[From _The Technique of the Drama_ (New York, 1892)]
The light-hearted genius of Paris composed a new style of opera for
the general merriment of the world. Who can describe the surprises,
the quaintness of song, the drolleries of action of the Offenbach
school? It was the intoxicating wine of music. Gladstone, when premier
of England, found time to say that the world owed as much in its
civilization to the discovery of the fiddle as it did to steam.
This cannot be applied in its whole sense to Offenbach, but this
master of satire and the sensuous certainly expressed his times. He
set laughter to song. It was democratic. It spared not king, courtier,
or the rabble. It was wisdom and sentiment in disguise. It was born
among despotisms, and jested when kingdoms fell. It was the stalking
horse behind which Offenbach hunted the follies of the day and bagged
the absurdities of the hour. If it had _double entendre_, its
existence had a double meaning. Its music and purpose defied national
prejudices. Under its laughter-compelling notes the sober bass-viol
put on a merry disposition, and your cornet-a-piston became a wag. It
was flippant, the glorification of youthful mirth and feelings, and it
made many a melancholy Jacques sing again the song of Beranger,
"_Comme je regrette ma jambe si dodu._"
It is not the purpose here to commend its delirious dances, but to
admit that there was genius in it. In a technical sense the dramatic
part of them are models compared with the inane and vague compositions
of a later school.
The opera bouffe is in a stage beyond decadence, and no longer regards
consistency, even of nonsense, in its dramatic elements. Some of the
conventionalisms of its technique remain.
We hear again and again the old choruses, the drinking songs, the
letter songs, the wine songs, the conspirators' songs, the departure
for the war, the lovers' duets, and what-not, with the old goblets,
the old helmets and all in use; but order is lost, and the topical
song often saves the public patience, apart from the _disjecta
membra_, upon which are fed the eye and the ear.
The Gilbert opera. The delicate foolery of Gilbert and the interpreting
melody of Sullivan created an inimitable form of opera that delighted
its generations. In its way perfection marks it. There is much in it
that ministers to inward quiet and enjoyment. "Pinafore," "The Mikado,"
and all the list, are products of genius. "Ruddygore" is structurally
weak, proving that even nonsense must have a logical treatment.
Successful in a manner as "Ruddygore" was, it was filled with
characteristic quaintness. We accept Rose Maybud as a piece of good
luck, from the moment her modest slippers demurely patter to the front;
and it is a sober statement to say that our generation has seen nothing
more charming than her artful artlessness and innocence. She is worthy
of Gilbert. His taste is refined beyond the point of vulgarity in
essence or by way of expediency. His fancy is not tainted with the
corruption of flesh-tight limbs, and he holds fast only to such physical
allurements as the "three little maids just from school" in the "Mikado"
or the impossibly good and dainty Rose Maybud may tempt us with. In the
dance there is no lasciviousness, only joy. Gilbert and Sullivan have
called a halt to the can-can and bid the world be decent. The whole
history of comic opera is filled with proof that music first consented
to lend itself to foolery on condition that there should be some heart
in it; and even Offenbach, the patriarch of libidinous absurdities,
could not get along without stopping by the wayside to make his sinners
sing love-songs filled with pure emotion.
Rose Maybud is a piece of delicate coquetry with the mysterious
simplicity of maidenhood, giving offense in no way. These authors are
satirists, not burlesquers and fakirs.