Now Sacchini, for some reason or other which I do not know, did not use
clarinets once in the whole score. Benoist was commissioned to add them
when the work was revived, as he told me as we were chatting one day.
Berlioz did not know this, and Benoist, who had not read Berlioz's
_Traité_, knew nothing of the romantic musician's enthusiastic
admiration of his work. These happily turned thirds, although they
weren't Sacchini's, were, none the less, an excellent innovation.

Benoist was less happy when he was asked to put some life into
Bellini's _Romeo_ by using earsplitting outbursts of drums, cymbals, and
brass. During the same noise-loving period Costa, in London, gave
Mozart's _Don Juan_ the same treatment. He let loose throughout the
opera the trombones which the author intentionally reserved for the end.
Benoist ought to have refused to do such a barbarous piece of work.
However, it had no effect in preventing the failure of a worthless
piece, staged at great expense by the management which had rejected Les
Troyens.

I was fifteen when I entered Halévy's class. I had already completed the
study of harmony, counterpoint and fugue under Maleden's direction. As I
have said, his method was that taught at the Ecole Niedermeuer. Faure,
Messager, Perilhou, and Gigot were trained there and they taught this
method in turn. My class-work consisted in making attempts at vocal and
instrumental music and orchestration. My _Rêverie_, _La Feuille de
Peuplier_ and many other things first appeared there. They have been
entirely forgotten, and rightly, for my work was very uneven.

At the end of his career Halévy was constantly writing opera and
opéra-comique which added nothing to his fame and which disappeared
never to be revived after a respectable number of performances. He was