ROSSINI ON HIS TRAVELS.
When in 1823, the year of _Semiramide's_ being produced at Venice,
Rossini started with his wife, the former Mdlle. Colbran, for
Paris--whence he made his way to London, returning to Paris soon
afterwards--he enjoyed a world-wide reputation, but was far from being
rich. Thanks, however, to a season in London, and to five years'
residence in Paris, where lucrative posts were given to him, he soon
made his fortune.
Speaking some thirty years afterwards of his visit to London, Rossini
said to Hiller:[9] "'From the beginning I had an opportunity of
observing how disproportionately singers were paid in comparison with
composers. If the composer got fifty ducats, the singer received a
thousand. Italian operatic composers might formerly write heaven knows
how many operas, and yet only be able to exist miserably. Things hardly
went otherwise with myself until my appointment under Barbaja.'
"'_Tancredi_ was your first opera which really made a great hit,
maestro; how much did you get for it?'
"'Five hundred francs,' replied Rossini, 'and when I wrote my last
Italian opera, _Semiramide_, and stipulated for 5,000 francs, I was
looked upon, not by the impresario alone, but by the entire public, as a
kind of pickpocket.'
"'You have the consolation of knowing,' said Hiller, 'that singers,
managers, and publishers, have been enriched by your means.'
"'A fine consolation' replied Rossini. 'Except during my stay in
England, I never gained sufficient by my art to enable me to put by
anything; and even in London I did not get money as a composer, but as
an accompanist.'
"'But still,' observed Hiller,'that was because you were a celebrated
composer.'
"'That is what my friends said,' replied Rossini, 'to decide me to do
it. It may have been prejudice, but I had a kind of repugnance to being
paid for accompanying on the piano, and I have only done so in London.
However, people wanted to see the tip of my nose, and to hear my wife. I
had fixed for our co-operation at musical soirees the tolerably high
price of 50_l._ We attended somewhere about sixty such soirees, and that
was after all worth having. In London, too, musicians will do anything
to get money, and some delicious facts came under my observation there.
For instance, the first time that I undertook the task of accompanist at
a soiree of this description, I was informed that Puzzi, the celebrated
horn-player, and Dragonetti, the more celebrated contrabassist, would
also be present. I thought they would perform solos; not a bit of it!
They were to assist me in accompanying. "Have you then your parts to
accompany these pieces?" I asked them. "Not we," was their answer, "but
we get well paid, and we accompany as we think fit!"
'"These extemporaneous attempts at instrumentation struck me as rather
dangerous, and I therefore begged Dragonetti to content himself with
giving a few pizzicatos when I winked at him, and Puzzi to strengthen
the final cadenzas with a few notes, which, being a good musician, he
easily invented for the occasion. In this manner things went off without
any very disastrous results, and every one was pleased.'"
"'Delicious!' exclaimed Hiller, 'still it strikes me that the English
have made great progress in a musical point of view. At the present time
a great deal of good music is performed in London--it is well performed
and listened to attentively, that is to say, at public concerts. In
private drawing-rooms music still plays a sorry part, and a great number
of individuals, totally devoid of talent, give themselves airs of
incredible assurance, and impart instruction on subjects of which their
knowledge amounts almost to nothing.'
"'I knew in London a certain professor who had amassed a large fortune
as a teacher of singing and the pianoforte,' said Rossini, 'while all he
understood was to play a little, most wretchedly, on the flute. There
was another man, with an immense connection, who did not even know the
notes. He employed an accompanist to beat into his head the pieces he
afterwards taught, and to accompany him in his lessons; but he had a
good voice.'"
Many of the French composers, with about an equal proportion of critics,
received Rossini with anything but cordiality. He was chiefly condemned
as a seeker after new effects. But Berlioz some years later vituperated
him from quite another point of view. He found his music heartless,
unemotional, and written entirely for the singer, and for the sake of
vocal, to the disregard of dramatic effect. "If," he afterwards said,
"it had been in my power to place a barrel of powder under the Salle
Louvois and blow it up during the representation of _La Gazza Ladra_ or
_Il Barbiere_, with all that it contained, I certainly should not have
failed to do so."
The composer Bertin, less a contemporary than a predecessor of Rossini,
wrote of him in the following terms:--
"M. Rossini has a brilliant imagination, _verve_, originality, great
fecundity; but he knows that he is not always pure and correct; and,
whatever certain persons may say, purity of style is not to be
disdained, and faults of syntax are never excusable. Besides, since the
writers of our daily journals constitute themselves judges in music,
having qualified myself by _Montano_, _Le Delire_, _Aline_, &c., I think
I have the right to give my opinion _ex professo_. I give it frankly,
and sign it, which is not done by certain persons who strive incognito
to make and unmake reputations. All this has been suggested only by the
love of art, and in the interest of M. Rossini himself. This composer is
beyond contradiction the most brilliant talent that Italy has produced
since Cimarosa; but one may deserve to be called celebrated without
being on an equality with Mozart."
It seems afterwards to have occurred to Bertin that music as good as
Rossini's might be composed by machinery. He declares, indeed, in a
pamphlet directed against Rossini, entitled "La musique mechanique et de
la musique philosophique," that he once asked Maelzel, the inventor of
the metronome, whether he could construct a machine to compose music;
upon which Maelzel daringly replied that he could, but that his
mechanically-made tunes would not be up to the level of Sacchini,
Cimarosa, and Mozart, and would be worthy only of Rossini.
"M. Auber has told me," says M. Jouvin, in his Life of that composer,
"how he met Rossini for the first time at a dinner given by Carafa in
honour of his illustrious compatriot. On rising from table the maestro,
at the request of his host, went to the piano and sang Figaro's
cavatina, 'Largo al fattotum della cita.'
"'I shall never forget,' said M. Auber to me, 'the effect produced by
his lightning-like execution.' Rossini had a beautiful baritone voice,
and he sang his music with a spirit and _verve_ which neither Pellegrini
nor Galli nor Lablache approached in the same part. As for his art as an
accompanist, it was marvellous; it was not on a key-board but on an
orchestra that the vertiginous hands of the pianist seemed to gallop.
When he had finished I looked mechanically at the ivory keys; I fancied
I could see them smoking. On arriving home I felt much inclined to throw
my scores into the fire. 'It will warm them, perhaps,' I said to myself;
'besides, what is the use of composing music, if one cannot compose like
Rossini?'"
Apart from a little professional jealousy, Rossini met in Paris with the
warmest possible reception; and the men in authority gave him
substantial marks of their esteem. He was appointed director of the
Theatre des Italiens, with a salary of 20,000 francs a year; and when
after eighteen months' service he resigned this post, the salary was
continued to him in connection with another, of which the duties were
purely nominal: that of "Inspector of singing." In granting Rossini this
salary, the object of the government was to induce him to remain in
France, and to compose a series of works for the Academie where, after
producing _Il Viaggio a Reims_, at the Italian Theatre in honour of
Charles X.'s coronation, he brought out in succession _Le Siege de
Corinthe_,[10] re-arranged from _Maometto Secundo_, an opera of the year
1820; _Moise_, re-arranged from _Mose in Egitto_, a Lenten opera
oratorio of the year 1818; _Le Comte Ory_, re-arranged with many
additions from _Il Viaggio a Reims_; and his greatest work _Guillaume
Tell_.
Every one knows that after _William Tell_, Rossini wrote no more for the
stage. But every one does not know that he for some little time
afterwards entertained an idea of composing an opera on the subject of
Faust. "Yes," answered Rossini, when Ferdinand Hiller questioned him on
the subject, "it was for a long period a favourite notion of mine, and I
had already planned the whole scenarium with Jouy; it was naturally
based upon Goethe's poem. At this time, however there arose in Paris a
regular 'Faust' mania; every theatre had a particular 'Faust' of its
own, and this somewhat damped my ardour. Meanwhile the revolution of
July had taken place; the Grand Opera, previously a royal institution,
passed into the hands of a private person; my mother was dead, and my
father found life in Paris unbearable because he did not understand
French: so I cancelled the agreement which bound me by rights to send in
four other grand operas, preferring to remain quietly in my native land,
enlivening the last years of my old father's existence. I had been far
away from my poor mother when she expired; this was an endless source of
regret to me, and I was most apprehensive that the same thing might
occur in my father's case."
Many explanations have been given of Rossini's reasons for abstaining
from writing any more for the stage, when he had once produced _William
Tell_--nor did he afterwards compose anything whatever of importance
except his thoroughly beautiful _Stabat Mater_. Some of these
explanations have been already referred to. The truth in this matter
seems to have been that Rossini acted under the influence of a great
variety of reasons. Without being hurt by the comparative coldness with
which _William Tell_ for a time was received, without being jealous of
Meyerbeer's and of Halevy's success, which, according to some
anecdote-mongers, caused him to exclaim: "Je reviendrai quand les Juifs
auront fini leur Sabbat," without even having "written himself out," he
may well have reflected whether such a strain as he had subjected
himself to in composing _William Tell_ was worth undergoing a second
time. With the exception of _Il Viaggio a Reims_ nothing that he wrote
for Paris, until he undertook _William Tell_, was absolutely new. He had
already lost the habit, if not the faculty, of composing rapidly; and
this same _Viaggio a Reims_ was the only original work he produced
between _Semiramide_, 1823, and _Guillaume Tell_, 1829. Writing at Paris
for as fine an orchestra as that of the San Carlo Theatre, and for a
finer chorus, he paid particular attention to the choral and orchestral
portions of his last great work. He also profited by the fact that at
the Academie he was free to have as many rehearsals as he pleased; and
to turn this advantage to the greatest possible account he gave himself
infinite, and with him quite unusual pains, to secure a perfect
execution of his opera. In writing for the voices moreover, he had
completely changed his style. What indeed can be more different from the
florid and frequently insignificant,--or, so to say,
anti-significant--passages in the rich, soft, voluptuous melodies of
_Semiramide_, than the simple, emotional, eminently dramatic strains
given to the singers in _Guillaume Tell_? Heine speaks in his "Parisian
Letters" of Meyerbeer's mother having once told him that her son was
"not obliged to compose;" on which Heine remarks that a windmill might
as well say it was not "obliged" to go round: though a windmill will
turn if the wind blows, just as a composer will produce music if moved
by the spirit. Talking on this most interesting subject of speculation
to Ferdinand Hiller, Rossini himself confessed that "when a man has
composed thirty-seven operas he begins to feel a little tired."
_Guillaume Tell_, in any case, marks the end of Rossini's career as an
operatic composer.
Opera has a distinct history in Italy, in France, and in Germany. For a
considerable time it makes progress in Italy. Then Italian composers and
Italian singers go abroad taking Italian opera with them. German
composers, too, visit Italy, and after studying there return to their
native land, to produce with modifications operas which must still be
regarded as Italian in character. At last the Germans who have studied
in Italy become the rivals of the Italian masters. Then Gluck and
Piccinni contend with one another in presence of French audiences, and
above all, of French critics. Finally it becomes the turn of the
Italians to borrow from the Germans; for Mozart, so highly indebted for
his melodic inspiration--or at least for his melodic forms--to Italy,
was so much before the Italians in regard to the composition of his
orchestra and the construction of his musical pieces, that when Rossini
wished to introduce into Italian opera the important reforms which must
always be associated with his name, he had nothing to do but to turn to
Mozart as a model. Rossini was the first Italian composer who
accompanied recitative with the full band, assigned leading parts to
bass singers, made of each dramatic scene one continuous piece of music,
and brought to perfection those highly varied, amply developed concerted
finales, which form so striking a feature in modern Italian opera. All
these innovations were simply adaptations from Mozart.
The history of Rossini's Italian career is the history of opera in Italy
during the first half of the nineteenth century; for Rossini caused the
works of his predecessors to be laid aside, while his own works and
those of his immediate successors, and in an artistic sense followers,
continued to be played almost to the exclusion of all others until the
Verdi period. And even Verdi, who in his latter works has studied
dramatic consistency and dramatic effect more than Rossini studied them
in his earlier works, must be regarded as belonging, more or less
completely, to the school of Rossini.