In this connection Victor Hugo’s credulity may be mentioned, for it was astonishing in a man of such colossal genius.  He believed in the most incredible things, as the “Man in the Iron Mask,” the twin brother of Louis XIV; in the octopus that has no mouth and feeds itself through its arms; and in the reality of the Japanese sirens which the Japanese were said to make out of an ape and a fish.  He had some excuse for the sirens as the Academie des Sciences believed in them for a short time.

If what is called history is so near mythology as, many times, to be confounded with it, what about romance and the historical drama in which events, entirely imaginative, must of necessity find a place?  What about the long-drawn-out conversations in books and on the stage that are attributed to historical persons?  What about the actions attributed to them, which need not be true but only seem to be so?  The supernatural element is the only thing lacking to make such works mythological in every way.

Now the supernatural lends itself admirably to expression in music and music finds in the supernatural a wealth of resources.  But these resources are by no means indispensable.  What music must have above all are emotions and passions laid bare and set in action by what we term the situation.  And where can one find more or better situations than in history?

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From the time of Lulli until the end of the Eighteenth Century French opera was legendary, that is to say, it was mythological in character and was not, as has been pretended, limited to the depiction of emotion and the inner feelings in order to avoid contingencies.  The real motive was to find in fables material for a spectacle.  Tragedy, as we know, does not do this, for it can be developed only with considerable difficulty when the stage is crowded with actors.  On the contrary, opera, which is free in its movements and can fill a vast stage, seeks for pomp, display and haloes in which gods and goddesses appear, in fact all that can be put into a stage-setting.  If they did not use local color, it was because local color had not been invented.  Finally, as we all get tired of everything, so they tired of mythology.  Then the historical work was adopted and appeared on the stage with success, as is well known.  The historical method had no rival until Robert le Diable rather timidly brought back the legendary element which triumphed later in the work of Richard Wagner.

In the meantime Les Huguenots succeeded Robert le Diable and for half a century this was the bright particular star of historical opera.  Even now, although its traditions have largely been forgotten and although its workmanship is rather inferior to that of a later time, this memorable work nevertheless shines, like the setting sun, surprisingly brilliantly.  The several generations who admired this work were not altogether wrong.  There is no necessity to class this brilliant success as a failure, because Robert Schumann, who knew nothing about the stage, denied its worth.  It is surprising that Berlioz’s judgment has not been set against Schumann’s.  Berlioz showed his enthusiasm for Les Huguenots in his famous treatise on instrumentation.