{"id":83995,"date":"2016-05-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-05-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newcriterion.com\/article\/the-doctor-who-cured-the-opera\/"},"modified":"2024-03-22T08:56:36","modified_gmt":"2024-03-22T12:56:36","slug":"the-doctor-who-cured-the-opera","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/newcriterion.com\/article\/the-doctor-who-cured-the-opera\/","title":{"rendered":"The doctor who cured the Op\u00e9ra"},"content":{"rendered":"

. . . nobody in our time had such a nose for a profit,\u00a0<\/em>nor such greyhound speed at running it down.<\/em>
\n\u2014M\u00e9moires, Philar\u00e8te chasles<\/p>\n

Winning the war, they say, is easier than winning the peace. Although the Acad\u00e9mie Royale de Musique\u2014the Paris Op\u00e9ra\u2014somehow survived the French Revolution and its bloody aftermath, the first years of the Bourbon Restoration posed a different type of threat. The Op\u00e9ra was one of France\u2019s most famous institutions, but generations of financial mismanagement and institutional politicking had produced their usual consequences. It was, in Ernest Newman\u2019s phrase, \u201choary with iniquities, cynical with long experiences of human cupidity and folly.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
\"\"
Charles Carey, <\/em>Louis V\u00e9ron, 1854, engraving\u00a0<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Not that it was lacking in resources\u2014from 1826 it had plenty of good singers, dancers, stage designers, and orchestral players. It had one of Europe\u2019s best conductors and the extraordinary danseuse<\/em> Marie Taglioni. There were even a few big successes\u2014but nothing seemed to jell. Although dependent on government subsidies almost since its inception, its losses were eye-wateringly large. Though it had the most expensive tickets in Paris, a performance schedule that required other theaters to close when the Op\u00e9ra was open, and two large subsidies, the Op\u00e9ra still lost over a million francs in 1830 when the average unskilled worker earned a little over 300 francs and an orchestral musician 1,200 francs. A profit at the Op\u00e9ra was the rarest of things\u2014since its founding in 1669, only one of its forty-three directors had ever made it into the black.<\/p>\n

Its losses were tolerated because the Op\u00e9ra was seen as a potent symbol of French culture and power: \u201cthe Op\u00e9ra represents Parisian civilization on its greatest days,\u201d said Voltaire. It was chartered by Louis Quatorze\u2014the \u201cSun King\u201d himself\u2014almost a decade before construction started on the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles. Even Napoleon, neither monarchist nor sentimentalist, nor particularly musical (\u201cWhat is this \u2018Don Juan\u2019 that they want to give at the Op\u00e9ra . . . ?\u201d he wrote to Fouch\u00e9, his chief of secret police), thought that \u201cof all the fine arts, music is . . . the one that a legislator should encourage the most\u201d\u2014and kept the subsidies flowing.<\/p>\n

\n

A profit at the Op\u00e9ra was the rarest of things\u2014since its founding in 1669, only one of its forty-three directors had ever made it into the black.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

After Napoleon\u2019s fall, Louis XVIII<\/small> and his successor Charles X<\/small> continued supporting the Op\u00e9ra, but its place on the political spectrum had shifted. While still a totem of French culture, the Op\u00e9ra\u2019s reputation, repertory, and audiences were linked in the public\u2019s mind to the ancien r\u00e9gime<\/em>. That grated against the political realities of the July Revolution in 1830 that brought Louis-Philippe, the self-styled \u201ccitizen king,\u201d to power.<\/p>\n

The Op\u00e9ra\u2019s post-subsidy losses were supposed to be met by Louis-Philippe\u2019s household budget. Shocked at the size and political implications of its gigantic and increasing shortfalls and aware of its dismal financial history, entrenched and m\u00e9chant<\/em> labor force, and bumbling management\u2014and realizing that more losses were in store if something were not done promptly\u2014Louis-Philippe tried to have it both ways: the government would still subsidize the Op\u00e9ra, but only to a point. Henceforth, the Op\u00e9ra would be leased to a concessionaire who would manage it at his own risk and for his own reward.<\/p>\n

The terms of the concession would be onerous: The concessionaire had to mount a number of different ballets and operas, satisfy production specifications and staffing levels, as well as meet a number of other expensive requirements. He would be supervised by a Commission de Surveillance<\/em> on the lookout for any failure to meet the concession\u2019s terms. Failure could result in sizeable fines or even the termination of the concession. Judging by the size of the performance bond demanded by the Commission<\/em>, the government appeared skeptical about the concessionaire\u2019s chances for success.<\/p>\n

By contrast, the successful applicant, a former doctor named Louis-D\u00e9sir\u00e9 V\u00e9ron, was not at all pessimistic. He was an evangelist for the new middle class. He believed that the July Revolution was the start of a period of relative political calm in France and that France\u2019s emerging middle class was as eager for entertainment as the aristocratic one that it was replacing, and more likely to pay. As he pitched it to the Comte de Montalivet, the Minister of the Interior, when he interviewed for the job,<\/p>\n

\n

The July Revolution represents the victory of the middle class: this victorious bourgeoisie wants to hold court and amuse itself. The Op\u00e9ra will become its Versailles, it will run there en masse<\/em>. . . . [F]oreigners will be drawn to Paris by the Op\u00e9ra\u2019s musical masterpieces and they will find the boxes filled with une soci\u00e9t\u00e9 \u00e9l\u00e9gante et rassur\u00e9e.<\/em><\/small><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

A mere thirty-four years old when appointed to the Op\u00e9ra, Docteur V\u00e9ron was already well on the way to being, in the words of one contemporary, \u201cas much part and parcel of the history of Paris during the first half of the nineteenth century as was Napoleon I<\/small> of the history of France.\u201d But he is little remembered today, even in France.<\/p>\n

In his lengthy, and sanitized, autobiography, M\u00e9moires d\u2019un Bourgeois de Paris<\/em>, V\u00e9ron tells us that he was born in 1798 on the Rive Gauche. His father, a mildly prosperous stationer-bookseller, wanted his son to take over the family business but nevertheless sent him to a good school, the Lyc\u00e9e Louis-le-Grand, where he was a classmate of Eug\u00e8ne Delacroix. The young V\u00e9ron entertained literary aspirations and\u2014when he could get time away from stocking shelves and chatting with customers\u2014worked as a stand-in secretary at the Acad\u00e9mie des Beaux-Arts and the Acad\u00e9mie Fran\u00e7aise and was befriended by a number of journalists whom he regularly treated to dinner on his father\u2019s account.<\/p>\n

Louis-D\u00e9sir\u00e9 hoped that his father would support his start as a writer, but this idea came to a bad end when, after reciting his poetry (\u201cdes couplets saugrenus<\/em>\u201d\u2014preposterous couplets\u2014as one contemporary sniffed) at a literary dinner, he was immediately and nightmarishly upstaged by the next reader, the young Victor Hugo. As far as his father was concerned, that was the end of his son\u2019s literary career, and Louis-D\u00e9sir\u00e9 was sent back to the stockroom to learn more of the secrets of stationery retail. That misery lasted for a year until 1816 when his exasperated father allowed him to attend the nearby Ecole de M\u00e9decine on two conditions: no more poetry and no more expensive dinners with his journalist friends.<\/p>\n

He did well in his coursework, studying with some of the most distinguished academic practitioners (their medical eponyms survive today) in Paris. He did not, however, shake off his journalist friends nor keep his promise not to expensively entertain. To keep himself in funds, he started a lucrative skeleton supply business. \u201cThe big thing for me,\u201d he wrote about his daily routine, \u201cwas to arrive at the hospital before the cart that carried all the unclaimed cadavers.\u201d He tells us that he also liked to play cards at the Palais Royale, then a hive of drinking dens, gaming houses, prostitution, and other light entertainment, and when his luck turned bad he was nearly ruined. Despite his fleshly weaknesses (including the seduction of a young nun who was shipped off to a leper colony when the affair was discovered), he ranked at the top of his class and was pursuing a career in academic medicine. But in 1824, in a competitive examination for an assistant professorship, he stumbled. (To give a sense of the competition, the two candidates who finished above him would, respectively, pioneer the field of hematology and describe the symptoms and origins of rheumatoid endocarditis). Though encouraged by his examiners to sit again the following year, the results seemed to throw him into a depression. In the words of one biographer, he \u201cturned his back on the Faculty, making the sign of the cross on the way out.\u201d So complete was his estrangement from the Ecole de M\u00e9decine, that in 1824 he moved across the Seine to the Rive Droite, where he lived for the rest of his life.<\/p>\n

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Fa\u00e7ade of Printemps, via Wikimedia Commons<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

He set up as a sole practitioner in the Rue Caumartin (these days close to the Printemps department store) and remained there for three years, but found it difficult to establish himself against settled competition. He used his medical connections to have himself appointed as an honorary physician to one of the royal regiments and as a physician to The National Museums (another unkind writer claimed that he merely repaired damaged statuary there). In retirement, he admitted with weary humor that he may have lacked a bedside manner: When an elderly aristocratic lady called him in to be bled, he had difficulty finding an obliging vein. Several painful stabs later, she threw him out, oozing but undrained, furiously shouting that she would tell the entire quartier<\/em> about his incompetence.<\/p>\n

\n

To get to the directorship of the Op\u00e9ra, V\u00e9ron\u00a0would need money, a reputation, and friends.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

But things then began to turn his way. \u201cI must say,\u201d he later wrote, \u201chow happy my life has been as the result of unexpected developments leading to lucky opportunities\u201d\u2014which he helped along by certain expediencies. To while away his patient-free hours, he joined a conservative Catholic literary and educational group called the Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 Royale des Bonnes Lettres<\/em> and was asked to deliver a series of lectures on medical topics. These were sufficiently well received that he was asked to start contributing to La Quotidienne<\/em>, a small Parisian paper. At first, he wrote exclusively on medical ills but soon turned to politics and from there began insinuating himself into Paris\u2019s influential journalistic and political circles. In 1828, he began writing theatrical and musical criticism for another journal, Le Messager des Chambres<\/em>, some of it quite telling.<\/p>\n

We seem to have arrived at a time of artistic reawakening. The Op\u00e9ra itself seems to have abandoned its old-fashioned powdered wigs. . . . [Daniel Auber\u2019s opera] La Muette<\/em> changed everything. We don\u2019t mind telling the Op\u00e9ra\u2019s new management that change is pressing and absolutely necessary.<\/p>\n

He began to develop influential contacts. By twenty-nine, he already had an impressive list of dinner companions including his lifelong patron and nemesis, the journalist and future French prime minister Adolphe Thiers, Jules Janin (the editor of the Journal des D\u00e9bats<\/em>), and Daniel Auber and Gioachino Rossini, the two most famous composers in Europe. But although these sorts of contacts and political abilities were necessary, they were not by themselves sufficient to get V\u00e9ron to the directorship of the Op\u00e9ra. He would need money, a reputation, and friends.<\/p>\n

He had one of these already, and was working hard on acquiring the others.<\/p>\n

Before her exile to the leper colony, V\u00e9ron\u2019s young nun told him, \u201cYou were born under a lucky star,\u201d and that star never shone more brightly than the evening he left his cabinet<\/em> in the Rue Caumartin and walked down the street to the local drugstore.<\/p>\n

Louis Regnauld, \u201cPharmacist to His Royal Highness, the Crown Prince,\u201d took a shine to the younger man. During their frequent chats in the Pharmacie Regnauld, V\u00e9ron noticed the unceasing stream of sneezing and coughing customers asking for la sp\u00e9cialit\u00e9 de la maison<\/em>, a cough drop or chest paste called the p\u00e2te pectoral balsamique<\/em>. Regnauld told V\u00e9ron that the product was very profitable\u2014and indeed would be a gold mine but for the cash needed to expand production. V\u00e9ron quickly offered Regnauld the remaining portion of his father\u2019s inheritance and they went into business. When Regnauld unexpectedly died a few months later, his widow sold the formula for the p\u00e2te Regnauld<\/em> to V\u00e9ron and a partner for 17,000 francs.<\/p>\n

In the mid-1820s French newspapers contained little advertising, as we now know it, their revenues being derived from sales. Some small journals did, however, publish short notices about new religious and philosophical books, generally under the news, reviews, and stories of the royal family. V\u00e9ron\u2019s columns in La Quotidienne<\/em> appeared just above these notices and it did not take long for him to inquire whether the editor would accept paid notices for the p\u00e2te Regnauld<\/em>. After a few issues, the brief notice blossomed into the archetype of the modern blurb complete with unctuous language, claims of efficacy, endorsements by celebrities, and availability \u201cwherever fine goods are sold.\u201d Reading them today, V\u00e9ron\u2019s advertisements seem stilted, but at the time they were hugely effective as he largely pioneered consumer advertising in France. Until his death in 1867, V\u00e9ron earned 40,000 francs a year from the p\u00e2te Regnauld.<\/em><\/p>\n

V\u00e9ron was a perceptive man, if not necessarily of patients and their illnesses, certainly of changing tastes and enthusiasms. In late 1829, he realized that while French book publishing was going through a bad patch, the popular press was increasing in fame and importance. France\u2019s improving economic situation, its increasingly literate society, and its periodic crackdowns on the political press all contributed to the growth of literary and commercial journalism. Influenced by the English and German press, he decided to launch a French literary journal. The required seed money gave him pause until he persuaded the rich and influential Alexandre Aguado (friend of Rossini, banker to Spain, and owner of Ch\u00e2teau Margaux) to take a small stake in the new Revue de Paris<\/em>, thereby prompting other investors to dive in after him.<\/p>\n

They need not have worried, for the Revue<\/em> was an immediate success. In its first issue were contributions from Sainte-Beuve, Walter Scott, Casimir Delavigne, and Charles Nodier with subsequent issues containing pieces by some of the soon-to-be great, but then unknown, names in French literature. Though he edited the Revue <\/em>for just two years, it gained him entr\u00e9e to Paris\u2019s intelligentsia. Some later took a more jaundiced view. Balzac, for example, wrote that in his ascent to the Op\u00e9ra, the doctor used the Revue <\/em>and kicked it aside, \u201clike you push a ladder away after you\u2019ve used it to climb a wall.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the five years before the July Revolution, the Op\u00e9ra\u2019s finances were particularly awful. One problem was its high fixed costs. Another was the fiercely defended right of the production departments to contract with favored suppliers. A third was the number of unpaid admissions due to free tickets and the unwillingness of the house staff to restrict the well-dressed from entering. \u201c[T]he aristocracy treated the Op\u00e9ra as their salon,\u201d one wrote, \u201c. . . they made themselves comfortable and strutted about as if they were at Court. Every evening, people of rank occupied the boxes and balconies without paying.\u201d<\/p>\n

Staff morale was poor, with rapid turnover at the directorial level. Artistically, the overall quality was declining. Visiting Italian companies described the singing style of their French colleagues as l\u2019urlo francese<\/em> (French screaming). Although there were bright spots, the repertoire was stale. When Rossini (seconded from the Th\u00e9\u00e2tre-Italien to liven things up) auditioned the Op\u00e9ra\u2019s leading singers, he dryly remarked that, \u201cthe nature of their talent was analogous to the works they presented.\u201d It was hardly surprising that the press reported that \u201cthe glory days of the Op\u00e9ra are now long past\u201d and \u201cit was sleeping on its subsidy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Others were of the same view. Prodded by Louis-Philippe to do something about the Op\u00e9ra\u2019s costs and intrigued by V\u00e9ron\u2019s confident view of a prosperous bourgeoisie<\/em> ready to pay lavishly for its entertainments, the Comte de Montalivet appointed V\u00e9ron to run the Op\u00e9ra, first for a three-month trial period from March 1, 1831, and then, from June 1, for a six-year term. His contract required V\u00e9ron to maintain and renovate the Op\u00e9ra \u201cat a level of grandeur and luxury befitting a national theater,\u201d and to stage six new works annually including one grand opera, one grand ballet, and two smaller operas and ballets. In return for being permitted to keep the box office receipts, V\u00e9ron would be responsible for production costs including scenery, d\u00e9cor, and costumes. The government would retain control of the pension fund. V\u00e9ron would receive an annual subsidy of 800,000 francs for the first year, declining thereafter.<\/p>\n

Although the terms of his appointment appeared to grant him considerable latitude, the Commission de Surveillance<\/em> appointed to keep an eye on V\u00e9ron took a different view. For the moment, however, his star still shone, even as he signed the agreement.<\/p>\n

The violinist Niccol\u00f2 Paganini, having conquered Vienna and Berlin, now had his eye on Paris. Aware, as Robert Schumann said, that \u201cwith a French public, reserve is not the way to succeed,\u201d Paganini thought big\u2014he would debut at the Op\u00e9ra. In those pre-concert-agent days, however, merely showing up at the Op\u00e9ra and asking to rent it was out of the question\u2014especially for a foreigner in league with the Devil (the popular explanation for Paganini\u2019s sulphurous virtuosity).<\/p>\n

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Paganini was a godsend.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Paganini would have to pull strings, and who better to do the pulling than his arch-insider friend Rossini? Just a few hours after being appointed director, V\u00e9ron was listening to Rossini\u2019s pitch.<\/p>\n

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Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres,\u00a0<\/em>Niccol\u00f2 Paganini, 1819, pencil, Louvre Museum, Paris<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Paganini was a godsend. Needing to make a powerful first impression, V\u00e9ron engaged him for ten concerts, doubled the ticket prices, and invited the elite of Paris\u2019s musical journalists to his first performance in five days\u2019 time. Their delirious accounts of the performance ensured that for the next five weeks the Op\u00e9ra was packed with the diplomatic corps, the Rothschilds, the Foulds, and the other soci\u00e9t\u00e9 \u00e9l\u00e9gante <\/em>that V\u00e9ron had promised the Minister.<\/p>\n

Paganini\u2019s concerts had an even more momentous consequence. Beset with doubts about his future and sorrowing over an unhappy love affair, the young Franz Liszt was galvanized by Paganini\u2019s playing. \u201c[H]e suddenly became aware,\u201d wrote Geraldine de Courcy, \u201cof a new direction for his own gifts. No longer would he subordinate or adapt his personality to the pianoforte but would make it a medium for the display of his own powers.\u201d What Liszt learned at the Op\u00e9ra from listening to Paganini would not just shape his own life but also the Western pianistic canon.<\/p>\n

V\u00e9ron\u2019s luck continued. Deep in planning the 1831\u20131832 season, V\u00e9ron was summoned to the Interior Ministry and ordered to stage a new work, Robert le Diable<\/em>, by a new and unproven composer, Giacomo Meyerbeer. Not having yet seen how profitable the Op\u00e9ra would become under V\u00e9ron, the Minister tried to ease the pain by offering him an additional 100,000 francs for the burden of staging what would turn out to be one of the runaway successes of nineteenth-century opera. During V\u00e9ron\u2019s lifetime, Robert<\/em> and its successors, Les Huguenots<\/em> and Le Proph\u00e8te<\/em>, would be staged thousands of times.<\/p>\n

But it was not just luck that made V\u00e9ron\u2019s time at the Op\u00e9ra so remarkable. He knew, instinctively, that there was something more in the air than merely an emergent bourgeoisie<\/em> calling for amusement. V\u00e9ron understood, almost before anyone else, that Eug\u00e8ne Scribe\u2019s librettos, Duponchel and Ciceri\u2019s sets, Marie Taglioni\u2019s ethereal dancing, and Meyerbeer\u2019s and Auber\u2019s thrilling music amounted to nothing less than Romanticism\u2019s revolutionary break from the past. As V\u00e9ron saw it, these artists were doing the hard part; his job was merely to get audiences through the doors. As the saying has it, \u201csuccess is often just a matter of continuing what was there in the first place.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unlike his predecessors, V\u00e9ron showed a tireless attention to the complexities of the job. He was in his office every day for months on end, even on days when there were no performances scheduled. He met with painters, scenery designers, machinists, and other artisans to get a sense of how the Op\u00e9ra planned, staged, and performed its works. He quickly adjusted the size of the orchestra and chorus and reduced salaries to both. At the same time, he inaugurated a \u201cstar system,\u201d paying generously for the great singers and dancers of his time. When ticket sales were down, he used the advertising techniques he invented for the p\u00e2te Regnauld<\/em>. He erected billboards outside the Op\u00e9ra that read: \u201cTomorrow: The Tenth Performance of . . . Which Will Now Be Given Only Rarely<\/em>,\u201d or \u201cTomorrow: The Eleventh Performance by . . . Which Will No Longer Be Performed After Her Departure<\/em>,\u201d or \u201cTomorrow: Twelfth Performance of . . . by the Original Cast,\u201d or \u201cSeventeenth Performance of . . . Which Has Been So Popular But Which May Close Any Time<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was attentive to what his audience wanted. The Op\u00e9ra already had marvelous acoustics (the composer Charles Gounod said that the old building on the Rue Le Pelletier \u201chad the sound of a violin\u201d), but V\u00e9ron redid its interior to make it more comfortable, with smaller boxes and stalls. He repainted and regilded the grande salle<\/em> as a bourgeois fantasy of what an aristocratic theater should look like. He improved the gas lighting and introduced Locatelli astrolamps (a forerunner of the spotlight) that allowed him to darken the hall and focus attention on the stage, all the better to view Duponchel\u2019s spectacular costumes and Ciceri\u2019s scenery. The sets he commissioned were so realistic that one critic claimed seasickness after a performance. He used megaphones to enhance the spectral effect of low male voices. To deal with the problem of his non-paying clientele, he introduced numbered tickets for the first time.<\/p>\n

He attended almost every rehearsal, asking the firemen and ushers what they thought of a particular aria or visual effect and would not hesitate to suggest a change to the composer or set designer if he agreed. The set painter Charles S\u00e9chan tells how V\u00e9ron, late one night at a dress rehearsal, noticed that a gas light important for creating a certain effect was not working properly. After rehearsal, V\u00e9ron packed S\u00e9chan into his carriage and drove him across town at two in the morning to get the worker who made the light out of bed\u2014not to berate him, but to offer a hundred francs if the worker could get the light to function in time for the first night.<\/p>\n

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The sets he commissioned were so realistic that one critic claimed seasickness after a performance.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Though his relationships with his singers and dancers were excellent, he used the theatrical press, particularly the fearsome Charles Maurice of the Courrier des Th\u00e9\u00e2tres<\/em> whose terse judgments (\u201cC<\/em>haque jour<\/em> . . . son journal \u00e9tait remplie de ces laconiques sentences de mort. C\u2019\u00e9tait le couteau de la guillotine <\/em>. . . rapide et sec<\/em>.\u201d) to enforce discipline when necessary. V\u00e9ron invented the custom of throwing flowers onstage after a particularly well-sung aria. He taught his new audiences when to applaud through the claque<\/em>, an operatic precursor of the \u201claugh track.\u201d He conferred for hours with his chef de claque<\/em>, the huge-handed Auguste Levasseur, about the timing and length of applause by Auguste\u2019s army of claqueurs<\/em>. Even this detailed planning could, on occasion, go awry. At one performance several years later, Auguste was meant to signal for applause at the start of the battle scene in the last act of Le Proph\u00e8te<\/em>, but he had dozed off before an audience member named Kruine put a pistol under his chin and blew his brains out, spraying nearby listeners with (according to the Figaro<\/em>) \u201cfragments of brain and jaw.\u201d Woken out of a sound sleep by the gunshot and thinking that the battle scene had started, Auguste signaled for applause\u2014the only sound in the dazed and horrified house. The Figaro<\/em> made the best of it all, saying that the mistimed applause was \u201cas much for the general\u2019s entry as it was for Kruine\u2019s exit.\u201d<\/p>\n

He took enormous pains in organizing the production of Robert le Diable<\/em>. It was rehearsed for six months and it easily swallowed up the 100,000 francs that V\u00e9ron received from the Minister for its production. On top of its virtuoso singing and Meyerbeer\u2019s extraordinary and compelling music, V\u00e9ron\u2019s team made Robert<\/em> into a highly visual work with its inventive moonlight ballet of ghostly nuns led by their debauched abbess (danced by Marie Taglioni and choreographed by her father, Filippo) and its vivid costumes and haunting scenery. V\u00e9ron\u2019s production of Robert<\/em> was, effectively, an early example of what Wagner would later term Gesamtkunstwerk<\/em>\u2014the perfect operatic combination of music, dance, scenery, and story. The production\u2019s difficulties were not helped by Meyerbeer\u2019s terror that his work would flop. Despite, or perhaps because of, its meticulous preparation, Robert<\/em> narrowly avoided three disasters on its opening night: the first when a collapsing lighting fixture narrowly missed a singer, the second when Marie Taglioni, lying on her tomb before the start of the Ballet of the Nuns, rolled off to avoid being crushed by a cloud-curtain dropping from the flies, and the third when the hero fell through a trapdoor in the last act, seemingly pursuing his satanic father down to Hell. The Gazette de France<\/em> later dryly observed that for all the potential mayhem, \u201cnobody was killed or wounded.\u201d All these mishaps were lost on Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Chopin, though, who murmured that \u201cif ever magnificence was shown in the theatre, I doubt that it reached the level of splendor shown in Robert<\/em>. . . . It is a masterpiece.\u201d<\/p>\n

Success followed success, even in disguise. The cholera epidemic of 1832 came close to bankrupting V\u00e9ron, but he used the months when the Op\u00e9ra was closed as time to rethink the repertoire. The new opera-ballet La Tentation<\/em> would feature a lively parade of demons while La <\/em>R\u00e9volte au S\u00e9rail<\/em> was intelligent and funny. He produced Auber\u2019s Le Serment<\/em> and Gustave <\/em>III, Cherubini\u2019s Ali Baba<\/em>, and Mozart\u2019s Don Giovanni<\/em>, all conducted by Fran\u00e7ois Habeneck, the great French conductor of the era. Such was the excitement of the Op\u00e9ra during V\u00e9ron\u2019s time, however, that even less well-attended works did well.<\/p>\n

During the cholera, V\u00e9ron cut costs by sending his performers and personnel on leave. Having set aside all of his profits from the preceding year, he created substantial goodwill by offering ticket refunds during the long period when there were no performances. When the epidemic finally abated, his grateful audiences flocked back. He commissioned La Juive<\/em> (whose crowd-pleasing final act features the heroine being boiled in oil) from Fromental Hal\u00e9vy and La Sylphide<\/em> with Marie Taglioni, a work that has never left the repertory since it was first staged. In 1834 he staged Coralli\u2019s ballet La Temp\u00eate<\/em>, with Fanny Elssler, wooing her from London after an extravagant dinner with a dessert (at least according to his M\u00e9moires<\/em>) of expensive jewelry served up on a salver. Before the premi\u00e8re of La Temp\u00eate<\/em>, V\u00e9ron and Charles Maurice inflamed audiences\u2019 imagination with an implausible\u2014but potent\u2014advertising campaign hinting at both the tragic love between Fanny and a mysterious consumptive Austrian prince, and the undying rivalry between Taglioni and Elssler (that even resulted in the short-lived invention of two new verbs: taglioniser<\/em>\u2014to dance like Marie\u2014and elssleriser)<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Himself a master of the casting couch, he happily appealed to his audiences\u2019 baser tastes. He cultivated the Dandies, that extraordinary group of high-spending and indolent young men who occupied the loge infernale<\/em> to the right of the stage, better to leer at the dancers. He invited subscribers to balls held in the Op\u00e9ra\u2019s cavernous backstage. Reversing the old policy of separating performers from patrons, V\u00e9ron opened the dancers\u2019 rehearsal rooms to the Dandies and lecherous old generals in what were called \u201cmeetings of the lions and the gazelles.\u201d According to the M\u00e9moires<\/em>, the performers\u2019 mothers were largely complicit in the seduction of their daughters, with one telling her difficult child, \u201cif you are not going to do it for yourself, then think of me!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone,\u201d wrote the opera historian Charles de Boigne, \u201cwanted his loge at the Op\u00e9ra, some once, others twice, and others three times a week. Notaries, lawyers, and bankers conscious of keeping their status would go twice: on Monday with their wives and on Friday\u2014the big day\u2014with their mistresses.\u201d<\/p>\n

Few accounts of V\u00e9ron omit his appearance: his ugliness was simply extraordinary. Tall and top-hatted, with thinning yellow hair, a pointy little nose, high-pitched reedy voice, and a massive embonpoint<\/em>, he wore an enormous scarf-like tie to conceal his scrofulous neck. Here is part of the reliably malicious Heinrich Heine\u2019s description:<\/p>\n

\n

[H]e trundles down the street with a satisfied air surrounded by youthful admirers and the occasional literary dandy whom he regales with champagne and a few nice extras. He is the god of materialism and his glance bruises one\u2019s spirit which I felt like a knife to the heart when I met him; many times it seemed to me that his eyes were like a crawling mass of little worms, sticky and shiny.<\/small><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Daumier and Vernier, it seems, had little to exaggerate in their caricatures. Though V\u00e9ron posed for the society sculptor Jean-Pierre Dantan (who rendered him as a pharmacist\u2019s delivery boy), the result was so distressing to the famously impervious V\u00e9ron that he bought up as many copies as he could and had them destroyed. But he compensated for his physique ingrat<\/em> by his powers as a conversationalist, a deferential manner, and considerable charm and worldliness. An elderly subscriber once wrote to ask V\u00e9ron for a small part in a performance in the forlorn hope that his young wife might not leave him; V\u00e9ron quietly had him installed in armor on horseback, beaming away, in the next performance. During his Op\u00e9ra years, V\u00e9ron entertained loudly and lavishly at the Caf\u00e9 des Anglais and other expensive restaurants, and rode around town in a foppish carriage pulled by horses with scarlet pom-poms on their ears.<\/p>\n

Predictably, it ended badly. Of all his faults, his success was considered the worst. Despite his reversal of the Op\u00e9ra\u2019s fortunes and its reinstatement as one of France\u2019s cultural treasures (Wagner and Verdi moved heaven and earth to be performed at the Op\u00e9ra), he was continually harrassed and fined by the Commission de Surveillance<\/em>. Literary and musical Paris turned against him. Heine spoke for many when he wrote that \u201cJust as V\u00e9ron the druggist invented an excellent remedy for coughs, V\u00e9ron the Op\u00e9ra director invented a remedy for music . . . his genius was to cure people by giving them such a taste for spectacle that the music no longer bothered them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Outraged questions were heard on the floor of the Chambre des D\u00e9put\u00e9s: \u201cHow is it that the director of the Op\u00e9ra can make so much money in three years? Shouldn\u2019t it take at least ten?\u201d Confident that the Commission de Surveillance<\/em> now knew how to run things, the Minister modified V\u00e9ron\u2019s concession and induced him to resign by reducing the state subsidy. By the time he left in September 1835, V\u00e9ron had commissioned another blockbuster, Les Huguenots<\/em>, from Meyerbeer and passed the directorship to his understudy, Henri Duponchel, who renewed the Op\u00e9ra\u2019s ancient custom of losing enormous amounts of money. Not everyone was happy about V\u00e9ron\u2019s departure. Years later, Charles de Boigne wrote, \u201cThose were good times, the V\u00e9ron years . . . [and] since V\u00e9ron, though many have reigned at the Op\u00e9ra, nobody else has governed.\u201d<\/p>\n

After his departure, V\u00e9ron continued his colorful ways. He took over Le Constitutionnel<\/em>, a weekly political journal that had fallen on hard times, and reversed its fortunes as quickly as he did the Op\u00e9ra\u2019s. He published Balzac, Sand, and Sainte-Beuve and popularized the serial novel by paying Eug\u00e8ne Sue a vast sum for the rights to Le Juif Errant<\/em>, ending each weekly installment with the now-famous line, \u201cTo be continued in the next episode.\u201d He took a long-dated revenge at his treatment by the Op\u00e9ra by having Le Constitutionnel<\/em> support Napol\u00e9on III<\/small> over Louis-Philippe in 1849.<\/p>\n

But then things began to turn against him. He took as his mistress the famously promiscuous trag\u00e9dienne Rachel, who repeatedly and publicly cuckolded him. Napoleon III<\/small> shut down Le Constitutionnel<\/em> in 1852 for its criticism of the regime, and V\u00e9ron was abandoned by the influential politicians and society figures that had once been so eager for his company. To keep him out of trouble, the government awarded him the L\u00e9gion d\u2019Honneur and give him a safe seat in the Chambre des D\u00e9put\u00e9s. When V\u00e9ron died (with the Archbishop of Paris at his side), he was buried in the Cimiti\u00e8re Montparnasse. As might be expected from one who always wanted to be found in the very best company, he arranged to be re-interred in P\u00e8re Lachaise when a grave became available. There, on top of a small rise, he keeps an eye on Rachel, just a short distance away, while his next-door neighbor, Pierre-Louis Canler, the former head of Paris\u2019s Morals Squad, keeps an eye on him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the now-forgotten Louis-D\u00e9sir\u00e9 V\u00e9ron.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1388,"featured_media":131388,"template":"","tags":[635,789,637,712,812],"department_id":[563],"issue":[2949],"section":[],"acf":{"participants":{"simple_value_formatted":"","value_formatted":null,"value":null,"field":{"ID":0,"key":"field_65fd9fbaa0408","label":"Authors","name":"participants","aria-label":"","prefix":"acf","type":"user","value":null,"menu_order":0,"instructions":"","required":0,"id":"","class":"","conditional_logic":0,"parent":"group_647e2b3c6941d","wrapper":{"width":"","class":"","id":""},"role":"","return_format":"array","multiple":1,"allow_null":0,"bidirectional":0,"bidirectional_target":[],"_name":"participants","_valid":1}},"page_number":{"simple_value_formatted":18,"value_formatted":18,"value":"18","field":{"ID":0,"key":"field_647e2bc0c860c","label":"Page Number","name":"page_number","aria-label":"","prefix":"acf","type":"number","value":null,"menu_order":1,"instructions":"","required":0,"id":"","class":"","conditional_logic":0,"parent":"group_647e2b3c6941d","wrapper":{"width":"","class":"","id":""},"default_value":"","min":"","max":"","placeholder":"","step":"","prepend":"","append":"","_name":"page_number","_valid":1}},"featured_image_credits":{"simple_value_formatted":"South fa\u00c3\u00a7ade of the Op\u00e9ra Garnier in Paris, France, via Wikimedia Commons<\/i>","value_formatted":"South fa\u00c3\u00a7ade of the Op\u00e9ra Garnier in Paris, France, via Wikimedia Commons<\/i>","value":"South fa\u00c3\u00a7ade of the Op\u00e9ra Garnier in Paris, France, via Wikimedia Commons<\/i>","field":{"ID":0,"key":"field_651b519e4fcb7","label":"Featured Image Credits","name":"featured_image_credits","aria-label":"","prefix":"acf","type":"wysiwyg","value":null,"menu_order":2,"instructions":"","required":0,"id":"","class":"","conditional_logic":0,"parent":"group_647e2b3c6941d","wrapper":{"width":"","class":"","id":""},"default_value":"","tabs":"all","toolbar":"basic","media_upload":0,"delay":0,"_name":"featured_image_credits","_valid":1}},"enable_paywall":{"simple_value_formatted":"Yes","value_formatted":true,"value":"1","field":{"ID":0,"key":"field_651d8874dce6f","label":"Enable Paywall","name":"enable_paywall","aria-label":"","prefix":"acf","type":"true_false","value":null,"menu_order":3,"instructions":"","required":0,"id":"","class":"","conditional_logic":0,"parent":"group_647e2b3c6941d","wrapper":{"width":"","class":"","id":""},"message":"","default_value":1,"ui":0,"ui_on_text":"","ui_off_text":"","_name":"enable_paywall","_valid":1}},"set_paywall_at":{"simple_value_formatted":null,"value_formatted":null,"value":null,"field":{"ID":0,"key":"field_66032c7fbb6f0","label":"Set Paywall At","name":"set_paywall_at","aria-label":"","prefix":"acf","type":"date_time_picker","value":null,"menu_order":4,"instructions":"","required":0,"id":"","class":"","conditional_logic":0,"parent":"group_647e2b3c6941d","wrapper":{"width":"","class":"","id":""},"display_format":"d\/m\/Y g:i a","return_format":"d\/m\/Y g:i a","first_day":1,"_name":"set_paywall_at","_valid":1}},"overlay_banner":{"simple_value_formatted":"","value_formatted":"","value":"","field":{"ID":0,"key":"field_66196a3de1de4","label":"Overlay Banner","name":"overlay_banner","aria-label":"","prefix":"acf","type":"text","value":null,"menu_order":5,"instructions":"","required":0,"id":"","class":"","conditional_logic":0,"parent":"group_647e2b3c6941d","wrapper":{"width":"","class":"","id":""},"default_value":"","maxlength":"","placeholder":"","prepend":"","append":"","_name":"overlay_banner","_valid":1}}},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"featured_img":"https:\/\/newcriterion.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/The-doctor-who-cured-the-Op-ra-8413.jpg","coauthors":[],"author_meta":{"author_link":"https:\/\/newcriterion.com\/author\/james-f-penrose\/","display_name":"James F. 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