No art form is so fleeting and so subject to the dictates of
fashion as opera. It has always been the plaything of fashion,
and suffers from its changes. To-day the stilted figures of
Hasse, Pergolesi, Rameau, and even Gluck, seem as grotesque
to us as the wigs and buckles of their contemporaries. To
Palestrina's masses and madrigals, Rameau's and Couperin's
clavecin pieces, and all of Bach, we can still listen without
this sense of incongruity. On the other hand, operas of
Alessandro Scarlatti, Matheson, and Porpora would bore us
unmitigatedly. They have gone out of fashion. Even the modern
successors of these men, Bellini, Donizetti, and Verdi, in his
earlier years, have become dead letters musically, although only
as late as 1845, Donizetti was at the very zenith of his fame.
Of all the operas of the past century, our present public has
not seen or even heard of one, with the exception of "The Magic
Flute," and less probably "Don Juan." This is bad enough;
but if we look at works belonging to the first part of the
nineteenth century, we find the same state of affairs. The
operas of Spontini, Rossini, most of Meyerbeer's, even Weber's
"Freischuetz," have passed away, seemingly never to return. Even
"Cavalleria Rusticana," of recent creation, is falling rapidly
into oblivion. Thus the opera comique early disappeared in
favour of the romantic opera and the operetta. The former has
already nearly ended its career, and the latter has descended
to the level of mere farce. In the course of time, these opera
forms become more and more evanescent; for the one-act opera of
miniature tragedy, which is practically only a few years old,
is already almost extinct.
And yet this art form has vastly more hold on the public than
other music destined to outlive it. The fact is, that music
which is tied down to the conventionalities and moods of its
time and place can never appeal but to the particular time and
mood which gave it birth. (Incidentally, I may say the same of
music having its roots in the other peculiarities of folk song.)
Now the writers of these operas were great men who put their
best into their work; the cause of the failure of these operas
was not on account of the music, but the ideas and thoughts
with which this music was saddled. What were the books which
people read and loved in those days (1750-1800), that is,
books upon which operas might be built? In England we find "The
Castle of Otranto," "The Mysterious Mother," etc., by Horace
Walpole. Now Macaulay says that Horace Walpole's works rank
as high among the delicacies of intellectual epicures as the
Strasburg pie among the dishes described in the _Almanach des
Gourmands_. None but an unhealthy and disorganized mind could
have produced such literary luxuries as the works of Walpole.
France had not yet recovered from the empty formalism of
the preceding century, Bernardin de St. Pierre was a kind
of colonial Mlle. Scudery, and Jean Jacques Rousseau, one
of the sparks which were to ignite the French Revolution,
writes his popular opera to the silly story of "The Village
Soothsayer." Had not Gluck written to the classics he would
have had to write "a la Watteau."
In Germany, conditions were better; for the so-called Romantic
school had just begun to make headway. In opera, however, this
school of Romanticism only commenced to make itself felt later,
when we have a crop of operas on Fouque's "Undine" as well as
"Hofmann's Tales."
It is as though opera had to dress according to the prevailing
fashion of the day. The very large sleeves of one year look
strange to us a little later. Just so is it with opera; for
those old operas by Mehul, Spontini, Salieri, and others all
wear enormous crinolines, while the contemporary instrumental
works of the same period, unfettered by fashion, still possess
all the freedom which their limited speech permitted them to
have. Thus we see that opera is necessarily a child of the times
in which it is written, in contrast to other music which echoes
but the thought of the composer, thought that is not necessarily
bound down to any time, place, or peculiarity of diction.
In Germany, Italian opera was never accepted by the people as
it was in France. In the latter country, opera had to be in the
vernacular and practically to become _French_. Lully's operas
were written to libretti by Quinault and Corneille; and while,
as early as 1645, Paris imported its opera from Italy, this
art form was rapidly modified to suit the public for which
it was secured. Even with Piccini and Gluck, and down to
Rossini and Meyerbeer, this nationalism was infused into the
foreign product. In Germany the case was entirely different,
for up to the very last, Italian opera was a thing apart.
Although German composers, such as Mozart and Paer, wrote
Italian opera, the "Singspiel" (a kind of opera comique),
found its culminating point in Weber's "Freischuetz," which
fought against Rossini's operas for supremacy in Germany.
Gluck's victory over the Piccinists gave to the French form
of Italian opera an impetus that caused Cherubini to proceed
on almost the same lines in his operas, the "Water Carrier,"
etc. Cherubini was a pupil of Andreas Sarti, a celebrated
contrapuntist and a disciple of the last of the Italian church
composers who looked back to Palestrina for inspiration. Thus
the infusion of a certain soberness of diction, which we call
German, fitted in with the man's training and predilections.
The first names we meet with in French opera after Cherubini
are those of Gretry, Mehul, and Spontini. The former was a
Frenchman whose works are now obsolete, although Macfarren, in
the "Encyclopedia Brittanica," says that he is the only French
composer of symphonies that are known and enjoy popularity
in France.
Gretry was born in Liege, about 1740. He walked to Italy,
studied in Rome, and returned to France about 1770. None of
his works have come down to us, but his name is interesting
by reason of a certain contradiction in his operas. This
contradiction consists in his being one of the first to revive
the idea of the hidden orchestra; it is interesting also to
note that in his "Richard Coeur de Lion," he anticipated
Wagner's use of the _leitmotiv_. His words on the hidden
orchestra sound strangely modern:
PLAN FOR A NEW THEATRE.--I should like the auditorium
of my theatre to be small, holding at the most one
thousand persons and consisting of a sort of open
space, without boxes, small or great; for these nooks
only encourage talking and scandal. I would like
the orchestra to be concealed, so that neither the
musicians nor the lights on their music stands could
be visible to the spectators.
Mehul was born about 1763 in the south of France, and is
celebrated, among other things, as being a pupil of Gluck,
in Paris. He was also noted for having, at the request of
Napoleon, brought out an opera based on Macpherson's "Ossian,"
in which no violins were used in the orchestra. "Joseph,"
another opera of his, is occasionally given in small German
towns. Mehul died in 1817.
Spontini, the next representative of opera in France, was an
Italian, born in 1774. He went to Paris in 1803, where, through
the influence of the Empress Josephine, he was enabled to have
several small operas performed; finally in 1807 his "Vestal,"
written to a French text, was given with great success. In this,
his greatest work, he followed Gluck's footsteps, not only in
the music, but also in the choice of a classic subject. In 1809,
he branched out into a more romantic vein with the opera of
"Fernando Cortez." His other works never attained popularity.
After the Restoration in France, he was named director of the
court music in Berlin by the King of Prussia, at an annual
salary of ten thousand thalers (about $7,500), a position he
held from 1820 to 1840. He died in Italy in 1851. Spontini may
be said to have been the last representative of the Gluck opera;
but he also brought into it all the magnificence in scenery,
etc., that would naturally be expected by the fashion of the
First Empire. He made no innovations, and merely served to
keep alive the traditions of Grand Opera in France.
The next powerful influence in France, and indeed in all
Europe, was that of Rossini. He may be said to have built on
Gluck's ideas in many ways. Born in 1792, at Pesaro, in Italy,
he wrote many operas of the flimsy Italian style while still
a boy. At twenty-one he had already written his "Tancredi"
and the opera buffa, "The Italians in Algiers." His best work
(besides "William Tell") was "The Barber of Seville." Other
works are "Cinderella" (_La Cenerentola_), "The Thieving
Blackbird" (_La Gazza Ladra_), "Moses," and "The Lady of the
Lake." These operas were mostly made up of parts of others
that were failures, a la Hasse. An engagement being offered
him in London, he went there with his wife, and in one season
they earned about two hundred thousand francs, which laid the
foundation for his future prosperity.
The next year he went to Paris, where, after a few unimportant
works, he, produced "William Tell" with tremendous success
(1829). Although he lived until 1868, he never wrote for
the operatic stage again, his other works being mainly the
well-known "Stabat Mater" and some choruses. He was essentially
a writer of light opera, although "William Tell" has many
elevated moments. His style was so entirely warped by his love
for show and the virtuoso side of singing that the many real
beauties of his music are hardly recognizable. His music is
so overladen with _fioriture_ that often its very considerable
value is obscured. He had absolutely no influence upon German
music, for the Germans, from Beethoven down, despised the
flimsy style and aims of this man, who, by appealing to the
most unmusical side of the fashionable audiences of Europe,
did so much to discourage the production of operas with a
lofty aim. In France, however, his influence was unchallenged,
and we may almost say that, with few exceptions, the overture
to "William Tell" served as a model for all other operatic
overtures which have been written there up to the present
day. We have only to look at the many overtures by Herold,
Boieldieu, Auber, and others, to see the influence exerted by
this style of overture, which consisted of a slow introduction,
followed by a more or less sentimental melody, followed in
turn by a galop as a coda.
So fashionable had this kind of thing become that even Weber was
slightly touched by it. In the meanwhile, the French composers
were producing operas of a smaller kind, but, in many ways, of
a better character than the larger works of Rossini, Spontini,
and their followers. Had this flimsy Italian influence been
lacking, doubtless French opera to-day would be a different
thing from what it actually is. For these smaller operas by
Herold, Auber, and Boieldieu had many points in common with
the German _Singspiel_, which may be said to have saved German
musical art for Wagner.
What might have developed under better conditions is shown
in a work by Halevy entitled, "La juive," in which is to be
found promise of a great school of opera, a promise unhappily
stifled by the advent of an eclectic, the German Meyerbeer,
who blinded the public with unheard of magnificence of staging,
just as Rossini before him had blinded it by novel technical
feats. Meyerbeer thus drew the art into a new channel, and,
unluckily, this new tendency was not so much in the direction
of elevation of style as in sensationalism.
To return to the French composers. Herold was born in 1791,
in Paris, and his principal works were "Zampa" and the "Pre
aux clercs." The first was produced in 1831, the latter in
1832. He died in 1833. Boieldieu was born in 1775, in Rouen;
died 1834. His principal works were "La dame blanche" and
"Jean de Paris."
Halevy (Levy) was born in 1799, in Paris, and died in 1862;
his father was a Bavarian and his mother from Lorraine. He
wrote innumerable operas. His most famous work, "La juive,"
written in 1835, was killed by Meyerbeer's "Huguenots," and
produced a year later. He was professor of counterpoint at
the Conservatoire from 1831, among his pupils being Gounod,
Masse, Bazin, and Bizet.
Auber was born in 1782, and died in May, 1871. He was
practically the last of the essentially French composers.
His operas may be summed up as being the perfect translation
into music of the witty plays of Scribe, with whom he was
associated all his life. To read a comedy by Scribe is to
imagine Auber's music to it. No one has excelled Auber in
the expression of all the finesse of wit and lightness of
touch. What the union between the two men was may be inferred
from the fact that Scribe wrote many of his librettos to
Auber's music, the latter being written first, Scribe then
adding the words. His principal works are "Masaniello" or
"The Mute," and "Fra Diavolo." He was appointed director of
the Paris Conservatoire, in 1842, in succession to Cherubini.
In speaking of Gretry, I quoted his opinion (given in one of
his essays on music) as to what opera should be and cited his
use of the _leitmotiv_ in his "Richard Coeur de Lion" (which
contains the air, _une fievre brulante_). If with this we
quote his reasons for writing opera comique rather than grand
opera, we have one of the reasons why French opera has, as yet,
never developed beyond Massenet's "Roi de Lahore" on one side,
and Delibes' "Lakme" on the other.
Gretry writes that he introduced lyric comedy on the stage
because the public was tired of tragedy, and because he had
heard so many lovers of dancing complain that their favourite
art played only a subordinate role in grand opera. Also the
public loved to hear short songs; therefore he introduced many
such into his operas.
Even nowadays, this seeming contradiction between theory and
practice is to be found, I think, in the French successors of
Meyerbeer. The public needed dancing, and all theories must
bend to that wish. Even Wagner succumbed to this influence in
Paris; and when Weber's "Freischuetz" was first given at the
grand opera, Berlioz was commissioned to arrange ballet music
from Weber's piano works to supply the deficiency.
In France, even to-day, everything gives way to the public,
a public whose intelligence from a poetic standpoint is, in
my opinion, lower than that of any other country. The French
composer is dependent on his country (Paris) as is no musician
of other nationality. Berlioz' life was embittered by the want
of recognition in Paris. Although he had been acclaimed as
a great musician all over Europe, yet he returned again and
again to Paris, preferring (as he admits) the approbation of
its musically worthless public to his otherwise world-wide fame.
We remember that Auber never stirred out of Paris throughout
his long life. It was an article in the _Gazette Musicale_ of
Paris which was instrumental in calling Gounod back into the
world from his intended priestly vocation. And this influence
of the admittedly ignorant and superficial French public is
the more remarkable when one considers the fact that it was
always the last to admit the value of the best work of its
composers. Thus Berlioz' fame was gained in Russia and Germany
while he was still derided and comparatively unknown in Paris.
The failure of Bizet's "Carmen" is said to have hastened the
composer's death, which took place within three months after
the first performance of the opera. As Saint-Saens wrote at
the time, in his disgust at the French public: "The fat, ugly
bourgeois ruminates in his padded stall, regretting separation
from his kind. He half opens a glassy eye, munches a bonbon,
then sleeps again, thinking that the orchestra is a-tuning." And
yet, even Saint-Saens, whose name became known chiefly through
Liszt's help, and whose operas and symphonies were given
in Germany before they were known in France, even he is one
of the most ardent adherents to the "anti-foreigner" cry in
France. In my opinion, this respect for and attempt to please
this grossly ignorant French public is and has been one of the
great devitalizing influences which hamper the French composer.
Charles Gounod was born in 1818, in Paris. His father was
an engraver and died when Gounod was very young. The boy
received his first music lessons from his mother. He was
admitted to the Conservatoire at sixteen, and studied with
Halevy and Lesueur. In 1839 he gained _the Prix de Rome_,
and spent three years in Rome, studying ecclesiastical
music. In 1846 he contemplated becoming a priest, and wrote
a number of religious vocal works, published under the name
Abbe C. Gounod. In 1851 the article I referred to appeared,
and such was its effect on Gounod, that within four months his
first opera "Sapho" was given (April, 1851). A year later this
was followed by some music for a tragedy (Poussard's "Ulysse"
at the Comedie Francaise), and in 1854 by the five-act opera "La
nonne sanglante." These were only very moderately successful;
and so Gounod turned to the opera comique, and wrote music to
an adaptation of Moliere's "Medecin malgre lui." This became
very popular, and paved the way for his "Faust," which was
produced at the Opera Comique in 1859. In the opera comique,
as we know, the singing was always interspersed with spoken
dialogue. Thus, this opera, as we know it, dates from its
preparation for the Grand Opera ten years later, 1869. Ten
months after "Faust" was given he used a fable of Lafontaine
for a short light opera, "Philemon and Baucis."
In the meantime, "Faust" began to bring him encouragement,
and his next opera was on the subject of the "Queen of Sheba"
(1862). This being unsuccessful, he wrote two more light operas,
"Mireille" and "La colombe" (1866). The next was "Romeo et
Juliette" (1867). This was very successful, and marks the
culmination of Gounod's success as an opera composer. In
1870 he went to London, where he made his home for a number
of years. His later operas, "Cinq-Mars" (1877), "Polyeucte"
(1878), and "Le tribut de Zamora" (1881), met with small
success, and have rarely been given.
In his later years, as we know, he showed his early predilection
for religious music; and his oratorios "The Redemption,"
"Mors et Vita," and several masses have been given with
varying success. Perhaps one of the greatest points ever made
in Gounod's favour by a critic was that by Pougin, who asks what
other composer could have written two such operas as "Faust" and
"Romeo et Juliette" and still have them essentially different
musically. The "Garden Scene" in the one and the "Balcony Scene"
in the other are identical, so far as the feeling of the play
is concerned; also the duel of Faust and Valentine and Romeo
and Tybalt.
Ambroise Thomas's better works, "Mignon" and "Hamlet," may
be said to be more or less echoes of Gounod; and while his
"Francesca da Rimini," which was brought out in 1882, was by
far his most ambitious work, it never became known outside of
Paris. Ambroise Thomas was born in 1811, and died within a year
of Gounod. His chief merit was in his successful direction
of the Conservatoire, to which he succeeded Auber in 1871.
Georges Bizet (his name was Alexander Cesar Leopold) was born in
1838, in Paris. His father was a poor singing teacher, and his
mother a sister-in-law of Delsarte; she was a first-prize piano
pupil of the Conservatoire. As a boy, Bizet was very precocious,
and entered the Conservatoire as a pupil of Marmontel when he
was ten. He took successively the first prizes for solfege,
piano, organ, and fugue, and finally the _Prix de Rome_ in
1857, when he was nineteen years old. The latter kept him
in Rome until 1861, when he returned to Paris and gave piano
and harmony lessons and arranged dance music for brass bands,
a _metier_ not unknown to either Wagner or Raff.
Until 1872, Bizet wrote but small and unimportant works, such
as "The Pearl Fisher," "The Fair Maid of Perth," and several
vaudeville operettas, some of which he wrote to order and
anonymously. He married a daughter of Halevy, the composer,
and in 1871-72 served in the National Guard. His first
important work was the incidental music to Alphonse Daudet's
"L'Arlesienne" and finally his "Carmen" was given (but without
success), at the Opera Comique, in March, 1875. He died June 3,
1875.
Camille Saint-Saens was born in Paris, in 1835; he commenced
studying piano when only three years old. I believe it is
mostly through his piano concertos and his symphonic poems
that his name will live; for his operas have never attained
popularity, with perhaps the one exception of "Samson and
Delilah." His other operas are: "The Yellow Princess,"
"Proserpina," "Etienne Marcel," "Henry VIII," "Ascanio."
Jules Massenet was born in 1842, and at the age of twelve
became a pupil of Bezit at the Conservatoire, was rejected by
Bezit for want of talent, and afterward studied with Reber and
Thomas, and won the _Prix de Rome_ in 1863. Upon his return,
in 1866, he wrote a number of small orchestral works, including
two suites and several sacred dramas, "Marie Magdalen" and
"Eve and the Virgin," in which the general Meyerbeerian style
militated against any suggestion of religious feeling. His
first grand opera, "Le roi de Lahore," was given in 1881.
The second was "Herodiade," which was followed by "Manon,"
"The Cid," "Esclarmonde," "Le mage."