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Church, State and an Operatic Outlaw: Jules Massenet's Hérodiade

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 May 2020

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Abstract

When Jules Massenet began work on Hérodiade in the late 1870s, he likely expected to see his work premiered at the Paris Opéra. But the coveted Parisian premiere was not to be. Based on a liberal reworking of the infamous tale of Herod, Salome and John the Baptist, Hérodiade undoubtedly challenges traditional Catholic doctrine. Yet Massenet's opera was not as ‘secular’ as it may seem. I argue here that it draws instead on a Republican-friendly brand of Catholicism that encouraged individual religiosity as an anticlerical strategy. Herein, I argue, lay the reasons why Hérodiade was outlawed. It was not so much the libretto's liberal transformations of biblical characters as what those transformations represented both to the Catholic Church and to the French state: in the end the representation of a simultaneously Republican and Catholic Christ presented a dangerous analogue to the country's strained political situation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Cambridge Opera Journal , Volume 31 , Issue 2-3 , July 2019 , pp. 211 - 236
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2020

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Footnotes

*

Jennifer Walker, North Carolina Central University, USA; [email protected].

Research for this article was supported by the Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship and the M. Elizabeth C. Bartlet Travel Grant for Research in France of the American Musicological Society. I would also like to extend my deepest gratitude to Annegret Fauser, Tim Carter and Clair Rowden for their invaluable and insightful feedback on this text in its various iterations.

References

1 Paul Bertray, ‘Hérodiade II’, Le courrier de Lyon (29 December 1885).

2 According to an obituary in La semaine religieuse du diocèse de Lyon, Abbé de Pubély was the pseudonym of Father Félix Mathieu Conil (1851–95), the parish priest at the church of Saint-Pothin de Lyon. See S. Buy, ‘Nécrologie’, La semaine religieuse du diocèse de Lyon (31 May–22 November 1895), 433–4. Joannès Blanchon was the founder of L’écho de Fourvière and the secretary of the Fourvière Commission that oversaw the construction of the Basilica of Notre-Dame de Fourvière (between 1872 and 1884). See Ramaut, Alban, ‘La création d’Hérodiade à Lyon’, in Opéra et religion sous la IIIe République, ed. Branger, Jean-Christophe and Ramaut, Alban (Saint-Étienne, 2006), 148Google Scholar.

3 This timeline is given by Demar Irvine and also by Gérard Condé. See Irvine, Demar, Massenet: A Chronicle of His Life and Times (Portland, 1994), 97–119Google Scholar, and Condé, Gérard, ‘Commentaire musical’, L’avant-scène opéra, 187 (1998), 74Google Scholar. Clair Rowden, however, suggests that it is incorrect and provides a more nuanced account in Republican Morality and Catholic Tradition at the Opera (Weinsberg, 2004), 91–4Google Scholar. Victor Wilder and Paul Milliet both imply that it was Ricordi who had the original idea to have Massenet set Flaubert's Hérodias to music. See Victor Wilder, ‘Semaine théâtrale’, Le ménestrel (25 December 1881), 27. Milliet provided an interview with writers for Le gaulois in 1886 in which he similarly claimed that it was Ricordi's idea. See Maxime Serpeille, ‘A propos d’Hérodiade’, Le gaulois (8 January 1886).

4 Condé, ‘Commentaire musical’, Irvine, Massenet, and Rowden, Republican Morality, all suggest that Massenet offered the score to the Vaucorbeil, during the summer of 1881 (see n. 3). Massenet's own memoirs also claimed that, in spite of his disdain for ‘knocking at theatre doors’, he offered the work to Vaucorbeil; see Massenet, Jules, Mes souvenirs et autres écrits, ed. Branger, Jean-Christophe (Paris, 2017), 123Google Scholar. David Grayson, however, asserts that Vaucorbeil solicited the score from Massenet as a possible addition to the upcoming season. Grayson, David, ‘Finding a Stage for French Opera’, in Music, Theater, and Cultural Transfer: Paris, 1830–1914, ed. Fauser, Annegret and Everist, Mark (Chicago, 2009), 13Google Scholar.

5 Jean-Christophe Branger has also claimed that Vaucorbeil refused to mount works whose librettists were little known. See Branger, Jean-Christophe, Manon de Jules Massenet ou le crépuscule de l'opéra-comique (Metz, 1999), 43Google Scholar, and Massenet Mes souvenirs et autres écrits, 123, n. 262.

6 Victor Wilder, ‘Semaine théâtrale’, Le ménestrel (25 December 1881), 27. ‘Ces légendes sacrées de la Bible ou de l’Évangile sont d'une grâce exquise, je l'accorde, mais elles sont fort délicates à mettre sur les planches. Il faut bien le dire, d'ailleurs, les auteurs d’Hérodiade ont traité leur sujet avec un sans-gêne historique qui dépasse de beaucoup les droits du poète.’

7 For a comprehensive listing of works which are based on the Salomé story, see Pym, Anthony, ‘The Importance of Salomé: Approaches to a fin-de-siècle Theme’, French Forum 14/3 (September 1989), 311–22Google Scholar, and Hubert, J.D., ‘Representations of Decapitation: Mallarmé's “Hérodiade” and Flaubert's “Hérodias”’, French Forum 7/3 (September 1982), 245–51Google Scholar. See also Rowden, Clair, ed., Performing Salome, Revealing Stories (London, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 As Clair Rowden has noted, the interest in the religious erotic increased exponentially during the last three decades of the nineteenth century. Positivist theology had situated Jesus and the gospel stories firmly within an orientalised, exotic milieu, and according to Rowden ‘neither the opera house, nor the Church had the monopoly on the religious erotic, and both were quite happy to blur the boundaries between the sensual and the mystical, to liberally exploit a contemporary fashion’. Rowden, Republican Morality, 110.

9 For a concise review of Church–State relations as a product of Revolutionary thought, see McMillan, James F., ‘Catholic Christianity in France from the Restoration to the Separation of Church and State, 1815–1905’, in The Cambridge History of Christianity. Vol. 8: World Christianities c.1815–c.1914, ed. Gilley, Sheridan and Stanley, Brian (Cambridge, 2006), 217–32Google Scholar.

10 Gibson, Ralph, A Social History of French Catholicism, 1789–1914 (London, 1989), 163Google Scholar.

11 For example, the conservative and nationalist newspaper L'autorité ran such headlines as ‘Cléricalisme laïque’, ‘La situation des catholiques en France’ and ‘Neutralité religieuse’ in 1881. Though conservative, L'autorité also had a Republican bent as it was one of the first news outlets to question Alfred Dreyfus's guilt in the Dreyfus Affair. The more decidedly Republican newspaper L'évenément ran similar headlines throughout 1880–1, including ‘Les religieux politiciens’ and ‘M. [René] Waldeck-Rousseau et l'archevêque de Paris’.

12 Fulcher, Jane, The Nation's Image: French Grand Opera as Politics and Politicized Art (New York, 1987)Google Scholar.

13 Christiansen, Rupert, Paris Babylon: The Story of the Paris Commune (New York, 1994), 384Google Scholar. For more on the Moral Order, see Passmore, Kevin, The Right in France from the Third Republic to Vichy (Oxford, 2012), 18–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Johannès Weber, ‘Critique musicale’, Le temps (4 January 1882).

15 Perkéo, ‘Lettre de Bruxelles’, Le figaro (7 December 1881). Rowden has likewise noted numerous additional critics who commented on Jean-Baptiste's likeness to Christ. Rowden, Republican Morality, 100–9.

16 All references to the libretto and score follow the 1884 three-act piano–vocal score with indications of instrumentation drawn from the 1909 full score, with no reconciliation of differences between the two (in terms of articulation, dynamics, etc.). Minor errors and inconsistencies of styling have been silently emended. See Massenet, Jules, Hérodiade (Paris: Heugel, 1884)Google Scholar and Hérodiade (Paris: Heugel, 1909)Google Scholar.

17 Act III scene 11, 288.

18 B. Jouvin, ‘L’Hérodiade de Jules Massenet’, Le figaro (22 December 1881).

19 Charles Koechlin, ‘Souvenirs de la classe Massenet (1894–1895)’, Le ménestrel (8 March 1935), 82.

20 Strauss, David Friedrich, Das Leben Jesu kritisch bearbeitet (Tübingen, 1837)Google Scholar. See also Keuss, Jeffrey F., ‘David Friedrich Strauss and Myth in Das Leben Jesu’, in The Sacred and the Profane: Contemporary Demands on Hermeneutics, ed. Keuss, Jeffrey F. (Aldershot, 2003), 53–61Google Scholar.

21 Under the reign of Napoléon III, Catholicism flourished in France during the Second Empire (1852–70). Its increased popularity was tied directly to an upsurge in ultramontanism, or the belief that the Pope's authority was superior to that of the leaders of the French Catholic Church. As Sophie Heywood points out, the strong ties between Napoléon III, the French Church and the Pope played an important role in French cultural affairs during the Second Empire; Napoléon III's strong emphasis on Catholicism, however, generated a resurgence of both social and political anticlericalism, the vestiges of which were prominent during the foundation of the Third Republic. See Heywood, Sophie, ‘The Apostolate of the Pen: Mgr de Ségur and the Mobility of Catholic Opinion in Second Empire France’, French History 26/2 (2012), 203–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For more on the Catholicism of the Second Empire, see Price, Roger, Religious Renewal in France, 1789–1870: The Roman Catholic Church Between Catastrophe and Triumph (Aberystwyth, 2017)Google Scholar.

22 Priest, Robert D., The Gospel According to Renan: Reading, Writing, and Religion in Nineteenth-Century France (Oxford, 2015), 69CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Hartog, François, La nation, la religion, l'avenir: sur les traces d'Ernest Renan (Paris, 2017)Google Scholar, and Wardman, H.W., Ernest Renan: A Critical Biography (London, 1964), 72–91Google Scholar. Wardman notes that La vie de Jésus was so popular that it had gone through ten editions of 5,000 copies each by the end of 1863 and had been translated into numerous European languages by the end of 1864 (81).

23 Gibson, Ralph, ‘Hellfire and Damnation in Nineteenth-Century France’, The Catholic Historical Review 74/3 (July 1988), 383–402Google Scholar.

24 Priest, The Gospel According to Renan, 70.

25 See Gibson, Ralph, A Social History of French Catholicism, 1789–1914 (London, 1989), 115–20Google Scholar; McManners, John, Church and State in France, 1870–1914 (London, 1972), 14–21Google Scholar; Rowden, Republican Morality, 31–43.

26 Renan, Ernest, Life of Jesus, trans. Hutchison, William G. (London, 1897), 82Google Scholar.

27 Renan, Life of Jesus, 58.

28 Renan, Life of Jesus, 143.

29 Imbert, Hugues, Profils d'artistes contemporains (Paris, 1897), 160, n. 1Google Scholar. ‘La Vie de Jésus exerça une grande influence sur Massenet lors de la création de Marie-Magdeleine. Le jeune compositeur fréquentait la maison de Renan, qu'il aimait beaucoup. Il s'asseyait souvent à sa table, en compagnie d'illustres littérateurs, notamment de Dumas fils.’

30 Erik Goldstrom, ‘A Whore in Paradise: The Oratorios of Jules Massenet’ (PhD diss., Stanford University, 1998), 31–50, 68, 204.

31 Camille Bellaigue, ‘Les “grands oratorios” à l’église Saint-Eustache’, Revue des deux mondes (15 April 1900), 927. ‘En général, et sous réserve faite à l'avance d'un ou deux passages particuliers, la Terre Promise témoigne d'une inspiration, au moins d'une intention plus purement sacrée. On n'appellera pas, ou presque pas, aujourd'hui M. Massenet le Renan de l'oratorio, le musicien féministe et délicieux de la piété dans la foi.’

32 de Bovet, Marie Anne, Charles Gounod: His Life and His Work (London, 1891), 190Google Scholar.

33 Rowden, Clair, ‘Hérodiade: Church, State, and the Feminist Movement’, in Nineteenth-Century Music: Selected Proceedings from the Tenth International Conference, ed. Samson, Jim and Zon, Bennett (London, 2002), 251, 276Google Scholar.

34 Act I scene 1, 25–6.

35 Act III scene 11, 291–4.

36 Act II scene 10, 247–8.

37 Act I scene 1, 32–7.

38 Renan, Life of Jesus, 48.

39 Renan, Life of Jesus, 48.

40 Act I scene 3, 67. ‘Nul ne prendra jamais pitié de ta douleur!’

41 The idea of Jean-Baptiste-as-Catholic-priest (albeit a fallen one) is Clair Rowden's. See Rowden, Republican Morality, 109–56.

42 See Rowden, ‘Hérodiade: Church, State, and the Feminist Movement’ and McMillan, James F., France and Women 1789–1914: Gender, Society, and Politics (London, 2000)Google Scholar for more detailed discussions on the moral interdicts directed at women by the Catholic Church in France during the nineteenth century.

43 Act I scene 4, 74–5. ‘Que ferait ta jeunesse à peine épanouie dans les pierres de mon chemin? Pour toi, c'est la saison où les vœux moins timides appellent des baisers sur les lèvres avides; pour toi, c'est la saison d'aimer!’

44 Act IV scene 11, 295–6, 302–6. ‘Ah! C'est donc vrai, Seigneur, que tu pardonnes! Que je puis respire cette enivrante fleur, la presser sur ma bouche et murmurer: je t'aime! Ces mots ne sont pas un blasphème: tu m'as donné la voix pour te nommer, Seigneur, et l’âme pour aimer! … Il est beau de mourir en s'aimant, ma chère âme! Quand nos jours s’éteindront comme une chaste flamme, notre amour, dans le ciel rayonnant de clarté, trouvera le mystère et l'immortalité! Transport de l'amour embrasse-nous toujours!’

45 Rowden, Republican Morality, 128.

46 Rowden, ‘Hérodiade: Church, State, and the Feminist Movement’, 252, 256–8, 276–7 and Republican Morality, 145–50. The notion that France (especially Paris) had become the new Rome dated from the Revolution. For more on the Third Republic as the ‘new Rome’, see Rowell, Diana, Paris: The ‘New Rome’ of Napoleon I (London, 2012)Google Scholar. Annegret Fauser also addresses the importance of this idea during the Third Republic in ‘Gendering the Nations: The Ideologies of French Discourse on Music (1870–1914)’, in The Politics of Musical Identity: Selected Essays (Farnham, 2015), 80–2.

47 Act I scene 5, 145–6, 153. (Vitellius) ‘Je représente ici César et la justice: Peuple, quels sont tes vœux?’ … (Jean-Baptiste) ‘Toute justice vient du ciel! Homme, ta puissance fragile se brise aux pieds de l'Eternel comme un vase d'argile!’

48 Un Monsieur de l'Orchestre [Armand Gouzien], ‘La soirée théâtrale (Par dépêche télégraphique)’, Le figaro (20 December 1881).

49 Diogène, ‘Chronique: préférez-vous Vitellius?’, La lanterne (16 December 1881). On the specifics of the debate in the Chamber of Deputies, see Mayeur, Jean-Marie, Léon Gambetta: la patrie et la République (Paris, 2008)Google Scholar.

50 Troy J. Hinkel, ‘Jules Ferry and Henri Maret: The Battle of Church and State at the Sorbonne, 1879–1884’ (PhD dissertation, University of Kansas, 2011), 2–9, 115–41. See also Oakley, Francis, The Conciliarist Tradition: Constitutionalism in the Catholic Church, 1300–1870 (New York, 2003), 209Google Scholar.

51 See, for example, columns printed in Le pays (16 December 1881) and L'univers (15 December 1881). Henri Maret provided his own account of the incident on the front page of his newspaper, Le radical, on 16 December.

52 Jean-Christophe Branger, ‘Introduction’, in Opéra et religion sous la IIIe République, ed. Jean-Christophe Branger and Alban Ramaut (Saint-Étienne, 2006), 10–13. ‘C'est peut-être là un des paradoxes de cette période qui, en dépit d'une rupture historique avec l’Église, voit naître en France un nombre important d'opéras où la Religion tient une place de premier plan. La situation contradictoire d'une Société favorisant aussi bien l’émergence de luttes contre les doctrines religieuses est d'ailleurs plus largement observée par le Mercure de France qui, en 1907, mène une vaste enquête international recueillant les avis de personnalités invitées à répondre à la question: “Assistons-nous à une dissolution ou à une évolution de l'idée religieuse et du sentiment religieux?”.’

53 Grayson, ‘Finding a Stage for French Opera’, 134.

54 Grayson, ‘Finding a Stage for French Opera’, 134. Grayson notes that along with Widor's La korrigane, Édouard Lalo's Namouna and an unnamed ballet by Émile Pessard were also slated to appear in 1880. Vaucorbeil did, however, mount a new production of Aïda, which opened on 22 March 1880 – well before Vaucorbeil would have seen Massenet's completed orchestral score.

55 Ellis, Katharine, ‘Olivier Halanzier and the Operatic Museum in Late Nineteenth-Century France’, Music & Letters 96/3 (2015), 410CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Pasler, Jann, Composing the Citizen: Music as Public Utility in Third Republic France (Berkeley, 2009), 368Google Scholar.

56 Huebner, Steven, French Opera at the fin de siècle: Wagnerism, Nationalism, and Style (Oxford, 1999), 3–4Google Scholar. In his review of Le roi de Lahore, Ernest Reyer made this point in 1877, even before Massenet's ‘official’ appointments. See Ernest Reyer, ‘Revue musicale: Le roi de Lahore’, Journal des débats (10 May 1877), 1–2.

57 Victor Wilder, ‘Semaine théâtrale’, Le ménestrel (25 December 1881), 27.

58 Ernest Reyer, ‘Revue musicale’, Journal des débats (25 December 1881).

59 B. Jouvin, ‘L’Hérodiade de Jules Massenet’, Le figaro (22 December 1881). Emphasis in original.

60 Un Monsieur de l'Orchestre [Armand Gouzien], ‘La soirée théâtrale (Par dépêche télégraphique)’.

61 The term ‘operatic museum’ was first used by in, William GibbonsBuilding the Operatic Museum: Eighteenth-Century Opera in fin-de-siècle Paris (Rochester, 2013)Google Scholar and later by Ellis, ‘Olivier Halanzier and the Operatic Museum in Late Nineteenth-Century France’. Huebner likewise notes the opera's similarities to the traditions of grand opéra. See Huebner, French Opera at the fin de siècle, 41.

62 Ellis, ‘Olivier Halanzier and the Operatic Museum in Late Nineteenth-Century France’, 390–1.

63 Charle, Christophe and Boittin, Jennifer, ‘Opera in France, 1870–1914: Between Nationalism and Foreign Imports’, in Opera and Society in France from Monteverdi to Bourdieu, ed. Johnson, Victoria, Fulcher, Jane and Ertman, Thomas (Cambridge, 2007), 245–50Google Scholar.

64 Huebner, French Opera at the fin de siècle, 10. For a detailed discussion of the state of the Paris Opéra during this time, see also Lacombe, Hervé, The Keys to French Opera in the Nineteenth Century, trans. Schneider, Edward (Berkeley, 2001), 209–25Google Scholar.

65 Grayson, ‘Finding a Stage for French Opera’, 135.

66 Macdonald, Hugh, ‘From Opéra-comique to Opéra-sérieux’, Revista de musicología 16 (1993), 3113–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gerhard, Anselm, The Urbanization of Opera: Music Theater in Paris in the Nineteenth Century, trans. Whittall, Mary (Chicago, 1998), 401–2Google Scholar; Grayson, ‘Finding a Stage for French Opera’, 135–6; Huebner, French Opera at the fin de siècle, 5–6.

67 Bibliothèque nationale de France, Bibliothèque-Musée de l'Opéra, Rés. A. 736 a (III), f. 445. ‘samedi 28 août/80 … hier visite à Carvalho – belle impression musique Hérodiade … J'attends solution opéra et opéra comique’.

68 Lacombe, The Keys to French Opera in the Nineteenth Century, 227.

69 Lacombe, The Keys to French Opera in the Nineteenth Century, 240–1.

70 Huebner, French Opera at the fin de siècle, 1.

71 Huebner, Steven, ‘Opera Audiences in Paris, 1830–1970’, Music & Letters, 70/2 (May 1989), 216Google Scholar.

72 Huebner, ‘Opera Audiences in Paris, 1830–1970’, 216.

73 The parliamentary debates over the reconstruction of the Opéra-Comique have recently been examined by Sylvain Nicolle in an unpublished conference paper entitled ‘Quel nouveau théâtre pour l'Opéra-Comique? Les débats parlementaires de la Salle Favart’, delivered 20 October 2017 at the conference ‘D'une Salle Favart à l'autre: l'Opéra-Comique de 1887 à 1900’. I am grateful to Clair Rowden for bringing this paper to my attention.

74 Cahier des charges: Auguste-Emmanuel Vaucorbeil, Art. 1. Archives nationales de France, AJ/13/1187. ‘L'Opéra n'est pas un théâtre d'essai.’ For more on cahiers des charges during the Third Republic, see Karine Boulanger, ‘Introduction aux cahiers des charges de la IIIe République (1871–1914)’, in La législation de l'Opéra de Paris, ed. Vincent Giroud and Solveig Serre (forthcoming). See also Jann Pasler, Composing the Citizen, 328.

75 Everist, Mark, ‘Parisian Music Drama, 1806–64: Social Structures and Artistic Contexts’, in Giacomo Meyerbeer and Music Drama in Nineteenth-Century Paris (Aldershot, 2005), 3Google Scholar.

76 Spies, André Michael, Opera, State, and Society in the Third Republic, 1875–1914 (New York, 1998), 8Google Scholar.

77 Colonne's Concerts Nationals later became the better-known Concerts Colonne. For the performances of Marie-Magdeleine at the Opéra-Comique, see Goldstrom, ‘A Whore in Paradise: The Oratorios of Jules Massenet’, 199. For the description of Marie-Magdeleine, see Victor Wilder, ‘Académie nationale de musique: La vierge’, Le ménestrel (30 May 1880), 202.

78 Wilder, ‘Académie nationale de musique: La vierge’. The second oratorio in Massenet's ‘sacred trilogy’ was Ève, which premiered on 18 March 1875 at the Cirque d’Été under the direction of Charles Lamoureux.

79 Demar Irvine notes that Vaucorbeil heard a play-through of the opera sometime during the early months of 1881. See Irvine, Massenet, 117.

80 Jane Fulcher argues that French grand opéra was an inherently politicised art form that was a ‘subtly used tool of the state’ from circa 1830 to 1870. In the case of Hérodiade, I extend this argument to the 1880s: Massenet's opera was simply too contemporary to not pose a potential threat to the ‘nation's image’. See Fulcher, The Nation's Image, 2.

81 Pasler, Composing the Citizen, 368.

82 Orwicz, Michael, ‘Anti-Academicism and State Power in the Early Third Republic’, Art History 14/4 (December 1991), 573CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Pasler, Composing the Citizen, 359–65.