Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Chuck Greif and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
THE OPERA
A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions of all
Works in the Modern Repertory.
BY R.A. STREATFEILD
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY J.A. FULLER-MAITLAND
_THIRD EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED_
LONDON
GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS, LIMITED
PHILADELPHIA: J.B. LIPPINCOTT CO.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
INTRODUCTION vii
I. THE BEGINNINGS OF OPERA 1
PERI--MONTEVERDE--CAVALLI--CESTI--CAMBERT--LULLI--PURCELL--
KEISER--SCARLATTI--HANDEL
II. THE REFORMS OF GLUCK 19
III. OPERA BUFFA, OPERA COMIQUE, AND SINGSPIEL 40
PERGOLESI--ROUSSEAU--MONSIGNY--GRÉTRY--CIMAROSA--HILLER
IV. MOZART 52
V. THE CLOSE OF THE CLASSICAL PERIOD 74
MÉHUL--CHERUBINI--SPONTINI--BEETHOVEN--BOIELDIEU
VI. WEBER AND THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL 87
WEBER--SPOHR--MARSCHNER--KREUTZER--LORTZING--NICOLAI--FLOTOW--
MENDELSSOHN--SCHUBERT--SCHUMANN
VII. ROSSINI, DONIZETTI, AND BELLINI 106
VIII. MEYERBEER AND FRENCH OPERA 126
HÉROLD--MEYERBEER--BERLIOZ--HALÉVY--AUBER
IX. WAGNER'S EARLY WORKS 151
X. WAGNER'S LATER WORKS 176
XL. MODERN FRANCE 214
GOUNOD--THOMAS--BIZET--SAINT SAËNS--REYER---MASSENET--BRUNEAU--
CHARPENTIER--DEBUSSY
XII. MODERN ITALY 262
VERDI--BOITO--PONCHIELLI--PUCCINI--MASCAGNI--LEONCAVALLO--GIORDANO
XIII. MODERN GERMAN AND SLAVONIC OPERA 302
CORNELIUS--GOETZ---GOLDMARK--HUMPERDINCK--STRAUSS--SMETANA--
GLINKA--PADEREWSKI
XIV. ENGLISH OPERA 323
BALFE--WALLACE--BENEDICT--GORING THOMAS--MACKENZIE--STANFORD--
SULLIVAN--SMYTH
INDEX OF OPERAS 351
INDEX OF COMPOSERS 361
INTRODUCTION
If Music be, among the arts, 'Heaven's youngest-teemed star', the
latest of the art-forms she herself has brought forth is
unquestionably Opera. Three hundred years does not at first seem a
very short time, but it is not long when it covers the whole period of
the inception, development, and what certainly looks like the
decadence, of an important branch of man's artistic industry. The art
of painting has taken at least twice as long to develop; yet the three
centuries from Monteverde to Debussy cover as great a distance as that
which separates Cimabue from Degas. In operatic history, revolutions,
which in other arts have not been accomplished in several generations,
have got themselves completed, and indeed almost forgotten, in the
course of a few years. Twenty-five years ago, for example, Wagner's
maturer works were regarded, by the more charitable of those who did
not admire them, as intelligible only to the few enthusiasts who had
devoted years of study to the unravelling of their mysteries; the
world in general looked askance at the 'Wagnerians', as they were
called, and professed to consider the shyly-confessed admiration of
the amateurs as a mere affectation. In that time we have seen the
tables turned, and now there is no more certain way for a manager to
secure a full house than by announcing one of these very works. An
even shorter period covers the latest Italian renaissance of music,
the feverish excitement into which the public was thrown by one of its
most blatant productions, and the collapse of a set of composers who
were at one time hailed as regenerators of their country's art.
But though artistic conditions in opera change quickly and continually,
though reputations are made and lost in a few years, and the real
reformers of music themselves alter their style and methods so radically
that the earlier compositions of a Gluck, a Wagner, or a Verdi present
scarcely any point of resemblance to those later masterpieces by which
each of these is immortalised, yet the attitude of audiences towards
opera in general changes curiously little from century to century; and
plenty of modern parallels might be found, in London and elsewhere, to
the story which tells of the delay in producing 'Don Giovanni' on
account of the extraordinary vogue of Martini's 'Una Cosa Rara', a work
which only survives because a certain tune from it is brought into the
supper-scene in Mozart's opera.
There is a good deal of fascination, and some truth, in the theory
that different nations enjoy opera in different ways. According to
this, the Italians consider it solely in relation to their sensuous
emotions; the French, as producing a titillating sensation more or
less akin to the pleasures of the table; the Spaniards, mainly as a
vehicle for dancing; the Germans, as an intellectual pleasure; and the
English, as an expensive but not unprofitable way of demonstrating
financial prosperity. The Italian might be said to hear through what
is euphemistically called his heart, the Frenchman through his palate,
the Spaniard through his toes, the German through his brain, and the
Englishman through his purse. But in truth this does not represent the
case at all fairly. For, to take only modern instances, Italy, on
whose congenial soil 'Cavalleria Rusticana' and the productions it
suggested met with such extraordinary success, saw also in 'Falstaff'
the wittiest and most brilliant musical comedy since 'Die
Meistersinger', and in 'Madama Butterfly' a lyric of infinite
delicacy, free from any suggestion of unworthy emotion. Among recent
French operas, works of tragic import, treated with all the intricacy
of the most advanced modern schools, have been received with far
greater favour than have been shown to works of the lighter class
which we associate with the genius of the French nation; and of late
years the vogue of such works as 'Louise' or 'Pelléas et Mélisande'
shows that the taste for music without any special form has conquered
the very nation in which form has generally ranked highest. In
Germany, on the other hand, some of the greatest successes with the
public at large have been won by productions which seem to touch the
lowest imaginable point of artistic imbecility; and the
ever-increasing interest in musical drama that is manifested year
after year by London audiences shows that higher motives than those
referred to weigh even with Englishmen. The theory above mentioned
will not hold water, for there are, as a matter of fact, only two ways
of looking at opera: either as a means, whether expensive or not, of
passing an evening with a very little intellectual trouble, some
social _éclat_, and a certain amount of pleasure, or as a form of art,
making serious and justifiable claims on the attention of rational
people. These claims of opera are perhaps more widely recognised in
England than they were some years ago; but there are still a certain
number of persons, and among them not a few musical people, who
hesitate to give opera a place beside what is usually called
'abstract' music. Music's highest dignity is, no doubt, reached when
it is self-sufficient, when its powers are exerted upon its own
creations, entirely without dependence upon predetermined emotions
calling for illustration, and when the interest of the composition as
well as the material is conveyed exclusively in terms of music. But
the function of music in expressing those sides of human emotion which
lie too deep for verbal utterance, a function of which the gradual
recognition led on to the invention of opera, is one that cannot be
slighted or ignored; in it lies a power of appeal to feeling that no
words can reach, and a very wonderful definiteness in conveying exact
shades of emotional sensation. Not that it can of itself suggest the
direction in which the emotions are to be worked upon; but this
direction once given from outside, whether by a 'programme' read by
the listener or by the action and accessories of the stage, the force
of feeling can be conveyed with overwhelming power, and the whole
gamut of emotion, from the subtlest hint or foreshadowing to the fury
of inevitable passion, is at the command of him who knows how to wield
the means by which expression is carried to the hearer's mind. And in
this fact--for a fact it is--lies the completest justification of
opera as an art-form. The old-fashioned criticism of opera as such,
based on the indisputable fact that, however excited people may be,
they do not in real life express themselves in song, but in
unmodulated speech, is not now very often heard. With the revival in
England of the dramatic instinct, the conventions of stage declamation
are readily accepted, and if it be conceded that the characters in a
drama may be allowed to speak blank verse, it is hardly more than a
step further to permit the action to be carried on by means of vocal
utterance in music. Until latterly, however, English people, though
taking pleasure in the opera, went to it rather to hear particular
singers than to enjoy the work as a whole, or with any consideration
for its dramatic significance. We should not expect a stern and
uncompromising nature like Carlyle's to regard the opera as anything
more than a trivial amusement, and that such was his attitude towards
it appears from his letters; but it is curious to see that a man of
such strongly pronounced dramatic tastes as Edward FitzGerald, though
devoted to the opera in his own way, yet took what can only be called
a superficial view of its possibilities.
The Englishman who said of the opera, 'At the first act I was
enchanted; the second I could just bear; and at the third I ran away',
is a fair illustration of an attitude common in the eighteenth
century; and in France things were not much better, even in days when
stage magnificence reached a point hardly surpassed in history. La
Bruyère's 'Je ne sais comment l'opéra avec une musique si parfaite, et
une dépense toute royale, a pu réussir à m'ennuyer', shows how little
he had realised the fatiguing effect of theatrical splendour too
persistently displayed. St. Evrémond finds juster cause for his bored
state of mind in the triviality of the subject-matter of operas, and
his words are worth quoting at some length: 'La langueur ordinaire où
je tombe aux opéras, vient de ce que je n'en ai jamais vu qui ne m'ait
paru méprisable dans la disposition du sujet, et dans les vers. Or,
c'est vainement que l'oreille est flattée, et que les yeux sont
charmés, si l'esprit ne se trouve pas satisfait; mon âme
d'intelligence avec mon esprit plus qu'avec mes sens, forme une
résistance aux impressions qu'elle peut recevoir, ou pour le moins
elle manque d'y prêter un consentement agréable, sans lequel les
objets les plus voluptueux même ne sauraient me donner un grand
plaisir. Une sottise chargée de musique, de danses, de machines, de
décorations, est une sottise magnifique; c'est un vilain fonds sous de
beaux dehors, où je pénètre avec beaucoup de désagrément.'
The cant phrase in use in FitzGerald's days, 'the lyric stage', might
have conveyed a hint of the truth to a man who cared for the forms of
literature as well as its essence. For, in its highest development,
opera is most nearly akin to lyrical utterances in poetry, and the most
important musical revolution of the present century has been in the
direction of increasing, not diminishing, the lyrical quality of
operatic work. The Elizabethan writers--not only the dramatists, but the
authors of romances--interspersed their blank verse or their prose
narration with short lyrical poems, just as in the days of Mozart the
airs and concerted pieces in an opera were connected by wastes of
recitative that were most aptly called 'dry'; and as it was left to a
modern poet to tell, in a series of lyrics succeeding one another
without interval, a dramatic story such as that of _Maud_, so was it a
modern composer who carried to completion, in 'Tristan und Isolde', the
dramatic expression of passion at the highest point of lyrical
utterance. It is no more unnatural for the raptures of Wagner's lovers,
or the swan-song of ecstasy, to be sung, than for the young man whose
character Tennyson assumes, to utter himself in measured verse,
sometimes of highly complex structure. The two works differ not in kind,
but in degree of intensity, and to those whose ears are open to the
appeal of music, the power of expression in such a case as this is
greater beyond all comparison than that of poetry, whether declaimed or
merely read. That so many people recognise the rational nature of opera
in the present day is in great measure due to Wagner, since whose
reforms the conventional and often idiotic libretti of former times have
entirely disappeared. In spite of the sneers of the professed
anti-Wagnerians, which were based as often as not upon some ineptitude
on the part of the translator, not upon any inherent defect in the
original, the plots invented by Wagner have won for themselves an
acceptance that may be called world-wide. And whatever be the verdict on
his own plots, there can be no question as to the superiority of the
average libretto since his day. No composer dare face the public of the
present day with one of the pointless, vapid sets of rhymes, strung
together with intervals of bald recitative, that pleased our
forefathers, and equally inconceivable is the re-setting of libretti
that have served before, in the manner of the eighteenth century
composers, a prodigious number of whom employed one specially admired
'book' by Metastasio.
Unfortunately those who take an intelligent interest in opera do not
even yet form a working majority of the operatic audience in any
country. While the supporters of orchestral, choral, or chamber music
consist wholly of persons, who, whatever their degree of musical
culture, take a serious view of the art so far as they can appreciate
it, and therefore are unhampered by the necessity of considering the
wishes of those who care nothing whatever about the music they perform.
In connection with every operatic enterprise the question arises of how
to cater for a great class who attend operatic performances for any
other reason rather than that of musical enjoyment, yet without whose
pecuniary support the undertaking must needs fail at once. Nor is it
only in England that the position is difficult. In countries where the
opera enjoys a Government subsidy, the influences that make against true
art are as many and as strong as they are elsewhere. The taste of the
Intendant in a German town, or that of the ladies of his family, may be
on such a level that the public of the town, over the operatic
arrangement of which he presides, may very well be compelled to hear
endless repetitions of flashy operas that have long passed out of every
respectable repertory; and in other countries the Government official
within whose jurisdiction the opera falls may, and very often does,
enforce the engagement of some musically incompetent prima donna in whom
he, or some scheming friend, takes a particular interest.
The moral conditions of the operatic stage are no doubt far more
satisfactory than they were, and in England the general deodorisation of
the theatre has not been unfelt in opera; but even without the unworthy
motives which too often drew the bucks and the dandies of a past day to
the opera-house, the influence of the unintelligent part of the
audience upon the performers is far from good in an artistic sense. It
is this which fosters that mental condition with which all who are
acquainted with the operatic world are only too familiar. Now, just as
in the days when Marcello wrote his _Teatro alla moda_, there is
scarcely a singer who does not hold, and extremely few who do not
express, the opinion that all the rest of the profession is in league
against them; and by this supposition, as well as by many other
circumstances, an atmosphere is created which is wholly antagonistic to
the attainment of artistic perfection. All honour is due to the purely
artistic singers who have reached their position without intrigue, and
whose influence on their colleagues is the best stimulus to wholesome
endeavour. It is beyond question that the greater the proportion of
intelligent hearers in any audience or set of subscribers, the higher
will the standard be, not only in vocalisation, but in that combination
which makes the artist as distinguished from the mere singer. For every
reason, too, it is desirable that opera should be given, as a general
rule, in the language of the country in which the performance takes
place, and although the system of giving each work with its own original
words is an ideally perfect one for trained hearers, yet the
difficulties in the way of its realisation, and the absurdities that
result from such expedients as a mixture of two or more languages in the
same piece, render it practically inexpedient for ordinary operatic
undertakings. The recognition of English as a possible medium of vocal
expression may be slow, but it is certainly making progress, and in the
last seasons at Covent Garden it was occasionally employed even before
the fashionable subscribers, who may be presumed to have tolerated it,
since they did not manifest any disapproval of its use. Since the first
edition of this book was published, the Utopian idea, as it then seemed,
of a national opera for London has advanced considerably towards
realisation, and it is certain that when it is set on foot, the English
language alone will be employed.
While opera is habitually performed in a foreign language, or, if in
English, by those who have not the art of making their words
intelligible, there will always be a demand for books that tell the
story more clearly than is to be found in the doggerel translations of
the libretti, unless audiences return with one accord to the attitude of
the amateurs of former days, who paid not the slightest attention to the
plot of the piece, provided only that their favourite singers were
taking part. Very often in that classic period the performers themselves
knew nothing and cared less about the dramatic meaning of the works in
which they appeared, and a venerable anecdote is current concerning a
certain supper party, the guests at which had all identified themselves
with one or other of the principal parts in 'Il Trovatore'. A question
being asked as to the plot of the then popular piece, it was found that
not one of the company had the vaguest notion what it was all about.
The old lady who, during the church scene in 'Faust', asked her
grand-daughter, in a spirit of humble inquiry, what the relationship was
between the two persons on the stage, is no figment of a diseased
imagination; the thing actually happened not long ago, and one is left
to wonder what impression the preceding scenes had made upon the hearer.
Of books that profess to tell the stories of the most popular operas
there is no lack, but, as a rule, the plots are related in a 'bald and
unconvincing' style, that leaves much to be desired, and sometimes in a
confused way that necessitates a visit to the opera itself in order to
clear up the explanation. There are useful dictionaries, too, notably
the excellent 'Opern-Handbuch' of Dr Riemann, which gives the names and
dates of production of every opera of any note; but the German scientist
does not always condescend to the detailed narration of the stories,
though he gives the sources from which they may have been derived. Mr
Streatfeild has hit upon the happy idea of combining the mere
story-telling part of his task with a survey of the history of opera
from its beginning early in the seventeenth century to the present day.
In the course of this historical narrative, the plots of all operas that
made a great mark in the past, or that have any chance of being revived
in the present, are related clearly and succinctly, and with a rare and
delightful absence of prejudice. The author finds much to praise in
every school; he is neither impatient of old opera nor intolerant of
new developments which have yet to prove their value; and he makes us
feel that he is not only an enthusiastic lover of opera as a whole, but
a cultivated musician. The historical plan adopted, in contradistinction
to the arrangement by which the operas are grouped under their titles in
alphabetical order, involves perhaps a little extra trouble to the
casual reader; but by the aid of the index, any opera concerning which
the casual reader desires to be informed can be found in its proper
place, and the chief facts regarding its origin and production are given
there as well as the story of its action.
J.A. FULLER-MAITLAND
_June 1907_
THE OPERA
CHAPTER I
THE BEGINNINGS OF OPERA
PERI--MONTEVERDE--CAVALLI--CESTI--CAMBERT--LULLI--PURCELL--
KEISER--SCARLATTI--HANDEL
The early history of many forms of art is wrapped in obscurity. Even in
music, the youngest of the arts, the precise origin of many modern
developments is largely a matter of conjecture. The history of opera,
fortunately for the historian, is an exception to the rule. All the
circumstances which combine to produce the idea of opera are known to
us, and every detail of its genesis is established beyond the
possibility of doubt.
The invention of opera partook largely of the nature of an accident.
Late in the sixteenth century a few Florentine amateurs, fired with the
enthusiasm for Greek art which was at that time the ruling passion of
every cultivated spirit in Italy, set themselves the task of
reconstructing the conditions of the Athenian drama. The result of their
labours, regarded as an attempted revival of the lost glories of Greek
tragedy, was a complete failure; but, unknown to themselves, they
produced the germ of that art-form which, as years passed on, was
destined, in their own country at least, to reign alone in the
affections of the people, and to take the place, so far as the altered
conditions permitted, of the national drama which they had fondly hoped
to recreate.
The foundations of the new art-form rested upon the theory that the
drama of the Greeks was throughout declaimed to a musical accompaniment.
The reformers, therefore, dismissed spoken dialogue from their drama,
and employed in its place a species of free declamation or recitative,
which they called _musica parlante_. The first work in which the new
style of composition was used was the 'Dafne' of Jacopo Peri, which was
privately performed in 1597. No trace of this work survives, nor of the
musical dramas by Emilio del Cavaliere and Vincenzo Galilei to which the
closing years of the sixteenth century gave birth. But it is best to
regard these privately performed works merely as experiments, and to
date the actual foundation of opera from the year 1600, when a public
performance of Peri's 'Euridice' was given at Florence in honour of the
marriage of Maria de' Medici and Henry IV. of France. A few years later
a printed edition of this work was published at Venice, a copy of which
is now in the library of the British Museum, and in recent times it has
been reprinted, so that those who are curious in these matters can study
this protoplasmic opera at their leisure. Expect for a few bars of
insignificant chorus, the whole work consists of the accompanied
recitative, which was the invention of these Florentine reformers. The
voices are accompanied by a violin, _chitarone_ (a large guitar), _lira
grande_, _liuto grosso_, and _gravicembalo_ or harpsichord, which filled
in the harmonies indicated by the figured bass. The instrumental
portions of the work are poor and thin, and the chief beauty lies in the
vocal part, which is often really pathetic and expressive. Peri
evidently tried to give musical form to the ordinary inflections of the
human voice, how successfully may be seen in the Lament of Orpheus which
Mr. Morton Latham has reprinted in his 'Renaissance of Music,' The
original edition of 'Euridice' contains an interesting preface, in which
the composer sets forth the theory upon which he worked, and the aims
which he had in view. It is too long to be reprinted here, but should be
read by all interested in the early history of opera.
With the production of 'Euridice' the history of opera may be said to
begin; but if the new art-form had depended only upon the efforts of
Peri and his friends, it must soon have languished and died. With all
their enthusiasm, the little band of Florentines had too slight an
acquaintance with the science of music to give proper effect to the
ideas which they originated. Peri built the ship, but it was reserved
for the genius of Claudio Monteverde to launch it upon a wider ocean
than his predecessor could have dreamed of. Monteverde had been trained
in the polyphonic school of Palestrina, but his genius had never
acquiesced in the rules and restrictions in which the older masters
delighted. He was a poor contrapuntist, and his madrigals are chiefly
interesting as a proof of how ill the novel harmonies of which he was
the discoverer accorded with the severe purity of the older school But
in the new art he found the field his genius required. What had been
weakness and license in the madrigal became strength and beauty in the
opera. The new wine was put into new bottles, and both were preserved.
Monteverde produced his 'Arianna' in 1607, and his 'Orfeo' in 1608, and
with these two works started opera upon the path of development which
was to culminate in the works of Wagner. 'Arianna,' which, according to
Marco da Gagliano, himself a rival composer of high ability, 'visibly
moved all the theatre to tears,' is lost to us save for a few
quotations; but 'Orfeo' is in existence, and has recently been reprinted
in Germany. A glance at the score shows what a gulf separates this work
from Peri's treatment of the same story. Monteverde, with his orchestra
of thirty-nine instruments--brass, wood, and strings complete--his rich
and brilliant harmonies, sounding so strangely beautiful to ears
accustomed only to the severity of the polyphonic school, and his
delicious and affecting melodies, sometimes rising almost to the dignity
of an aria, must have seemed something more than human to the eager
Venetians as they listened for the first time to music as rich in colour
as the gleaming marbles of the Cà d'Oro or the radiant canvases of
Titian and Giorgione.
The success of Monteverde had its natural result. He soon had pupils
and imitators by the score. The Venetians speedily discovered that they
had an inherent taste for opera, and the musicians of the day delighted
to cater for it. Monteverde's most famous pupil was Cavalli, to whom may
with some certainty be attributed an innovation which was destined to
affect the future of opera very deeply. In his time, to quote Mr.
Latham's 'Renaissance of Music,' 'the _musica parlante_ of the earliest
days of opera was broken up into recitative, which was less eloquent,
and aria, which was more ornamental. The first appearance of this change
is to be found in Cavalli's operas, in which certain rhythmical
movements called "arias" which are quite distinct from the _musica
parlante_, make their appearance. The music assigned by Monteverde to
Orpheus when he is leading Eurydice back from the Shades is undoubtedly
an air, but the situation is one to which an air is appropriate, and
_musica parlante_ would be inappropriate. If the drama had been a play
to be spoken and not sung, there would not have been any incongruity in
allotting a song to Orpheus, to enable Eurydice to trace him through the
dark abodes of Hades. But the arias of Cavalli are not confined to such
special situations, and recur frequently,' Cavalli had the true Venetian
love of colour. In his hands the orchestra began to assume a new
importance. His attempts to give musical expression to the sights and
sounds of nature--the murmur of the sea, the rippling of the brook and
the tempestuous fury of the winds--mark an interesting step in the
history of orchestral development. With Marcantonio Cesti appears
another innovation of scarcely less importance to the history of opera
than the invention of the aria itself--the _da capo_ or the repetition
of the first part of the aria in its entirety after the conclusion of
the second part. However much the _da capo_ may have contributed to the
settlement of form in composition, it must be admitted that it struck at
the root of all real dramatic effect, and in process of time degraded
opera to the level of a concert. Cesti was a pupil of Carissimi, who is
famous chiefly for his sacred works, and from him he learnt to prefer
mere musical beauty to dramatic truth. Those of his operas which remain
to us show a far greater command of orchestral and vocal resource than
Monteverde or Cavalli could boast, but so far as real expression and
sincerity are concerned, they are inferior to the less cultured efforts
of the earlier musicians. It would be idle to attempt an enumeration of
the Venetian composers of the seventeenth century and their works. Some
idea of the musical activity which prevailed may be gathered from the
fact that while the first public theatre was opened in 1637, before the
close of the century there were no less than eleven theatres in the city
devoted to the performance of opera alone.
Meanwhile the enthusiasm for the new art-form spread through the cities
of Italy. According to an extant letter of Salvator Rosa's, opera was in
full swing in Rome during the Carnival of 1652. The first opera of
Provenzale, the founder of the Neapolitan school, was produced in 1658.
Bologna, Milan, Parma, and other cities soon followed suit. France, too,
was not behindhand, but there the development of the art soon deserved
the name a new school of opera, distinct in many important particulars
from its parent in Italy. The French nobles who saw the performance of
Peri's 'Euridice' at the marriage of Henry IV. may have carried back
tales of its splendour and beauty to their own country, but Paris was
not as yet ripe for opera. Not until 1647 did the French Court make the
acquaintance of the new art which was afterwards to win some of its most
brilliant triumphs in their city. In that year a performance of Peri's
'Euridice' (which, in spite of newer developments, had not lost its
popularity) was given in Paris under the patronage of Cadinal Mazarin.
This was followed by Cavalli's 'Serse,' conducted by the composer
himself. These performances quickened the latent genius of the French
people, and Robert Cambert, the founder of their school, hastened to
produce operas, which, though bearing traces of Italian influence, were
nevertheless distinctively French in manner and method. His works, two
of which are known to us, 'Pomone' and 'Les Peines et les Plaisirs de
l'Amour,' were to a certain extent a development of the masques which
had been popular in Paris for many years. They are pastoral and
allegorical in subject, and are often merely a vehicle for fulsome
adulation of the 'Roi Soleil.' But in construction they are operas pure
and simple. There is no spoken dialogue, and the music is continuous
from first to last. Cambert's operas were very successful, and in
conjunction with his librettist Perrin he received a charter from the
King in 1669, giving him the sole right of establishing opera-houses in
the kingdom. Quarrels, however, ensued. Cambert and Perrin separated.
The charter was revoked, or rather granted to a new-comer, Giovanni
Battista Lulli, and Cambert, in disgrace, retired to England, where he
died. Lulli (1633-1687) left Italy too young to be much influenced by
the developments of opera in that country, and was besides too good a
man of business to allow his artistic instinct to interfere with his
chance of success. He found Cambert's operas popular in Paris, and
instead of attempting any radical reforms, he adhered to the form which
he found ready made, only developing the orchestra to an extent which
was then unknown, and adding dignity and passion to the airs and
recitatives. Lulli's industry was extraordinary. During the space of
fourteen years he wrote no fewer than twenty operas, conceived upon a
grand scale, and produced with great magnificence. His treatment of
recitative is perhaps his strongest point, for in spite of the beauty of
one or two isolated songs, such as the famous 'Bois épais' in 'Amadis'
and Charon's wonderful air in 'Alceste,' his melodic gift was not great,
and his choral writing is generally of the most unpretentious
description. But his recitative is always solid and dignified, and often
impassioned and pathetic. Music, too, owes him a great debt for his
invention of what is known as the French form of overture, consisting
of a prelude, fugue, and dance movement, which was afterwards carried to
the highest conceivable pitch of perfection by Handel.
Meanwhile an offshoot of the French school, transplanted to the banks of
the Thames, had blossomed into a brief but brilliant life under the
fostering care of the greatest musical genius our island has ever
produced, Henry Purcell. Charles II. was not a profound musician, but he
knew what sort of music he liked, and on one point his mind was made
up--that he did not like the music of the elderly composers who had
survived the Protectorate, and came forward at his restoration to claim
the posts which they had held at his father's court. Christopher
Gibbons, Child, and other relics of the dead polyphonic school were
quietly dismissed to provincial organ-lofts, and Pelham Humphreys, the
most promising of the 'Children of the Chapel Royal,' was sent over to
Paris to learn all that was newest in music at the feet of Lulli.
Humphreys came back, in the words of Pepys, 'an absolute Monsieur,' full
of the latest theories concerning opera and music generally, and with a
sublime contempt for the efforts of his stay-at-home colleagues. His own
music shows the French influence very strongly, and in that of his pupil
Henry Purcell (1658-1695) it may also be perceived, although coloured
and transmuted by the intensely English character of Purcell's own
genius. For many years it was supposed that Purcell's first and,
strictly speaking, his only opera, 'Dido and Æneas,' was written by him
at the age of seventeen and produced in 1675. Mr. Barclay Squire has now
proved that it was not produced until much later, but this scarcely
lessens the wonder of it, for Purcell can never have seen an opera
performed, and his acquaintance with the new art-form must have been
based upon Pelham Humphrey's account of the performances which he had
seen in Paris. Possibly, too, he may have had opportunities of studying
the engraved scores of some of Lulli's operas, which, considering the
close intercourse between the courts of France and England, may have
found their way across the Channel. 'Dido and Æneas' is now universally
spoken of as the first English opera. Masques had been popular from the
time of Queen Elizabeth onwards, which the greatest living poets and
musicians had not disdained to produce, and Sir William Davenant had
given performances of musical dramas 'after the manner of the Ancients'
during the closing years of the Commonwealth, but it is probable that
spoken dialogue occurred in all these entertainments, as it certainly
did in Locke's 'Psyche,' Banister's 'Circe,' in fact, in all the
dramatic works of this period which were wrongly described as operas. In
'Dido and Æneas,' on the contrary, the music is continuous throughout.
Airs and recitatives, choruses and instrumental pieces succeed each
other, as in the operas of the Italian and French schools. 'Dido and
Æneas' was written for performance at a young ladies' school kept by
one Josias Priest in Leicester Fields and afterwards at Chelsea. The
libretto was the work of Nahum Tate, the Poet Laureate of the time. The
opera is in three short acts, and Virgil's version of the story is
followed pretty closely save for the intrusion of a sorceress and a
chorus of witches who have sworn Dido's destruction and send a messenger
to Æneas, disguised as Mercury, to hasten his departure. Dido's death
song, which is followed by a chorus of mourning Cupids, is one of the
most pathetic scenes ever written, and illustrates in a forcible manner
Purcell's beautiful and ingenious use of a ground-bass. The gloomy
chromatic passage constantly repeated by the bass instruments, with
ever-varying harmonies in the violins, paints such a picture of the
blank despair of a broken heart as Wagner himself, with his immense
orchestral resources, never surpassed. In the general construction of
his opera Purcell followed the French model, but his treatment of
recitative is bolder and more various than that of Lulli, while as a
melodist he is incomparably superior. Purcell never repeated the
experiment of 'Dido and Æneas.' Musical taste in England was presumably
not cultivated enough to appreciate a work of so advanced a style. At
any rate, for the rest of his life, Purcell wrote nothing for the
theatre but incidental music. Much of this, notably the scores of 'Timon
of Athens,' 'Bonduca,' and 'King Arthur,' is wonderfully beautiful, but
in all of these works the spoken dialogue forms the basis of the piece,
and the music is merely an adjunct, often with little reference to the
main interest of the play. In 'King Arthur' occurs the famous 'Frost
Scene,' the close resemblance of which to the 'Choeur de Peuples des
Climats Glacés' in Lulli's 'Isis' would alone make it certain that
Purcell was a careful student of the French school of opera.
Opera did not take long to cross the Alps, and early in the seventeenth
century the works of Italian composers found a warm welcome at the
courts of southern Germany. But Germany was not as yet ripe for a
national opera. During the first half of the century there are records
of one or two isolated attempts to found a school of German opera, but
the iron heel of the Thirty Years' War was on the neck of the country,
and art struggled in vain against overwhelming odds. The first German
opera, strictly so called, was the 'Dafne' of Heinrich Schütz, the words
of which were a translation of the libretto already used by Peri. Of
this work, which was produced in 1627, all trace has been lost.
'Seelewig,' by Sigmund Staden, which is described as a 'Gesangweis auf
italienische Art gesetzet,' was printed at Nuremberg in 1644, but there
is no record of its ever having been performed. To Hamburg belongs the
honour of establishing German opera upon a permanent basis. There, in
1678, some years before the production of Purcell's 'Dido and Æneas,' an
opera-house was opened with a performance of a Singspiel entitled 'Der
erschaffene, gefallene und aufgerichtete Mensch,' the music of which was
composed by Johannn Theile. Three other works, all of them secular,
were produced in the same year. The new form of entertainment speedily
became popular among the rich burghers of the Free City, and composers
were easily found to cater for their taste.
For many years Hamburg was the only German town where opera found a
permanent home, but there the musical activity must have been
remarkable. Reinhard Keiser (1673-1739), the composer whose name stands
for what was best in the school, is said alone to have produced no fewer
than a hundred and sixteen operas. Nearly all of these works have
disappeared, and those that remain are for the most part disfigured by
the barbarous mixture of Italian and German which was fashionable at
Hamburg and in London too at that time. The singers were possibly for
the most part Italians, who insisted upon singing their airs in their
native language, though they had no objection to using German for the
recitatives, in which there was no opportunity for vocal display.
Keiser's music lacks the suavity of the Italian school, but his
recitatives are vigorous and powerful, and seem to foreshadow the
triumphs which the German school was afterwards to win in declamatory
music. The earliest operas of Handel (1685-1759) were written for
Hamburg, and in the one of them which Fate has preserved for us,
'Almira' (1704), we see the Hamburg school at its finest. In spite of
the ludicrous mixture of German and Italian there is a good deal of
dramatic power in the music, and the airs show how early Handel's
wonderful gift of melody had developed. The chorus has very little to
do, but a delightful feature of the work is to be found in the series of
beautiful dance-tunes lavishly scattered throughout it. One of these, a
Sarabande, was afterwards worked up into the famous air, 'Lascia ch' io
pianga,' in 'Rinaldo.' When the new Hamburg Opera-House was opened in
1874, it was inaugurated by a performance of 'Almira,' which gave
musicians a unique opportunity of realising to some extent what opera
was like at the beginning of the eighteenth century. In 1706 Handel left
Hamburg for the purpose of prosecuting his studies in Italy. There he
found the world at the feet of Alessandro Scarlatti (1659-1725), a
composer whose importance to the history of opera can scarcely be
over-estimated. He is said, like Cesti, to have been a pupil of
Carissimi, though, as the latter died in 1674, at the age of seventy, he
cannot have done much more than lay the foundation of his pupil's
greatness. The invention of the _da capo_ is generally attributed to
Scarlatti, wrongly, as has already been shown, since it appears in
Cesti's opera 'La Dori,' which was performed in 1663. But it seems
almost certain that Scarlatti was the first to use accompanied
recitative, a powerful means of dramatic expression in the hands of all
who followed him, while his genius advanced the science of
instrumentation to a point hitherto unknown.
Nevertheless, Scarlatti's efforts were almost exclusively addressed to
the development of the musical rather than the dramatic side of opera,
and he is largely responsible for the strait-jacket of convention in
which opera was confined during the greater part of the eighteenth
century, in fact until it was released by the genius of Gluck.
Handel's conquest of Italy was speedy and decisive. 'Rodrigo,' produced
at Florence in 1707, made him famous, and 'Agrippina' (Venice, 1708)
raised him almost to the rank of a god. At every pause in the
performance the theatre rang with shouts of 'Viva il caro Sassone,' and
the opera had an unbroken run of twenty-seven nights, a thing till then
unheard of. It did not take Handel long to learn all that Italy could
teach him. With his inexhaustible fertility of melody and his complete
command of every musical resource then known, he only needed to have his
German vigour tempered by Italian suppleness and grace to stand forth as
the foremost operatic composer of the age. His Italian training and his
theatrical experience gave him a thorough knowledge of the capabilities
of the human voice, and the practical common-sense which was always one
of his most striking characteristics prevented him from ever treating it
from the merely instrumental point of view, a pitfall into which many of
the great composers have fallen. He left Italy for London in 1710, and
produced his 'Rinaldo' at the Queen's Theatre in the Haymarket the
following year. It was put upon the stage with unexampled magnificence,
and its success was prodigious. 'Rinaldo' was quickly followed by such
succession of masterpieces as put the ancient glories of the Italian
stage to shame. Most of them were produced at the Haymarket Theatre,
either under Handel's own management or under the auspices of a company
known as the Royal Academy of Music. Handel's success made him many
enemies, and he was throughout his career the object of innumerable
plots on the part of disappointed and envious rivals. The most active of
these was Buononcini, himself a composer of no mean ability, though
eclipsed by the genius of Handel. Buononcini's machinations were so far
successful--though he himself was compelled to leave England in disgrace
for different reasons--that in 1741, after the production of his
'Deidamia,' Handel succumbed to bankruptcy and a severe attack of
paralysis. After this he wrote no more for the stage, but devoted
himself to the production of those oratorios which have made his name
famous wherever the English language is spoken.
In spite of their transcendent beauties, the form of Handel's operas has
long banished them from the stage. Handel, with all his genius, was not
one of the great revolutionists of the history of music. He was content
to bring existing forms to the highest possible point of perfection,
without seeking to embark upon new oceans of discovery. Opera in his day
consisted of a string of airs connected by recitative, with an
occasional duet, and a chorus to bring down the curtain at the end of
the work. The airs were, as a rule, fully accompanied. Strings,
hautboys, and bassoons formed the groundwork of the orchestra. If
distinctive colouring or sonority were required, the composer used
flutes, horns, harps, and trumpets, while to gain an effect of a special
nature, he would call in the assistance of lutes and mandolins, or
archaic instruments such as the viola da gamba, violetta marina,
cornetto and theorbo. The _recitativo secco_ was accompanied by the
harpsichord, at which the composer himself presided. The _recitativo
stromentato_, or accompanied recitative, was only used to emphasise
situations of special importance. Handel's incomparable genius infused
so much dramatic power into this meagre form, that even now the truth
and sincerity of his songs charm us no less than their extraordinary
melodic beauty. But it is easy to see that in the hands of composers
less richly endowed, this form was fated to degenerate into a mere
concert upon the stage. The science of vocalisation was cultivated to
such a pitch of perfection that composers were tempted, and even
compelled, to consult the tastes of singers rather than dramatic truth.
Handel's successors, such as Porpora and Hasse, without a tithe of his
genius, used such talent as they possessed merely to exhibit the vocal
dexterity of popular singers in the most agreeable light. The favourite
form of entertainment in these degraded times was the pasticcio, a
hybrid production composed of a selection of songs from various popular
operas, often by three or four different composers, strung together
regardless of rhyme or reason. Even in Handel's lifetime the older
school of opera was tottering to its fall. Only the man was needed who
should sweep the mass of insincerity from the stage and replace it by
the purer ideal which had been the guiding spirit of Peri and
Monteverde.