After Signor Ricco had explained the mystery of his daughter and
himself going home on foot, their carriage having disappointed
them, the conversation turned on the opera they had just seen. The
chapel-master declared, with a half comic distortion of face, that he
wished he had stayed away.
“And why, maestro?” asked Heissenheimer.
“I hoped to have heard Rossini’s magnificent _Otello_; and was
compelled to take instead that confounded Don Giovanni.”
“Ricco,” said the old merchant, “you are certainly skilled in the black
art, and have wrought magic upon me; else I know not what prevents me
from throwing this empty champagne flask at your head! Butler--some
more wine! and have done, chapel-master, with your nonsense about
Rossini, for whom I know you care as little as I! and tell us truly,
were you not enraptured with the glorious masterpiece of to-night?”
“O Germans--where are your ears? Caro Heissenheimer, I will tell you
the truth; but shall I criticise as an Italian or a German?”
“What do you mean by the distinction?” asked Louis.
“What a question! Young man, can you be so ignorant? As Italian, I
complain that this opera gives me no rest; that I must be kept on
the stretch from beginning to end; that I forget the singers in the
orchestra; that I feel more fear and horror than delight; in short, I
complain that the devil, instead of Don Giovanni, has not taken the
composer, who forces me to _labor_, where I expected only _pleasure_.
But I can also complain as a German. Do you think I know not what you
wish? _Per Bacco!_ the misfortune is, you only _half_ wish! An opera
should be a whole; connected from beginning to end; each impression
on the mind should be a stone added to the dramatic structure,
strengthened by the music. Is it not so?”
“I should think a reasonable person would desire nothing less,”
answered Louis.
“Well then--have you that in Don Giovanni?”
“You will drive me crazy!” cried Heissenheimer impatiently.
“Nay--rather you me--senseless Germans!” returned Ricco. “You can
devise a theory that leaves nothing to be wished. But place a work of
art before you, you have no eyes nor ears--much less a judgment. You
fit on your theory; do they agree in a few points--well; the work is
a masterpiece, though it may differ in all essentials from your own
principles; thenceforth you _believe_ blindly, and each adopts the
other’s opinion. Do they not agree--you have not independence enough
to yield to an impression of nature, and judge thereby that the thing
is worthless. If a German is dying with rapture, he is to blame if not
enraptured according to rule! Corpo di Bacco! I have more gall in me
than wine! Fill my glass!”
“You are leaving the subject--Signor Ricco,” said Louis; “you were to
complain of Don Giovanni as a German. I confess, I am curious to hear
you.”
“I also,” added the merchant. “But it will come to nothing; for I see
he is treating us to one of his accustomed jokes.”
“Nay--it is my ardor that leads me to digression. To return to Don
Giovanni. At first--and then the Germans were reasonable, for they
had in their theatres chiefly the works of Italian composers or their
pupils--at first, I say--the thing was not popular, and with reason.”
“Stupid slanderer!” exclaimed Heissenheimer.
“There were in it a few good musical touches, and the Germans thought
it a pity the work should be lost. They fitted on a skilful theory;
they found that Don Giovanni stabs the commendatore, and commits other
crimes, and is finally carried off by the devil: the thing is complete,
and has a capital moral! Why should it not please? So its nonsense
and folly are passed over. A single wise head has seen through it,
who really understands more of the opera than your thirty millions of
Germans besides. This was your late Hoffmann. He marked well where the
thing halted: but he admired the music, and put a good face on it for
his countrymen, quieting the last murmurs of their consciences. How he
must have laughed over their fond delusion!”
“As well as I can gather your meaning,” said the young artist, “you
seem to think there is a want of unity of idea in the action and music
of Don Giovanni?”
“I should be blind and deaf if I thought otherwise.”
“And thus, as a German, you would find fault with the work?”
“Exactly.”
“I entreat you, then, to dispense with your oracular ambiguity, and
passing by a few improbabilities and other trifling defects--to show us
where is the vulnerable heel of this Achilles.”
“Ha, maestro!” cried the merchant, “you have but shallow water for
the war-ship with which you mean to manœuvre round this walled and
fortified citadel of art! You will be aground presently.”
“On the contrary--I will make you a breach, so that the enemy shall
march in with all his forces.”
“Triumph not too soon!” cried Louis--“for we shall fight to the last
man in its defence.”
“Right, my young friend!” added Heissenheimer; and Ricco proceeded,
after a digression or two, from which he was called back by his two
challengers--
“Is it not true, friends, that in a drama each principal person should
contribute substantially to the progress of the action? You assent;
well--in Don Giovanni there are five--the Commendatore, Giovanni,
Octavio, Donna Anna, and Elvira. I have nothing against the old man,
nor Giovanni. Your Hoffmann has cunningly rescued Donna Anna from
criticism; Octavio may be considered to have a sort of right to his
place. He is, so to speak, the earthly hostage for the elevated Anna,
or rather the stake to which she is bound. Now for Donna Elvira. Many
have felt that this fifth person is the fifth wheel to the wagon; and
in many ways they have sought to justify her appearance. But it has not
succeeded. Your Hoffmann does best, who says as good as nothing of her.”
“I thought,” observed Louis, “she was to be regarded as an avenging
goddess; at least, so the great composer conceived her, even if the
poet assigned her a somewhat doubtful place.”
“Excellent!” cried the merchant. “What have you to say to that, Ricco?”
“That it is not true. An avenging goddess--who whimpers rather than
implores for love, and at last would snatch from justice the object
of her revenge!--The kneeling in the last finale, or ante-finale (for
you would have a battle also about this double close) looks like
revenge!--Look you, this Elvira could be borne, or not observed, if
she did not so lower herself in the middle of the piece. And here
the composer is even more in fault than the poet. The terzetto in A
major I will let pass; I will believe she can forgive her repentant
betrayer, and love him again. But the sestetto! Have you borne in
mind what wickedness has been committed towards her? I am an Italian,
and we look over some things more easily than you Germans. But a
Chinese, or a barbarian, must revolt at this! The trusting, confiding,
forgiving, loving Elvira is exposed to the deepest disgrace--the
most crushing insult! Has she a spark of womanly pride or Castilian
spirit in her breast, it must burst into a flame that will consume
the guilty betrayer, or sweep the wretched victim to destruction.
What has she suffered? The most horrible injury that can be inflicted
on a woman! Why does she not snatch a dagger, to plunge it into the
breast of the slave who has been employed against her--or that of the
fiend Don Giovanni, the author of the outrage, or those who behold
her dishonor--or, Lucretia-like, into her own? Go--you Germans, and
boast of your passion for completeness! You feel not where a work of
art strikes the heart. When Leporello’s mask is fallen, and Elvira,
who should sink back in despair, or rise in the invincible might of
revenge, sings so passionately with the other five voices--as if
nothing more had happened to her than Zerlina,--I feel my blood boil!
Would our Rossini have done the like? In his polonaises you feel the
dolor of love: could you only understand the heavenly melodies as
the maestro himself conceived them! The notes are not--indeed--but
he dreamed of a singer such as your wooden German never thought
of; a singer, the charm of whose expression could ennoble the most
insignificant passages into a moving plaint of the heart! Have you
never heard that the English Garrick could so repeat the alphabet
as to move his audience to tears? So it is with Rossini’s music. He
sacrifices himself; he wants not to shine; but that his performers
should. But your German hears from paper; and thus writes tolerably.
And you trouble not yourselves, if your singers misrepresent the best
your master has furnished. The performance of to-night--but I am
speaking only of Don Giovanni. What say you to my criticism on Elvira?
why do I not hear reproaches?”
“You are a clever critic,” answered Louis; “I know you are wrong, and
yet I cannot reply to your objections.”
“Yes--quite wrong--chapel-master!” added the merchant. “I will venture
you do not believe yourself what you say. Swear that you do--in good
faith!”
“Ha! ha! ha!” cried Ricco; “you would have me swear to what I have
proved! My good Heissenheimer, I will read you the riddle. We Italians
are more candid than you. We know well what is wanting in our operas,
and have judgment enough to understand that it cannot be otherwise.
Where two make a work, the whole cannot be cast in one great mould.
If we thus discover disproportion betwixt the music and the text, it
disturbs not our enjoyment. But the German will smoothe it all away; he
rests not till the faults growing out of the nature of the thing are
changed into beauties by some jugglery of the understanding; and after
he has in this way deceived himself, he begins to enjoy. If I loved Don
Giovanni ever so much, the part of Elvira would not disturb me. I would
easily help myself out of the difficulty; I would have Elvira fall
senseless on the discovery of her error, and a friend of Anna’s supply
the sixth voice. What have you against that?”
“In this manner,” replied Louis, “you may banish reason from art
altogether. I cannot conceive of a work of art, which shall not proceed
from the full consciousness of the artist, and contain only beauties
designed by himself. Therefore do I detest Rossini’s works, void of
meaning----”
“Void of meaning? Young man, do not depreciate our master. Think you,
he was unconscious of that for which you reproach him, and that he
could not have bettered it if he had chosen? But he wished to lead
music back to her own natural place; to make her again a science for
the ear, and deliver her from your massive philosophical smoke-cells
and pedantic fetters. Turn nothing but counterpoint; screw only fugues
and canons; write only dissonances, like your Mozart and Beethoven;
drive your anarchy ever so far, nature will still be victorious. And
then delight yourself in the conceit--that your masters look to the
_whole_! Truly, they may have the will, but the vision fails them, and
they see no further than a mole on the top of Mont Blanc. Your beloved
Don Giovanni, of which you believe that it came forth fully armed from
the composer’s fancy, like Minerva from the head of Jupiter, is an
automaton, whose limbs are fastened together with thongs, and secured
with hammer strokes; a thing that has more rents and seams than a
clown’s jacket; which you can cut up like an eel, without touching its
heart;--in short, as I have proved, a thing that can neither live nor
stand, if more is expected than that it should be the scaffold on which
the musician builds his illumination of tones.”
“But,” cried Louis, “the splendor of that illumination shall light up
the gloom of the most distant future! It shall remain a Sirius, the
central sun of stars of the first magnitude, so long as art itself
shall exist.”
“Ay, and your torchlight, your will-o’-the-wisp, Rossini, shall be
blown out by the first breath of time!” said Heissenheimer.
“Friends,” replied Ricco, “were it not better that we broke up our
conference? Our discourse grows somewhat warm.”
“You have chilled me completely, at least, towards yourself,” returned
the merchant. “But I cannot believe you in earnest with your talk, so I
will drink a glass with you. If I did not think you have joked with us,
I would have had the wine poisoned for me in which I pledge an enemy of
Mozart.”
“Have I called myself his enemy?” said the chapel-master. “Who would
deny the man genius? I charge him only with a wrong use of it--and
of music, which should bring us joy and happiness, not gloom and
melancholy. What should I do with wine that did not make me merry like
your champagne?”
“So merry,” grumbled the merchant, “that, truly, you have made yourself
merry with us. But, Louis, why so thoughtful?”
“Pardon me,” answered the young man; “I am troubled by what I cannot
yet make clear to myself. I would reply to the chapel-master’s
accusation against the part of Elvira. His opinion is plausible, but he
is wrong in reference to the work. I believe I can see a way to lead to
a right understanding.”
“We cannot reach it to-night,” said Ricco, preparing to depart. “It
is midnight, and I must go home. Some other time we will speak on the
subject; and I will convince you that your conviction is incorrect.
Now, fare you well.”
“Good night--incorrigible fellow!” cried Heissenheimer; and then put it
to the choice of his young friend, whether they should empty another
flask, or take a walk in the fresh air. Louis preferred a walk, for he
was somewhat excited with the conversation.