HEINRICH HEINE - Repositories

Martyr of Montmartre
the dismal convulsions which announce the extinction
of physical life." ^^
While Enghsh readers were thus being offered
details of Heine's death, he was engaged in negotiations
with "Her Majesty's Theatre" for the production
of a ballet on the subject of Faust. The prospectus
of this London opera house promised the Faustballet
for the season of 1847. Preparations were
already in progress for its staging, when Benjamin
Lumley, the director, suddenly ordered its removal
from the repertoire, despite the expenses lavished
upon this work by the manager. In his reminiscences,
published in 1864, Lumley reprinted his correspondence
with Heine from 1847 to 1852 regarding
this ballet and gave his reasons for the decision
to lay it aside: "True, it was the work of a poet; but
of a poet unacquainted with the necessities of stage
representation, especially in England — of a man
of powerful imagination, who presupposed that a
public would see the effects as he S2L\V them, and feel
w ith his feelings. In short, the execution of the ballet
was an impossibility." ^^
Although Heine's ballet on Faust was not produced
in England because of practical difficulties,
nevertheless the fact that its staging ^\^as seriously
considered by the Court theatre clearly indicated
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