=The Opera after Gluck=.—After Gluck the first great name is that of
=Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart= (1756-1791). Haydn had indeed written a
number of operas, but they were, in the main, light in character and
exercised no influence whatever on the development of the form. At the
age of twelve, Mozart had composed two operas, but the first to receive
public performance was _Mitridate, Re di Ponto_ (Mithridates, King of
Pontus), which was produced at Milan two years later under his own
direction. This was followed by others, but these early works do not
call for any extended mention. Though they abound in melody and show a
maturity remarkable in so young a composer, they were frankly written
to please the taste of the time and do not in any essentials depart
from the accepted Italian style then in favor, as fixed by Scarlatti
and his contemporaries.
=Gluck and Mozart Compared=.—It was not until _Idomeneo, Re di Creta_
(Idomeneus, King of Crete) was brought out during the Carnival season
of 1781, that he demonstrated fully the gifts which made him the first
dramatic composer of his time. In this he shows a great advance over
the conventional opera of the period and an approach to the ideals of
Gluck, though neither in _Idomeneo_ nor in any of his later operas did
he attempt to embody these ideals in the uncompromising form chosen by
the older master. Though contemporaries, no two composers could well
be more unlike in character, temperament and methods than Gluck and
Mozart. The one, a man of years, ripened through travel and study,
conditioned his music according to the requirements of the drama; the
other, a youth of no great intellectual endowments aside from his art,
but aflame with the fire of genius, felt the drama in terms of music.
Thus they approached the task from opposite sides. Not that Gluck was
without feeling or Mozart without intellect; it was simply a case of
the dramatist and the musician solving the problem each in his own
way. At the same time it was impossible that Gluck’s theories should
be entirely without influence on Mozart. Even a genius must learn from
his environment, and Gluck’s position, though sharply disputed by the
Italian school to which Mozart belonged, could not be ignored by the
younger man. Then, too, Mozart had been in Paris during the height
of the Gluck-Piccini controversy, and it is known that he had made a
close study of _Alceste_, to which Gluck, in the form of a dedication
to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, had given a preface containing a clear
exposition of his principles of dramatic composition. It is hard to
say, however, what direction Mozart’s dramatic course might have taken
had his life not been cut so pitilessly short and if his outward
circumstances had been less constrained. He was obliged to adapt
himself to Italian influences which at that time were all powerful.
=The Singspiel=.—As already mentioned, the first attempts at German
opera took the form of the _Singspiel_, but it gradually died out
during the invasion of Italian opera in Germany. Its revival and
development to a higher standard was due to =Johann Adam Hiller=
(1728-1804), who received his first impulse through an English ballad
opera of a farcical nature, “The Devil to Pay.” This was translated
into German and given (1743) at Berlin with the original English
melodies taken from popular ballads. Hiller set this translation to
music and followed it with many others which soon acquired great vogue;
one or two, for example, _Der Dorfbarbier_ (The Village Barber),
are still heard in Germany. Hiller, though one of the most learned
musicians of the day, the founder of the celebrated Gewandhaus Concerts
in Leipzig and editor of the first musical periodical ever published,
adopted a simple, natural Folk-style in these operettas, as they were
also called. Goethe was particularly interested in this revival of a
national form of opera; it stimulated him to the writing of the ballads
which in turn acted so powerfully in developing the German song under
the hands of Loewe, Schubert, Schumann and others.
=Mozart’s First German Opera=.—Emperor Joseph II, wishing to establish
the _Singspiel_ in Vienna, commissioned Mozart to write a German opera
of a similar style. This resulted in _Die Entführung aus dem Serail_
(The Elopement from the Seraglio), and the composer’s hopes of founding
a national school of opera were high. Unfortunately, he was doomed to
disappointment. Though _Die Entführung_ was received with enthusiasm,
popular favor was averse to opera in any other tongue than Italian; the
German theatre was open only a few years and with the exception of _Die
Zauberflöte_, his future operas were composed to Italian texts.
=His Later Operas=.—_Le Nozze di Figaro_ (The Marriage of Figaro—1786),
_Don Giovanni_ (Don Juan—1788), _Die Zauberflöte_ (The Magic
Flute—1791) rank as Mozart’s greatest operas. Considered as music
alone, the last reaches a height which gives an idea of what he might
have done in nationalizing the opera if he had been spared a score of
years longer; but its confused, irrational plot stands in the way of
its popularization. The same objection holds good of _Così fan Tutte_
(Women are All Alike—1790), which contains some of his most exquisite
music.
=Characteristics of Mozart’s Operas=.—Mozart’s _conception_ of the
opera is that of the _musician_, _not_ of the _dramatist_. This
is plain from the indifferent texts he willingly accepted, yet so
universal was his genius that he fused the two elements into a complete
and consistent whole. Such a union of clearly-cut characterization and
musical beauty is unknown in the opera. He made his _characters eternal
types_ by means of music so apposite to their individuality that it
seems in each case to spring from inward necessity, yet which as music
has never been surpassed for intrinsic grace and charm. Italian melody
in its best estate on a foundation of German depth and solidity is
its distinguishing characteristic. This characterization is confined,
however, to details and personages; of the development of the drama
as a whole he apparently had but little idea. This, however, was not
called for by the taste of the times; the opera was not considered from
a dramatic standpoint, save by Gluck and the composers of the French
school; the libretto furnished a series of situations suitable for
musical illustration, not a consistent and logical dramatic action.
=Their Significance to German Art=.—Mozart marks the highest point
reached by the opera of the 18th century; he also _marks the passing
of Italian supremacy in Germany_. The Germans were already masters
of the other great forms, the Oratorio and the Symphony; Gluck and
Mozart captured the Opera also for Germany, though it was not for
several decades after Mozart’s death that German opera rose from its
discredited position at the close of the century.
=Beethoven’s Fidelio=.—A mighty impulse was given to the development of
a national school by the production of _Fidelio_ (1805), Beethoven’s
only opera. His two great predecessors had been obliged for the most
part to write their operas to French and Italian texts. =Beethoven=
(1770-1827), however, showed his independence and sturdy national
character by choosing a subject totally alien to the frivolous
intrigues which at that time ruled the Viennese stage—a story of
heroic, wifely devotion—and composed it to German words and in the
German style; that is, with dialogue instead of recitative. Essentially
symphonic in character, _Fidelio_ shows the same disregard of vocal
limitations which characterizes the Ninth Symphony and the Mass in D.
Difficult for the singers, it was still more difficult for the public.
In subject and treatment it was above their heads; they turned it the
cold shoulder and it soon disappeared from the boards. An appreciation
of its greatness was reserved for a later day.
=Italian Composers in France and Germany=.—The popularity of Italian
opera outside of Italy led to the expatriation of many Italian
composers who exercised a powerful influence in France and Germany.
Among these =Antonio Salieri= (1750-1825) deserves mention for his
career in Vienna, where he was the successful rival of Mozart in court
favor and later the teacher of Beethoven. More important was =Luigi
Cherubini= (1760-1842), who found his way to Paris just before the
Revolution. A master of the severe contrapuntal school, which was then
passing away, Beethoven considered him the first composer of the day
for the stage and studied his works zealously. Cherubini was present
at the first performance of _Fidelio_, which shows strong traces of
the influence exerted upon Beethoven by _Les Deux Journées_ (The Two
Days, known in Germany and England as The Water Carrier), Cherubini’s
greatest opera. The two were on intimate terms during the stay of the
latter in Vienna for the purpose of bringing out several of his operas.
There was much in common between them; the Italian had the solidity,
dignity and nobility of treatment generally associated with the German
character. Beethoven’s choice of a subject for his opera was doubtless
influenced by _Les Deux Journées_; the themes of both are much the
same, involving devotion and self-sacrifice of the highest order.
=Spontini and Rossini=.—Another Italian composer who went first to
France and afterward to Germany was =Gasparo Spontini= (1774-1851),
who with _La Vestale_ (The Vestal) enlarged the sphere of the opera
in Paris. Spectacular and pompous in character, sonorous and powerful
in instrumentation, it pointed directly to the type of grand opera
originated by Meyerbeer nearly a generation later. In 1820, he was
summoned to Berlin, where he remained as court composer and conductor
for twenty-two years, a period coincident with the most significant
development of the German school of opera. Spontini was the last
of the many Italians who had for a century and a half borne almost
uninterrupted sway in Germany.
The most brilliant and gifted of all these wandering sons of Italy was
=Gioacchino Rossini= (1792-1868). As rich in melody as Mozart, though
of a less refined type, he owed more to nature than to study. His
first successful opera, _Tancredi_ (1813), set all Italy agog with the
freshness and vivacity of its airs, and it was not long before he was
the most popular composer in Europe. Gifted with prodigious facility—in
one period of eight years he wrote twenty operas—his operas ruled all
stages and fixed the standard by which all others were judged.
[Illustration: GIOACCHINO ROSSINI.]
=Characteristics of Rossini’s Operas=.—They are, on the whole, a
_reversion_ to the conventionalized opera of Handel’s time in being
written for the singer to exhibit his art and not to express the
significance of the drama; this notwithstanding their undoubted charm,
the many piquant and original touches in rhythm and harmony, the
occasional suggestive instrumentation. An intensely _florid style_ is
used not only in the _buffa_ school where it can readily be justified,
but in operas of a tragic nature where it is manifestly out of place.
In _Semiramide_, for instance, a story of battle, murder and sudden
death is told in the same rippling rhythms and highly ornamented
melodies that illustrate the intrigues of his _Barbiere di Siviglia_
(Barber of Seville), where they are eminently appropriate.
=His Change of Style=.—This is true, however, only of his works
composed for the Italian stage. His _Guillaume Tell_ (William Tell),
produced in 1829, five years after his arrival in Paris, showed the
influence of his new environment by an almost startling change of
style. Elevated and dramatic in treatment, shorn of redundant ornament
as befits the character of the subject—taken from Schiller’s play of
the same name—it remains his greatest achievement; at least in serious
opera. It was also his last work for the stage. It is not known by what
strange caprice he practically closed his career as composer at the age
of thirty-nine.