FROM "OTELLO" TO "SEMIRAMIDE."
In 1816, Rossini brought out at the San Carlo, of Naples, the second of
his serious operas, or at least the second of those which were destined
to make a mark: _Otello_. This work exhibited reforms of various kinds
much more important than any that are to be noticed in _Tancredi_.
Recitative is more sparingly used than in the earlier work, and for the
first time it is accompanied by the full band. Now, too, Rossini
banished the piano from the orchestra, where it had been allowed to
remain long after its expulsion as an orchestral instrument from the
bands of Germany and (thanks to Gluck) of France. Two years after its
production at Naples Byron witnessed a representation of _Otello_ at
Venice, and gives some account of it in one of his letters dated 1818.
The libretto struck him as bad and ridiculous, but he praises the music,
and the style in which it was executed. Lord Mount-Edgcumbe, when the
work was given in London, must have been disgusted to find two of the
leading parts assigned to bass voices. Iago is of necessity almost as
important a character as Othello himself. Rossini's librettist kept him,
nevertheless, a little too much in the back ground, while Roderigo, on
the other hand, is too much brought forward. In expelling the piano from
the orchestra Rossini at the same time, did away with those interminable
recitatives accompanied by piano or piano and double bass which
separated the musical pieces in the works composed by Rossini's
predecessors. It was the impersonation, however, of _Otello_ by Davide,
which, in the way of acting and singing, helped more than anything else
to ensure the success of the performance.
"Davide," wrote a French critic, M. Bertin, from Venice, in 1823,
"excites among the _dilettanti_ of this town an enthusiasm and delight
which could scarcely be conceived without having been witnessed. He is a
singer of the new school, full of mannerism, affectation and display,
abusing, like Martin, his magnificent voice with its prodigious compass
(three octaves comprised between four B flats). He crushes the principal
motive of an air beneath the luxuriance of his ornamentation, which has
no other merit than that of difficulty conquered. But he is also a
singer of warmth, _verve_, expression, energy and musical sentiment;
alone he can fill up and give life to a scene; it is impossible for
another singer to carry away an audience as he does, and when he will
only be simple he is admirable; he is the Rossini of song, he is a great
singer, the greatest I have ever heard. Doubtless the manner in which
Garcia plays and sings the part of Otello is preferable, taking it
altogether, to that of Davide. It is purer, more severe, more constantly
dramatic; but with all his faults Davide produces more effect--a great
deal more effect. There is something in him, I cannot say what, which,
even when he is ridiculous, commands, enhances attention. He never
leaves you cold, and when he does not move you he astonishes you; in a
word, before hearing him, I did not know what the power of singing
really was. The enthusiasm he excites is without limits. In fact his
faults are not faults, for Italians who in their _opera seria_ do not
employ what the French call the tragic style, scarcely understand us
when we tell them that a waltz or a quadrille movement is out of place
in the mouth of a Caesar, an Assur, or an Otello. With them the essential
thing is to please; they are only difficult on this point, and their
indifference as to all the rest is really inconceivable. Here is an
example of it. Davide, considering, apparently, that the final duet of
_Otello_ did not sufficiently show off his voice, determined to
substitute for it a duet from _Armida_ ('Amor possente nome') which is
very pretty, but anything rather than severe. As it was impossible to
kill Desdemona to such a tune, the Moor, after giving way to the most
violent jealousy, sheaths his dagger, and begins in the most tender and
graceful manner his duet with Desdemona, at the conclusion of which he
takes her politely by the hand, and retires amidst the applause and
bravos of the public, who seems to think it quite natural that the piece
should finish in this manner, or rather that it should not finish at
all; for after this beautiful _denouement_ the action is about as far
advanced as it was in the first scene. We do not in France carry our
love of music so far as to tolerate such absurdities as these, and
perhaps we are right."
_Otello_ in the present day seems somewhat antiquated, and in some of
the dramatic scenes the accent of passion is smothered beneath roulades
and vocalistic ornaments of all kinds. But it contains some fine pieces,
and the last act is full of beauty. Speaking once to a friend on the
subject of his own operas, Rossini said that much of what he had written
must in time pass out of fashion, but that he believed the second act of
_William Tell_, the last act of _Otello_, and the whole of the _Barber
of Seville_ would survive the rest.[8] _Il Barbiere_ is, indeed, as
fresh now as when it was first written. Yet Paisiello's treatment of the
same subject was found to be old-fashioned in a very few years--was in
fact rendered so by the newness, the brightness, the youthful gaiety of
Rossini's setting.
Nothing more need be said in this volume of Rossini considered as a
composer of comic opera. He cultivated every style, including the
ancient style of _La Cenerentola_ which contains much comic with some
serious music, and of _La Gazza Ladra_, which might well have been
treated seriously throughout, though in some of the gravest situations
of this work he is gay, in some of the severest, lively.
_La Cenerentola_, like _Il Barbiere_, _La Gazza Ladra_, and so many
successful operas by Rossini and other Italian composers (_L'Elisir_,
_Linda_, _Lucrezia_, _La Favorita_, _Maria di Rohan_, for instance, of
Donizetti, and the _Sonnambula_ and _Norma_ of Bellini), is based on a
French play--the ingenious comedy of _Cendrillon_, by Etienne. Rossini
composed it for the Teatro Valle of Rome, where it was produced for the
carnival of 1817, on the 26th of December, 1816, precisely one year
after _Torvaldo e Dorliska_, nearly one year after the _Barber_, a few
months after _Otello_, and a few months before _La Gazza Ladra_. Between
the winter of 1815 and the spring of 1816, Rossini composed and produced
six operas, including the four admirable ones just named. The two others
given with comparatively little success were _Torvaldo e Dorliska_ and
_La Gazzetta_.
_La Cenerentola_, on its first production, excited no such enthusiasm as
_Il Barbiere_, but drew after its second or third representation. It is
known to have been Rossini's custom when an opera of his fell, to pick
up the pieces; and the score of _La Cenerentola_ was adorned throughout
with fragments saved from the ruins of his earlier works; such as the
wholly forgotten _Pietra del Paragone_ and the never-much-remembered
_Turco in Italia_. To the former had originally belonged the drinking
chorus, the burlesque proclamation of the Baron, and the duet "Un soave
non so che;" to the latter the duet "Zitti zitti," the sestet and the
stretta of the finale.
To _La Cenerentola_ belongs the most beautiful and the most striking of
Rossini's final airs for the prima donna: the once highly popular "Non
piu mesta." This was his fourth air of the kind; and he now abandoned
this method of bringing an opera to a brilliant termination in favour of
other composers--who duly adopted it.
The part of Cenerentola, like that of Rosina, was written for Madame
Giorgi-Righetti, who obtained therein the most brilliant success,
especially in the famous _rondo finale_. All Rossini's great prima-donna
parts were composed for the contralto or for the mezzo-soprano voice;
for Madame Marcolini, Tancredi; for Madame Giorgi-Righetti, Rosina and
Cenerentola; and for Mademoiselle Colbran, Desdemona and Semiramide.
When Rossini began his career, so absurd was the prevalent custom of
distributing the parts that the first woman's part was habitually given
to the contralto, the first man's part to the sopranist, or artificial
male soprano. Rossini continued to compose principal female parts, first
for the contralto, then for the mezzo-soprano voice; and it was only
when he produced _Matilda di Shubrun_ towards the end of his Italian
career (1821) that he assigned a leading character to a soprano. Matilda
in _Matilda di Shubrun_, and Matilde in _Guillaume Tell_, are the only
two parts that Rossini ever wrote for the soprano voice.
Whether soprano voices have been forced into activity in order to suit
new tastes, or whether composers have taken to writing for the soprano
voice because in the present day sopranos, and especially "light
sopranos," abound, whereas good mezzo-soprano and contralto voices are
but rarely to be met with, it would be difficult to say. But with the
exception of Meyerbeer's _Africaine_ and Donizetti's _Favorita_, no
leading operatic part has for the last fifty years or more been written
for the contralto voice.
A new kind of part, however, has been found for the most masculine of
feminine voices; such parts as those of Pippo in _La Gazza Ladra_, of
Malcolm Graeme in _La Donna del Lago_, and of Arsace in _Semiramide_; and
here again we see an innovation of Rossini's, which by his successors
has been generally adopted.
In connection with _La Gazza Ladra_ a few words may here be said of
Rossini's orchestration; much more varied, more brilliant and more
sonorous than that of his predecessors. Rossini introduced new
instruments, and with them new instrumental combinations. These
innovations, like those consisting in a new distribution of the voice
parts, and in the substitution of orchestral melodies with declamatory
phrases here and there for the singers in lieu of endless recitative
accompanied by chords for the violoncello and piano, excited the
hostility of many orthodox professors, together with old-fashioned
connoisseurs and amateurs of all kinds. They accused Rossini of bringing
clarinets from cowherds, horns from the hunting field, trumpets from the
camp, and trombones from the infernal regions. He was destined, on
establishing himself at Paris, to introduce cornets, ophicleides, and,
in the overture to _William Tell_, the nearest possible approach to the
instrument with which the cowherds of Switzerland do really appeal to
the animals placed under their care. But before he had reached these
extremes, before he had in _Semiramide_ brought an entire military band
on to the stage, and had in the same opera written for four horns a
beautiful and beautifully harmonised melody which does not in any way
suggest the chase, he raised the mortal anger of one of his adversaries
and actually placed his life in danger by beginning the overture to _La
Gazza Ladra_ with a duet for drums. A young enthusiast on the side of
stagnation went about armed with the proclaimed intention of slaying the
ruthless innovator. Rossini sent for the juvenile fanatic, talked to
him, explained that in a piece of a military character drums were not
altogether out of place and at last succeeded in appeasing his fury.
To appreciate at a glance Rossini's importance as a writer for the
orchestra it is only necessary to recall the fact that he alone of
Italian composers has composed overtures which live with a life of their
own apart from the works to which they belong, and that of such
overtures he has left five; those of the _Barber_, of _La Gazza Ladra_,
of _Semiramide_, of the _Siege of Corinth_, and of _William Tell_.