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‘Then I would go to the piano and begin to play a rhapsody of Liszt or a polonaise of Chopin… on top lay a copy of [the patriotic score] “Partant pour La Syrie”, a portrait of his mother, Queen Hortense, a lovely figure in dark velvet… and a bunch of Hortensia flowers.’ So wrote Louise de Mercy-Argenteau of her affaire de coeur with the doomed Napoléon III in her riveting memoir, The Last Love of an Emperor. Visiting him for the final time while he was imprisoned by the Prussians in the Schloss Wilhelmshöhe, Louise would play for the forlorn exile to soothe his nerves.
A descendant of the Franco-Belgian house of Chimay, Louise came from a princely family with a strong musical tradition. She was a friend of Lizst, whom she called ‘the bullfinch’ for the dextrous way his fingers would fly across the keys, as well as the Russian composer César Cui, for whom in Liège she mounted a spectacular performance of his opera The Prisoner of the Caucasus. The latter led to a life in St Petersburg, where she died in 1890, soon after being painted in a haunting rendition by the great portraitist Ilya Repin. The legacy of Louise and her uncle, Joseph, 17th Prince de Chimay, lives on in an astonishing creation at their ancestral seat in southern Belgium. The Théâtre du Château de Chimay was introduced to me with the irresistible line: ‘My parents in-law have a theatre behind the kitchen, modelled on Fontainebleau. You must see it.’
A lure if ever there was one – from Marie-Séverine de Caraman Chimay, the exuberant director of the London-based fabric house Watts of Westminster. It wasn’t long before I found myself transported to an empty stage, gazing out on to a tiny Rococo firmament of gilded and scarlet boxes. Here, in the rolling hills of Botte du Hainaut, is a Wunderkammer filled with all the galloping romance of the Second French Empire.
Today’s incumbents, Prince Philippe and Princesse Françoise de Chimay, are themselves avid and active music lovers. They continue the familial tradition by hosting regular concerts, ensuring that their jewel of a theatre is neither clad in dust sheets nor a ghostly relic. Instead it is a thriving cultural artery in Europe’s classical-music circuit, its custodians serving as patrons to younger musicians while also inviting established names. Built in 1863, the theatre was designed by French architect Charles-Antoine Cambon and Hector-Martin Lefuel, together celebrated for embellishing the Louvre and creating the now-lost imperial apartments at the Palais des Tuileries.
The titan pair were commissioned by Joseph, Prince de Chimay, illustrious envoy of the recently established Belgian kingdom and confidant of Leopold I, to replace an earlier example by Chimay’s mother, Madame Tallien. On its unveiling, the Italian-style auditorium drew admiration for its precise, delicate lines and the architectural wit Cambon was known for. Guests walk into the theatre under a gauzy Grecian-style portrait of Tallien, the former Thérésa Cabarrus, heroine of the French Revolution and femme scandaleuse.
It was whispered that she bathed daily in the juice of strawberries and once appeared at the Paris Opéra in white silk with no undergarments, prompting Talleyrand to exclaim: ‘Il n’est pas possible de s’exposer plus somptueusement!’ (‘One could not be more sumptuously unclothed!’). Her circular theatre in the château courtyard, beloved of Cherubini and the Spanish opera singer Maria Malibran, was razed to make way for a more splendid version befitting the grand prince, as her son Joseph was then known. Inspired by sketches produced for Louis XV for his theatre at Fontainebleau, Cambon and Lefuel designed an oval shape for excellent acoustics with two floors of stuccoed balconies overlooked by an axial prince’s box, emblazoned with family armorials and a sun mask of the king.
Prince Philippe remembers returning, on holiday from school in England, to hear the voice of American soprano Teresa Stich-Randall – Toscanini called her ‘the find of the century’ – along with his elegant parents, Prince Elie and Princesse Elisabeth. ‘They were incredibly cultured, hosting the likes of Menuhin and Rostropovich at Chimay,’ he recalls. ‘My father had studied as a boy the violin, which is the family instrument, and the piano, under the master composer Rodolphe Deneufbourg. Music runs through our veins, from one generation to the next,’ he says with a smile. Elisabeth, now 96, who wrote a book about the colourful Thérésa and still lives at the château, was a lady-in-waiting to Queen Fabiola, who would often attend concerts. ‘The style, the flowers, the orchestra, the jewels,’ recalled one attendee: ‘It was what we all needed after the war.’ Cambon himself painted the trompel’oeil canvas stage curtain which is awaiting restoration. Prince Philippe commissioned old family friend and set designer Thierry Bosquet (WoI Oct 2023) to design the scenery with his inimitable eye for detail.
Thierry also created a ravishing series of miniature rooms, depicting château interiors tragically lost in a fire of 1935, and set them into the walls of an anteroom to enchant audiences in the intervals. Philippe directs my gaze to the ceiling, which he describes as ‘our pride and joy’. Illustrating paradise, the visual cupola effect – another optical illusion – lends a soaring impression, bolstered by Classical schemes. ‘It is made from 20 distemper painted canvases,’ he explains, pointing out the tableaux of four cartouches surrounded by glorious swags and hovering cherubs. ‘In style, it is closely related to Le Théâtre Royal de Namur, another treasure here in Walloon,’ says Philippe, his ever present jack russell, Josephine, at his side as we move past the violin reliefs set into the deep-green salon by the theatre.
The double doors at the entrance are dominated by Winterhalter portraits of the Grand Prince and his soignée wife, Emilie Pellapra. The beauty claimed to be a daughter of Napoleon Bonaparte, and bears more than a passing resemblance to the Corsican conqueror. Here at Chimay, the shadows fall between the past and present like theatre curtains between acts – perhaps the family themselves are the most beguiling draw of all.
Inspiration
A version of this article appeared in the February 2024 issue of The World of Interiors. Learn about our subscription offers
Guided tours can be arranged of the Théâtre du Château de Chimay, 18 Rue du Château, Chimay 6460, Belgium, and concerts are open to the public. chateaudechimay.be
