Music, as speaking the language of feeling, emotion, and passion,
found its first full expansion in the operatic form. There had been
attempts to represent drama with chorus, founded on the ancient Greek
drama, but it was soon discovered that dialogue and monologue could
not be embodied in choral forms without involving an utter absurdity.
The spirit of the renaissance had freed poetry, statuary, and painting
from the monopolising claims of the church. Music, which had become a
well-equipped and developed science, could not long rest in a similar
servitude. Though it is not the aim of the author to discuss operatic
history, a brief survey of the progress of opera from its birth cannot
be omitted.
The oldest of the entertainments which ripened into Italian opera
belongs to the last years of the fifteenth century, and was the work
of the brilliant Politian, known as one of the revivalists of Greek
learning attached to the court of Cosmo de' Medici and his son
Lorenzo. This was the musical drama of "Orfeo." The story was written
in Latin, and sung in music principally choral, though a few solo
phrases were given to the principal characters. It was performed at
Rome with great magnificence, and Vasari tells us that Peruzzi, the
decorator of the papal theatre, painted such scenery for it that even
the great Titian was so struck with the _vraisemblance_ of the work
that he was not satisfied until he had touched the canvas to be sure
of its not being in relief. We may fancy indeed that the scenery was
one great attraction of the representation. In spite of spasmodic
encouragement by the more liberally-minded pontiffs, the general
weight of church influence was against the new musical tendency, and
the most skilled composers were at first afraid to devote their
talents to further its growth.
What musicians did not dare undertake out of dread of the
thunderbolts of the church, a company of _literati_ at Florence
commenced in 1580. The primary purpose was the revival of Greek art,
including music. This association, in conjunction with the Medicean
Academy, laid down the rule that distinct individuality of expression
in music was to be sought for. As results, quickly came musical drama
with recitative (modern form of the Greek chorus) and solo melody for
characteristic parts of the legend or story. Out of this beginning
swiftly grew the opera. Composers in the new form sprung up in various
parts of Italy, though Naples, Venice, and Florence continued to be
its centres.
Between 1637 and 1700 there were performed three hundred operas at
Venice alone. An account of the performance of "Berenice," composed by
Domenico Freschi, at Padua, in 1680, dwarfs all our present ideas of
spectacular splendour. In this opera there were choruses of a hundred
virgins and a hundred soldiers; a hundred horsemen in steel armour; a
hundred performers on trumpets, cornets, sackbuts, drums, flutes, and
other instruments, on horseback and on foot; two lions led by two
Turks, and two elephants led by two Indians; Berenice's triumphal car
drawn by four horses, and six other cars with spoils and prisoners,
drawn by twelve horses. Among the scenes in the first act was a vast
plain with two triumphal arches; another with pavilions and tents; a
square prepared for the entrance of the triumphal procession, and a
forest for the chase. In the second act there were the royal
apartments of Berenice's temple of vengeance, a spacious court with
view of the prison and a covered way with long lines of chariots. In
the third act there were the royal dressing-room, the stables with a
hundred live horses, porticoes adorned with tapestry, and a great
palace in the perspective. In the course of the piece there were
representations of the hunting of the boar, the stag, and the lions.
The whole concluded with a huge globe descending from the skies, and
dividing itself in lesser globes of fire, on which stood allegorical
figures of fame, honour, nobility, virtue, and glory. The theatrical
manager had princes and nobles for bankers and assistants, and they
lavished their treasures of art and money to make such spectacles as
the modern stagemen of London and Paris cannot approach.
In Evelyn's diary there is an entry describing opera at Venice in
1645:--"This night, having with my lord Bruce taken our places before,
we went to the opera, where comedies and other plays are represented
in recitative music by the most excellent musicians, vocal and
instrumental, with variety of scenes painted and contrived with no
lesse art of perspective, and machines for flying in the aire, and
other wonderful motions; taken together it is one of the most
magnificent and expensive diversions the wit of man can invent. The
history was Hercules in Lydia. The sceanes changed thirteen times. The
famous voices, Anna Rencia, a Roman, and reputed the best treble of
women; but there was a Eunuch who in my opinion surpassed her; also a
Genoise that in my judgment sung an incomparable base. They held us by
the eyes and ears till two o'clock i' the morning." Again he writes of
the carnival of 1646:--"The comedians have liberty and the operas are
open; witty pasquils are thrown about, and the mountebanks have their
stages at every corner. The diversion which chiefly took me up was
three noble operas, where were most excellent voices and music, the
most celebrated of which was the famous and beautiful Anna Rencia,
whom we invited to a fish dinner after four daies in Lent, when they
had given over at the theatre." Old Evelyn then narrates how he and
his noble friend took the lovely diner out on a junketing, and got
shot at with blunderbusses from the gondola of an infuriated rival.
Opera progressed towards a fixed status with a swiftness hardly
paralleled in the history of any art. The soil was rich and fully
prepared for the growth, and the fecund root, once planted, shot into
a luxuriant beauty and symmetry, which nothing could check. The Church
wisely gave up its opposition, and henceforth there was nothing to
impede the progress of a product which spread and naturalised itself
in England, France, and Germany. The inventive genius of Monteverde,
Carissimi, Scarlatti (the friend and rival of Handel), Durante, and
Leonardo Leo, perfected the forms of the opera nearly as we have them
to-day. A line of brilliant composers in the school of Durante and Leo
brings us down through Pergolesi, Derni, Terradiglias, Jomelli,
Traetta, Ciccio di Majo, Galluppi, and Giuglielmi, to the most
distinguished of the early Italian composers, Niccolo Piccini, who,
mostly forgotten in his works, is principally known to modern fame as
the rival of the mighty Gluck in that art controversy which shook
Paris into such bitter factions. Yet, overshadowed as Piccini was in
the greatness of his rival, there can be no question of his desert as
the most brilliant ornament and exponent of the early operatic school.
No greater honour could have been paid to him than that he should have
been chosen as their champion by the _Italianissimi_ of his day in the
battle royal with such a giant as Gluck, an honour richly deserved by
a composer distinguished by multiplicity and beauty of ideas, dramatic
insight, and ardent conviction.