ROSSINI AT NAPLES.
Barbaja, the ex-waiter at the Ridotto of the San Carlo Theatre, was
director of the San Carlo itself, and almost at the height of his glory,
which Rossini was so much to increase, when _Tancredi_ was brought out
at Venice and _L'Italiana in Algeri_ at Milan.
The year following was not for Rossini a very brilliant one; and neither
_Aureliano in Palmira_, nor a cantata called _Egle e Irene_, written for
the Princess Belgiojoso, nor _Il Turco in Italia_--all of the year
1814--did much to increase his reputation. But the success of _Tancredi_
and of _L'Italiana in Algeri_ was enough for Barbaja, who accordingly
invited Rossini in 1814 to come to Naples and compose something for the
San Carlo. On his arrival Rossini signed a contract with Barbaja for
several years; binding himself to write two new operas annually, and to
re-arrange the music of any old works the manager might wish to
produce, either at his principal theatre or at the second Neapolitan
opera-house, the Teatro del Fondo, of which also Barbaja was lessee.
Rossini's emoluments were to be 40_l._ (200 ducats) a month with a share
in the profits of the gambling saloon. Such an engagement would not seem
very magnificent to a second or third rate composer of our own time. But
it was better than 40_l._ an opera, at which rate Rossini had hitherto
been paid. Provided, moreover, that he supplied Barbaja with his two new
operas every year he was at liberty to write for other managers.
In the present day it is not uncommon to find an operatic manager of
enterprise directing two lyrical theatres in two different countries.
Mr. Lumley was manager at the same time of Her Majesty's Theatre in
London and of the Theatre des Italiens in Paris. The late Mr. Gye
entered into an arrangement (which however was not carried out) for
directing the Imperial Opera House of St. Petersburg, while he was at
the same time managing the Royal Italian Opera of London. Mr. Mapleson
directs simultaneously Her Majesty's Theatre in London, and the Italian
Opera which he has recently established at the so-called Academy of
Music in New York. But these feats are nothing compared with the
performances of Barbaja in the managerial line. It is much easier at the
present time to get from London to New York or from London to St.
Petersburg, than it was in the days of Barbaja to move from Naples or
even from Milan to Vienna; and a manager must have possessed great
administrative ability who could direct three operatic enterprises in
three different capitals at the same time.
Barbaja had in his employment all the great composers and all the best
singers of his native Italy. So numerous was his company that he
scarcely knew who did and who did not belong to it; and a story is told
of his meeting one day a singer of some celebrity, and offering him an
engagement--when, to his consternation and horror, the vocalist informed
him that he had been drawing a regular salary from the theatre for the
last three months. "Go to Donizetti," cried Barbaja, "and tell him to
give you a part without a moment's delay."
On one occasion Donizetti, engaged at that time as accompanist at the
Scala Theatre, had been requested to try the voice of a lady who had
come to Barbaja with a letter of recommendation. Donizetti asked her to
go through a few exercises in solfeggio; on which Barbaja, mistaking
_do_, _re_, _mi_, &c., for the words of some outlandish tongue,
exclaimed that it would be useless to sing in a foreign language, and
that the postulant for an engagement had better carry her talents
elsewhere. Another time, when a favourite vocalist complained that the
piano, to whose accompaniment she had been rehearsing her part, was too
high, Barbaja at once promised that before the next rehearsal he would
have it lowered. The following morning the instrument was, as before,
half a note above the requisite pitch. It was pointed out to Barbaja
that the piano still wanted lowering; upon which he flew into a violent
passion and, summoning one of the stage carpenters, asked him why, when
he had been told that the piano was too high, he had not shortened it
by two or three inches instead of doing so only by one.
When his singers were genuinely successful he would take their part
under all circumstances, and defend them against every attack. A popular
prima donna told him one day, on arriving at the San Carlo Theatre,
whither she had been borne in a sedan-chair, that one of the carriers
had been very negligent in his duty, and had allowed her several times
to be bumped on the ground. Barbaja called the porters to his room and,
giving each a box on the ears, exclaimed, "Which of you two brutes was
in fault?"
For the sake of teasing Barbaja, a few of the subscribers to the Scala
Theatre agreed one night to hiss Rubini in one of his best parts.
Barbaja, perfectly aghast, looked from his box, shook his fist at the
seeming malcontents, and, alike indignant and enthusiastic, called out
to the universally-admired tenor: "Bravo, Rubini, never mind those pigs!
It is I who pay you, and I am delighted with your singing."
In spite of his long-continued success, Barbaja ended, like so many
managers, by failing; and but that he stood well with the Austrian
Government, who gave him a contract for building barracks at Milan, he
might have died in poverty. There is nothing, however, to show that his
collapse was due to ignorance of music. It would be probably nearer the
truth to attribute it to that loss of energy and tact by which advancing
years are generally accompanied.
Among the _prime donne_ of the San Carlo Theatre Barbaja's favourite, in
the fullest sense of the word, was Mademoiselle Colbran, who, after
studying under Crescentini and Marinelli, made her first appearance with
brilliant success at Paris in 1801. She was then but sixteen years of
age, having been born at Madrid in 1785. When Rossini, then, first met
her at Naples in 1815, she was already thirty. Her voice began to
deteriorate soon afterwards, if we are to believe Stendhal--who, much as
he had in common with the Abbe Carpani (including nearly the whole of
the materials for his _Life of Rossini_), did not share that writer's
admiration for a singer whom it was the fashion for royalists to laud,
for republicans to decry. Stendhal, though he feared that opera,
accustomed to subventions and to patronage of all kinds, could not
flourish under republican institutions, was nevertheless inclined
towards republicanism.
Mademoiselle Colbran has been described as a great beauty in the queenly
style--dark hair, brilliant eyes, imposing demeanour; and though
Stendhal is under the impression that her voice began to fall off soon
after Rossini's arrival at Naples, it seems certain that she must have
preserved it in all its beauty until long afterwards. Rossini in any
case wrote for her many of his best parts which, had they not been
perfectly sung, could scarcely have met with the success they actually
obtained. Among these parts may be mentioned in particular those of
Desdemona, Elcia in _Mose in Egitto_, Elena in _La Donna del Lago_,
Zelmira in the opera of that name, and Semiramide. The artistic merits
of Mademoiselle Colbran were, however, as has already been mentioned,
discussed habitually from a political point of view. Revolutionists
hissed her because the king admired her, while royalists were ready
under all circumstances to applaud her. The first part which Rossini
composed for Mademoiselle Colbran, his future wife, was that of
_Elisabetta_ in the opera of the same name; a work founded on Scott's
novel of _Kenilworth_, and written appropriately enough by a certain
Signor Smith. Smith's knowledge of the English language seems, in spite
of his name, to have been imperfect; for, instead of taking his story
direct from the original, he borrowed it in an adapted shape from a
French melodrama.
The Neapolitans, up to this time, had not heard a note of Rossini's
music. He had conquered the hearts of the Venetians and the Milanese.
But he was unknown at Naples; and not to have earned the applause of the
Neapolitan public was not to have achieved an Italian reputation. The
connoisseurs of Naples were by no means disposed to accept Rossini on
the strength of the success he had achieved at Milan and Venice; while
the professors of the famous Conservatorio, whose classes he had not
followed, were incredulous as to his being a composer of any sound
musical learning, and were quite prepared to find him a much overrated
man.
Rossini began by playing a trick on the Neapolitan audience; for in lieu
of an original composition, he prefaced _Elisabetta_ with an overture
which he had written the year before at Milan for _Aureliano in
Palmira_--and which he was to offer to the Romans a year afterwards as
overture to _Il Barbiere_. The Neapolitans were delighted with the
overture; but it has been surmised that had they known it to have been
originally composed for an opera which had failed at Milan, they would
not, perhaps, have applauded it so much. The first piece in the opera
was, as Stendhal tells us, a duet for Leicester and his young wife, in
the minor, which, says Stendhal, was "very original." The finale to the
first act, in which the leading motives of the overture were introduced,
called forth enthusiastic applause. "All the emotions of serious opera
with no tedious intervals between:" such, Stendhal (or Carpani) informs
us, was the phrase in which the general verdict of the Neapolitan public
was expressed. Mademoiselle Colbran's greatest success, however, was not
achieved until the second act where, on the rising of the curtain,
Elisabetta, attired in an historical costume--warranted authentic and
ordered expressly from London by a fanatical English admirer--had a
grand scena. The concerted finale to this act was another triumph both
for the composer and for the singers.
_Elisabetta_ made but little mark beyond the frontiers of Italy. It
contains much beautiful music; but the distribution of characters is not
all that could be desired. Thus the parts of Norfolk, and of Leicester,
are both given to tenors; though Norfolk as a wicked personage should
have been represented by a baritone or bass. The bass singer, however,
was still kept in the background; and at the San Carlo, though there
were three admirable tenors--Davide, Nozzari, and Garcia,--there was no
bass singer capable of taking a leading part. But for Rossini the bass
singer might have remained indefinitely in obscurity. Gradually,
however, he was brought to the front, not only in comic operas, where
the Italians already tolerated him, but also in serious operas like
_Otello_ and _Semiramide_, and in half-character works such as
_Cenerentola_ and _La Gazza Ladra_. _Elisabetta_ was the first Italian
opera in which recitative was accompanied by the stringed quartet in
place of the double bass and piano previously employed.
Rossini had plenty of work to do at Naples, for, besides composing two
new operas every year he had to transpose parts and to correct and
complete operatic scores. But in addition to all this he found time to
write two works for Rome, which were produced in 1816, during the
carnival. One of these, _Torvaldo e Dorliska_, was brought out at the
Teatro Valle where it met with so little success that the composer
informed his mother of the fact by sending her the drawing, not this
time of a full-sized _fiasco_, but of a small _fiasco_ or _fiaschetto_.
_Torvaldo e Dorliska_, in which the principal parts were written for
Remorini and Galli, the two best bass singers of their time, and for
Donzelli, the celebrated tenor, must in spite of its failure have
possessed some merit. It was performed at Paris in 1825 for the first
appearance of Mademoiselle Garcia, the future Malibran; and Rossini
borrowed from it the motive of the admirable letter duet in _Otello_.