memory. In those days I knew next to nothing of the great master, and I shall always remember the absolutely astonished surprise with which I heard there the Speaking Picture. Among many other beautiful things it contains a certain tale of storm and shipwreck that is bursting with genius, animation and life. The Théatre de Monsieur itself soon made shipwreck, being something far too French and distinctive to hold its own in a Paris from which French taste had almost disappeared, in music at any rate, and in which the public would look at nothing that was not massive, heavy, noisy, clouded and clumsy—Boche in fact. We may hope to see the last of this thickheaded and barbarous form of snobbery, and perhaps there will be a chance of life for a small theatre in which would be played, in the setting and under the material conditions most suited to them, the operatic masterpieces of the eighteenth century. What I have said on this subject is not inspired merely by historical interest, but by the hope of bringing back to life, by contact with these masterpieces, a form of French music,—and so natural a form,—that has died out.
In the meantime there is one place, and a privileged place, where Grétry ought to be restored at once to high honour, though his creations seem to have fallen into utter neglect there. I mean the school, the Conservatoire. There there is no need of settings or orchestra. A piano is enough. It is outrageous that at the Conservatoire there should be classes and competitions in Comic Opera, and yet they never sing a line of Grétry who was the genius of Comic Opera incarnate.
