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Massenet and Wagner: Bridling the influence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 August 2008

Steven Huebner
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Extract

By a stroke of coincidence the critic Théodore de Wyzewa found himself sitting next to Jules Massenet during a performance of Parsifal at Bayreuth in August 1886. Massenet's behaviour made a deep enough impression on Wyzewa for him to share it with readers of Le Figaro several years later. ‘He quivered feverishly, became short-breathed, and his large, sombre eyes sparkled in the dark. And when the opera was over, I heard him say to someone in the corridors of the theatre “Ah! I am anxious to return to Paris to burn my Werther!”’ Wyzewa published his piece on the day of Werther's Paris première. In a city where Wagner stagings had recently become all the rage, this was hardly a ringing endorsement; but Wyzewa had a more important point. Massenet provided a prime example of an ill that had descended on French composers, all too many of whom had sacrificed native qualities in vain, sterile imitations of Wagner. Pale beside the ‘enchanted treasure of dream and fantasy’ (‘le trésor enchanté du rêve et de la fantaisie’) in Wagner's textures, such imitations had taken on a merely formulaic character.

Type
Research Article
Information
Cambridge Opera Journal , Volume 5 , Issue 3 , November 1993 , pp. 223 - 238
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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References

An earlier version of this essay was presented at the symposium ‘Massenet et son temps’ held at Saint Etienne, France, 28 October–1 November 1992. The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada generously provided financial support for this study.

1 ‘M. Jules Massenet’, Le Figaro, 16 01 1893.Google Scholar

2 ‘Werther’, L'Art du théâtre, 31 (07 1903), 106–8.Google Scholar

3 In a letter of 25 September 1880 to his friend Paul Lacombe (Massenet–Lacombe correspondence, Bibliothèque municipale de Carcassonne), Massenet announced that he was about to begin work on Werther: ‘that very special work is meant above all to satisfy me’ (‘cet ouvrage tout spécial est destiné à me satisfaire d'abord’). In December 1880, the Opéra Comique announced a cast to the papers, but Massenet seems to have dropped the project around that time. The account that Massenet gives in Mes Souvenirs (Paris, 1912Google Scholar; new edition annotated by Condé, Gérard, Paris, 1992Google Scholar) about having been inspired by a visit to Wetzlar in 1886 to write a Werther cannot be true; it illustrates how unreliable a source the composer's book often is. Werther was not premièred until 16 February 1892 at the Vienna Court Opera.

4 As initially composed, the opera had a much longer passage of ensemble singing for Charlotte and Werther. In a pre-publication print of the piano–vocal score once owned by Milliet and dated by him 8 May 1888 (B.O. & 2117(2)), Charlotte and Werther sing together in the last tableau following her ‘Ton baiser du moins je te l'aurai rendu!’ In the first and subsequent editions, the musical text is substantially the same, but rendered initially by the orchestra alone and then by Charlotte.

5 ‘quelle féerie! quelle musique! quelle douceur dans l'orchestration!’ and later in the letter ‘que devenir avec Hérodiade, Manon, et … Montalte??? c'est d'un toc!’ Letter of 24 January (B.N., Mus., l.a. Massenet 208). A guess at the recipient of this letter as either Adolphe D'Ennery or Louis Gallet comes from its contents – which make clear that Massenet is writing to a friend and collaborator – as well as the way Montalte (a libretto by D'Ennery and Gallet, unlike Hérodiade and Manon) is set off in the list of operas. Massenet must have dropped the Montalte project by the end of 1883 because Le Ménestrel announced in its issue of 30 December that Ernest Guiraud would set the text.

6 This anecdote is told by Imbert, Hugues in ‘Jules Massenet’, Profils d'artistes contemporains (Paris, 1897), 226.Google Scholar

7 ‘Parisis’ [psdn. Emile Blavet], ‘La Vie Parisienne’, Le Figaro, 19 01 1884.Google Scholar

8 A fine article by Annegret Fauser on the same subject as this essay, but written from a different perspective and with a different purpose, is entitled: ‘Esclarmonde: un opéra wagnérien?’, L'Avant-Scène Opéra: Esclarmonde, Grisélidis, 148 (1992), 68–73.Google Scholar The author sensibly concludes by suggesting that the answer hinges on how one understands wagnérisme. I would go a step further and propose that the question posed in the title – which encourages a ‘yes, no or perhaps’ answer – is not the only angle from which to view this work or any other fin-de-siècle French opera. In place of an apportionment into two camps, however one defines them, one may simply attempt to assess Wagnerian influence in a wide variety of works.

9 For a reliable account of the genesis of Esclarmonde, see Gillis, Patrick, ‘Genèse d'Esclarmonde’, L'Avant-Scène – Esclarmonde, Grisélidis, 22–33.Google Scholar

10 For an accessible summary of Partonopeus, see Histoire littéraire de la France (Nendeln/Lichtenstein: Kraus repr., 1971, of original 1838 edition), XIX, 632–48.Google Scholar The most likely source of the complete text in modern French for the librettists and Massenet would have been by d'Aussy, Legrand, Fabliaux ou Contes (Paris, 1829), V, 203–318.Google ScholarReyer's, Ernest review of the opera (Le Journal des débats, 19 05 1889) mentions the Legrand d'Aussy translationGoogle Scholar; since he was well acquainted with Alfred Blau as one of the librettists for his own Sigurd, Reyer's observation is particularly valuable.

11 ‘Souvenirs sur Massenet’, Mercure de France, 1 03 1921.Google Scholar The passage in Le Jongleur that de Rigné cites is the phrase ‘Voix de l'inexprimable’ in G flat major sung by ‘le moine musicien’ in Act II; the harmonies are said to recall the language of Tannhäuser. This music certainly has a modal flavour appropriate to the setting, but it must be admitted that, in this case, it is difficult to hear Wagner's work – say the Pilgrims' chorus – behind Massenet's application of couleur locale.

12 Henri Céard noted the derivation of the name in his review of the first production in Le Siècle, 16 05 1889.Google Scholar A summary of Huon with citations is given in Histoire littéraire de la France, 41–93.Google Scholar

13 In the original: ‘Acolons-nous, si morrons plus soef / Tristans morue por bele Iseut amer / Si ferons nous, moi et vous, en non Dé.’ Histoire littéraire de la France, 71.Google Scholar

14 The two voice-leading situations are, of course, entirely different, with Massenet's fundamental conservatism highlighted against the Wagner example.

15 Malherbe's book was published by Fischbacher in Paris. He also wrote a feature on Esclarmonde shortly before the première entitled ‘Légende et Opéra’, Le Monde artiste, 5 05 1889.Google Scholar

16 Notice, 57.Google Scholar

17 Notice, 45.Google Scholar

18 On Steigerung in Gounod see Huebner, Steven, The Operas of Charles Gounod (Oxford, 1990), 254.Google Scholar Other examples in amorous or erotic contexts in the work of Massenet include: Eve, Troisième parie, Eve–Adam duet at ‘Aimons nous!’; Le Roi de Lahore, Act II, Sita–Alim duet, at ‘Restons unis’; Hérodiade, Act I, Salomé–Jean duet at ‘Dans la mystique ardeur’; Manon, Act I, Poussette–Javotte–Rosette intervention ‘Revenez Guillot’ in the Manon–Des Grieux duet; Thaïs, Act I, finale, ‘Qui te fait si sevère’; Gela, Act I, Introduction, ‘Les grands cieux sont comme un miroir’.

19 The classic study on the double-tonic complex in Tristan is Bailey's, RobertRichard Wagner: Prelude and Transfiguration from ‘Tristan and Isolde’ (New York, 1985).Google Scholar

20 de Thémines, M., review of Esclarmonde, La Patrie, 21 05 1889Google Scholar and Bellaigue, Camille, review of Esclarmonde, Revue des deux mondes, 1 06 1889.Google Scholar

21 Progressive critics who were staunch supporters of Wagner's music, such as Louis de Fourcaud ( Le Gaulois, 16 05 1889Google Scholar) and Wilder, Victor (Gil Blas, 17 05 1889)Google Scholar, attacked Esclarmonde not only for its musical concessions to the gallery but also for an over-complicated plot. Conservative writers such as Pougin, Arthur (Le Ménestrel, 19 05 1889)Google Scholar and Camille Bellaigue (see n. 20) were not much happier with the libretto, and argued that Massenet leaned excessively on Wagner.

22 Biquet, A., review of Esclarmonde, Le Radical, 17 05 1889.Google Scholar

23 René de Récy makes this point in his review of Massenet's, Thaïs, Revue politique et littéraire, 24 03 1894.Google Scholar

24 Serviéres, Georges, ‘Jules Massenet’, La Musique française moderne (Paris, 1897), 174.Google Scholar