Probably the average opera-goer is contemptuous of the libretto, because
he thinks it is an easy task to write the mere words of an opera. To
him, no doubt, the opera lives by its music, and by its music alone. But
there is really no warrant for this uncomplimentary attitude. An opera
is a music-drama, and if it is to achieve success, wide-spread and
long-lasting, its drama must be as effective as its music. Experience
proves that, so far from being as easy as it seems, the construction of
a satisfactory libretto is really a difficult feat, to be achieved only
by an expert in stage-craft. It is no task to be confided to an amateur
play-maker, to a mere lyrist, ignorant of the art of the theater. First
of all, a satisfactory book must contain the skeleton of a good play;
and, second, this must be the special kind of play which will not only
inspire the musician, but afford him a succession of special
opportunities for the exercise of his own art. The book of an opera must
be a good play; and more than once have we seen a libretto deprived of
its music and written out again in prose for production in non-musical
theaters. 'Carmen' is one example of this transformation. The late Sir
Henry Irving was so taken with Wagner's 'Flying Dutchman' that he had it
made over into a play for his own acting--'Vanderdecken.'
The book of an opera must be a good play, and therefore not a few
successful operas have been composed on plots which had already won
approval as plays on the stage. Indeed, many modern composers are so
convinced of the necessity that librettos shall be attractive in
themselves that they are continually borrowing popular plays to deck
with melody. 'Salome' and 'Pelleas et Melisande,' 'Madam Butterfly' and
'Cavalleria Rusticana,' the 'Boheme' and the 'Tosca' were all successful
without music before they were set to music to win a second success. The
book of Verdi's 'Rigoletto' is based on Victor Hugo's drama, 'Le Roi
s'Amuse'; and oddly enough it was the operatic libretto, rather than the
original poetic drama, which suggested the English play on the same
theme, Tom Taylor's blank-verse drama, the 'Fool's Revenge.' Another of
Verdi's librettos was borrowed from Hugo's 'Hermani', while his
'Traviata,' as we all know, is taken from the play of the younger Dumas,
long popular in America as 'Camille.' Two of Verdi's latest operas had
Shaksperian themes, 'Otello' and 'Falstaff.'
It is instructive to note, so an American musical critic once asserted,
that of all Gounod's dozen operas, "the only two which have survived are
the two which are derived from Goethe's 'Faust' and from Shakspere's
'Romeo and Juliet'"; and he added a reminder that in these operas the
music owes its success "not only to the aid derived from its
associations with a favorite play, but also in part to the fact that the
composer's creative imagination was fertilized by the splendid
opportunities for dramatic composition offered by these plays. Gounod
was moved by the joys and woes of Margaret and of Juliet, and it is
only under the influence of deep feeling that such masterworks can be
created." When Gounod set to music a poetic play by Goethe, and when
Verdi set to music a group of characters created by Shakspere, the
composers might well be inspired by the poets; and they were thus aided
to attain the utmost of which they are capable as musicians.
But it may be doubted whether any musician could find any really helpful
inspiration in dramas of vulgar violence, such as the 'Tosca' of Sardou,
and the 'Salome' of Oscar Wilde; and it is extremely improbable that the
operas composed to such unworthy themes will be able to achieve any
durable popularity. In plots of so coarse a character there is neither
beauty nor poetry, and the vogue of music-dramas having subjects so
debased is likely to be fleeting. On the other hand, there was both
poetry and beauty in the original plays of 'Madam Butterfly' and
'Cavalleria Rusticana,' and we need not be surprised if the operas
composed on these themes prove to have a long life in the musical
theaters. We may even go further and suggest that there was a haunting
and ethereal grace about Maeterlinck's 'Pelleas et Melisande' which
seemed almost to demand translation into the sister art of music.
The two most effective French comedies of the eighteenth century, the
'Barber of Seville' and the 'Marriage of Figaro,' supplied librettos,
one for Rossini and the other for Mozart. We may be sure that sooner or
later some other composer, Italian or American or German, will be
tempted to undertake an opera based on Fulda's 'Two Sisters,' in which
there could not help being a very effective part for the prima donna.
And sooner or later again some musician with an appreciation of humor
and sentiment will be moved to take for his libretto the comedy of
'Masks and Faces,' by Charles Reade and Tom Taylor, generally known by
the name of its fascinating heroine, Peg Woffington. No doubt there are
not a few other modern plays in which composers will discover musical
possibilities.