Cartoonist Jean-Jacques Sempé is a master at observing the eccentricities of the French. One of his drawings shows a modern staging of an opera set in ancient Rome. Performers in togas lounge around a table sparsely supplied with wine and a little fruit. “I went to see Lambert last night,” grumbles one chorus member. “He’s an extra in Lucrezia Borgia. Every night, it’s hors d’oeuvre, entrée, main dish (fish or meat) with vegetables, and a choice of cheese or dessert.”
Lucrezia Borgia, Gaetano Donizetti’s tale of medieval homicide, does contain a number of eating and drinking scenes, but might not have been Sempé’s ideal choice, since its most famous aria, the drinking song Il segreto per esser felici (The Secret to Being Happy), concludes with all five singers dropping dead, poisoned by Lucrezia.
All the same, the intimate relationship of wine, food and music, traditionally one of the closest in the arts, has long been established in France. In medieval times, artisans were sometimes paid in wine, particularly by the church, which monopolized its production. To christen a new organ, workmen and sponsors “drank its health” by filling one of the pipes with wine, an invitation to both faithful and clergy, for the most pious of reasons, to get roaring drunk.
In the 19th century, the musical celebration of good eating and drinking found its apotheosis in grand opera. Italian composers gravitated to Paris, the most cosmopolitan of Europe’s capitals. In the new opera house of Napoleon III’s empress, Eugenie, the world’s largest and best equipped, Puccini, Donizetti and Rossini enjoyed their greatest successes.
Chorus singers were so much in demand in Paris that they took over certain cafés, making it easier for impresarios to find them in an emergency. The second act of Puccini’s La Bohème, based on Parisian writer Henri Murger’s memories of his impecunious days as a student, takes place in such a cafe, the Momus, which used to stand at 19 rue des Prêtres-Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois. Strolling among the patrons, to the irritation of her new and venerable protector, the artist’s model Musetta taunts her former lover Marcello with the waltz Quando me’n vo’ (When I Walk), boasting of her beauty, so great that people stop and stare in the street.
Le café Momus on the right of the image, 1849, Henri Lévis
Tournedos Rossini
Notwithstanding the fame of La Bohème, the composer with the closest ties to Paris and haute cuisine was Gioachino Rossini. Born in Pesaro, he moved to Paris in 1824 at the height of his fame, and alternated between Italy and France for the rest of his life. A passionate gourmet, impressively but genially obese, Rossini was vocal in his appreciation of food:
Appetite is for the stomach what love is for the heart. The stomach is the conductor, who rules the grand orchestra of our passions, and rouses it to action. The bassoon or the piccolo, grumbling its discontent or shrilling its longing, personify the empty stomach for me. The stomach, replete, on the other hand, is the triangle of enjoyment or the kettledrum of joy. As for love, I regard her as the prima donna par excellence, the goddess who sings cavatinas to the brain, intoxicates the ear, and delights the heart. Eating, loving, singing and digesting are, in truth, the four acts of the comic opera known as Life, and they pass like the bubbles of a bottle of champagne.
Rossini’s Falstaff, The Italian Girl in Algiers and La Cenerentola (Cinderella) all contain eating or drinking songs. The massive Falstaff and the character of Don Magnifico in Cenerentola both celebrate their love of eating, but the composer’s greatest appreciation of food took place offstage. Friendly with the leading chefs of the day, in particular Marie-Antoine Carême, who called him “the only one who has ever understood me,” Rossini inspired them to invent dishes in his name, including a salad, poached eggs, chicken and fillet of sole, all prepared “alla Rossini.”
In most cases, these dishes were distinguished by the richness of their ingredients. Rossini personally created a risotto based on fat-rich beef marrow, and any dish containing truffles or foie gras met with his instant approval. Stuffed into a tube of pasta, these two delicacies made another of his signature dishes, Cannelloni alla Rossini. They also feature in the recipe with which he’s most associated, Tournedos Rossini.
To create this challenge to the digestion, a thick slice of beef fillet is sautéed in butter and placed on a piece of fried bread, topped with a slice of foie gras, then garnished with truffles and completed with a drizzle of sauce based on Madeira wine. Because it needs the minimum of cooking, the dish was often prepared at the table over an alcohol burner, contributing an additional element of theatricality. There’s no agreement over who invented the dish—Carême, Dugléré and Escoffier all claim credit—nor can anyone satisfactorily explain its name. If one anecdote is to be believed, Rossini himself is responsible. Watching the chef prepare the dish at the Café Anglais, he became so intrusive that the cook told him to sit down. Put out, Rossini snapped, “Well then, turn your back” (so I can’t see what you’re doing)”—in French “Et alors, tournez le dos.”
Operetta composers in the 20th century picked up the theme of café life made famous by Paris. The White Horse Inn, a German comedy romance set in a mountain resort, became a hit in the 1930s, both on stage and screen. The success of Sigmund Romberg’s The Student Prince, premiered in 1924, was due largely to a rousing song in which the eponymous hero leads his fellow University of Heidelberg students in a celebration of beer. Jacques Offenbach set his ballet Gaîté Parisienne in a 19th-century Paris café. At its climax, cancan dancers burst onstage to the music of a galop that was ever afterward associated with this dance. The ultimate café operetta, however, was Franz Lehár’s 1905 The Merry Widow. Composed and premiered in Vienna, it languished until the libretto was rewritten to feature Paris’s café Maxim’s and the cocottes or party girls who hung out there. Since then, it has racked up an estimated million performances, making it the most popular show in musical history.