From Napoleon Magazine No. 108
Musician and baritone endowed with an exceptional voice, Pierre-Jean Garat began to acquire notoriety as early as the reign of Louis XVI before experiencing unparalleled success under the Directory. A fashion darling, he became indispensable in Parisian life during the Consulate and later the Empire. While Napoleon appreciated his artistic qualities, he was much less sensitive to the independent spirit of this vain singer.
By Mathieu Geagea / historian
Born into a bourgeois family, it was under the reign of Louis XV, on April 26, 1762, that the greatest singer of his time came into the world in the city of Bordeaux. Pierre-Jean Garat's father was a young lawyer aged twenty-seven, originally from the Basque Country, while his mother was the daughter of a surgeon from Bordeaux.
In the early months of his life, Pierre-Jean was entrusted to the care of a wet nurse residing in the locality of Barsac, not far from Bordeaux. Legend has it that it was through this woman, who sang all day long, that the child was initiated into the pleasure of music: "The cradle beside which she always sang was a place of delight for the child. [...] With a few sounds, she made such a child do what she wanted; these sounds, linked in singing phrases, were engraved in the child's ear and voice. [...] Garat began to sing before he began to speak," recounted Dominique-Joseph Garat, Pierre-Jean's uncle.
Back among his family in Bordeaux, the young child loved to sing melodies and fascinated his parents with the accuracy of his voice. A talent that undoubtedly came from his mother, a distinguished musician and singer. After attending the beginning of his schooling in Bordeaux, Pierre-Jean, an ordinary, even mediocre student, joined the college of Barbezieux in the neighboring Charente region. The teenager only thought of music. "He thus learned about fifty different melodies, and although he was barely twelve years old, he already had such a fine, delicate, and trained ear," wrote the art historian Paul Lafond in his work dedicated to Garat. The fragile health of the young man prompted his parents to send him to his paternal family in the Basque Country for a few months, where the climate was considered more agreeable. Ignorant of musical science, Pierre-Jean Garat began to study vocalization with an Italian master named Lamberti, residing in Bayonne. From this short period of his life spent in the Basque Country, the future great singer would bring back many mountain melodies.
Back in the capital of Bordeaux, Pierre-Jean Garat continued his apprenticeship with François Beck, a German composer and conductor of the Grand-Théâtre de Bordeaux. Under the latter's guidance, the young man learned harmony with alarming ease. He did not miss, at the Grand-Théâtre, the opportunity to hear the principal lyrical masterpieces interpreted by the best singers. Pierre-Jean Garat memorized them all and constantly trained to reach the level of his models. The young virtuoso often enjoyed singing amid a circle of friends in the alleys of Tourny in the heart of Bordeaux. François Beck then invited him to participate in public or private concerts that he organized in salons. The young man surprised renowned musicians who, passing through the city, could hear him and charmed his listeners by singing operas and Basque songs. As he approached his twenties, Pierre-Jean Garat was sent by his father to Paris to begin studying law to practice, like him, the profession of lawyer.
Conquering Paris and Versailles
At the end of the autumn of 1782, young Garat set off for the capital. He quickly gave up his law studies to devote himself exclusively to singing. He then approached Italian singers enjoying great success in the French capital. With them, he perfected himself, appropriated their methods, and reproduced their voices "with equal flexibility and no less equal accuracy," wrote Paul Lafond: "Garat was neither a high tenor, nor a tenor, nor a baritone, nor a bass. By a whim of nature, his throat lent itself to all registers. He was a summary of all voices. In a single evening, he sang the most opposite airs. From the pathetic, he passed without any effort to the comic."
Very quickly, Garat becomes an essential figure in all of Paris. The young singer is present at all the festivities. In theaters, concerts, balls, gatherings, and even churches, Garat savors the pleasure of hearing music and meeting personalities. Charming, he leaves no one indifferent, and everyone marvels at his prodigious memory, allowing him to sing an opera from beginning to end, from the overture to the final aria. In their Literary, Philosophical, and Critical Correspondence addressed to a German sovereign in February 1784, the men of letters Friedrich-Melchior Grimm and the philosopher Denis Diderot do not fail to emphasize: "We have for some time had a young man whose talent is one of those extraordinary phenomena. [...] His name is Mr. Garat. [...] He is barely twenty years old."
While he had only been in Paris for barely three months, his growing fame reached the walls of the Palace of Versailles, and soon Queen Marie-Antoinette expressed the desire to hear this young prodigy. On January 12, 1783, Pierre-Jean Garat graciously accepted the invitation of the sovereign and discovered for the first time in his life the splendors of the Palace of Versailles. Intimidated, he was introduced into a salon where Marie-Antoinette, the king's brothers, the Count of Provence, the Count of Artois, and a crowd of courtiers awaited him. Accompanied by the Italian composer Antonio Salieri, seated behind a harpsichord, Garat sang some Basque or Gascon airs, which he translated into French as he went along. He ended his performance with an opera he sang from memory. His success that day exceeded what he could have hoped for. From that day on, Garat would visit Versailles and Trianon several times to sing before and with the queen.
Meanwhile, Dominique Garat, having learned that his son had wholly abandoned his law studies in Bordeaux, reproached him sharply, urging him to return to university. He then resorted to drastic measures by cutting off his allowance. Without subsidies and leading a lifestyle far beyond his means, Garat nevertheless received support from his uncle Dominique-Joseph, a journalist in Paris. He soon found a devoted protector in the person of the Count of Vaudreuil, cousin of the Duchess of Polignac, the friend and confidante of the queen. Finally, in September 1783, Garat became secretary to the cabinet of the Count of Artois. Despite his salary, the young singer still faced financial difficulties, and twice, the queen came to his aid by paying his debts.
In 1786, Pierre-Jean Garat returned to Bordeaux for the first time in four years. His reputation preceded him, and the native son received a warm welcome and countless invitations, as many wished to meet and hear him. He took advantage of this stay on the banks of the Garonne to participate in a concert organized to benefit François Beck, his former master, who was then in a difficult financial situation. Finally, Garat used this trip to reconcile with his father. After several months in his native land, the singer returned to Paris.
From the fall of the monarchy to the Directory
Two years They were passed before the whirlwind of the Revolution abruptly and considerably disrupted Parisian life. The fall of the monarchy in 1792 led Garat to lose the pension he received from the court. A few months later, the singer judged it wiser to move away from the capital, and accompanied by his friend Pierre Rode, a composer and violinist, also from Bordeaux, he settled in Rouen. For eight months, the two artists stayed and gave about twenty concerts in this city, one of the few to have maintained a significant musical activity in this troubled period. On the occasion of one of these concerts, Garat put himself in danger. Faced with a conquered audience demanding that he sing "La Carmagnole," this revolutionary song created at the time of the fall of the monarchy, Garat refused to do so and instead chose to interpret a romance that was perceived to contain allusions to Queen Marie-Antoinette. This period of terror was enough for the singer to be arrested on November 5, 1793. Garat remained imprisoned for several months.
The fall and execution of Robespierre in July 1794 allowed him to escape the guillotine and regain his freedom on August 8 of the same year. In debt, Garat resumed singing to earn a living and pay off his creditors. With Pierre Rode and the young Rouen composer François-Adrien Boieldieu, the singer gave a new concert just a few days after his release from prison. With the economic and political situation in the country remaining uncertain, Garat and Rode then chose to leave Rouen to try their luck abroad. After embarking from Le Havre, the two men reached Hamburg, where they performed with the same success. After staying there for several months, they moved on to Holland, then England, before returning to France towards the end of 1795.
During this period marked by the birth of the Directory, Paris had once again changed its face. "The salons were reopening. The luxurious carriages reappeared, and dinners, balls, and concerts followed one another without interruption, never numerous enough for the new society thirsty for pleasure. [...] One had to distract oneself at all costs from the oppression of the recent times from which one emerged weakened and bruised," wrote Paul Lafond in his biography of the singer. Despite his absence for several months, Garat effortlessly regained his former fame and became the man of fashion again. It was common to hear him sing at the salon of Madame Tallien, at the home of the financier Gabriel-Julien Ouvrard, or at the parties organized by the influential member of the Directory, Paul Barras. Garat charged a high price for his performances, which made him indispensable in the highest circles. "Among his most unbearable quirks was that of being begged to sing. Although he was devastated if not asked, it was only through supplications and insistence that one obtained to hear him in a salon," mentions Paul Lafond in his work. In these social evenings, the singer rubbed shoulders with all the important personalities in Parisian society in science, literature, and politics.
At the same time, Garat performed on the stage of the Théâtre français on Rue Feydeau. Once again, he demonstrated the diversity of his repertoire by being able to sing German opera, Italian compositions, or Gascon songs in one evening. At each of his concerts, the public reserved a triumph for him. In 1796, Garat was appointed professor of singing at the Conservatoire de Musique, founded three years earlier to replace the Royal School of Singing. There, he acquired a reputation as an outstanding teacher.
A sartorial singularity
At the beginning of his success, during the Directory period, Pierre-Jean Garat did not conform to the moment's fashion. More accustomed to the elegance under the Ancien Régime, the singer refused to don the blue carmagnole, white waistcoat, pink-striped trousers, or the blue woolen cap bordered with red. Worse still than anything, he continued to wear powdered hair with a queue—a hairstyle known to be that of royalists and therefore perceived as seditious and unpatriotic. Won over by the ideas of the Revolution, Garat's admirers could only express their disapproval and dissatisfaction with the hairstyle worn by their idol. One evening, when he was to perform at the Théâtre de la rue Feydeau, Garat was greeted with boos as he took the stage. The audience then chanted, "The queue! The queue!" Standing by his side, his friend, the musician and lyric singer Jean-Blaise Martin, whispered to Garat: "You will be booed as long as you keep your hairstyle." As Garat tried to sing despite the increasing shouts and even insults from the audience, Jean-Blaise Martin quickly approached him and cut off this famous, much-criticized pigtail with a stroke of scissors. That was enough for Garat to receive unanimous applause subsequently. From that day on, the singer had, willingly or not, to submit to the fashion of the time.
Nevertheless, he could not help but stand out. He replaced his pigtail with a multitude of tiny curls. Instead of silk breeches, he preferred deerskin breeches that reached halfway down his legs, paired with soft boots with reverses. He had two front pieces added to his frock coat adorned with buttons. And rather than a round hat, he favored a top hat.
In the "Incroyables" fashion movement trend, characterized by dissipation and extravagance, Garat quickly became the darling of the golden youth who began to copy his clothing, especially the tie knotted on the right. He never departed from this exhibitionist and effeminate attitude. Towards the end of his life, however, he regretted no longer attracting attention with his picturesque outfits. A year before his death, his attire was decidedly eclectic as he walked the streets of Paris adorned in a green coat under a brown frock coat with red trousers covered in tall yellow leather boots. To the writer Auguste Jal, who accompanied him that day, Garat, disillusioned, could not help but grumble, pointing his finger at the crowd of passersby: "The ungrateful. They wouldn't have passed me twenty years ago without noticing my yellow boots. The ungrateful!" As Louis-Gabriel Michaud wrote in the fifteenth volume of his "Biographie universelle": "It would have been difficult to say whether Garat valued his talent or his influence on fashion more."
Garat and Napoleon: between charm and annoyance
Becoming a senator under the Consulate, Dominique-Joseph Garat considered it improper and intolerable for his nephew, who bore the same surname, to sing for money. Instead, he preferred to be granted a relatively high pension because he abstained from performing in public. To avoid compromising his uncle's promising political career, Pierre-Jean Garat consented to this heavy sacrifice while continuing to give his classes at the Conservatoire de Musique and being invited to sing at the homes of eminent personalities. During this period, the singer made only one exception when he agreed to play the role of the angel Gabriel in Haydn's dramatic lyric work "La création." The performance took place at the opera on Rue de Richelieu on the evening of December 24, 1800. The presence of the First Consul, Napoleon Bonaparte, was announced. As the curtain rose, an explosion was heard, causing concern among the audience. In the following minutes, the First Consul's box opened, and Bonaparte, accompanied by several generals and his wife Josephine, took his place in full view. From the pit to the orchestra, from the theater to the boxes, the rumor quickly spread that the First Consul had just survived an exceptionally violent assassination attempt on Rue Saint-Nicaise. By his presence, Bonaparte proved that he had not been injured. During this historic evening, the future Emperor of the French heard Garat's voice for the first time.
During this Consulate period, the singer was in high demand. Josephine received him at Malmaison, at the home of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, and Lucien Bonaparte's, the brother of the First Consul.
After lunch, the First Consul had the pleasure of hearing Garat sing for the second time during an invitation to the home of Thetesson, a close friend of Josephine Marquise de Mone. Touched by his talent, the future Emperor even asked him to repeat the romance by the composer and harpsichordist Charles-Henri Planta-de. Once Bonaparte took his leave, Garat soberly confided to the Marquise de Montesson: "He is charming. He is a great man."
After the proclamation of the Empire in 1804, the singer with the golden voice found himself regularly invited to the grand concerts organized by the emperor at the Tuileries Palace. Full of himself, endowed with a very proud character, he did not hesitate to assert his personality at his own risk. One evening, accompanied by the musician and lyric singer Jean-Blaise Martin, Garat was dissatisfied with the seating arrangement reserved for them. Without hesitation, he went so far as to exchange the tickets bearing his and his colleague's names with those of high-ranking individuals much better favored. When the chamberlain noticed this, Garat confidently replied that he would refuse to sing if satisfied. Informed of the incident, Napoleon reportedly declared, "These gentlemen have their dignity; place them where they want to be." Having been conveyed the Emperor's benevolent words, Garat opted for a response imbued with humility: "We will do our best to satisfy a sovereign who is willing to show indulgent deference to men who may be too vain."
Respectful towards the Emperor, Garat did not, however, belong to the sycophants of the imperial regime. On the contrary, he often appeared nostalgic for the monarchy, recalling the favors bestowed upon him by Marie-Antoinette some twenty years earlier. Although Napoleon was sometimes annoyed by Garat's independence of mind, it did not prevent him from decorating this exceptional singer with the Legion of Honor. A distinction that the recipient did not like to display ostentatiously. "He despised it to such an extent that, when he was obliged to wear it at an official gathering, he usually turned the reverse of his coat to conceal it," notes the art historian Paul Lafond.
The Emperor's Anger
At forty-five, Pierre-Jean Garat found himself at the peak of his career. He was one of the most prominent figures in Parisian life. He became a fashion icon and mingled with the mighty and accumulated female conquests. One of them, a Savoyard aristocrat Adélaïde de Bellegarde, ten years his junior and also a model for the painter David, had two illegitimate children with Garat, a boy and a girl born respectively in 1801 and 1802. However, it was with one of his young students from the Conservatoire de Musique, a brilliant contralto named Marie-Catherine-Césarine Duchamps, that Garat allegedly tied the knot, although doubts remain about the reality of this marriage. "She had a beautiful, deep voice, which earned her the nickname 'Miss Contralto' by him. Always and above all enamored of his art, Garat did not give her a moment's rest, making her vocalize relentlessly. Excessively jealous, he did not give her a moment of freedom," states Paul Lafond. His arrogance and narcissism also earned him criticism and hatred.
Some of his detractors believe they detect cryptic allusions in his songs, although it is difficult to ascertain whether Garat acted knowingly or involuntarily. Thus, some of his romances, such as "Henri IV à Gabrielle" or "Bayard," suggest a critique of the Emperor through evoking these historical figures. Informed, the latter does not hide his resentment. Another step is taken when Garat sings "Bélisaire" in homage to this Roman general of the East who lived in the sixth century, subsequently falling into disfavor with Emperor Justinian following rumors of his involvement in conspiracies. Through this ode, several Bonapartists perceive a parallel with General Jean Victor Marie Moreau, who was involved in a conspiracy against Napoleon in 1803, after which he was arrested, tried, and sentenced. Banished, the officer was struck off the army's rolls. Even though the song lyrics were written by the poet Népomucène Lemercier, the interpreter, Garat, will suffer the consequences of Napoleon's wrath. The sovereign decides to deprive him of his position as a professor at the Conservatoire de Musique. However, this decision did not prevent Garat from continuing to teach there graciously. The Emperor and the singer would no longer meet after that. While Garat was not a fervent admirer of Napoleon, he remained always faithful to Empress Joséphine, whom he frequently visited at Malmaison after her divorce from the Emperor.
A Solitary End of Life
In 1814, the singer witnessed the Empire's fall and the monarchy's restoration with little regret. Barely seated on the throne, King Louis XVIII instructed Garat to enjoy again his position as a professor at the Conservatoire de Musique, which had been taken from him fourteen months earlier.
In 1817, the King's Household tasked Garat with traveling through the provinces of the Midi to unearth promising young talents who could benefit from his teaching. After completing this task, the singer returned to Paris and resumed his classes at the Conservatoire de Musique, renamed the previous year as the "École royale de Musique et de déclamation." While his teaching remained as precise as ever, and he still expressed the exact demands of his students, Garat, now in his fifties, began to feel the pangs of old age. Gradually, his voice faded, plunging him into immense grief. He refused to admit this failure of his body and continued tirelessly to engage with music.
To a friend who questioned him one day about whether he still tried to sing sometimes, he did not hesitate to reply: "No. It is impossible for me, but my memory sings silently, and I have never sung better." His inevitable decline then made him misanthropic and gloomy. In almost solitude, Garat faced the slow and progressive weakening of his body. To his few visitors, music always remained his main topic of discussion: "It was always and remained until his last breath his beloved mistress, the only one he never abandoned and to whom he always remained faithful," writes his biographer Paul Lafond.
On March 1, 1823, at three in the morning, the most famous and talented singer of his generation passed away at his home on Rue Montmartre in Paris at sixty. He was buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery under a stone monument shaped like a casket, dominated at the head by a stele. On this stele, covered with a white marble background, a bouquet and a bas-relief representing a muse playing the harp, an allegory of music, are sculpted. Many years later, the stele would be surmounted by a bronze bust of the deceased.
In the enclosure of musicians in the eleventh division of Père-Lachaise Cemetery, Garat now rests near the graves of composers Étienne-Nicolas Méhul and André Grétry, as well as cellist Jean-Louis Duport. Nearly sixty years after his death, his daughter, Marie-Aimée-Aurore, joined him to rest by his side. In the days following Pierre-Jean Garat's funeral, one of his students from the Conservatoire de Musique, soprano singer Antoinette-Eugénie Rigaud, honored her master's memory. Like a defiance to Napoleon, she sang on the opera stage the romance "Bélisaire," which provoked the Emperor's anger against Garat. "This simple and touching melody [...] brought the audience to tears. The singer herself could not resist the general emotion; she cried like everyone else and could barely finish her romance," recalls Paul Lafond. Garat could not have hoped for a more beautiful posthumous tribute.
Bibliography
Louis-Gabriel Michaud, Biographie universelle ancienne et moderne: histoire par ordre alphabétique de la vie publique et privée de tous les hommes, volume 15, Thoisnier Desplaces editions, Paris, 1843. I François-Joseph Fétis, Biographie universelle des musiciens et bibliographie générale de la musique, Firmin-Didot editions, Paris, 1834-1835, reproduced in facsimile in the "Bibliothèque des introuvables" collection, Paris, 2001. I Paul Lafond, Garat 1762-1823, Paris, 1900.
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