CHAPTER IV

THE HISTORY OF AN OPÉRA-COMIQUE


Young musicians often complain, and not without reason, of the
difficulties of their careers. It may, perhaps, be useful to remind them
that their elders have not always had beds of roses, and that too often
they have had to breast both wind and sea after spending their best
years in port, unable to make a start. These obstacles frequently are
the result of the worst sort of malignity, when it is for the best
interest of everyone--both of the theatres which rebuff them, and the
public which ignores them--that they be permitted to set out under full
sail.

In 1864 one of the most brilliant of the reviews had the following
comments to make on this subject:

Our real duty--and it is a true kindness--is not to encourage them
(beginners) but to discourage them. In art a vocation is
everything, and a vocation needs no one, for God aids. What use is
it to encourage them and their efforts when the public obstinately
refuses to pay any attention to them? If an act is ordered from one
of them, it fails to go. Two or three years later the same thing is
tried again with the same result. No theatre, even if it were four
times as heavily subsidized as the Théâtre-Lyrique, could continue
to exist on such resources. So the result is that they turn to
accredited talent and call on such men from outside as Gounod,