Florentines to Wagner's dramas would carry us too far afield to serve
the purposes of this book. My aim is to fix the attitude proper, or at
least useful, to the opera audience of to-day. The excursion into
history which I have made has but the purpose to give the art-form a
reputable standing in court, and to explain the motives which prompted
the revolution accomplished by Wagner. As to the elements which
compose an opera, only those need particular attention which are
illustrated in the current repertory. Unlike the opera audiences of
two centuries ago, we are not required to distinguish carefully
between the various styles of opera in order to understand why the
composer adopted a particular manner, and certain fixed forms in each.
The old distinctions between _Opera seria_, _Opera buffa_, and _Opera
semiseria_ perplex us no more. Only because of the perversion of the
time-honored Italian epithet _buffa_ by the French mongrel _Opéra
bouffe_ is it necessary to explain that the classic _Opera buffa_ was
a polite comedy, whose musical integument did not of necessity differ
from that of _Opera seria_ except in this--that the dialogue was
carried on in "dry" recitative (_recitativo secco_, or _parlante_) in
the former, and a more measured declamation with orchestral
accompaniment (_recitativo stromentato_) in the latter. So far as
subject-matter was concerned the classic distinction between tragedy
and comedy served. The dry recitative was supported by chords played
by a double-bass and harpsichord or pianoforte. In London, at a later
period, for reasons of doubtful validity, these chords came to be
played on a double-bass and violoncello, as we occasionally hear them
to-day.
[Sidenote: _Opera semiseria._]
[Sidenote: _"Don Giovanni."_]
Shakespeare has taught us to accept an infusion of the comic element
in plays of a serious cast, but Shakespeare was an innovator, a
Romanticist, and, measured by old standards, his dramas are irregular.
The Italians, who followed classic models, for a reason amply
explained by the genesis of the art-form, rigorously excluded comedy
from serious operas, except as _intermezzi_, until they hit upon a
third classification, which they called _Opera semiseria_, in which a
serious subject was enlivened with comic episodes. Our dramatic tastes
being grounded in Shakespeare, we should be inclined to put down "Don
Giovanni" as a musical tragedy; or, haunted by the Italian
terminology, as _Opera semiseria_; but Mozart calls it _Opera buffa_,
more in deference to the librettist's work, I fancy, than his own,
for, as I have suggested elsewhere,[E] the musician's imagination in
the fire of composition went far beyond the conventional fancy of the
librettist in the finale of that most wonderful work.
[Sidenote: _An Opera buffa._]
[Sidenote: _French Grand Opéra._]
[Sidenote: _Opéra comique._]
[Sidenote: _"Mignon."_]
[Sidenote: _"Faust."_]
It is well to remember that "Don Giovanni" is an _Opera buffa_ when
watching the buffooneries of _Leporello_, for that alone justifies
them. The French have _Grand Opéra_, in which everything is sung to
orchestra accompaniment, there being neither spoken dialogue nor dry
recitative, and _Opéra comique_, in which the dialogue is spoken. The
latter corresponds with the honorable German term _Singspiel_, and one
will not go far astray if he associate both terms with the English
operas of Wallace and Balfe, save that the French and Germans have
generally been more deft in bridging over the chasm between speech and
song than their British rivals. _Opéra comique_ has another
characteristic, its _dénouement_ must be happy. Formerly the _Théatre
national de l'Opéra-Comique_ in Paris was devoted exclusively to
_Opéra comique_ as thus defined (it has since abolished the
distinction and _Grand Opéra_ may be heard there now), and, therefore,
when Ambroise Thomas brought forward his "Mignon," Goethe's story was
found to be changed so that _Mignon_ recovered and was married to
_Wilhelm Meister_ at the end. The Germans are seldom pleased with the
transformations which their literary masterpieces are forced to
undergo at the hands of French librettists. They still refuse to call
Gounod's "Faust" by that name; if you wish to hear it in Germany you
must go to the theatre when "Margarethe" is performed. Naturally they
fell indignantly afoul of "Mignon," and to placate them we have a
second finale, a _dénouement allemand_, provided by the authors, in
which _Mignon_ dies as she ought.
[Sidenote: _Grosse Oper._]
[Sidenote: _Comic opera and operetta._]
[Sidenote: _Opéra bouffe._]
[Sidenote: _Romantic operas._]
Of course the _Grosse Oper_ of the Germans is the French _Grand Opéra_
and the English grand opera--but all the English terms are ambiguous,
and everything that is done in Covent Garden in London or the
Metropolitan Opera House in New York is set down as "grand opera,"
just as the vilest imitations of the French _vaudevilles_ or English
farces with music are called "comic operas." In its best estate, say
in the delightful works of Gilbert and Sullivan, what is designated as
comic opera ought to be called operetta, which is a piece in which the
forms of grand opera are imitated, or travestied, the dialogue is
spoken, and the purpose of the play is to satirize a popular folly.
Only in method, agencies, and scope does such an operetta (the
examples of Gilbert and Sullivan are in mind) differ from comedy in
its best conception, as a dramatic composition which aims to "chastise
manners with a smile" ("_Ridendo castigat mores_"). Its present
degeneracy, as illustrated in the _Opéra bouffe_ of the French and the
concoctions of the would-be imitators of Gilbert and Sullivan,
exemplifies little else than a pursuit far into the depths of the
method suggested by a friend to one of Lully's imitators who had
expressed a fear that a ballet written, but not yet performed, would
fail. "You must lengthen the dances and shorten the ladies' skirts,"
he said. The Germans make another distinction based on the subject
chosen for the story. Spohr's "Jessonda," Weber's "Freischütz,"
"Oberon," and "Euryanthe," Marschner's "Vampyr," "Templer und Jüdin,"
and "Hans Heiling" are "Romantic" operas. The significance of this
classification in operatic literature may be learned from an effort
which I have made in another chapter to discuss the terms Classic and
Romantic as applied to music. Briefly stated, the operas mentioned are
put in a class by themselves (and their imitations with them) because
their plots were drawn from the romantic legends of the Middle Ages,
in which the institutions of chivalry, fairy lore, and supernaturalism
play a large part.
[Sidenote: _Modern designations._]
[Sidenote: _German opera and Wagner._]
These distinctions we meet in reading about music. As I have
intimated, we do not concern ourselves much with them now. In New York
and London the people speak of Italian, English, and German opera,
referring generally to the language employed in the performance. But
there is also in the use of the terms an underlying recognition of
differences in ideals of performance. As all operas sung in the
regular seasons at Covent Garden and the Metropolitan Opera House are
popularly spoken of as Italian operas, so German opera popularly means
Wagner's lyric dramas, in the first instance, and a style of
performance which grew out of Wagner's influence in the second. As
compared with Italian opera, in which the principal singers are all
and the _ensemble_ nothing, it means, mayhap, inferior vocalists but
better actors in the principal parts, a superior orchestra and chorus,
and a more conscientious effort on the part of conductor, stage
manager, and artists, from first to last, to lift the general effect
above the conventional level which has prevailed for centuries in the
Italian opera houses.
[Sidenote: _Wagner's "Musikdrama."_]
[Sidenote: _Modern Italian terminology._]
In terminology, as well as in artistic aim, Wagner's lyric dramas
round out a cycle that began with the works of the Florentine
reformers of the sixteenth century. Wagner called his later operas
_Musikdramen_, wherefore he was soundly abused and ridiculed by his
critics. When the Italian opera first appeared it was called _Dramma
per musica_, or _Melodramma_, or _Tragedia per musica_, all of which
terms stand in Italian for the conception that _Musikdrama_ stands for
in German. The new thing had been in existence for half a century, and
was already on the road to the degraded level on which we shall find
it when we come to the subject of operatic singing, before it came to
be called _Opera in musica_, of which "opera" is an abbreviation. Now
it is to be observed that the composers of all countries, having been
taught to believe that the dramatic contents of an opera have some
significance, are abandoning the vague term "opera" and following
Wagner in his adoption of the principles underlying the original
terminology. Verdi called his "Aïda" an _Opera in quattro atti_, but
his "Otello" he designated a lyric drama (_Dramma lirico_), his
"Falstaff" a lyric comedy (_Commedia lirica_), and his example is
followed by the younger Italian composers, such as Mascagni,
Leoncavallo, and Puccini.
[Sidenote: _Recitative._]
In the majority of the operas of the current list the vocal element
illustrates an amalgamation of the archaic recitative and aria. The
dry form of recitative is met with now only in a few of the operas
which date back to the last century or the early years of the present.
"Le Nozze di Figaro," "Don Giovanni," and "Il Barbiere di Siviglia"
are the most familiar works in which it is employed, and in the
second of these it is used only by the bearers of the comedy element.
The dissolute _Don_ chatters glibly in it with _Zerlina_, but when
_Donna Anna_ and _Don Ottavio_ converse, it is in the _recitativo
stromentato_.
[Sidenote: _The object of recitative._]
[Sidenote: _Defects of the recitative._]
[Sidenote: _What it can do._]
In both forms recitative is the vehicle for promoting the action of
the play, preparing its incidents, and paving the way for the
situations and emotional states which are exploited, promulgated, and
dwelt upon in the set music pieces. Its purpose is to maintain the
play in an artificial atmosphere, so that the transition from dialogue
to song may not be so abrupt as to disturb the mood of the listener.
Of all the factors in an opera, the dry recitative is the most
monotonous. It is not music, but speech about to break into music.
Unless one is familiar with Italian and desirous of following the
conversation, which we have been often told is not necessary to the
enjoyment of an opera, its everlasting use of stereotyped falls and
intervallic turns, coupled with the strumming of arpeggioed cadences
on the pianoforte (or worse, double-bass and violoncello), makes it
insufferably wearisome to the listener. Its expression is
fleeting--only for the moment. It lacks the sustained tones and
structural symmetry essential to melody, and therefore it cannot
sustain a mood. It makes efficient use of only one of the fundamental
factors of vocal music--variety of pitch--and that in a rudimentary
way. It is specifically a product of the Italian language, and best
adapted to comedy in that language. Spoken with the vivacity native to
it in the drama, dry recitative is an impossibility in English. It is
only in the more measured and sober gait proper to oratorio that we
can listen to it in the vernacular without thought of incongruity. Yet
it may be made most admirably to preserve the characteristics of
conversation, and even illustrate Spencer's theory of the origin of
music. Witness the following brief example from "Don Giovanni," in
which the vivacity of the master is admirably contrasted with the
lumpishness of his servant:
[Sidenote: _An example from Mozart._]
[Music illustration: _Sempre sotto voce._
DON GIOVANNI. LEPORELLO.
_Le-po-rel-lo, o-ve sei? Son qui per_
Le-po-rel-lo, where are you? I'm here and
D.G. LEP.
_dis-gra-zi-a! e vo-i? Son qui. Chi è_
more's the pit-y! and you, Sir? Here too. Who's
D.G.
_mor-to, voi, o il vec-chio? Che do-_
been killed, you or the old one? What a
LEP.
_man-da da bes-tia! il vec-chio. Bra-vo!_
ques-tion, you boo-by! the old one. Bra-vo!]
[Sidenote: _Its characteristics._]
Of course it is left to the intelligence and taste of the singers to
bring out the effects in a recitative, but in this specimen it ought
to be noted how sluggishly the disgruntled _Leporello_ replies to the
brisk question of _Don Giovanni_, how correct is the rhetorical pause
in "you, or the old one?" and the greater sobriety which comes over
the manner of the _Don_ as he thinks of the murder just committed, and
replies, "the old one."
[Sidenote: _Recitative of some sort necessary._]
[Sidenote: _The speaking voice in opera._]
I am strongly inclined to the belief that in one form or the other,
preferably the accompanied, recitative is a necessary integer in the
operatic sum. That it is possible to accustom one's self to the change
alternately from speech to song we know from the experiences made with
German, French, and English operas, but these were not true lyric
dramas, but dramas with incidental music. To be a real lyric drama an
opera ought to be musical throughout, the voice being maintained from
beginning to end on an exalted plane. The tendency to drop into the
speaking voice for the sake of dramatic effect shown by some tragic
singers does not seem to me commendable. Wagner relates with
enthusiasm how Madame Schroeder-Devrient in "Fidelio" was wont to give
supreme emphasis to the phrase immediately preceding the trumpet
signal in the dungeon scene ("Another step, and you are _dead_!") by
speaking the last word "with an awful accent of despair." He then
comments:
"The indescribable effect of this manifested itself to all
like an agonizing plunge from one sphere into another, and
its sublimity consisted in this, that with lightning
quickness a glimpse was given to us of the nature of both
spheres, of which one was the ideal, the other the real."
[Sidenote: _Wagner and Schroeder-Devrient._]
I have heard a similar effect produced by Herr Niemann and Madame
Lehmann, but could not convince myself that it was not an extremely
venturesome experiment. Madame Schroeder-Devrient saw the beginning of
the modern methods of dramatic expression, and it is easy to believe
that a sudden change like that so well defined by Wagner, made with
her sweeping voice and accompanied by her plastic and powerful acting,
was really thrilling; but, I fancy, nevertheless, that only Beethoven
and the intensity of feeling which pervades the scene saved the
audience from a disturbing sense of the incongruity of the
performance.
[Sidenote: _Early forms._]
[Sidenote: _The dialogue of the Florentines._]
The development which has taken place in the recitative has not only
assisted in elevating opera to the dignity of a lyric drama by saving
us from alternate contemplation of the two spheres of ideality and
reality, but has also made the factor itself an eloquent vehicle of
dramatic expression. Save that it had to forego the help of the
instruments beyond a mere harmonic support, the _stilo
rappresentativo_, or _musica parlante_, as the Florentines called
their musical dialogue, approached the sustained recitative which we
hear in the oratorio and grand opera more closely than it did the
_recitative secco_. Ever and anon, already in the earliest works (the
"Eurydice" of Rinuccini as composed by both Peri and Caccini) there
are passages which sound like rudimentary melodies, but are charged
with vital dramatic expression. Note the following phrase from
_Orpheus's_ monologue on being left in the infernal regions by
_Venus_, from Peri's opera, performed A.D. 1600, in honor of the
marriage of Maria de' Medici to Henry IV. of France:
[Sidenote: _An example from Peri._]
[Music illustration:
_E voi, deh per pie-tà, del mio mar-ti-re
Che nel mi-se-ro cor di-mo-ra e-ter-no,
La-cri-ma-te al mio pian-to om-bre d'in-fer-no!_]
[Sidenote: _Development of the arioso._]
[Sidenote: _The aria supplanted._]
[Sidenote: _Music and action._]
Out of this style there grew within a decade something very near the
arioso, and for all the purposes of our argument we may accept the
melodic devices by which Wagner carries on the dialogue of his operas
as an uncircumscribed arioso superimposed upon a foundation of
orchestral harmony; for example, _Lohengrin's_ address to the swan,
_Elsa's_ account of her dream. The greater melodiousness of the
_recitativo stromentato_, and the aid of the orchestra when it began
to assert itself as a factor of independent value, soon enabled this
form of musical conversation to become a reflector of the changing
moods and passions of the play, and thus the value of the aria,
whether considered as a solo, or in its composite form as duet, trio,
quartet, or _ensemble_, was lessened. The growth of the accompanied
recitative naturally brought with it emancipation from the tyranny of
the classical aria. Wagner's reform had nothing to do with that
emancipation, which had been accomplished before him, but went, as we
shall see presently, to a liberation of the composers from all the
formal dams which had clogged the united flow of action and music. We
should, however, even while admiring the achievements of modern
composers in blending these elements (and I know of no more striking
illustration than the scene of the fat knight's discomfiture in
_Ford's_ house in Verdi's "Falstaff") bear in mind that while we may
dream of perfect union between words and music, it is not always
possible that action and music shall go hand in hand. Let me repeat
what once I wrote in a review of Cornelius's opera, "Der Barbier von
Bagdad:"[F]
[Sidenote: _How music can replace incident._]
"After all, of the constituents of an opera, action, at
least that form of it usually called incident, is most
easily spared. Progress in feeling, development of the
emotional element, is indeed essential to variety of musical
utterance, but nevertheless all great operas have
demonstrated that music is more potent and eloquent when
proclaiming an emotional state than while seeking to depict
progress toward such a state. Even in the dramas of Wagner
the culminating musical moments are predominantly lyrical,
as witness the love-duet in 'Tristan,' the close of 'Das
Rheingold,' _Siegmund's_ song, the love-duet, and _Wotan's_
farewell in 'Die Walküre,' the forest scene and final duet
in 'Siegfried,' and the death of _Siegfried_ in 'Die
Götterdämmerung.' It is in the nature of music that this
should be so. For the drama which plays on the stage of the
heart, music is a more truthful language than speech; but it
can stimulate movement and prepare the mind for an incident
better than it can accompany movement and incident. Yet
music that has a high degree of emotional expressiveness, by
diverting attention from externals to the play of passion
within the breasts of the persons can sometimes make us
forget the paucity of incident in a play. 'Tristan und
Isolde' is a case in point. Practically, its outward action
is summed up in each of its three acts by the same words:
Preparation for a meeting of the ill-starred lovers; the
meeting. What is outside of this is mere detail; yet the
effect of the tragedy upon a listener is that of a play
surcharged with pregnant occurrence. It is the subtle
alchemy of music that transmutes the psychological action of
the tragedy into dramatic incident."
[Sidenote: _Set forms not to be condemned._]
[Sidenote: _Wagner's influence._]
[Sidenote: _His orchestra._]
[Sidenote: _Vocal feats._]
For those who hold such a view with me it will be impossible to
condemn pieces of set forms in the lyric drama. Wagner still
represents his art-work alone, but in the influence which he exerted
upon contemporaneous composers in Italy and France, as well as
Germany, he is quite as significant a figure as he is as the creator
of the _Musikdrama_. The operas which are most popular in our Italian
and French repertories are those which benefited by the liberation
from formalism and the exaltation of the dramatic idea which he
preached and exemplified--such works as Gounod's "Faust," Verdi's
"Aïda" and "Otello," and Bizet's "Carmen." With that emancipation
there came, as was inevitable, new conceptions of the province of
dramatic singing as well as new convictions touching the mission of
the orchestra. The instruments in Wagner's latter-day works are quite
as much as the singing actors the expositors of the dramatic idea, and
in the works of the other men whom I have mentioned they speak a
language which a century ago was known only to the orchestras of Gluck
and Mozart with their comparatively limited, yet eloquent, vocabulary.
Coupled with praise for the wonderful art of Mesdames Patti and Melba
(and I am glad to have lived in their generation, though they do not
represent my ideal in dramatic singing), we are accustomed to hear
lamentations over the decay of singing. I have intoned such jeremiads
myself, and I do not believe that music is suffering from a greater
want to-day than that of a more thorough training for singers. I
marvel when I read that Senesino sang cadences of fifty seconds'
duration; that Ferri with a single breath could trill upon each note
of two octaves, ascending and descending, and that La Bastardella's
art was equal to a perfect performance (perfect in the conception of
her day) of a flourish like this:
[Sidenote: _La Bastardella's flourish._]
[Music illustration]
[Sidenote: _Character of the opera a century and a half ago._]
[Sidenote: _Music and dramatic expression._]
I marvel, I say, at the skill, the gifts, and the training which could
accomplish such feats, but I would not have them back again if they
were to be employed in the old service. When Senesino, Farinelli,
Sassarelli, Ferri, and their tribe dominated the stage, it strutted
with sexless Agamemnons and Cæsars. Telemachus, Darius, Nero, Cato,
Alexander, Scipio, and Hannibal ran around on the boards as
languishing lovers, clad in humiliating disguises, singing woful arias
to their mistress's eyebrows--arias full of trills and scales and
florid ornaments, but void of feeling as a problem in Euclid. Thanks
very largely to German influences, the opera is returning to its
original purposes. Music is again become a means of dramatic
expression, and the singers who appeal to us most powerfully are those
who are best able to make song subserve that purpose, and who to that
end give to dramatic truthfulness, to effective elocution, and to
action the attention which mere voice and beautiful utterance received
in the period which is called the Golden Age of singing, but which was
the Leaden Age of the lyric drama.
[Sidenote: _Singers heard in New York._]
For seventy years the people of New York, scarcely less favored than
those of London, have heard nearly all the great singers of Europe.
Let me talk about some of them, for I am trying to establish some
ground on which my readers may stand when they try to form an estimate
of the singing which they are privileged to hear in the opera houses
of to-day. Madame Malibran was a member of the first Italian company
that ever sang here. Madame Cinti-Damoreau came in 1844, Bosio in
1849, Jenny Lind in 1850, Sontag in 1853, Grisi in 1854, La Grange in
1855, Frezzolini in 1857, Piccolomini in 1858, Nilsson in 1870, Lucca
in 1872, Titiens in 1876, Gerster in 1878, and Sembrich in 1883. I
omit the singers of the German opera as belonging to a different
category. Adelina Patti was always with us until she made her European
début in 1861, and remained abroad twenty years. Of the men who were
the artistic associates of these _prime donne_, mention may be made of
Mario, Benedetti, Corsi, Salvi, Ronconi, Formes, Brignoli, Amadeo,
Coletti, and Campanini, none of whom, excepting Mario, was of
first-class importance compared with the women singers.