๐๐๐ซ๐ข๐ ๐๐จ๐ณ๐, ๐ ๐๐๐๐ฎ๐ญ๐ฒ ๐จ๐ ๐ญ๐ก๐ ๐๐๐๐จ๐ง๐ ๐๐ฆ๐ฉ๐ข๐ซ๐
The fact is that Marie Roze, nรฉe Maria Hippolyte Ponsin, a Parisian born in 1846, was not only undoubtedly a first-rate performer but also a beautiful woman; and, as a true child of the Second Empire, she certainly did not regard this as a matter of secondary importance. Photography was therefore, for her, a vital tool for self-promotion and career management.
We see her here in a carte de visite from the Parisian studio Gaston & Mathieu, which, as we learn from the back of the card, was located at No. 40 Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle, next to the Gymnase, the theatre that still stands and operates at No. 38 today. Off the top of my head, Iโd say the photograph can be dated to the second half of the 1860s, the period in which the young singer, having graduated from the Conservatoire where she had studied singing and acting with Eugรจne-Ernest Mocker (who also taught our favourite, Victor Capoul) and with Daniel Franรงois Esprit Auber, had become a permanent member of the Opรฉra-Comique, where she had made her debut in 1865 in Hรฉroldโs Marie. Roze was to remain associated with this tiny but highly significant theatre for many years, where she would premiere numerous works and where, as Kutsch and Riemens tell us, she was due to be the very first performer of the role of Carmen in December 1875. Three months before the premiere, however, Madame Roze withdrew from this production, apparently convinced that the heroineโs carefree behaviour was too at odds with her tragic end. Who knows which of the two elements โ the carefree or the tragic โ she found unsuitable; who knows whether she would have preferred a more dramatic portrayal of the character or a happy ending.
Following her debut in 1865, Marie Rozeโs career unfolded between the Opรฉra-Comique and the Opรฉra, where she made her debut in 1870 playing Marguerite in Faust. From 1872 onwards, she also sang in London, where she would forge a special relationship with Her Majestyโs Theatre and later with the Carl Rosa Opera Company, with whom, amongst other things, she introduced Massenetโs Manon to English audiences. At the end of 1877, she travelled to the United States for the first time.
The New York Times reported her arrival in an article published on 31 December, which, despite some inconsistencies in the chronology, paints a very vivid picture of this young prima donna.
Mme Marie Roze. The arrival of the Strakosch Companyโs new prima donna. A note on her brilliant career.
Mme Marie Roze, the charming French singer engaged by Mr Max Strakosch for the Italian opera season opening in Philadelphia on 7 January, arrived in our city yesterday aboard the White Star Line steamer Republic, accompanied by a maid and her agent, Mr Henry Mapleson.
The steamer had a smooth crossing and Mme Roze arrived in fine form. During the voyage, she befriended all the passengers and secured the enduring admiration of every member of the crew by giving a concert for their benefit in the shipโs saloon, for which she was thanked with a gracious letter signed by all the passengers. Before she left the ship, she was surrounded by everyone and was almost smothered by the ladiesโ kisses and overwhelmed by the gentlemenโs compliments, and she received earnest invitations to visit families in many towns across the country.
Mme Roze brings with her a vast collection of stage costumes, many of which are brand new, as well as all the stage jewellery once worn by Therese Tietjens, which she herself purchased following the death of this great artist.
She is a woman of great beauty: dark-haired, plump and graceful, and her face lights up with animation when she speaks. She is young, not yet having turned twenty-nine [in reality she was nearly thirty-two, but the registry office, as we know, is always a little vague when it comes to prima donnasโฆ].
She was born in Paris and, at the age of 12, was sent to study in England. During the two years she spent there, she developed a precocious passion for music, and on her return to Paris her talent caught the attention of the composer Auber; she was reluctantly [probably because of her young age, ed.] admitted to the Conservatoire Impรฉrial, where she became Auberโs favourite pupil. Under his guidance, Mme Rozeโs rich voice developed to its full potential, and the singer made her first public appearance on 16 March 1865, when she sang a Benedictus in the Tuileries Chapel before Napoleon III and the Empress, during the celebrations marking the birth of the Imperial Prince. She sang again before the imperial family on 23 May, when she received a gold medal from the Emperor along with his thanks. On 20 June 1866, having completed her studies, she was awarded first prize at the Conservatoire and signed a three-year contract with Mr De Lenven, director of the Opรฉra-Comique. Her debut as Marie in Hรฉroldโs opera was a resounding success, to which she added further triumphs with her now-famous performances as Zerlina in Fra Diavolo, Marguerite in Prรฉ aux Clercs, in Mรฉhulโs Joseph, in Auberโs LโAmbassadrice, in Massรฉโs Le fils du Brigadier and in Auberโs Le premier jour de Bonheur, for which she created the role of Djelma to great acclaim.
She resumed her studies with Mr Wartel and subsequently accepted a new three-year contract with Mr Emilio Perrin of the Imperial Opera, making her debut at the Opรฉra as Marguerite in Faust.
She refused to leave Paris during the siege [of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, translatorโs note] and, during that crisis, was chosen to sing La Marseillaise before a vast audience; she also devoted all her professional skills to alleviating the suffering of the sick and wounded. For the courage and charity she displayed during the days of the Commune, she received a bronze medal from the Geneva Convention and a certificate from the French government. After the war, she toured and performed in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Brussels, and in 1872 she signed a contract with Mr Mapleson, as a result of which she appeared in London to great acclaim. Since then, she has sung in every season at Her Majestyโs Theatre, creating the role of Queen Berengaria in Balfeโs The Talisman and taking the leading roles in The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, Il Trovatore, The Magic Flute, Der Freischรผtz, Lohengrin, Robert le Diable and many other operas. She will make her first appearance in this country in Philadelphia on 8 January as Leonora in La Favorita. Mr Strakoschโs company includes, amongst others, Miss Kellogg and Miss Anne Louise Cary, Mr Tom Karl, Herr Graff, Mr E. A. Conly and others. The company will also appear later in the season at Boothโs Theatre.
Brunette and curvaceous, full of grace and savoir-faire, adored by the ladies and desired by the gentlemen, Marie Roze had two husbands โ or perhaps one and a half. The first was Julius Edson Perkins, an American tenor with a promising career who died in 1875 at the age of just thirty. The second was Henry Mapleson, whom a New York Times article as late as 1877 still described as her agent. Mapleson was the eldest son of James Henry Mapleson, arguably the greatest impresario of the nineteenth century in both Britain and America. The son was decidedly less talented; all sources seem to agree that he did indeed marry Marie Roze, with the sole significant exception of the extremely acerbic Clara Louise Kellogg, who states in no uncertain terms in her memoirs that no marriage was ever celebrated between the two and that Roze, to put it bluntly, was just one of the many who, in one way or another, passed through Mapleson Jrโs bed. Kellogg was certainly no saint, but the other woman, too, could be โ especially in her dealings with her female colleagues โ the very opposite of that dispenser of kisses and sweet nothings who had enchanted the passengers of the Republic.
Unfortunately for Roze, if we are to believe Kutsch and Riemens, we must also revise our view of her role as an angel to the wounded during the siege of Paris. According to the two authors of the Grosses Sรคngerlexikon, in fact, as the Prussian army approached, she too left the capital, like many of her colleagues, and moved to Brussels. Perhaps portraying her as a Florence Nightingale of the days of the Commune, and shifting her move to Brussels (and Amsterdam, another safe haven from the perils of war) to the years following the conflict, was an attempt โ albeit a somewhat laboured one โ to cover up a few embarrassing blemishes that had appeared on the young divaโs public image.
๐๐๐ซ๐ข๐ ๐๐จ๐ณ๐, ๐๐ง ๐๐ฑ๐จ๐ญ๐ข๐ ๐ฉ๐ซ๐ข๐๐ฌ๐ญ๐๐ฌ๐ฌ ๐๐ง๐ ๐ญ๐ก๐ โ๐๐ ๐๐๐๐ญ๐จโ ๐ฉ๐ซ๐ข๐ฆ๐ ๐๐จ๐ง๐ง๐
The second part of our belated tribute to Marie Roze begins with this carte de visite from the Parisian Bingham studio, which shows her in the exotic costume of Djelma, the female co-lead in Auberโs Le premier jour de bonheur. The opera, which was to be the penultimate work by the composer, then aged eighty-six, premiered at the Opรฉra-Comique on 15 February 1868, to resounding acclaim. The two leading roles were played by Victor Capoul and Marie Cabel, a true virtuoso now in the twilight of her career but with a glorious recent past behind her: suffice it to say that she had been the first Manon in Auberโs opera, the first Dinorah in Meyerbeerโs opera and the first Philine in Thomasโs Mignon. And, as anyone familiar with nineteenth-century opera knows, having been the first performer of a role means having been the artist on whose abilities and skills the composer tailored the musical part, with its virtuosic passages and expressive nuances.
In fact, despite its great overall success, things did not go quite as well for Cabel as they did for Auber, Capoul and Marie Roze.
The libretto for Le premier jour de bonheur is based on a comedy dating back to 1816, which had already been used in the 1930s for another opรฉra-comique. The new adaptation created for Auber transposes the story from France to distant India, thus following the great trend for exotic settings so much in vogue in Paris during the Worldโs Fairs. From the Ceylon of Les Pรชcheurs de perles to the Arabia of Djamileh, right through to the India of Lakmรฉ and Le Roi de Lahore (not to mention the mythical Byzantium of Esclarmonde and Theodora), the French stages of the late nineteenth century were teeming with prima donnas decked out in garish silks and more or less bizarre displays of jewellery. Posing against a backdrop of palm trees and lush vegetation, Marie Roze shows us the costume that, in the original production at the Opรฉra-Comique, had been designed for the Indian priestess (!) Djelma, a role which, judging by the scant details on the operaโs plot that can be found, seems โ if not that of a second female lead โ at any rate entirely peripheral to the story told in the libretto.
And yet, right from the evening of the first performance, the two real stars were Victor Capoul and Marie Roze, whilst Cabel (who played the Englishwoman Elisabeth, daughter of the Governor of Madras, with whom the thoroughly hapless French officer Gaston de Mailleprรฉ falls in love) came across as somewhat cloying and affected. At least, that is what the reviewer of the performance wrote in Watsonโs Art Journal on 21 March 1868, who then gave a very detailed account of the evening. Who knows whether Auber had somehow sensed that it was necessary to compensate for some of Cabelโs shortcomings by giving more prominence to Marie Roze (who, let us recall, had only three yearsโ experience behind her) when he decided at the last minute to include for her, in the second act, a Chanson des Djinns, which proved to be one of the most successful numbers in the score.
The second act is the operaโs triumph. Djelma sings the Chanson des Djinns, a sort of barcarolle with a truly original flavour, sweet and light as a breeze, a melody that captures your ear and never lets go. The composer deserves every honour simply for having written this piece. As Mademoiselle Marie Roze, as beautiful as a houri in her oriental costume, breathed out the final note of this delightful melody, the audienceโs enthusiasm erupted once more and, by popular demand, the piece had to be repeated.
The anonymous reviewer is completely taken with Marie Roze and blatantly snubs the prima donna, tolerating her only when she performs a duet with the other soprano โ a charming nocturne set to the verses
Retard the dawning Aurora
It must be said โ and let this not appear to be mere partisan bias on the part of a blog that now seems to have adopted the French tenor as its mascot โ that the undisputed star of the evening was, beyond all doubt, Victor Capoul, who sparked what might once have been called โoutbursts of raptureโ right from his opening aria, which he sang with such perfection and finesse as to elicit frenzied applause from the audience. He did not resist the request for an encore of this masterpiece; he sang it again and, no sooner had he finished than he was greeted with shouts of enthusiasm even from the ladies โ those delicate creatures who are usually content merely to extend, in the most polite of manners, the fingers of their little white-gloved hands. But on this occasion, carried away by the melody and the manner in which it was sung, they shouted โBravo!โ, threw their bouquets at the fortunate tenor and clapped their hands thunderously.
Le premier jour de bonheur was the first major success of Marie Rozeโs career and certainly served as a springboard for her rise to the far more imposing stage of the Opรฉra. The success of this late work by Auber was resounding, and within the space of just two years it ran for no fewer than 167 performances at the Salle Favart. Not even Thomasโs Mignon, another huge hit with the public, had managed to achieve the same. As the de facto prima donna, Marie Roze was fully admitted into the pantheon of the de jure prima donnas, a status later immortalised in bronze when she became Madame Mapleson.
And what of Auberโs opera? It remained at the Opรฉra-Comique until 1870, when the war and the siege made it advisable to put many things on hold. In the meantime, it had been performed in Brussels and, later, translated into German, it appeared in Munich, Leipzig, Vienna, Brno and Berlin. It was performed in Budapest in Hungarian and also had an Italian version for which musical recitatives were written to replace the spoken ones in the original (a fundamental characteristic of opรฉra-comique). In 1872, it was also performed in Spain as a zarzuela.
It returned to Paris in 1873, once the war was over, but there were barely eight performances before it was shelved.
