“Rossini is the first composer of Europe; I have succeeded in attracting him to the service of France; he had before been tempted in vain.  Jealous of his success, people have cried out that he was an idler, that he would do nothing.  I secured him by the methods and in the interest of the King; I can do with him as I will, as with all the artists, though they are most difficult people.  They must be taken through the heart.  Rossini has just composed a really ravishing piece; and, touched by the manner in which he is treated, he wishes to present it to the King in token of his gratitude, and wishes to receive nothing.  He is right, but the King cannot accept gratis so fine a present; I propose that the King grant him the cross of the Legion of Honor and announce it himself to him to-morrow—­which would be an act full of grace.  All favors must come always from the King.”

Great tenacity was needed in the government of Charles X. to get the Chefs-d’Oeuvre of Rossini represented at the Opera.  A little school of petty and backward ideas rushed, under pretext of patriotism, but really from jealousy, systematically to drive from the stage everything not French.  For this coterie Rossini and Meyerbeer were suspects, intruders, who must be repulsed at any cost.  The government had the good sense to take no account of this ridiculous opposition, which refused to recognize that art should be cosmopolitan.  Before seeing his name on the bills of our first lyric stage, Rossini required no less than nine years of patience.  All Europe applauded him, but at Paris he had to face the fire of pamphleteers rendered furious by his fame.  The government finally forced the Opera to mount Le Siege de Corinthe.  Its success was so striking that the evening of the first representation (October 9, 1826), the public made almost a riot for half an hour, because Rossini, called loudly by an enthusiastic crowd, refused to appear upon the stage.

The maestro gave at the Opera Moise, March 26, 1826; Le Comte Ory, August 20, 1828; Guillaume Tell, August 20, 1829. (At this time the first representations of the most important works took place in midsummer.) The evening of the first night of Guillaume Tell, the orchestra went, after the opera, to give a serenade under the windows of the composer, who occupied the house on the Boulevard Montmartre, through which the Passage Jouffroy has since been cut.  The 10th of February, 1868, on the occasion of the hundredth representation of the same work, there was a repetition of the serenade of 1829.  The master then lived in the Rue Chaussee d’Antin, No. 2.  Under his windows the orchestra and chorus of the opera commenced the concert about half an hour after midnight, by the light of torches, and Faure sang the solos.

The government which secured the representation of Guillaume Tell was not afraid of the words “independence” and “liberty.”  A year and a half before, the 20th of February, 1828, there had been given at the Opera the chef-d’oeuvre of Auber, La Muette de Portici, and the Duchess of Berry, a Neapolitan princess, had applauded the Naples Revolution put into music.