Ogden Standard-Examiner | 1927-01-30 | Page 60 | How the "Musical Clown" Became a Great Composer

1 i I ft low How a f I I 1 f ik 1 t r Y o i t J f rt te t Y 4 1 tt f v p 4 A t I a an n k t t I Michel Michel- kl Michel Maurice Levy the musical clown andon and on the left his beautiful and devoted wife By CARL DE VIDAL HUNT PARIS VERY artist in Paris is ia rejoicing EVERY B over the success of an opera which has just been produced at the Opera by bya by a man who was known for tor years as the Musical Clown Never before the critics say has a composer of grand opera risen to national fame in such spectacular fashion and so unexpectedly What makes the event doubly inter Inter- esting is the romantic background of a womans woman's love and devotion ion the gripping story of an artists artist's determination In the tho face of defeat and his amazing resolve when his work worle was rejected ten years ago to earn his livelihood as a musical buffoon until lie he had saved enough money to produce his bis opera himself And the grim irony of it all accord according ing to the composers composer's own recital is that in his hia despair he ridiculed good music so successfully that he became famous as asa asa asa a musical Punchinello and earned more money as such than he ever expected to get get out of his opera real rell name is Michel Maurice Michel Levy lie He composed his first piece when he was eleven cleven years old and had the joy of hearing it played by the orchestra ot of the Garde the finest band In France day To-day ho is one forty-one gray gray- haired gray haired but happy and undaunted The opera he composed is called The Cloister and deals with the ambitions and feuds inside of a priory When ho he first offered the piece to the mighty di director rector general of ot the Paris opera that great official merely glanced at the tho list ot of the cast and then exclaimed somewhat violently Why there isn't a woman in the cast monsieur nothing but monks and other saintly people I cannot produce an opera without a woman in it and if I cannot nobody else will or can cnn Heres Here's your our manuscript Better try something else monsieur Crestfallen and anti dejected the unhappy musician picked up his score and started home to his wife Louise Marion in the Latin quarter How could he face his young bride after this terrible disillusionment At first ho thought of making directly for tor the tho Seine and ending it all but his good star led him home to the woman he loved That night the two sat up to- to together to together gether and planned It was Louise Marion who first got herself in leash She Sho told Michel that sho believed in him and that she sho knew he would succeed eventually Then Michel had a sudden inspiration ne He laughed at the thought t of it took teok his wife into his arms and kissed her and then ran from the house At one o'clock in the morning he came back and put two sixty-two francs on the little bedroom table Ive earned it by making a fool ot of myself at the piano in the Chateau dEau d'Eau music hall he said with a grim laugh and Im I'm going to continue playing tile the harlequin Maybe Ill I'll have more success in that line of work From that night on a man named amused the noisy audiences of the Chateau dEau d'Eau with his clever imi- imi imitations imitations imi imitations of famous pianists Without the tho least knowledge of any language except French he parodied from every land and kept his bis listeners in a constant roar of laughter Soon after he was discovered by the well known Paris impresario Paul Franck who gave him an engagement at La Lune Jousse from which he eventually eventually ally graduated to the Olympia on the Boulevard des was made Maurice Michel Michel LeVy and his opera were shelved At what price of heartaches this abdication was consummated only the bravo little music mesic master knew This terrible self-denial self this nightly desecration of his art under the ludt- ludt ludi ludicrously e Betho 1 big pseudonym of ot brought him fame tame as a buffoon but with with- within within with within in his soul lived his opera hope and and hope k It was Louise Ml Marion rion who always buoyed him up when his spirits faltered and it was she who said one day not three months ago Michel take your score to the Opera and try your luck And Michel did try it The director of the Opera looked over the tho piece and a week later wrote to Mon Mon- Mon Monsieur Michel-Maurice Michel Levy that his opera Le Lc Cloitre would be bo produced and that rehearsals would begin forthwith forth forth- forthwith forthwith with The Tho premiere was a great night for tor Michel and Louise Marion I had the privilege of sitting with them and Michels Michel's brother brothel in the dark little loge logo No 9 on the side of the tho stalls All the elite of the arts and music was d in the house and when a thousand voices clamored for Ie le after the third act the good who had hadt t made Paris laugh faltered back into inte the darkness of the logo loge and wept