After matters had settled down he was able to again set to work. His next operatic venture was "Don César de Bazan," played at the Opéra Comique in 1872, concerning which it is not necessary to say much. A piquant little _entr'acte_ has survived, and is occasionally heard at concerts. A more important work was the music he composed to Leconte de Lisle's drama, "Les Erinnyes," which still ranks amongst his most remarkable productions.
Massenet has been most successful in imparting a sort of antique colouring to his score. A selection of the music has found its way into the concert-room, and was heard at the Crystal Palace under the composer's direction some years ago. The best numbers are the beautiful invocation of Electra and the characteristic dances.
The turning-point in the composer's career was at hand. He had written a sort of oratorio entitled "Marie Magdeleine," and having shown the score to Mme. Viardot, this great artist, who had been instrumental in furthering Gounod's _début_ as an operatic composer, was much struck by its merit, and determined to have it produced and sing in it herself. "Marie Magdeleine" was accordingly performed at the Odéon in 1873, and created a great stir in musical circles. This delicate and refined score reveals many of the special characteristics well known to those who admire the composer's music. It is very different from what we understand in England as an oratorio. The sensuous vein of melody and the sickly sentimentality which Massenet so often mistakes for true feeling are noticeable in many of its pages. "Marie Magdeleine" was just the sort of work to please a French audience of twenty years ago, whose acquaintance with Berlioz and Wagner was limited, and whose ideal was bounded by Gounod. It was the Bible doctored up in a manner suitable to the taste of impressionable Parisian ladies--utterly inadequate for the theme, at the same time very charming and effective. These words apply equally to "Eve," a work of the same nature that was produced two years later with equal success.
It is but right to say that Massenet has not employed the title of "oratorio" for either of the above works. "Marie Magdeleine" is styled a sacred drama, and "Eve" a _mystère_. Concerning the first of these Mons. Arthur Pougin informs us that Massenet had not intended to adopt "the broad, noble, and pompous style of the oratorio. Painter and poet, he had endeavoured in this new and long-thought-out work, to introduce _rêverie_ and description; he further employed the accents of a veritably human passion, of a tenderness in some way terrestrial, which might have given rise to criticism had he let it be imagined that he intended to follow on the traces of Handel, Bach, or Mendelssohn."