, see BRANGER – HAINE , 2014, pp. 54-55. 7. PG 1892A. 134 The Parisian Press on Werther in Vienna and/or performers. They also mirror French pride in the success of a native son, chagrin at having been trumped by a foreign capital for the premiere of an important new work, and genuine curiosity, which could be only partially satisfied by reading descriptions of the event or even by looking at the piano-vocal score, which was issued by Heugel in its initial three-act version as early as January 1892. Werther’s stage history is atypical for a French opera, for the world premiere in Vienna on 16 February 1892 (which used Max Kalbeck’s German translation) led to a German premiere in Weimar (13 November 1892), and then a Geneva premiere in French on 27 December 1892 before the Parisian premiere at the Opéra-Comique. Carvalho’s original plan seems to have been to present Werther in early November 1892 (before Weimar), but Massenet rejected two tenors who had prepared and rehearsed the role (Étienne Gibert, Charles Delmas), and probably tried working with Eugène-Charles Badiali, a young baritone, before finally making do with Guillaume Ibos, who appeared in Paris shortly before Christmas and learned Werther’s part in just a few days8. Van Dyck, who had created the title role in Vienna and would have been a logical choice for Paris, where he was already well known, was busy in the Austrian capital during the 1891-1892 season, but the real reason for his absence apparently rests in a personality conflict with Carvalho, an admired but authoritarian director9. Even a dozen years earlier, when Werther was little more than a plan, insertions designed to pique the public’s interest began to surface in theatrical columns. In November 1879 a brief notice remarks that Massenet’s teacher, Ambroise Thomas, had written a masterpiece with Mignon and then expresses hope that his student, Massenet, will have equal success with Werther (another Goethe-inspired project), a new work that will be presented at the Opéra- Comique at some point in the future10. In September 1880, when Paul Milliet, in consultation with Georges Hartmann, may already have begun drafting the first act of the libretto, Massenet mentions thisdrame lyrique in four tableaux in a letter to composer Paul Lacombe11. The following month an anonymous snippet 8. WRIGHT 2015, pp. 121-125. 9. BRANGER – HAINE 2014, pp. 27-28. Despite a respectable run of performances in 1893 and brief revivals in 1894 and 1897, when the Opéra-Comique was still under Carvalho’s directorship, Werther did not become a pillar of the repertory until Carvalho’s successor Albert Carré revived and restaged it in 1903, with Léon Beyle in the lead role; he also brought in Van Dyck to sing a half dozen performances late that year. (See WRIGHT 2015, pp. 125-128.) 10. MENDEL 1879. 11. See GILLIS 1994, pp. 69-70. Charles Malherbe (MALHERBE 1892A, p. 168) — who may well have had the information from Milliet himself — says that it was Milliet who first conceived 135 Lesley Wright in Le Ménestrel describes Werther as an «opéra de genre» that was intended for the next season at the Opéra-Comique (1881-1882)12. Early insertions like these consistently refer to a hoped-for or imminent premiere in Paris at the Opéra- Comique. While the libretto was being drafted and revised multiple times in the first half of the 1880s, the press fell silent about Werther. Massenet began composing only in the spring of 1885, and he was, in fact, writing out his piano-vocal manuscript when a July 1886 insertion, possibly designed to nudge Carvalho into action, reports that Félix Duquesnel, director of the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin, was contemplating a production13. More detailed than most, this insertion stresses that Werther differs from ‘ordinary’ operas because its form avoids ensembles and «ne comprendrait ni choeurs, ni duos, ni trios, ni quatuors»14. Because of Massenet’s concern for verisimilitude, the characters would sing one after the other: «ainsi que l’on parle et l’on se répond dans une conversation de la vie réelle. En résumé une sorte de symphonie en plusieurs tableaux […]»15. The author does admit, however, that this production is only «à l’état de projet, et n’est peut-être mis en avant qu’à l’effet de tirer l’attention de M. Carvalho sur un ouvrage qu’il paraît trop ignorer»16. In his notoriously unreliable memoirs, Massenet claims to have played through the entire score for Carvalho on 25 May 1887, aided by Rose Caron (his hoped-for Charlotte), who turned pages17. He recalls that the director, who was expecting another Manon, found the subject without interest and doomed from the start. A 23 May snippet in Le Figaro, most likely submitted by the theater, seems the idea of the poem and prepared the libretto. See also SACD. 12. LE MÉNESTREL 1880. This notice also mentions Victor Capoul (1839-1924), Émile Taskin (1855-1897), and Juliette Bilbaut-Vauchelet (1855-1925) as the potential singers. 13. MORENO 1886. Massenet may well have begun sketching Werther in the spring of 1885, for he stated just that in an interview (CHARVAY 1893).