DONIZETTI AND BELLINI.
Donizetti, Rossini's immediate successor but not supplanter, composed
from sixty to seventy operas ("_c'est beaucoup" dirait_ Candide) of
which to this day three at least ("_c'est beaucoup" dirait_ Martin), are
still played regularly every season in London: _Lucia, Lucrezia_, and
_La Favorita_. Of his two charming works in the light style--comic
operas in which the composer never approaches the farcical, never once
ceases to be graceful--neither _L'Elisir_ nor _Don Pasquale_ can be
compared to the much more vigorous _Barber_. Nor has Donizetti produced
any work so full of melody as _Semiramide_, or so dramatic as _William
Tell_. But he rises to unwonted heights in the last act of _La
Favorite_; which, composed for the French Academie, became naturalised
in due time on the Italian operatic stage under the title of _La
Favorita_.
Although the career of Donizetti was very much longer than that of
Bellini, whom he preceded and whom he survived, he produced in
proportion to the number of his works fewer by a great deal which have
kept the stage.
Donizetti brought out his first opera _Enrico di Borgogna_ at Venice in
1818, when he was twenty years of age, and _Catarina Cornaro_, his
sixty-third (not to count two or three that were never produced) at
Naples, in 1844, when he was forty-six.
Bellini brought out the first of his works performed in public, _Bianca
e Fernando_ (he had previously composed a sort of pasticcio for the
school theatre of the Naples Conservatorio) at the San Carlo in 1826,
when he was twenty-five years of age; and his last, _I Puritani_, at
Paris in 1835. He had a career then, of but nine years, during which he
composed ten operas, of which five were played with great success, and
of which three, _La Sonnambula_, _Norma_, and _I Puritani_, forty-five
years after their composer's death, still keep the stage. Stendhal (or
perhaps it was Carpani) had foretold that Rossini, the composer of
florid music, would be followed by a master whose melodies would be
remarkable for extreme simplicity, and this prophecy was fulfilled in
the case of Bellini.
Donizetti, like so many other composers, was not encouraged by his
parents to adopt the career in which he was destined to obtain so much
distinction. When, however, his father at last consented to his becoming
a professional musician, he is said to have presented him with an ivory
scraper, as if to impress upon him the necessity of practising the art
of erasing. Probably no composer ever did less in that line than
Donizetti; and though he wrote more accurately than many other Italian
composers, one is frequently astonished to find in his works melodies of
significance and beauty followed at haphazard by the merest
trivialities. Donizetti never went to work without the paternal scraper
by his side. The fluent composer, however, had no occasion to make use
of it for scratching out notes; and it never seems to have occurred to
him to strike out feeble passages, not to say entire pieces. What
Donizetti's father should have given him was not a scraper but a pair of
scissors.
Donizetti, born at Bergamo in 1798, was but seventeen years of age when
he commenced his studies in his native town under Mayer, who, before the
appearance of Rossini, was one of the most popular composers in Italy;
and he finished them (so far as studies can ever be finished) at Bologna
under Pilotti and Mattei, the latter of whom had some years previously
been Rossini's instructor. Finding that Mattei gave him very few lessons
at the Bologna Lyceum, where he was professor, the youthful and
ingenious Donizetti contrived to obtain supplementary ones by making
himself very agreeable to his master and by turning the conversation as
often as possible to musical subjects. He even went so far as to play at
cards every evening with Mattei's aged mother, a piece of benevolence
for which he was rewarded by much instructive talk from the grateful
son. While at the Lyceum Donizetti occupied himself not only with music,
but also with drawing, architecture, and even poetry; and that he could
turn out fair enough verses for musical purposes was shown when, many
years afterwards, he wrote--so rapidly that the word "improvised" might
here be used--for the benefit of a manager in distress, both words and
music of a little one-act opera, called _Il Campanello_, founded on the
_Sonnette de Nuit_ of Scribe.
No composer, with the exception of Mozart, possessed a more remarkable
memory than Donizetti. After two hearings of Allegri's _Miserere_,
Mozart remembered the whole work so as to be able to write it out note
for note; and Donizetti, wishing to procure for Mayer a copy of an opera
which was being performed at Bologna, and which the impresario had
refused to lend, had such a lively recollection of the music after
hearing it two or three times that he was able to put it down on paper
from beginning to end. Unfortunately the tellers of these stories omit
as a rule to say whether the possessors of such wonderful mnemonic
powers make notes while hearing the compositions, which, in rather a
literal sense, they propose to carry away with them. A prodigious memory
for small things as for great would be necessary to enable a musician in
the present day to write out, even after a dozen hearings, an opera by
Meyerbeer or by Wagner with all the changes of harmony, all the details
of instrumentation. The operas, however, of Donizetti's youth were much
simpler affairs than these latter-day productions.
Already known by many pieces of instrumental and religious music,
Donizetti produced his first opera, _Enrico di Borgogna_, at Venice in
1818. This work obtained so much success that the composer was requested
to undertake at once a second one for the same city. After writing an
opera for Mantua in 1819, _Il Falignamo di Livonia_, Donizetti visited
Rome, where his _Zoraide di Granata_ procured him an exemption from
military service, which would otherwise have carried him off, and the
honour of being crowned at the Capitol. He now produced a whole series
of operas which owed their success chiefly to the skill with which he
imitated the style of Rossini. Strangely enough it was not until Rossini
had ceased to write that Donizetti, his immediate successor, exhibited
something like a style of his own. In 1830, however, the in many parts
highly-dramatic _Anna Bolena_ was produced; a work which was long
regarded as its composer's masterpiece. Donizetti wrote _Anna Bolena_
for Pasta and Rubini, and it was first represented for Pasta's benefit
in the year 1831. In the tenor air, _Vivi tu_, Rubini made a striking
success; and it was in this opera, as Henry VIII., that Lablache first
gained the favour of the London public. _Anna Bolena_ was destined soon
to be eclipsed by other works from the pen of the same composer; and it
is now but rarely, if ever, heard. Many years, indeed, have passed since
it was last performed in London with Mdlle. Titiens in the principal
character. It contains an unusually large number of expressive, singable
melodies; and many of its scenes possess more dramatic significance than
belong as a rule to Rossini's Italian works. It marks a step in fact, in
the movement from the style of Rossini, as exhibited in his Italian
operas, towards that of Verdi; a movement in which Bellini, standing by
himself, cannot be said to have had any part. Neither in his earlier
operas does Bellini, like Donizetti, resemble Rossini, nor in his later
ones does he, like Donizetti, approach what was afterwards to be known
as the style of Verdi.
_Lucrezia Borgia_, written for Milan in 1834, was a distinct advance on
_Anna Bolena_. This work, with _Lucia_ and _La Favorita_, by which it
was to be succeeded, must be ranked among Donizetti's most successful
productions; and it has already been pointed out that the three operas
just named are the only ones by which Donizetti is now represented
regularly every year at our great lyrical theatres. _Lucrezia Borgia_ is
based on one of Victor Hugo's most dramatic plays; but the composer has
not turned to so effective account as might have been expected, the
great scene in which Maffio Orsini's drinking song is interrupted by the
funeral dirge given to the procession of monks in the outside street.
Like Verdi, some years afterwards, in _Ernani_ and in _Rigoletto_,
Donizetti counted too much on a musical effect which is naturally much
more impressive in a spoken drama, where music, until this one scene,
has not been heard, than in an opera which is sung throughout. Francis
I.'s song, in the drama of _Le Roi s'amuse_, arrests the attention much
more than does the Duke of Mantua's canzone in _Rigoletto_. The horn of
Hernani is mysterious and terrifying in the play, while in the opera,
heard after many other horns, not to speak of cornets, trombones,
ophecleides, and all the instruments of the Sax family, it scarcely
excites even a feeling of surprise. As regards _Lucrezia Borgia_, though
the singers of the drinking-song and the chanters of the burial service
have the scene entirely to themselves, yet the contrast between reckless
life and inevitable death is less striking in a work where music
possesses no special significance than in one where music has been
introduced for the sake of impressiveness in the single scene where it
is employed. Taking it, however, for what it is worth, Donizetti's
successor, Verdi, would doubtless have made more of it than Donizetti
himself has done. Maffio Orsini's brindisi is spirited, and
characteristically voluptuous. But there is nothing very awe-inspiring
in the chorus of monks at the back of the stage; and the two pieces bear
no relation to one another--which they might perhaps with advantage have
been made to do.
_Lucrezia Borgia_ contains less recitative than belongs to the operas of
Rossini, who himself dispensed with the endless monologues and
recitatives cultivated by his predecessors. Indeed, the amount of
measured talk in _Lucrezia Borgia_ scarcely exceeds that which is to be
met with in the most popular of Verdi's works. The brilliancy of the
introduction, the series of dramatic scenes--for which the composer had,
above all, to thank his librettist, who, in his turn, was indebted to
Victor Hugo--and an unusually large number of tuneful themes for four
leading personages among whom the interest is judiciously distributed,
could not fail to secure for _Lucrezia Borgia_ the success it in fact
obtained.
The graceful _Elisir d'Amore_, which, owing to the prevailing taste for
spectacular opera, is now but rarely heard, was given for the first time
at Milan in 1832. Donizetti was now composing operas at the rate of
about three a year. Many of them made but little impression and scarcely
a twelfth part of them are performed in the present day.
In 1835, however, Donizetti produced an opera which was received with
enthusiasm, which soon became popular throughout Europe, and which
seems to possess as much vitality now as when it was first brought out.
_Lucia di Lammermoor_, the work in question, contains some of the most
beautiful melodies, in the sentimental style, that Donizetti has
composed; and it is especially admired by musicians for the broadly
conceived, well-constructed and highly dramatic finale which brings the
second act to so effective a conclusion. The sudden appearance of Edgar
of Ravenswood just as his devoted but despairing Lucy has been forced to
sign the contract which gives her to another, is but the first of a
series of situations, skilfully varied and contrasted, which the
librettist has ably planned, and which have been admirably treated by
the composer. The part of Lucia, beloved by every "light soprano" of the
present day, was written for Persiani; that of Edgardo, which, in the
days of the great tenors, was even more popular than the prima donna's
part, for Duprez. Of the last act of _Lucia_, which, until the reign of
the light sopranos set in, used to be considered the crowning glory of
the opera, Donizetti wrote both words and music. It has already been
mentioned that he once transformed a French vaudeville into an Italian
opera or operetta; and it may be added that the libretti of _Betly_ and
of _La Figlia del Reggimento_ are both from his pen. _La Figlia del
Reggimento_, however, was only _La Fille du Regiment_ translated into
Italian; and the libretto of _Betly_ is based, scene by scene, on
Adolphe Adam's little opera of _Le Chalet_--known in English as the
_Swiss Cottage_. In the case of the last act of _Lucia_, Donizetti not
only wrote the words; he designed the scenes. In the novel Edgar loses
himself on the seashore, and is drowned. In the opera, however, when so
far as Lucia is concerned the story is at an end, he reappears in an
appropriate cemetery to celebrate, in a lyrical lament, the virtues of
his demented love; to be informed by a chorus of retainers that she has
not only lost her reason, but has departed altogether from this world;
and finally to stab himself while still singing the praises of his
"_bell' alma adorata_." When the Lucia of the evening is Patti, Nilsson,
or Albani, and the Edgardo is no one in particular, the final scene of
course falls flat; no one, indeed, stops to hear it. But the case was
quite different when the part of Edgardo was filled by a great dramatic
vocalist, like Duprez, or in later days by Mario.
In 1835 Donizetti visited Paris, and there brought out his _Marino
Faliero_, remembered for a time by several pretty pieces, including, in
particular, the opening chorus for the workmen in the arsenal, and a
chorus of gondoliers at the beginning of the second act. He was more
successful when revisiting the French capital, in 1840, he produced
there his opera of _I Martiri_, founded on the subject of _Polyeucte_
which, composed for Naples with a view to Nourrit in the principal part,
had been objected to by the Neapolitan censorship; _La Fille du
Regiment_, written for and performed at the Opera Comique; and _La
Favorite_ composed in the first instance for a house of the second rank,
the Theatre de la Renaissance, but afterwards transferred to the
Academie. _La Favorite_--or _La Favorita_, as it became after passing
from the French to the Italian stage--has, like _Lucrezia Borgia_, the
advantage of being founded on a highly dramatic story. It is based on a
French drama known, until the opera caused it to be forgotten, as _Le
Comte de Comminges_; and it seems to owe its origin to a Spanish work.
In _La Favorita_, as in most Spanish plays, there is no unfolding of the
plot through introductory narrative. The action, from the beginning,
takes place beneath the eyes of the spectator. A young man, already
tired of the world, is seeking repose in the seclusion of a monastery.
But he has been troubled by a vision. The vision still haunts him, and
the prior vainly exhorts him in a duet to abandon all thought of the
external, and to concentrate his attention on the inward and spiritual.
Fernando's adventures with the beautiful lady who turns out to be the
"favourite" of the king, the recompense bestowed upon him in the shape
of this lady's hand for the valour he has shown in the king's service,
and his ultimate return to the monastery when he finds how bitterly he
has been deceived, need not here be recounted. It is worth observing,
however, that the success of the opera has been in a great measure due
to the excellence of the libretto; and that in all really good libretti,
as in that of _La Favorita_, the action of the piece, instead of being
related, is presented continuously on the stage. The duet of the first
act for Fernando and the chief of the monastery is sufficiently
interesting. The choruses of women and the ballet music (of which these
choruses form part), in the second act, are graceful and melodious; and
the king's air in the third act, _Pour tant d'amour_, has been always
liked both by the popular baritones who sing it and by the public.
Leonora's scena, too, "O mon Fernand," possesses, at least in the slow
movement (the quick one being quite unworthy of it), a certain amount of
beauty. But the fourth act of _La Favorita_ is worth all the rest of the
opera, and it may well be regarded as the finest act Donizetti has
composed. The calmness and purity of the tenor's air, "Ange si pur," and
the passionate impulsiveness of the final duet for the despondent
lovers, are eminently dramatic: the character of each piece being
perfectly in accord with the situation. The choruses are highly
impressive, and the whole scene becomes filled with earnest animation as
it moves towards the final climax. Donizetti is said to have sketched
and in the main to have completed this act at a single sitting, and in
the space of some three or four hours. The andante, however, of the duet
was added at the rehearsals; and the cavatina, "Ange si pur" was
borrowed from the score of a work never brought out--_Le Duc d'Albe_. If
there could be any doubt about the fact, it would be difficult to
believe that Fernando's air had not been inspired by the situation in
which it occurs. So, after all, in a measure it was; since the composer
took it from elsewhere to introduce it where he knew it would be in
place.
_La Favorita_ was by no means Donizetti's last work. He had yet to write
_Linda di Chamouni_, in which there is more of what is called "local
colour" than in any other of his operas; and _Don Pasquale_, which,
apart from the brightness and gaiety of its never-ending series of
melodies, would be remembered if only from the circumstance of its
having been written for that incomparable quartet, Grisi, Mario,
Tamburini, and Lablache. The very year (1843) that Donizetti produced
_Don Pasquale_ at Paris he brought out _Maria di Rohan_ at Vienna. The
music of _Maria di Rohan_ is in some respects the most dramatic that
Donizetti has written. The libretto, like almost every good libretto, is
based on a French play--_Un Duel sous Richelieu_; and it contains a very
strong part for the baritone, in which, at our Royal Italian Opera,
Ronconi has often shown the highest histrionic genius, together with a
certain inability to sing in tune. _Maria di Rohan_, however, is not to
be called dramatic simply because it contains one great dramatic part.
What is more important is the fact that the music of the work is
appropriate to the various personages and to the great situations of the
piece. In portraying the original of the jealous husband, Donizetti
exhibits all the earnestness and vigour of Verdi, whom, as before
observed, he resembles more in _Maria di Rohan_ than in any of his
earlier works.
Donizetti's last opera was _Catarina Cornaro_, brought out at Naples in
1844. This was his sixty-third dramatic work, without counting a certain
number--variously estimated, but not likely to be great--which have not
been represented. At least two-thirds of Donizetti's operas have never
been heard in England. Soon after the production of _Catarina Cornaro_
Donizetti fell into a melancholy condition. Symptoms of dementia
manifested themselves while he was on a visit to Paris. The doctors
thought the air of his native town might have some salutary effect, and
the patient was accordingly ordered to Bergamo; but the case was
already a hopeless one. He was taken to Bergamo, but was attacked with
paralysis on the journey; and soon after his arrival, having experienced
a second attack, he succumbed.
Donizetti, as has already been said, worked for some time before and for
many years after Bellini, whom he preceded and survived. Bellini was
born in 1806, nine years after Donizetti, and died in 1837, thirteen
years before him. He was a native of Sicily, and his father, with whom
he took his first lessons in music, was an organist at Catania. The
organist was persuaded to send his son to Naples by a Sicilian nobleman,
who promised to pay his expenses as a student at the famous
Conservatorio, which he in due time entered, and where he had for
fellow-pupil Mercadante--more or less known whereever Italian opera has
been cultivated by his _Giuramento_, the only one of his numerous works
which ever met with anything like an enduring success. Mercadante was a
better musician than Bellini. But he possessed far less creative power;
and his creations or inspirations in the shape of melodies are seldom
comparable in beauty to those of which the scores of _La Sonnambula_,
_Norma_, and _I Puritani_ are so full. The tenor's love-song in _Il
Giuramento_, and the highly dramatic duet which brings that opera to a
conclusion, will be remembered by all who have once heard this
masterpiece of a composer who did not produce masterpieces. Opera-goers
of the last thirty years cannot altogether forget him; and it may in
particular be observed that he made a far more effective use of the
orchestra than his more divinely endowed fellow-student, who thought
and felt in melody as Ovid, and afterwards Pope, "lisped in numbers:"
every sequence of notes that occurred to him being melodious.
Bellini composed his first work while he was studying at the
Conservatorio, where it was afterwards performed. His next production
was intended for the outside public. It was entitled _Adelson e
Salvino_, and had the honour, or at least the advantage, of being
represented in the presence of the illustrious Barbaja, who, without
being a musician, was, as we have already seen, a keen appreciator of
musical excellence. It would have been necessary, perhaps, to have been
a little blind not to perceive the merit of three such masters as
Rossini, Donizetti, and Bellini. Such blindness however, was as a matter
of fact exhibited by a good many, whereas the ex-waiter of the San Carlo
gambling saloon showed himself clear-sighted in the matter. Rossini and
Donizetti had both been under engagements to Barbaja, and he was not
going to allow Bellini to escape him. The famous impresario was at this
time director of the San Carlo at Naples, of the Scala at Milan, of some
smaller operatic establishments in Italy, and of the Italian Opera at
Vienna. He commissioned Bellini in the first place to write an opera for
Naples, where, in 1826, he brought out his _Bianca e Fernando_. This
work obtained no very great amount of success. But it pleased a
considerable portion of the public; and it so far satisfied Barbaja that
the sagacious manager entrusted the young composer, now twenty years of
age, with the libretto of _Il Pirata_, in which the principal part was
to be written specially for Rubini. This time Bellini's opera was to be
produced at La Scala. In the simple touching melodies of _Il Pirata_--of
which the principal one for the tenor, quickly laid hold of by composers
for the pianoforte and the violin, was still remembered long after the
opera, as a whole, had been forgotten--Bellini at once revealed the
character of his genius; and the composer of twenty was destined to
express the reaction he felt within himself, and which the public was
prepared to feel, against the florid style of Rossini. While composing
_Il Pirata_, Bellini retired into the country with the singer on whose
execution the success of the work would so much depend. Rubini sang the
melodies of his part as Bellini wrote them; and Bellini is said not to
have succeeded all at once in inducing him to abandon his taste for
ornamentation, and in prevailing upon him to deliver the simple phrases
of his principal airs, not only from the chest, but also from the heart.
Rubini and his composer, Bellini and his singer, soon understood one
another; and in his great scene the admired tenor excited the utmost
enthusiasm. Now were fulfilled the words of the prophet Stendhal (or
perhaps it was the seer Carpani beneath whose mantle Stendhal, we know,
was in the habit of concealing himself), who, writing only some two or
three years before, had foretold that Rossini would be followed by a
composer remarkable for the simplicity of his style.
After producing in succession _La Straniera_ (Milan, 1828), _Zaira_
(Parma, 1829), Bellini brought out at Venice his operatic version of
_Romeo and Juliet_, under the title of _I Capuletti ed i Montecchi_
which owed such success as it obtained to the singing of Mdle. Pasta,
as _Il Pirata_ had been indebted for the favour with which it was
received to the singing of Rubini. The years 1829, 1830, 1831, and 1832
are especially memorable in the history of Italian opera; for in the
first of these Rossini's _William Tell_, in the second Donizetti's _Anna
Bolena_, in the third Bellini's _Sonnambula_, and in the fourth
Bellini's _Norma_, was produced. The Italian school of operatic music
was certainly at that time supreme in Europe; and Rossini, Donizetti,
and Bellini continued for many years to hold sway at theatres where they
have now to share their dominion with the composers of France and
Germany--with Gounod, Ambroise Thomas, and Bizet, with Meyerbeer and
with Wagner.
_La Sonnambula_, as the work of a new composer, was a good deal sneered
at on the occasion of its first production in London. But its endless
flow of melodies--many of which, being full of true emotion, are so far
thoroughly dramatic--could not fail to ensure its success, with the
public at large; and this success, now of half a century's duration, has
scarcely diminished since the part of _Amina_ was first undertaken by
Pasta, and that of _Elvino_ by Rubini. Our old friend, Lord
Mount-Edgcumbe, true type of the praiser of times gone by, having been
scared by Rossini, was not likely to be calmed down by Bellini. Of
_Norma_ he tells us that the scene of the opera was laid "in Wales," and
that it "was not liked." It is difficult to understand the mood of one,
having ears to hear, who, whatever he might think of _Norma_ as a
specimen of the highest kind of tragic opera, could fail to "like it."
Rossini, together with a mass of opera-goers in all countries, was of
those who not only "liked" but greatly admired _Norma_; and he gave the
composer the benefit of his counsels when the still young Bellini (he
was even now only thirty years of age) undertook to write an opera for
the Italian Theatre of Paris, with Grisi, Rubini, Tamburini, and
Lablache in the principal parts. The effect of Rossini's advice may be
seen in the greater degree of attention paid by Bellini to the
orchestration of _I Puritani_ and to the concerted music. It would have
been well if some one had recommended Bellini not to set to work upon so
poor a libretto as that of _I Puritani_ derived from Ancelot's poor
novel, _Les Puritains d'Ecosse_. Rubini's air, "Ah te, o cara," the
polacca for Grisi, the duet in three movements for Tamburini and
Lablache,--as to which Rossini, writing an account of the opera to a
friend at Milan, remarked that some echo of the final outburst for the
two voices, with its brazen accompaniments, must surely have reached
him,--and the beautiful tenor solo of the closing concerted piece: these
in themselves must have been enough to secure the success of the opera.
The last-named melody for the tenor voice, so thoroughly religious in
character, was sung at Bellini's funeral to the words of the
_Lacrymosa_; and it was in the midst of the enthusiasm created by his
last work that Bellini, at the age of thirty-eight, died.