Chapter XVII "Hänsel und Gretel"

Wagner's influence and his successors--Engelbert Humperdinck--Myths

and fairy tales--Origin of "Hänsel und Gretel"--First performances--

An application of Wagnerian principles--The prelude--The Prayer Theme

--The Counter-charm--Theme of Fulfilment--Story of the opera--A relic

of an old Christmas song--Theme of the Witch--The Theme of Promise--

"Ring around a Rosy"--The "Knusperwalzer."

CHAPTER I

"IL BARBIERE DI SIVIGLIA"

The history of what is popularly called Italian opera begins in the

United States with a performance of Rossini's lyrical comedy "Il

Barbiere di Siviglia"; it may, therefore, fittingly take the first

place in these operatic studies. The place was the Park Theatre,

then situated in Chambers Street, east of Broadway, and the date

November 29, 1825. It was not the first performance of Italian opera

music in America, however, nor yet of Rossini's merry work. In the

early years of the nineteenth century New York was almost as fully

abreast of the times in the matter of dramatic entertainments as

London. New works produced in the English capital were heard in New

York as soon as the ships of that day could bring over the books and

the actors. Especially was this true of English ballad operas and

English transcriptions, or adaptations, of French, German, and

Italian operas. New York was five months ahead of Paris in making

the acquaintance of the operatic version of Beaumarchais's "Barbier

de Séville." The first performance of Rossini's opera took place in

Rome on February 5, 1816. London heard it in its original form at

the King's Theatre on March 10, 1818, with Garcia, the first

Count Almaviva, in that part. The opera "went off with unbounded

applause," says Parke (an oboe player, who has left us two volumes

of entertaining and instructive memoirs), but it did not win the

degree of favor enjoyed by the other operas of Rossini then current

on the English stage. It dropped out of the repertory of the King's

Theatre and was not revived until 1822--a year in which the

popularity of Rossini in the British metropolis may be measured by

the fact that all but four of the operas brought forward that year

were composed by him. The first Parisian representation of the opera

took place on October 26, 1819. Garcia was again in the cast. By

that time, in all likelihood, all of musical New York that could

muster up a pucker was already whistling "Largo al factotum" and

the beginning of "Una voce poco fà," for, on May 17, 1819, Thomas

Phillipps had brought an English "Barber of Seville" forward at a

benefit performance for himself at the same Park Theatre at which

more than six years later the Garcia company, the first Italian

opera troupe to visit the New World, performed it in Italian on

the date already mentioned. At Mr. Phillipps's performance the

beneficiary sang the part of Almaviva, and Miss Leesugg, who

afterward became the wife of the comedian Hackett, was the Rosina.

On November 21, 1821, there was another performance for Mr.

Phillipps's benefit, and this time Mrs. Holman took the part of

Rosina. Phillipps and Holman--brave names these in the dramatic

annals of New York and London a little less than a century ago!

When will European writers on music begin to realize that musical

culture in America is not just now in its beginnings?

It was Manuel Garcia's troupe that first performed "Il Barbiere

di Siviglia" in New York, and four of the parts in the opera were

played by members of his family. Manuel, the father, was the Count,

as he had been at the premières in Rome, London, and Paris; Manuel,

son, was the Figaro (he lived to read about eighty-one years of

operatic enterprise in New York, and died at the age of 101 years in

London in 1906); Signora Garcia, mère, was the Berta, and Rosina was

sung and played by that "cunning pattern of excellent nature," as a

writer of the day called her, Signorina Garcia, afterward the famous

Malibran. The other performers at this representation of the Italian

"Barber" were Signor Rosich (Dr. Bartolo), Signor Angrisani (Don

Basilio), and Signor Crivelli, the younger (Fiorello). The opera was

given twenty-three times in a season of seventy-nine nights, and the

receipts ranged from $1843 on the opening night and $1834 on the

closing, down to $356 on the twenty-ninth night.

But neither Phillipps nor Garcia was the first to present an

operatic version of Beaumarchais's comedy to the American people.

French operas by Rousseau, Monsigny, Dalayrac, and Grétry, which may

be said to have composed the staple of the opera-houses of Europe in

the last decades of the eighteenth century, were known also in the

contemporaneous theatres of Charleston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and

New York. In 1794 the last three of these cities enjoyed "an opera

in 3 acts," the text by Colman, entitled, "The Spanish Barber; or,

The Futile Precaution." Nothing is said in the announcements of

this opera touching the authorship of the music, but it seems to

be an inevitable conclusion that it was Paisiello's, composed for

St. Petersburg about 1780. There were German "Barbers" in existence

at the time composed by Benda (Friedrich Ludwig), Elsperger, and

Schulz, but they did not enjoy large popularity in their own

country, and Isouard's "Barbier" was not yet written. Paisiello's

opera, on the contrary, was extremely popular, throughout Europe.

True, he called it "The Barber of Seville," not "The Spanish

Barber," but Colman's subtitle, "The Futile Precaution," came from

the original French title. Rossini also adopted it and purposely

avoided the chief title set by Beaumarchais and used by Paisiello;

but he was not long permitted to have his way. Thereby hangs a

tale of the composition and first failure of his opera which I

must now relate.

On December 26, 1815, the first day of the carnival season, Rossini

produced his opera, "Torvaldo e Dorliska," at the Teatro Argentina,

in Rome, and at the same time signed a contract with Cesarini, the

impresario of the theatre, to have the first act of a second opera

ready on the twentieth day of the following January. For this opera

Rossini was to receive 400 Roman scudi (the equivalent of about

$400) after the first three performances, which he was to conduct

seated at the pianoforte in the orchestra, as was then the custom.

He seems to have agreed to take any libretto submitted by the

impresario and approved by the public censor; but there are

indications that Sterbini, who was to write the libretto, had

already suggested a remodelling of Paisiello's "Barber." In order

to expedite the work of composition it was provided in the contract

that Rossini was to take lodgings with a singer named Zamboni, to

whom the honor fell of being the original of the town factotum

in Rossini's opera. Some say that Rossini completed the score in

thirteen days; some in fifteen. Castil-Blaze says it was a month,

but the truth is that the work consumed less than half that period.

Donizetti, asked if he believed that Rossini had really written the

score in thirteen days, is reported to have replied, no doubt with

a malicious twinkle in his eyes: "It is very possible; he is so

lazy." Paisiello was still alive, and so was at least the memory of

his opera, so Rossini, as a precautionary measure, thought it wise

to spike, if possible, the guns of an apprehended opposition. So

he addressed a letter to the venerable composer, asking leave to

make use of the subject. He got permission and then wrote a preface

to his libretto (or had Serbini write it for him), in which,

while flattering his predecessor, he nevertheless contrived to

indicate that he considered the opera of that venerable musician

old-fashioned, undramatic, and outdated. "Beaumarchais's comedy,

entitled 'The Barber of Seville, or the Useless Precaution,'"

he wrote, "is presented at Rome in the form of a comic drama under

the title of 'Almaviva, ossia l'inutile Precauzione,' in order

that the public may be fully convinced of the sentiments of respect

and veneration by which the author of the music of this drama is

animated with regard to the celebrated Paisiello, who has already

treated the subject under its primitive title. Himself invited to

undertake this difficult task, the maestro Gioachino Rossini, in

order to avoid the reproach of entering rashly into rivalry with

the immortal author who preceded him, expressly required that 'The

Barber of Seville' should be entirely versified anew, and also

that new situations should be added for the musical pieces which,

moreover, are required by the modern theatrical taste, entirely

changed since the time when the renowned Paisiello wrote his work."

I have told the story of the fiasco made by Rossini's opera on its

first production at the Argentine Theatre on February 5, 1816, in an

extended preface to the vocal score of "Il Barbiere," published in

1900 by G. Schirmer, and a quotation from that preface will serve

here quite as well as a paraphrase; so I quote (with an avowal of

gratitude for the privilege to the publishers):--

Paisiello gave his consent to the use of the subject, believing that

the opera of his young rival would assuredly fail. At the same time

he wrote to a friend in Rome, asking him to do all in his power to

compass a fiasco for the opera. The young composer's enemies were

not sluggish. All the whistlers of Italy, says Castil-Blaze, seemed

to have made a rendezvous at the Teatro Argentina on the night set

down for the first production. Their malicious intentions were

helped along by accidents at the outset of the performance. Details

of the story have been preserved for us in an account written

by Signora Giorgi-Righetti, who sang the part of Rosina on the

memorable occasion. Garcia had persuaded Rossini to permit him to

sing a Spanish song to his own accompaniment on a guitar under

Rosina's balcony in the first act. It would provide the needed local

color, he urged. When about to start his song, Garcia found that he

had forgotten to tune his guitar. He began to set the pegs in the

face of the waiting public. A string broke, and a new one was drawn

up amid the titters of the spectators. The song did not please the

auditors, who mocked at the singer by humming Spanish fiorituri

after him. Boisterous laughter broke out when Figaro came on the

stage also with a guitar, and "Largo al factotum" was lost in the

din. Another howl of delighted derision went up when Rosina's

voice was heard singing within: "Segui o caro, deh segui così"

("Continue, my dear, continue thus"). The audience continued "thus."

The representative of Rosina was popular, but the fact that she

was first heard in a trifling phrase instead of an aria caused

disappointment. The duet, between Almaviva and Figaro, was sung amid

hisses, shrieks, and shouts. The cavatina "Una voce poco fà" got a

triple round of applause, however, and Rossini, interpreting the

fact as a compliment to the personality of the singer rather than

to the music, after bowing to the public, exclaimed: "Oh natura!"

"Thank her," retorted Giorgi-Righetti; "but for her you would not

have had occasion to rise from your choir." The turmoil began again

with the next duet, and the finale was mere dumb show. When the

curtain fell, Rossini faced the mob, shrugged his shoulders, and

clapped his hands to show his contempt. Only the musicians and

singers heard the second act, the din being incessant from beginning

to end. Rossini remained imperturbable, and when Giorgi-Rhigetti,

Garcia, and Zamboni hastened to his lodgings to offer their

condolences as soon as they could don street attire, they found him

asleep. The next day he wrote the cavatina "Ecco ridente in cielo"

to take the place of Garcia's unlucky Spanish song, borrowing the

air from his own "Aureliano," composed two years before, into

which it had been incorporated from "Ciro," a still earlier work.

When night came, he feigned illness so as to escape the task of

conducting. By that time his enemies had worn themselves out. The

music was heard amid loud plaudits, and in a week the opera had

scored a tremendous success.

And now for the dramatic and musical contents of "Il Barbiere." At

the very outset Rossini opens the door for us to take a glimpse at

the changes in musical manner which were wrought by time. He had

faulted Paisiello's opera because in parts it had become antiquated,

for which reason he had had new situations introduced to meet the

"modern theatrical taste"; but he lived fifty years after "Il

Barbiere" had conquered the world, and never took the trouble to

write an overture for it, the one originally composed for the opera

having been lost soon after the first production. The overture which

leads us into the opera nowadays is all very well in its way and a

striking example of how a piece of music may benefit from fortuitous

circumstances. Persons with fantastic imaginations have rhapsodized

on its appositeness, and professed to hear in it the whispered

plottings of the lovers and the merry raillery of Rosina, contrasted

with the futile ragings of her grouty guardian; but when Rossini

composed this piece of music, its mission was to introduce an

adventure of the Emperor Aurelian in Palmyra in the third century of

the Christian era. Having served that purpose, it became the prelude

to another opera which dealt with Queen Elizabeth of England, a

monarch who reigned some twelve hundred years after Aurelian. Again,

before the melody now known as that of Almaviva's cavatina (which

supplanted Garcia's unlucky Spanish song) had burst into the

efflorescence which now distinguishes it, it came as a chorus from

the mouths of Cyrus and his Persians in ancient Babylon. Truly,

the verities of time and place sat lightly on the Italian opera

composers of a hundred years ago. But the serenade which follows the

rising of the curtain preserves a custom more general at the time of

Beaumarchais than now, though it is not yet obsolete. Dr. Bartolo,

who is guardian of the fascinating Rosina, is in love with her, or

at least wishes for reasons not entirely dissociated from her money

bags to make her his wife, and therefore keeps her most of the time

behind bolts and bars. The Count Almaviva, however, has seen her on

a visit from his estates to Seville, becomes enamoured of her, and

she has felt her heart warmed toward him, though she is ignorant of

his rank and knows him only under the name of Lindoro. Hoping that

it may bring him an opportunity for a glance, mayhap a word with his

inamorata, Amaviva follows the advice given by Sir Proteus to Thurio

in "The Two Gentlemen of Verona"; he visits his lady's chamber

window, not at night, but at early dawn, with a "sweet concert," and

to the instruments of Fiorello's musicians tunes "a deploring dump."

It is the cavatina "Ecco ridente in cielo." The musicians, rewarded

by Almaviva beyond expectations, are profuse and long-winded

in their expression of gratitude, and are gotten rid of with

difficulty. The Count has not yet had a glimpse of Rosina, who is

in the habit of breathing the morning air from the balcony of her

prison house, and is about to despair when Figaro, barber and

Seville's factotum, appears trolling a song in which he recites his

accomplishments, the universality of his employments, and the great

demand for his services. ("Largo al factotum dello città.") The

Count recognizes him, tells of his vain vigils in front of Rosina's

balcony, and, so soon as he learns that Figaro is a sort of man

of all work to Bartolo, employs him as his go-between. Rosina

now appears on the balcony. Almaviva is about to engage her in

conversation when Bartolo appears and discovers a billet-doux which

Rosina had intended to drop into the hand of her Lindoro. He demands

to see it, but she explains that it is but a copy of the words of an

aria from an opera entitled "The Futile Precaution," and drops it

from the balcony, as if by accident. She sends Bartolo to recover

it, but Almaviva, who had observed the device, secures it, and

Bartolo is told by his crafty ward that the wind must have carried

it away. Growing suspicious, he commands her into the house and

goes away to hasten the preparations for his wedding, after giving

orders that no one is to be admitted to the house save Don Basilio,

Rosina's singing-master, and Bartolo's messenger and general

mischief-maker.

The letter which Rosina had thus slyly conveyed to her unknown lover

begged him to contrive means to let her know his name, condition,

and intentions respecting herself. Figaro, taking the case in hand

at once, suggests that Almaviva publish his answer in a ballad. This

the Count does ("Se il mio nome saper"), protesting the honesty and

ardor of his passion, but still concealing his name and station. He

is delighted to hear his lady-love's voice bidding him to continue

his song. (It is the phrase, "Segui, o caro, deh segui così," which

sounded so monstrously diverting at the first representation of the

opera in Rome.) After the second stanza Rosina essays a longer

response, but is interrupted by some of the inmates of the house.

Figaro now confides to the Count a scheme by which he is to meet his

fair enslaver face to face: he is to assume the rôle of a drunken

soldier who has been billeted upon Dr. Bartolo, a plan that is

favored by the fact that a company of soldiers has come to Seville

that very day which is under the command of the Count's cousin. The

plan is promptly put into execution. Not long after, Rosina enters

Dr. Bartolo's library singing the famous cavatina, "Una voce poco

fà," in which she tells of her love for Lindoro and proclaims her

determination to have her own way in the matter of her heart, in

spite of all that her tyrannical guardian or anybody else can do.

This cavatina has been the show piece of hundreds of singers ever

since it was written. Signora Giorgi-Righetti, the first Rosina, was

a contralto, and sang the music in the key of E, in which it was

written. When it became one of Jenny Lind's display airs, it was

transposed to F and tricked out with a great abundance of fiorituri.

Adelina Patti in her youth used so to overburden its already florid

measures with ornament that the story goes that once when she sang

it for Rossini, the old master dryly remarked: "A very pretty air;

who composed it?" Figaro enters at the conclusion of Rosina's song,

and the two are about to exchange confidences when Bartolo enters

with Basilio, who confides to the old doctor his suspicion that the

unknown lover of Rosina is the Count Almaviva, and suggests that

the latter's presence in Seville be made irksome by a few adroitly

spread innuendoes against his character. How a calumny, ingeniously

published, may grow from a whispered zephyr to a crashing,

detonating tempest, Basilio describes in the buffo air "La

calunnia"--a marvellous example of the device of crescendo which

in this form is one of Rossini's inventions. Bartolo prefers his

own plan of compelling his ward to marry him at once. He goes

with Basilio to draw up a marriage agreement, and Figaro, who has

overheard their talk, acquaints Rosina with its purport. He also

tells her that she shall soon see her lover face to face if she will

but send him a line by his hands. Thus he secures a letter from her,

but learns that the artful minx had written it before he entered.

Her ink-stained fingers, the disappearance of a sheet of paper

from his writing desk, and the condition of his quill pen convince

Bartolo on his return that he is being deceived, and he resolves

that henceforth his ward shall be more closely confined than ever.

And so he informs her, while she mimics his angry gestures behind

his back. In another moment there is a boisterous knocking and

shouting at the door, and in comes Almaviva, disguised as a cavalry

soldier most obviously in his cups. He manages to make himself known

to Rosina, and exchanges letters with her under the very nose of her

jailer, affects a fury toward Dr. Bartolo when the latter claims

exemption from the billet, and escapes arrest only by secretly

making himself known to the officer commanding the soldiers who

had been drawn into the house by the disturbance. The sudden and

inexplicable change of conduct on the part of the soldiers petrifies

Bartolo; he is literally "astonied," and Figaro makes him the victim

of several laughable pranks before he recovers his wits.

Dr. Bartolo's suspicions have been aroused about the soldier,

concerning whose identity he makes vain inquiries, but he does

not hesitate to admit to his library a seeming music-master who

announces himself as Don Alonzo, come to act as substitute for Don

Basilio, who, he says, is ill. Of course it is Almaviva. Soon the

ill-natured guardian grows impatient of his garrulity, and Almaviva,

to allay his suspicions and gain a sight of his inamorata, gives him

a letter written by Rosina to Lindoro, which he says he had found in

the Count's lodgings. If he can but see the lady, he hopes by means

of the letter to convince her of Lindoro's faithlessness. This

device, though it disturbs its inventor, is successful, and Bartolo

brings in his ward to receive her music lesson. Here, according to

tradition, there stood in the original score a trio which was lost

with the overture. Very welcome has this loss appeared to the

Rosinas of a later day, for it has enabled them to introduce into

the "lesson scene" music of their own choice, and, of course,

such as showed their voices and art to the best advantage. Very

amusing have been the anachronisms which have resulted from these

illustrations of artistic vanity, and diverting are the glimpses

which they give of the tastes and sensibilities of great prime

donne. Grisi and Alboni, stimulated by the example of Catalani

(though not in this opera), could think of nothing nobler than

to display their skill by singing Rode's Air and Variations, a

violin piece. This grew hackneyed, but, nevertheless, survived

till a comparatively late day. Bosio, feeling that variations were

necessary, threw Rode's over in favor of those on "Gia della mente

involarmi"--a polka tune from Alary's "A Tre Nozze." Then Mme.

Gassier ushered in the day of the vocal waltz--Venzano's, of

amiable memory. Her followers have not yet died out, though Patti

substituted Arditi's "Il Bacio" for Venzano's; Mme. Sembrich,

Strauss's "Voce di Primavera," and Mme. Melba, Arditi's "Se saran

rose." Mme. Viardot, with a finer sense of the fitness of things,

but either forgetful or not apprehensive of the fate which befell

her father at the first performance of the opera in Rome, introduced

a Spanish song. Mme. Patti always kept a ready repertory for the

scene, with a song in the vernacular of the people for whom she was

singing to bring the enthusiasm to a climax and a finish: "Home,

Sweet Home" in New York and London, "Solovei" in St. Petersburg.

Usually she began with the bolero from "Les Vêpres Siciliennes," or

the shadow dance from "Dinorah." Mme. Seinbrich, living in a period

when the style of song of which she and Mme. Melba are still the

brightest exemplars, is not as familiar as it used to be when they

were children, also found it necessary to have an extended list of

pieces ready at hand to satisfy the rapacious public. She was wont

at first to sing Proch's Air and Variations, but that always led

to a demand for more, and whether she supplemented it with "Ah!

non giunge," from "La Sonnambula," the bolero from "The Sicilian

Vespers," "O luce di quest anima," from "Linda," or the vocalized

waltz by Strauss, the applause always was riotous, and so remained

until she sat down to the pianoforte and sang Chopin's "Maiden's

Wish," in Polish, to her own accompaniment. As for Mme. Melba, not

to be set in the shade simply because Mme. Sembrich is almost as

good a pianist as she is a singer, she supplements Arditi's waltz

or Massenet's "Sevillana" with Tosti's "Mattinata," to which she

also plays an exquisite accompaniment.

But this is a long digression; I must back to my intriguing

lovers, who have made good use of the lesson scene to repeat their

protestations of affection and lay plots for attaining their

happiness. In this they are helped by Figaro, who comes to shave Dr.

Bartolo in spite of his protests, and, contriving to get hold of the

latter's keys, "conveys" the one which opens the balcony lock, and

thus makes possible a plan for a midnight elopement. In the midst

of the lesson the real Basilio comes to meet his appointment, and

there is a moment of confusion for the plotters, out of which Figaro

extricates them by persuading Basilio that he is sick of a raging

fever, and must go instantly home, Almaviva adding a convincing

argument in the shape of a generously lined purse. Nevertheless,

Basilio afterwards betrays the Count to Bartolo, who commands him to

bring a notary to the house that very night so that he may sign the

marriage contract with Rosina. In the midst of a tempest Figaro and

the Count let themselves into the house at midnight to carry off

Rosina, but find her in a whimsy, her mind having been poisoned

against her lover by Bartolo with the aid of the unfortunate letter.

Out of this dilemma Almaviva extricates himself by confessing his

identity, and the pair are about to steal away when the discovery is

made that the ladder to the balcony has been carried away. As they

are tiptoeing toward the window, the three sing a trio in which

there is such obvious use of a melodic phrase which belongs to Haydn

that every writer on "Il Barbiere" seems to have thought it his duty

to point out an instance of "plagiarism" on the part of Rossini. It

is a trifling matter. The trio begins thus:--

[Musical excerpt--"Ziti, ziti, piano, piano, non facciamo

confusionne"]

which is a slightly varied form of four measures from Simon's song

in the first part of "The Seasons":--

[Musical excerpt--"With eagerness the husbandman his tilling work

begins."]

With these four measures the likeness begins and ends. A venial

offence, if it be an offence at all. Composers were not held

to so strict and scrupulous an accountability touching melodic

meum and tuum a century ago as they are now; yet there was then

a thousand-fold more melodic inventiveness. Another case of

"conveyance" by Rossini has also been pointed out; the air of the

duenna in the third act beginning "Il vecchiotto cerca moglie" is

said to be that of a song which Rossini heard a Russian lady sing

in Rome. I have searched much in Russian song literature and failed

to find the alleged original. To finish the story: the notary

summoned by Bartolo arrives on the scene, but is persuaded by Figaro

to draw up an attestation of a marriage agreement between Count

Almaviva and Rosina, and Bartolo, finding at the last that all his

precautions have been in vain, comforted not a little by the gift of

his ward's dower, which the Count relinquishes, gives his blessing

to the lovers.

I have told the story of "Il Barbiere di Siviglia" as it appears

in the book. It has grown to be the custom to omit in performance

several of the incidents which are essential to the development

and understanding of the plot. Some day--soon, it is to be

hoped--managers, singers, and public will awake to a realization

that, even in the old operas in which beautiful singing is supposed

to be the be-all and end-all, the action ought to be kept coherent.

In that happy day Rossini's effervescent lyrical arrangement of

Beaumarchais's vivacious comedy will be restored to its rights.

CHAPTER II

"LE NOZZE DI FIGARO"

Beaumarchais wrote a trilogy of Figaro comedies, and if the tastes

and methods of a century or so ago had been like those of the

present, we might have had also a trilogy of Figaro operas--"Le

Barbier de Seville," "Le Mariage de Figaro," and "La Mère coupable."

As it is, we have operatic versions of the first two of the

comedies, Mozart's "Nozze di Figaro" being a sequel to Rossini's

"Il Barbiere," its action beginning at a period not long after the

precautions of Dr. Bartolo had been rendered inutile by Figaro's

cunning schemes and Almaviva had installed Rosina as his countess.

"Le Nozze" was composed a whole generation before Rossini's opera.

Mozart and his public could keep the sequence of incidents in view,

however, from the fact that Paisiello had acquainted them with the

beginning of the story. Paisiello's opera is dead, but Rossini's is

very much alive, and it might prove interesting, some day, to have

the two living operas brought together in performance in order to

note the effect produced upon each other by comparison of their

scores. One effect, I fancy, would be to make the elder of the

operas sound younger than its companion, because of the greater

variety and freshness, as well as dramatic vigor, of its music. But

though the names of many of the characters would be the same, we

should scarcely recognize their musical physiognomies. We should

find the sprightly Rosina of "Il Barbiere" changed into a mature

lady with a countenance sicklied o'er with the pale cast of a gentle

melancholy; the Count's tenor would, in the short interval, have

changed into barytone; Figaro's barytone into a bass, while the

buffo-bass of Don Basilio would have reversed the process with age

and gone upward into the tenor region. We should meet with some

new characters, of which two at least would supply the element of

dramatic freshness and vivacity which we should miss from the

company of the first opera--Susanna and Cherubino.

We should also, in all likelihood, be struck by the difference in

the moral atmosphere of the two works. It took Beaumarchais three

years to secure a public performance of his "Mariage de Figaro"

because of the opposition of the French court, with Louis XVI at

its head, to its too frank libertinism. This opposition spread also

to other royal and imperial personages, who did not relish the

manner in which the poet had castigated the nobility, exalted the

intellectuality of menials, and satirized the social and political

conditions which were generally prevalent a short time before the

French Revolution. Neither of the operas, however, met the obstacles

which blocked the progress of the comedies on which they are

founded, because Da Ponte, who wrote the book for Mozart, and

Sterbini, who was Rossini's librettist, judiciously and deftly

elided the objectionable political element. "Le Nozze" is by far the

more ingeniously constructed play of the two (though a trifle too

involved for popular comprehension in the original language), but

"Il Barbiere" has the advantage of freedom from the moral grossness

which pollutes its companion. For the unspoiled taste of the better

class of opera patrons, there is a livelier as well as a lovelier

charm in the story of Almaviva's adventures while outwitting Dr.

Bartolo and carrying off the winsome Rosina to be his countess

than in the depiction of his amatory intrigues after marriage.

In fact, there is something especially repellent in the Count's

lustful pursuit of the bride of the man to whose intellectual

resourcefulness he owed the successful outcome of his own wooing.

It is, indeed, a fortunate thing for Mozart's music that so few

opera-goers understand Italian nowadays. The play is a moral

blister, and the less intelligible it is made by excisions in its

dialogue, the better, in one respect, for the virtuous sensibilities

of its auditors. One point which can be sacrificed without detriment

to the music and at only a trifling cost to the comedy (even when it

is looked upon from the viewpoint which prevailed in Europe at the

period of its creation) is that which Beaumarchais relied on chiefly

to add piquancy to the conduct of the Count. Almaviva, we are given

to understand, on his marriage with Rosina had voluntarily abandoned

an ancient seignorial right, described by Susanna as "certe mezz'

ore che il diritto feudale," but is desirous of reviving the

practice in the case of the Countess's bewitching maid on the eve of

her marriage to his valet. It is this discovery which induces Figaro

to invent his scheme for expediting the wedding, and lends a touch

of humor to the scene in which Figaro asks that he and his bride

enjoy the first-fruits of the reform while the villagers lustily

hymn the merits of their "virtuous" lord; but the too frank

discussion of the subject with which the dialogue teems might easily

be avoided. The opera, like all the old works of the lyrical stage,

is in sad need of intelligent revision and thorough study, so that

its dramatic as well as its musical beauties may be preserved. There

is no lovelier merit in Mozart's music than the depth and tenderness

with which the honest love of Susanna for Figaro and the Countess

for her lord are published; and it is no demerit that the volatile

passion of the adolescent Cherubino and the frolicsome, scintillant,

vivacious spirit of the plotters are also given voice. Mozart's

music could not be all that it is if it did not enter fully and

unreservedly into the spirit of the comedy; it is what it is because

whenever the opportunity presented itself, he raised it into the

realm of the ideal. Yet Mozart was no Puritan. He swam along gayly

and contentedly on the careless current of life as it was lived

in Vienna and elsewhere in the closing decades of the eighteenth

century, and was not averse, merely for the fun of the thing, to go

even a step beyond his librettist when the chance offered. Here is

an instance in point: The plotters have been working a little at

cross-purposes, each seeking his own advantages, and their plans are

about to be put to the test when Figaro temporarily loses confidence

in the honesty of Susanna. With his trust in her falls to the ground

his faith in all woman-kind. He rails against the whole sex in the

air, beginning: "Aprite un po' quegl' occhi?" in the last act.

Enumerating the moral blemishes of women, he at length seems to be

fairly choked by his own spleen, and bursts out at the end with

"Il resto nol dico, gia ognuno lo sa" ("The rest I'll not tell

you--everybody knows it"). The orchestra stops, all but the horns,

which with the phrase

[Musical excerpt]

aided by a traditional gesture (the singer's forefingers pointing

upward from his forehead), complete his meaning. It is a pity that

the air is often omitted, for it is eloquent in the exposition of

the spirit of the comedy.

The merriest of opera overtures introduces "Le Nozze di Figaro," and

puts the listener at once into a frolicsome mood. It seems to be the

most careless of little pieces, drawing none of its material from

the music of the play, making light of some of the formulas which

demanded respect at the time (there is no free fantasia), laughing

and singing its innocent life out in less than five minutes as if it

were breathing an atmosphere of pure oxygen. It romps; it does not

reflect or feel. Motion is its business, not emotion. It has no

concern with the deep and gentle feelings of the play, but only with

its frolic. The spirit of playful torment, the disposition of a

pretty tease, speaks out of its second subject:--

[Musical excerpt]

and one may, if one wishes, hear the voice of only half-serious

admonition in the phrase of the basses, which the violins echo as

if in mockery:--

[Musical excerpt]

But, on the whole, the overture does not ask for analysis or

interpretation; it is satisfied to express untrammelled joy in

existence.

The curtain is withdrawn, and we discover the lovers preparing for

their wedding. Figaro is taking the dimensions of a room, and the

first motive of a duet illustrates his measured paces; Susanna is

trimming a hat, and her happiness and her complacent satisfaction

with her handiwork are published in the second motive, whose

innocent joy explodes in scintillant semi-quavers in the fiddles

at the third measure. His labors ended, Figaro joins Susanna in

her utterances of joy. But there is a fly in the ointment, Why has

Figaro been so busily measuring the room? To test its fitness as

their chamber, for the Count has assigned it to them, though it is

one of the best rooms in the palace. He points out its convenient

location (duet: "Se a caso madama"); so near the room of the

Countess that her maid can easily answer the "din din" of her bell,

and near enough to the room of the Count that his "don don" would

never sound in vain should he wish to send his valet on an errand.

Altogether too convenient, explains Susanna; some fine day the

Count's "don don" might mean a three-mile journey for the valet,

and then the devil would fetch the dear Count to her side in three

paces. Has he not been making love violently to her for a space,

sending Don Basilio to give her singing lessons and to urge her to

accept his suit? Did Figaro imagine it was because of his own pretty

face that the Count had promised her so handsome a dowry? Figaro had

pressed such a flattering unction to his soul, but now recalls, with

not a little jealous perturbation, that the Count had planned to

take him with him to London, where he was to go on a mission of

state: "He as ambassador, Figaro as a courier, and Susanna as

ambassadress in secret. Is that your game, my lord? Then I'll set

the pace for your dancing with my guitar" (Cavatina: "Se vuol

ballare").

Almaviva's obedient valet disappears, and presto! in his place

we see our old friend, the cunning, resourceful barber and town

factotum of the earlier days, who shall hatch out a plot to confound

his master and shield his love from persecution. First of all he

must hasten the wedding. He sets about this at once, but all

unconscious of the fact that Dr. Bartolo has never forgiven nor

forgotten the part he played in robbing him of his ward Rosina.

He comes now to let us know that he is seeking revenge against

Figaro and at the same time, as he hopes, rid himself of his old

housekeeper, Marcellina, to whom he is bound by an obligation that

is becoming irksome. The old duenna has been casting amatory glances

in Figaro's direction, and has a hold on him in the shape of a

written obligation to marry her in default of repayment of a sum of

money borrowed in a time of need. She enlists Bartolo as adviser,

and he agrees to lay the matter before the Count. Somewhat early,

but naturally enough in the case of the conceited dotard, he gloats

over his vengeance, which seems as good as accomplished, and

celebrates his triumph in an air ("La vendetta!"). As she is about

to leave the room, Marcellina meets Susanna, and the two make a

forced effort to conceal their mutual hatred and jealousy in an

amusing duettino ("Via resti servita, madama brillante!"), full of

satirical compliments and curtsies. Marcellina is bowed out of the

room with extravagant politeness, and Susanna turns her attention to

her mistress's wardrobe, only to be interrupted by the entrance of

Cherubino, the Count's page. Though a mere stripling, Cherubino is

already a budding voluptuary, animated with a wish, something like

that of Byron's hero, that all woman-kind had but a single mouth and

he the privilege of kissing it. He adores the Countess; but not her

alone. Susanna has a ribbon in her hand with which, she tells him,

she binds up her mistress's tresses at night. Happy Susanna! Happy

ribbon! Cherubino seizes it, refuses to give it up, and offers in

exchange his latest ballad. "What shall I do with the song?" asks

Susanna. "Sing it to the Countess! Sing it yourself! Sing it to

Barbarina, to Marcellina, to all the ladies in the palace!" He

tells Susanna (Air: "Non so più cosa son") of the torments which he

endures. The lad's mind is, indeed, in a parlous state; he feels his

body alternately burning and freezing; the mere sight of a maiden

sends the blood to his cheeks, and he needs must sigh whenever he

hears her voice; sleeping and waking, by lakeside, in the shadow of

the woods, on the mountain, by stream and fountain, his thoughts are

only of love and its sweet pains. It is quite impossible to describe

the eloquence with which Mozart's music expresses the feverish

unrest, the turmoil, and the longing which fill the lad's soul.

Otto Jahn has attempted it, and I shall quote his effort:--

The vibration of sentiment, never amounting to actual passion,

the mingled anguish and delight of the longing which can never be

satisfied, are expressed with a power of beauty raising them out of

the domain of mere sensuality. Very remarkable is the simplicity of

the means by which this extraordinary effect is attained. A violin

accompaniment passage, not unusual in itself, keeps up the restless

movement; the harmonies make no striking progressions; strong

emphasis and accents are sparingly used, and yet the soft flow of

the music is made suggestive of the consuming glow of passion. The

instrumentation is here of a very peculiar effect and quite a novel

coloring; the stringed instruments are muted, and clarinets occur

for the first time, and very prominently, both alone and in

combination with the horns and bassoons.

Cherubino's philandering with Susanna is interrupted by the Count,

who comes with protestations of love, which the page hears from

a hiding-place behind a large arm-chair, where Susanna, in her

embarrassment, had hastily concealed him on the Count's entrance.

The Count's philandering, in turn, is interrupted by Basilio, whose

voice is heard long enough before his entrance to permit the Count

also to seek a hiding-place. He, too, gets behind the chair, while

Cherubino, screened by Susanna's skirts, ensconces himself in the

seat, and finds cover under one of the Countess's gowns which

Susanna hurriedly throws over him. Don Basilio comes in search of

the Count, but promptly begins his pleas in behalf of his master.

Receiving nothing but indignant rejoinders, he twits Susanna with

loving the lad, and more than intimates that Cherubino is in love

with the Countess. Why else does he devour her with his eyes when

serving her at table? And had he not composed a canzonetta for her?

Far be it from him, however, to add a word to what "everybody says."

"Everybody says what?" demands the Count, discovering himself. A

trio follows ("Cosa sento!") The Count, though in a rage, preserves

a dignified behavior and orders the instant dismissal of the page

from the palace. Susanna is overwhelmed with confusion, and plainly

betrays her agitation. She swoons, and her companions are about to

place her in the arm-chair when she realizes a danger and recovers

consciousness. Don Basilio cringes before the Count, but is

maliciously delighted at the turn which affairs have taken.

The Count is stern. Cherubino had once before incurred his

displeasure by poaching in his preserves. He had visited Barbarina,

the pretty daughter of his gardener, and found the door bolted. The

maid appeared confused, and he, seeking an explanation, drew the

cover from the table and found the page hiding under. He illustrates

his action by lifting the gown thrown over the chair, and there

is the page again! This, then, is the reason of Susanna's seeming

prudery--the page, her lover! He accuses Susanna, who asserts her

innocence, and truthfully says that Cherubino had come to ask her

to procure the Countess's intercession in his behalf, when his

entrance had thrown them both into such confusion that Cherubino

had concealed himself. Where? Behind the arm-chair. But the Count

himself had hidden there. True, but a moment before the page had

slipped around and into the chair. Then he had heard all that the

Count had said to Susanna? Cherubino says he had tried his best

not to overhear anything. Figaro is sent for and enters with the

villagers, who hymn the virtues of their lord. To the Count's

question as to the meaning of the demonstration, Figaro explains

that it is an expression of their gratitude for the Count's

surrender of seignorial rights, and that his subjects wish him to

celebrate the occasion by bestowing the hand of Susanna on Figaro at

once and himself placing the bridal veil upon her brow. The Count

sees through Figaro's trick, but believing it will be frustrated by

Marcellina's appeal, he promises to honor the bride, as requested,

in due season. Cherubino has begged for the Count's forgiveness, and

Susanna has urged his youth in extenuation of his fault. Reminded

that the lad knows of his pursuit of Susanna, the Count modifies his

sentence of dismissal from his service to banishment to Seville as

an officer in his regiment. Figaro playfully inducts him into the

new existence.

The air "Non più andrai," in which this is done, is in vigorous

march rhythm. Benucci, the original Figaro in Vienna, had a superbly

sonorous voice, and Michael Kelly, the English tenor (who sang the

two rôles of Don Basilio and Don Curzio), tells us how thrillingly

he sang the song at the first rehearsal with the full band. Mozart

was on the stage in a crimson pelisse and cocked hat trimmed with

gold lace, giving the time to the orchestra. Figaro gave the song

with the greatest animation and power of voice. "I was standing

close to Mozart," says Kelly, "who, sotto voce, was repeating:

'Bravo, bravo, Benucci!' and when Benucci came to the fine passage,

'Cherubino, alla vittoria, alla gloria militar,' which he gave out

with stentorian lungs, the effect was electricity itself, for the

whole of the performers on the stage, and those in the orchestra, as

if actuated by one feeling of delight, vociferated: 'Bravo, bravo,

maestro! Viva, viva, grande Mozart!' Those in the orchestra I

thought would never have ceased applauding by beating the bows of

their violins against the music desks. The little man acknowledged

by repeated obeisances his thanks for the distinguished mark of

enthusiastic applause bestowed upon him."

This ends the first act. At the opening of the second the Countess

asks our sympathy because of the unhappiness caused by her errant

husband. (Cavatina: "Porgi amor.") She prays the god of love to

restore her to his affections. Susanna entering, the Countess asks

her to continue her tale of the Count's pursuit of her. There is

nothing to add, says the maid; the Count wooed as noblemen woo women

of her class--with money. Figaro appears to tell that the Count

is aiding Marcellina in her scheme and of the trick which he has

devised to circumvent him. He had sent Basilio to his lordship with

a letter warning him that the Countess had made an appointment to

meet a lover at the ball to be given in the evening. This would fan

the fires of his jealousy and so enrage him that he would forget his

designs against Susanna until she was safely married, when he would

discover that he had been outwitted. In the meantime, while he is

reflecting on the fact that two could play at the game, Susanna is

to apprise the Count that she will meet him in the garden in the

evening. Cherubino, whose departure to Seville had been delayed for

the purpose, is to meet the Count disguised as Susanna, and the

Countess, appearing on the scene, is to unmask him. The Count is

supposed to have gone a-hunting, and the plotters have two hours for

preparation. Figaro leaves them to find Cherubino, that he may be

put into petticoats. When the page comes, the Countess first insists

on hearing the song which he had given to Susanna, and Cherubino,

stammering and blushing at first, sings it to Susanna's guitar.

(Canzone: "Voi che sapete.") Again I call upon Otto Jahn for a

description of the music. "Cherubino is not here directly expressing

his feelings; he is depicting them in a romance, and he is in the

presence of the Countess, toward whom he glances with all the

bashfulness of boyish passion. The song is in ballad form, to suit

the situation, the voice executing the clear, lovely melody, while

the stringed instruments carry on a simple accompaniment pizzicato,

to imitate the guitar: this delicate outline is, however, shaded and

animated in a wonderful degree by solo wind instruments. Without

being absolutely necessary for the progress of the melodies and the

completeness of the harmonies, they supply the delicate touches of

detail, reading between the lines of the romance, as it were, what

is passing in the heart of the singer. We know not whether to

admire most the gracefulness of the melodies, the delicacy of the

disposition of the parts, the charm of the tone coloring, or the

tenderness of the expression--the whole is of entrancing beauty."

Susanna finds that she and Cherubino are of the same height, and

begins to array him in garments belonging to her, first locking the

door against possible intruders. The Countess views the adventure

with some misgivings at first, but, after all, Cherubino is a mere

boy, and she rejoices him with approval of his songs, and smiles

upon him till he is deliriously happy. Basilio has given him his

commission in the Count's regiment, and the Countess discovers that

it lacks a seal to secure which would cause a longer and desired

delay. While Susanna is playing the rôle of dressing-maid to

Cherubino, and instructing him in a ladylike bearing, the Count

raps for admission to the room. Figaro's decoy letter caused him

uneasiness, and he had abandoned the hunt. Cherubino hurries

into the chamber, and the Countess turns the key upon him before

admitting his lordship, who enters in an ill-humor which is soon

turned into jealous rage. Cherubino has awkwardly overturned a chair

in the chamber, and though the Countess explains that Susanna is

within, she refuses to open the door, on the plea that her maid is

making her toilet. The Count goes for tools to break open the door,

taking the Countess with him. Susanna, who has heard all from an

alcove, hastens to Cherubino's rescue, who escapes by leaping

from the window of the Countess's apartment into the garden below.

Susanna takes his place in the chamber. Then begins the most

marvellously ingenious and beautiful finale in the whole literature

of opera. Fast upon each other follow no fewer than eight

independent pieces of music, each a perfect delineation of the

quickly changing moods and situations of the comedy, yet each built

up on the lines of musical symmetry, and developing a musical theme

which, though it passes from mouth to mouth, appears each time to

belong peculiarly to the person uttering it. The Countess throws

herself upon the mercy of the Count, confesses that Cherubino,

suspiciously garbed, is in the chamber, but pleads for his life and

protests her innocence of wrong. She gives the key to her enraged

husband, who draws his sword, unlocks the door, and commands

the page to stand forth. Susanna confronts the pair with grave

unconsciousness upon her features. The Countess is no less amazed

than her lord.

The Count goes into the chamber to search for the page, giving

Susanna a chance to explain, and the nimble-witted women are ready

for him when he comes back confused, confounded, and ready to ask

forgiveness of his wife, who becomes tearful and accusing, telling

him at length that the story of the page's presence was all

an invention to test him. But the letter giving word of the

assignation? Written by Figaro. He then shall be punished.

Forgiveness is deserved only by those willing to forgive. All is

well, and the Countess gives her hand to be kissed by her lord.

Enters Figaro with joyous music to announce that all's ready for

the wedding; trumpets sounding, pipes tootling, peasants singing

and dancing. The Count throws a damper upon his exuberant spirits.

How about that letter? In spite of the efforts of the Countess and

Susanna to make him confess its authorship, Figaro stoutly insists

that he knows nothing of it. The Count summons Marcellina, but

before she arrives, the drunken gardener Antonio appears to tell the

Count that some one had leaped out of the salon window and damaged

his plants and pots. Confusion overwhelms the women. But Figaro's

wits are at work. He laughs loudly and accuses Antonio of being too

tipsy to know what had happened. The gardener sticks to his story

and is about to describe the man who came like a bolt from the

window, when Figaro says it was he made the leap. He was waiting in

the salon to see Susanna, he explains, when he heard the Count's

footsteps, and, fearing to meet him because of the decoy letter, he

had jumped from the window and got a sprained ankle, which he offers

in evidence. The orchestra changes key and tempo, and begins a new

inquisition with pitiless reiteration:--

[Musical excerpt]

Antonio produces Cherubino's commission, "These, then, are your

papers?" The Count takes the commission, opens it, and the Countess

recognizes it. With whispers and signs the women let Figaro know

what it is, and he is ready with the explanation that the page had

left the paper with him. Why? It lacked--the women come again to his

rescue--it lacked the seal. The Count tears up the paper in his rage

at being foiled again. But his allies are at hand, in the persons

of Marcellina, Bartolo, and Basilio, who appear with the accusing

contract, signed by Figaro. The Count takes the case under

advisement, and the act ends with Figaro's enemies sure of triumph

and his friends dismayed.

The third act plays in a large hall of the palace decorated for the

wedding. In a duet ("Crudel! perche finora") the Count renews his

addresses to Susanna. She, to help along the plot to unmask him,

consents to meet him in the garden. A wonderful grace rests upon the

music of the duet, which Mozart's genius makes more illuminative

than the words. Is it Susanna's native candor, or goodness, or

mischievousness, or her embarrassment which prompts her to answer

"yes" when "no" was expected and "no" when the Count had already

received an affirmative? We can think as we please; the musical

effect is delicious. Figaro's coming interrupts further conversation,

and as Susanna leaves the room with her, she drops a remark to

Figaro, which the Count overhears: "Hush! We have won our case

without a lawyer." What does it mean? Treachery, of course. Possibly

Marcellina's silence has been purchased. But whence the money? The

Count's amour propre is deeply wounded at the thought that his

menials should outwit him and he fail of his conquest. He swears

that he will be avenged upon both. Apparently he has not long to

wait, for Marcellina, Don Curzio, and Bartolo enter, followed by

Figaro. Don Curzio announces the decision of the court in the

duenna's suit against Figaro. He must pay or marry, according to the

bond. But Figaro refuses to abide by the decision. He is a gentleman

by birth, as proved by the jewels and costly clothing found upon him

when he was recovered from some robbers who stole him when a babe,

and he must have the consent of his parents. He has diligently

sought them and will prove his identity by a mark upon his arm.

"A spatula on the right elbow?" anxiously inquires Marcellina.

"Yes." And now Bartolo and the duenna, who a moment ago would fain

have made him an OEdipus, recognize in Figaro their own son, born

out of wedlock. He rushes to their arms and is found embracing his

mother most tenderly by Susanna, who comes with a purse to repay the

loan. She flies into a passion and boxes Figaro's ears before the

situation is explained, and she is made as happy by the unexpected

dénouement as the Count and Don Curzio are miserable. Bartolo

resolves that there shall be a double wedding; he will do tardy

justice to Marcellina. Now we see the Countess again in her

lamentable mood, mourning the loss of her husband's love. (Aria:

"Dove sono.") Susanna comes to tell of her appointment with the

Count. The place, "in the garden," seems to be lacking in clearness,

and the Countess proposes that it be made more definite and certain

(as the lawyers say), by means of a letter which shall take the form

of a "Song to the Zephyr." This is the occasion of the exquisite

duet which was surely in the mind of the composer's father when,

writing to his daughter from Vienna after the third performance of

the opera, he said: "One little duet had to be sung three times."

Was there ever such exquisite dictation and transcription? Can any

one say, after hearing this "Canzonetta sull' aria," that it is

unnatural to melodize conversation? With what gracious tact the

orchestra gives time to Susanna to set down the words of her

mistress! How perfect is the musical reproduction of inquiry and

repetition when a phrase escapes the memory of the writer!

[Musical excerpt--Susanna: "sotto i pini?" Conte: "Sotto i pini del

boschetto."]

The letter is written, read over phrase by phrase, and sealed with

a pin which the Count is to return as proof that he has received

the note.

The wedding festivities begin with a presentation of flowers to the

Countess by the village maidens, among whom in disguise is the rogue

Cherubino--so fair in hat and gown that the Countess singles him out

of the throng to present his nosegay in person. Antonio, who had

suspected that he was still about the palace, exposes him to the

Count, who threatens the most rigorous punishment, but is obliged to

grant Barberina's petition that he give his consent to her marriage

to the page. Had he not often told her to ask him what she pleased,

when kissing her in secret? Under the circumstances he can only

grant the little maid's wish. During the dance which follows (it

is a Spanish fandango which seems to have been popular in Vienna

at the time, for Gluck had already made use of the same melody in

his ballet "Don Juan"), Susanna kneels before the Count to have

him place the wreath (or veil) upon her head, and slyly slips the

"Canzonetta sull' aria" into his hands. He pricks his finger with

the pin, drops it, but, on reading the postscript, picks it up, so

that he may return it to the writer as a sign of understanding.

In the evening Barberina, who has been commissioned to carry the

pin to her cousin Susanna, loses it again, and her lamentation

"L'ho perdita," with its childish sobs while hunting it, is one

of the little gems of the opera. From her Figaro learns that the

letter which he had seen the Count read during the dance was from

Susanna, and becomes furiously jealous. In an air (which has already

been described), he rails against man's credulity and woman's

faithlessness. The time is come to unmask the Count. The Countess

and Susanna have exchanged dresses, and now come into the garden.

Left alone, Susanna gives voice to her longing and love (for Figaro,

though the situation makes it seem to be for the Count) in the air

which has won great favor in the concert-room: "Deh vieni non

tardar." Here some of Otto Jahn's words are again appropriate:--

Mozart was right to let the feelings of the loving maiden shine

forth in all their depth and purity, for Susanna has none but her

Figaro in her mind, and the sentiments she expresses are her true

ones. Figaro, in his hiding-place, listening and suspecting her of

awaiting the Count's arrival, throws a cross-light on the situation,

which, however, only receives its full dramatic signification by

reason of the truth of Susanna's expression of feeling. Susanna,

without her sensual charm, is inconceivable, and a tinge of

sensuality is an essential element of her nature; but Mozart has

transfigured it into a noble purity which may fitly be compared

with the grandest achievements of Greek sculpture.

Cherubino, watched from different places of concealment by the

Count, Figaro, and Susanna, appears, and, seeing the Countess, whom

he takes for Susanna, confounds not her alone, but also the Count

and Figaro, by his ardent addresses to her. He attempts to kiss her,

but the Count steps forward and interposes his cheek. The Count

attempts to box Cherubino's ears, but Figaro, slipping forward at

the moment, receives the blow instead. Confusion is at its height.

The Count makes love to his wife, thinking she is Susanna, promises

her a dowry, and places a ring on her finger. Seeing torches

approaching, they withdraw into deeper darkness. Susanna shows

herself, and Figaro, who takes her for the Countess, acquaints her

of the Count's doings which he has just witnessed. Susanna betrays

herself, and Figaro resolves to punish her for her masquerading.

He makes love to her with extravagant pathos until interrupted by

a slap in the face. Susanna's patience had become exhausted, and

her temper got the better of her judgment. Figaro laughs at her

ill-humor and confesses his trick, but renews his sham love-making

when he sees the Count returning. The latter calls for lights, and

seizes Figaro and his retainers. In the presence of all he is put

to shame by the disclosures of the personality of the Countess and

Susanna. He falls on his knees, asks forgiveness, receives it, and

all ends happily.

CHAPTER III

"DIE ZAUBERFLÖTE"

Mozart's "Zauberflöte"--"The Magic Flute"--is the oldest German

opera holding a place on the American stage, though not quite 118

years old; but so far as my memory and records go, it has had but

four performances in the original tongue in New York in a whole

generation. There have been a few representations in English within

this time and a considerable number in Italian, our operatic

institutions being quick, as a rule, to put it upon the stage

whenever they have at command a soprano leggiero with a voice

of sufficient range and flexibility to meet the demands of the

extraordinary music which Mozart wrote for the Queen of Night to

oblige his voluble-throated sister-in-law, Mme. Hofer, who was

the original representative of that character. The same operatic

conditions having prevailed in New York and London for many years,

it is not strange that English-speaking people have come to

associate "The Magic Flute" with the Italian rather than the German

repertory. Yet we have the dictum of Beethoven that it is Mozart's

greatest opera, because in it his genius showed itself in so large

a variety of musical forms, ranging from ditties in the folk-song

style to figurated chorale and fugue, and more particularly because

in it Mozart first disclosed himself as a German composer. By this

Beethoven did not mean that Mozart had not written music before for

a German libretto, but that he had never written German music before

in an opera. The distinction is one more easily observed by Germans

and critical historians than by the ordinary frequenters of our

opera-houses. "Die Zauberflöte" has a special charm for people of

German blood, which is both admirable and amiable. Its magnificent

choruses are sung by men, and Germany is the home of the Männergesang;

among the opera's songs are echoes of the Volkslied--ditties which

seem to have been caught up in the German nurseries or plucked off

the lips of the itinerant German balladist; its emotional music is

heartfelt, warm, ingenuous, and in form and spirit free from the

artificiality of Italian opera as it was in Mozart's day and as it

continued to be for a long time thereafter. It was this last virtue

which gave the opera its largest importance in the eyes of Otto

Jahn, Mozart's biographer. In it, he said, for the first time all

the resources of cultivated art were brought to bear with the

freedom of genius upon a genuine German opera. In his Italian

operas, Mozart had adopted the traditions of a long period of

development, and by virtue of his original genius had brought them

to a climax and a conclusion; but in "Die Zauberflöte" he "stepped

across the threshold of the future and unlocked the sanctuary of

national art for his countrymen."

In this view every critical historian can concur, no matter what his

tastes or where his home. But it is less easy for an English,

French, or Italian critic than a German to pardon the incongruities,

incoherences, and silly buffooneries which mar the opera. Some of

the disturbing elements are dear to the Teutonic heart. Papageno,

for instance, is but a slightly metamorphosed Kasperl, a Jack

Pudding (Hanswurst) twice removed; and Kasperl is as intimately

bound up in the German nature as his cousin Punch in the English.

Kasperl is, indeed, directly responsible for "Die Zauberflöte." At

the end of the eighteenth century there was in Vienna a singular

individual named Emmanuel Schikaneder, a Jack-of-all-trades so far

as public amusements were concerned--musician, singer, actor,

playwright, and manager. There can be no doubt but that he was a sad

scalawag and ribald rogue, with as few moral scruples as ever

burdened a purveyor of popular amusements. But he had some personal

traits which endeared him to Mozart, and a degree of intellectuality

which won him a fairly respectable place among the writers for the

stage at the turn of the century. Moreover, when he had become

prosperous enough to build a new theatre with the proceeds of "Die

Zauberflöte," he was wise enough to give a generous commission,

unhampered by his customary meddlesome restrictions, to Beethoven;

and discreet enough to approve of the highly virtuous book of

"Fidelio." At the beginning of the last decade of the eighteenth

century, however, his theatre had fallen on evil days, and in dire

straits he went to Mozart, whose friendship he had enjoyed from the

latter's Salzburg days, and begged him to undertake the composition

of an opera for which he had written the book, in conjunction with

one of his actors and choristers, named Gieseke (though this fact

never received public acknowledgment at his hands). Wieland's

"Oberon" had filled the popular mind with a great fondness for

fantastic and Oriental subjects, and a rival manager had been

successful with musical pieces in which the principal character was

the popular Kasperl. Casting about for an operatic subject which

should appeal to the general liking for romanticism and buffoonery

at once, Schikaneder hit upon a tale called "Lulu; oder, Die

Zauberflöte," written by Liebeskind, but published by Wieland in a

volume of Orientalia entitled "Dschinnistan." He had got pretty

deep in his work when a rival manager brought out an adaptation of

the same story, with music by Wenzel Müller. The farcical character

of the piece is indicated by its title, which was "Kasper, der

Fagottist; oder, Die Zauberzither"; but it made so striking a

success that Schikaneder feared to enter the lists against it with

an opera drawn from the same source. He was either too lazy, too

much in a hurry, or too indifferent to the principles of art to

remodel the completed portion, but finished his book on lines far

different from those originally contemplated. The transformation

thus accomplished brought about all the blemishes of "Die

Zauberflöte," but also gave occasion for the sublime music with

which Mozart transfigured some of the scenes. This will be

understood better if an outline of Liebeskind's tale is made to

precede the story of the opera as it came from Mozart's hand.

A wicked magician, Dilsenghuin, has robbed the "radiant fairy"

Perifirime of her daughter, Sidi, and carried off a magic talisman.

The magician keeps the damsel in confinement and persecutes her with

amatory advances which she is able to resist through a power which

is to support her so long as her heart is untouched by love.

Perifirime promises the hand of her daughter, whose father is the

King of Cashmere, to Prince Lulu, son of the King of Chorassan, if

he regain the stolen talisman for her. To do this, however, is given

only to one who has never felt the divine passion. Lulu undertakes

the adventure, and as aids the fairy gives him a magic flute and a

ring. The tone of the flute will win the hearts of all who hear it;

by turning the ring, the wearer is enabled to assume any form

desired at will; by throwing it away he may summon the fairy herself

to his aid. The Prince assumes the form of an old man, and, like

Orpheus, softens the nature of the wild beasts that he meets in the

forest. He even melts the heart of the magician himself, who admits

him to his castle. Once he is within its walls, the inmates all

yield to the charm of his magical music, not excepting the lovely

prisoner. At a banquet he throws the magician and his companions

into a deep sleep, and possesses himself of the talisman. It is a

gold fire-steel, every spark struck from which becomes a powerful

spirit whose service is at the command of the possessor. With the

help of genii, struck from the magical implement, and the fairy whom

he summons at the last, Prince Lulu overcomes all the obstacles

placed in his way. Discomfited, the magician flies away as an owl.

Perifirime destroys the castle and carries the lovers in a cloud

chariot to her own palace. Their royal fathers give their blessings,

and Prince Lulu and Princess Sidi are joined in wedlock.

Following in a general way the lines of this story, but supplying

the comic element by the creation of Papageno (who is Kasperl in a

habiliment of feathers), Schikaneder had already got his hero into

the castle of the wicked magician in quest of the daughter of the

Queen of Night (in whose character there was not yet a trace of

maleficence), when the success of his rival's earlier presentation

of the story gave him pause. Now there came to him (or to his

literary colleague) a conceit which fired the imagination of Mozart

and added an element to the play which was bound at once to dignify

it and create a popular stir that might lead to a triumph. Whence

the suggestion came is not known, but its execution, so far as the

libretto was concerned, was left to Gieseke. Under the Emperor

Leopold II the Austrian government had adopted a reactionary policy

toward the order of Freemasons, which was suspected of making

propaganda for liberal ideas in politics and religion. Both

Schikaneder and Mozart belonged to the order, Mozart, indeed, being

so enthusiastic a devotee that he once confessed to his father his

gratitude to God that through Freemasonry he had learned to look

upon death as the gateway to true happiness. In continuing the book

of the opera, Schikaneder (or Gieseke for him) abruptly transformed

the wicked magician into a virtuous sage who had carried off the

daughter of a wicked sorceress, the Queen of Night, to save the

maiden from the baleful influence of her mother. Instead of seeking

to frustrate the efforts of the prince who comes to rescue her,

the sage initiates him into the mysteries of Isis, leads him into

the paths of virtue and wisdom, tests him by trials, and rewards

him at the last by blessing his union with the maiden. The trials

of silence, secrecy, and hardihood in passing through the dread

elements of fire and water were ancient literary materials; they may

be found in the account of the initiation of a neophyte into the

mysteries of Isis in Apuleius's "Metamorphoses; or, The Golden Ass,"

a romance written in the second century. By placing the scene of the

opera in Egypt, the belief of Freemasons that their order originated

in that unspeakably ancient land was humored, while the use of some

of its symbolism (such as the conflict between light and darkness)

and the proclamation of what were believed to be some of its ethical

principles could safely be relied upon to delight the knowing and

irritate the curiosity of the uninitiated. The change also led to

the shabby treatment which woman receives in the opera, while

Schikaneder's failure to rewrite the first part accounts for such

inconsistencies as the genii who are sent to guide the prince

appearing first in the service of the evil principle and afterward

as agents of the good.

The overture to "Die Zauberflöte," because of its firm establishment

in our concert-rooms, is more widely known than the opera. Two of its

salient features have also made it the subject of large discussion

among musical analysts; namely, the reiterated chords, three times

three, which introduce the second part of the overture. {1}

[Musical excerpt]

and the fugued allegro, constructed with a skill that will never

cease to be a wonder to the knowing, built up on the following

subject:--

[Musical excerpt]

In the chords (which are heard again in the temple scene, at

which the hero is admitted as a novice and permitted to begin his

probation), the analysts who seek to find as much symbolism as

possible in the opera, see an allusion to the signals given by

knocking at the door of the lodge-room. Some such purpose may been

have in the mind of Mozart when he chose the device, but it was

not unique when he applied it. I have found it used in an almost

identical manner in the overture to "Günther von Schwarzburg," by

Ignaz Holzbauer, a German opera produced in Mannheim fifteen years

before "Die Zauberflöte" saw the light of the stage lamps. Mozart

knew Holzbauer, who was a really great musician, and admired his

music. Connected with the fugue theme there is a more familiar

story. In 1781 Clementi, the great pianist and composer, visited

Vienna. He made the acquaintance of Haydn, was introduced at court,

and Emperor Joseph II brought him and Mozart together in a trial of

skill at playing and improvising. Among other things Clementi played

his own sonata in B-flat, the first movement of which begins thus:--

[Musical excerpt]

The resemblance between this theme and Mozart's fugal subject is

too plain to need pointing out. Such likenesses were more common in

Mozart's day than they were a century ago; they were more common

in Handel's day than in Mozart's; they are almost as common in our

day as they were in Handel's, but now we explain them as being the

products of "unconscious cerebration," whereas in the eighteenth

century they were frank borrowings in which there was no moral

obliquity; for originality then lay as much in treatment as in

thematic invention, if not more.

Come we now to a description of the action of the opera. Tamino,--

strange to say, a "Japanese" prince,--hunting far, very far, from

home, is pursued, after his last arrow has been sped, by a great

serpent. He flees, cries for help, and seeing himself already in the

clutch of death, falls in a swoon. At the moment of his greatest

danger three veiled ladies appear on the scene and melodiously and

harmoniously unite in slaying the monster. They are smitten, in

unison, with the beauty of the unconscious youth whom they have

saved, and quarrel prettily among themselves for the privilege of

remaining beside him while information of the incident is bearing

to the Queen of Night, who lives hard by in a castle. No two being

willing that the third shall stay, all three go to the Queen, who is

their mistress. Tamino's consciousness returning, he discovers that

the serpent has been slain, and hails Papageno, who comes upon the

scene, as his deliverer. Papageno is a bird-catcher by trade and

in the service of the Queen of Night--a happy-go-lucky, talkative

fellow, whose thoughts do not go beyond creature comforts. He

publishes his nature (and incidentally illustrates what has been

said above about the naïve character of some of the music of the

opera) by trolling a ditty with an opening strain as follows:--

[Musical excerpt]

Papageno has no scruples about accepting credit and gratitude for

the deed performed by the ladies, and, though he is the veriest

poltroon, he boasts inordinately about the gigantic strength which

had enabled him to strangle the serpent. He is punished for his

mendacity when the ladies return and place a padlock upon his mouth,

closing his lips to the things of which he is most fond--speech and

food. To Tamino they give a miniature portrait, which excites him to

rapturous song ("Dies Bildniss ist bezaubernd schön," or "Oh! cara

immagine," as the case may be). Then he learns that the original of

the portrait is Pamina, daughter of the Queen of Night, stolen from

her mother by a "wicked demon," Sarastro. In the true spirit of

knight-errantry he vows that he will restore the maid to her

mother's arms. There is a burst of thunder, and the Queen appears

in such apparel and manner as the exchequer at the theatre and the

ingenuity of the stage mechanic are able to provide. (When last I

saw her her robe was black, bespangled with stars and glittering

gems, and she rode upon the crescent moon.) She knows the merits and

virtues of the youth, and promises that he shall have Pamina to wife

if he succeeds in his adventure. Papageno is commanded to accompany

him, and as aids the ladies give to Tamino a magic flute, whose

tones shall protect him from every danger, and to Papageno a

bell-chime of equal potency. (These talismans have hundreds of

prototypes in the folk-lore of all peoples.) Papageno is loath to

accompany the prince, because the magician had once threatened to

spit and roast him like the bird he resembled if ever he was caught

in his domain, but the magical bells give him comfort and assurance.

Meanwhile the padlock has been removed from his lips, with

admonitions not to lie more. In the quintet which accompanies these

sayings and doings, there is exquisite music, which, it is said,

Mozart conceived while playing at billiards. Finally the ladies

announce that three boys, "young, beautiful, pure, and wise," shall

guide the pair to the castle of Sarastro.

We are next in a room of the castle before the would-be rescuers

arrive. Pamina has tried to escape, and is put in chains by her

keeper, the Moor Monostatos. She weeps because of her misery, and

repulses the protestations of love with which her jailer plagues

her. Papageno enters the room, and he and the jailer run in opposite

directions at sight of each other--Papageno frightened by the

complexion of the blackamoor, Monostatos terror-stricken at the

sight of a man in feathers. Returning, Papageno convinces himself

of the identity of Pamina with the daughter of the Queen of Night,

tells her of Tamino, who is coming for her with a heart full of

love, and promptly they sing of the divine dignity of the marital

state. It is the duet, "Bei Männern weiche Liebe fühlen," or "Là

dove prende, amor ricetto," familiar to concert-rooms, and the

melody to some hymnals. A story goes that Mozart had to write

this duet three or five times before it would pass muster in the

censorious eyes of Schikaneder. After the opera had made good its

success, the duet as we have it to-day alternated at the performance

with a more ornate version--in all likelihood one of the earlier

forms in which Mozart cast it.

The three boys--genii they are, and if I were stage-manager they

should fly like Peter Pan--lead Tamino into a grove wherein stand

three temples dedicated respectively to Wisdom, Nature, and Reason.

The precinct is sacred; the music tells us that--the halo streaming

from sustained notes of flutes and clarinets, the muted trumpets,

the solemn trombones in softest monotone, the placid undulations of

the song sung by the violins, the muffled, admonitory beats of the

kettledrums. The genii leave Tamino after admonishing him to be

"steadfast, patient, and silent." Conscious of a noble purpose, the

hero boldly approaches the Temple of Reason, but before he can enter

its portals, is stopped by an imperative injunction from within:

"Back!" He essays the Temple of Nature, and is turned away again by

the ominous word. Out of the Temple of Wisdom steps an aged priest,

from whom he learns that Sarastro is master within, and that no

one is privileged to enter whose heart, like his, harbors hatred

and vengeful thoughts. Tamino thinks Sarastro fully deserving of

hatred and revenge, and is informed that he had been deceived by a

woman--one of the sex "that does little, chatters much." Tamino asks

if Pamina lives, but the priest is bound by an oath to say nothing

on that subject until "the hand of friendship shall lead him to an

eternal union within the sanctuary." When shall night vanish and the

light appear? Oracular voices answer, "Soon, youth, or never!" Does

Pamina live? The voices: "Pamina still lives!" Thus comforted, he

sings his happiness, filling the pauses in his song with interludes

on the flute, bringing to his feet the wild beasts and forest

creatures of all sorts. He hears Papageno's syrinx, and at length

finds the fowler with Monostatos; but before their joy can have

expression Pamina and the slaves appear and capture them. Papageno

recollects him of his magic bells; he plays upon them, and the

slaves, willy-nilly, dance themselves out of sight. Scarcely are the

lovers free when a solemn strain announces the approach of Sarastro.

He comes in a chariot drawn by lions and surrounded by a brave

retinue. Pamina kneels to him, confesses her attempt to escape, but

explains that it was to free herself from the odious attentions of

Monostatos. The latter, asking his reward for having thwarted the

plan of Papageno, receives it from Sarastro in the shape of a

bastinado. Pamina pleads for restoration to her mother, but the sage

refuses to free her, saying that her mother is a haughty woman,

adding the ungallant reflection that woman's heart should be

directed by man lest she step outside her sphere. He commands that

Tamino and Papageno be veiled and led into the Temple of Probation.

The first act is ended.

The initiation of Tamino and Papageno into the mysteries, their

trials, failures, triumph, and reward, form the contents of the

second act. At a conclave of the elect, Sarastro announces that

Tamino stands at the door of the Temple of Wisdom, desirous to gaze

upon the "great light" of the sanctuary. He prays Isis and Osiris

to give strength to the neophytes:--

[Musical excerpt--"O Isis und Osiris schenket Der Weisheit Geist

dem neuen Paar."]

To the impressiveness of this prayer the orchestra contributes as

potent a factor as the stately melody or the solemn harmonies. All

the bright-voiced instruments are excluded, and the music assigned

to three groups of sombre color, composed, respectively, (1) of

divided violas and violoncellos; (2) of three trombones, and (3) of

two basset horns and two bassoons. The assent of the sacerdotal

assembly is indicated by the three trumpet blasts which have been

described in connection with the overture, and Tamino and Papageno

are admitted to the Temple, instructed, and begin their probationary

trials. True to the notion of the order, two priests warn the

neophytes against the wiles of woman. Papageno has little inclination

to seek wisdom, but enters upon the trials in the hope of winning a

wife who shall be like himself in appearance. In the first trial,

which is that of silence, the value of the priestly warning just

received is at once made apparent. Tamino and Papageno have scarcely

been left alone, when the three female attendants of the Queen of

Night appear and attempt to terrify them with tales of the false

nature of the priests, whose recruits, say they, are carried to

hell, body and breeches (literally "mit Haut und Haar," i.e. "with

skin and hair"). Papageno becomes terror-stricken and falls to the

floor, when voices within proclaim that the sanctity of the temple

has been profaned by woman's presence. The ladies flee.

The scene changes. Pamina is seen asleep in a bower of roses,

silvered over by the light of the moon. Monostatos, deploring the

fact that love should be denied him because of his color, though

enjoyed by everything else in nature, attempts to steal a kiss. A

peal of thunder, and the Queen of Night rises from the ground. She

importunes Pamina to free herself and avenge her mother's wrongs

by killing Sarastro. To this end she hands her a dagger and pours

out the "hellish rage" which "boils" in her heart in a flood of

scintillant staceati in the tonal regions where few soprano voices

move:--

[Musical excerpt]

Monostatos has overheard all. He wrenches the dagger from Pamina,

urges her again to accept his love, threatens her with death, and

is about to put his threat into execution when Sarastro enters,

dismisses the slave, and announces that his revenge upon the Queen

of Night shall lie in promoting the happiness of the daughter by

securing her union with Tamino.

The probationary trials of Tamino and Papageno are continued. The

two are led into a hall and admonished to remain silent till they

hear a trumpet-call. Papageno falls to chattering with an old woman,

is terrified beyond measure by a thunder-clap, and recovers his

composure only when the genii bring back the flute and bells and a

table of food. Tamino, however, remains steadfast, though Pamina

herself comes to him and pleads for a word of love. Papageno boasts

of his own hardihood, but stops to eat, though the trumpet has

called. A lion appears; Tamino plays his flute, and the beast

returns to his cage. The youth is prepared for the final trial; he

is to wander for a space through flood and flame, and Pamina is

brought to say her tearful farewells. The courage and will of the

neophyte remain unshaken, though the maiden gives way to despair and

seeks to take her own life. The genii stay her hand, and assure her

that Tamino shall be restored to her. Two men in armor guard the

gates of a subterranean cavern. They sing of the rewards to be won

by him who shall walk the path of danger; water, fire, air, and

earth shall purify him; and if he withstand death's terrors, heaven

shall receive him and he be enlightened and fitted to consecrate

himself wholly to the mysteries of Isis:--

[Musical excerpt--"Der, welcher wandert diese Strasse voll Beschwerde"]

A marvellous piece of music is consorted with this oracular

utterance. The words are set to an old German church melody--"Ach

Gott, vom Himmel sieh darein"--around which the orchestral

instruments weave a contrapuntal web of wondrous beauty. At the

gates Pamina joins her lover and accompanies him on his journey,

which is happily achieved with the help of the flute. Meanwhile

Papageno is pardoned his loquacity, but told that he shall never

feel the joy of the elect. He thinks he can make shift with a

pretty wife instead. The old woman of the trial chamber appears and

discloses herself as the charming, youthful Papageno, but only for

an instant. He calls after her in vain, and is about to hang himself

when the genii remind him of his magic bells. He rings and sings;

his feathered mate comes to him. Monostatos aids the Queen of Night

and her companions in an assault upon the sanctuary; but a storm

confounds them, and Sarastro blesses the union of Tamino and Pamina,

amidst joyful hymning by the elect.

An extraordinary hodgepodge, truly, yet, taken all in all, an

effective stage piece. Goethe was so impressed with the ingenuity

shown by Schikaneder in treating the device of contrast that he

seriously contemplated writing a second part, the music of which was

to be composed by Wranitzky, who set Gieseke's operatic version of

"Oberon." German critics and managers have deplored its absurdities

and contradictions, but have found no way to obviate them which

can be said to be generally acceptable. The buffooneries cannot be

separated from the sublimities without disrupting the piece, nor can

its doggerel be turned into dignified verse. It were best, I fancy,

that managers should treat the opera, and audiences receive it, as a

sort of Christmas pantomime which Mozart has glorified by his music.

The tendency of German critics has been to view it with too much

seriousness. It is difficult to avoid this while one is under the

magic spell of its music, but the only way to become reconciled to

it on reflection is to take it as the story of its creation shows

that its creators intended it to be taken; namely, as a piece

designed to suit the tastes of the uncultivated and careless masses.

This will explain the singular sacrifice of principle which Mozart

made in permitting a mountebank like Schikaneder to pass judgment on

his music while he was composing it, to exact that one duet should

be composed over five times before he would accept it, and even to

suggest melodies for some of the numbers. Jahn would have us believe

that Mozart was so concerned at the failure of the first act to win

applause at the first performance that he came behind the scenes

pale as death to receive comfort and encouragement from Schikaneder;

I prefer to believe another story, which is to the effect that

Mozart almost died with laughing when he found that the public went

into ecstasies over his opera. Certain it is that his pleasure in

it was divided. Schikaneder had told him that he might occasionally

consult the taste of connoisseurs, and he did so, finding profound

satisfaction in the music written for Sarastro and the priests, and

doubtless also in the fine ensembles; but the enthusiasm inspired

by what he knew to be concessions to the vulgar only excited his

hilarity. The beautiful in the score is amply explained by Mozart's

genius and his marvellous command of the technique of composition.

The dignity of the simple idea of a celebration of the mysteries

of Isis would have been enough, without the composer's reverence

for Freemasonry and its principles, to inspire him for a great

achievement when it came to providing a setting for the scenes in

which the priests figure. The rest of the music he seems to have

written with little regard to coherency or unity of character. His

sister-in-law had a voice of extraordinary range and elasticity;

hence the two display airs; Papageno had to have music in keeping in

his character, and Mozart doubtless wrote it with as little serious

thought as he did the "Piece for an Organ in a Clock, in F minor,

4-4," and "Andante to a Waltz for a Little Organ," which can be

found entered in his autograph catalogue for the last year of

his life. In the overture, one of the finest of his instrumental

compositions, he returned to a form that had not been in use since

the time of Hasse and Graum; in the scene with the two men in armor

he made use of a German chorale sung in octaves as a canto firmo,

with counterpoint in the orchestra--a recondite idea which it is

difficult to imagine him inventing for this opera. I fancy (not

without evidence) that he made the number out of material found in

his sketch-book. These things indicate that the depth which the

critics with deep-diving and bottom-scraping proclivities affect

to see in the work is rather the product of imagination than real.

Footnotes:

{1} These chords, played by all the wind instruments of the band,

are the chords of the introduction raised to a higher power.

CHAPTER IV

"DON GIOVANNI"

In the preceding chapter it was remarked that Mozart's "Zauberflöte"

was the oldest German opera in the current American repertory.

Accepting the lists of the last two decades as a criterion, "Don

Giovanni" is the oldest Italian opera, save one. That one is "Le

Nozze di Figaro," and it may, therefore, be said that Mozart's

operas mark the beginning of the repertory as it exists at the

present time in America. Twenty-five years ago it was possible to

hear a few performances of Gluck's "Orfeo" in English and Italian,

and its name has continued to figure occasionally ever since in the

lists of works put forth by managers when inviting subscriptions for

operatic seasons; but that fact can scarcely be said to have kept

the opera in the repertory.

Our oldest Italian opera is less than 125 years old, and "Don

Giovanni" only 122--an inconsiderable age for a first-class work of

art compared with its companion pieces in literature, painting, and

sculpture, yet a highly respectable one for an opera. Music has

undergone a greater revolution within the last century than any

other art in thrice the period, yet "Don Giovanni" is as much

admired now as it was in the last decade of the eighteenth century,

and, indeed, has less prejudice to contend with in the minds of

musicians and critics than it had when it was in its infancy, and

I confidently believe that to its score and that of "Le Nozze di

Figaro" opera writers will soon be turning to learn the methods of

dramatic characterization. Pure beauty lives in angelic wedlock with

psychological expression in Mozart's dramatic music, and these

factors will act as powerful loadstones in bringing composers who

are now laboriously and vainly seeking devices for characterization

in tricks and devices based on arbitrary formulas back to the gospel

of truth and beauty. Wagner has had no successful imitator. His

scheme of thematic identification and development, in its union of

calculation, reflection, and musical inspiration, is beyond the

capacities of those who have come after him. The bow of Ulysses is

still unbent; but he will be a great musician indeed who shall use

the resources of the new art with such large ease, freedom, power,

and effectiveness as Mozart used those of the comparatively

ingenuous art of his day. And yet the great opera composer who is to

come in great likelihood will be a disciple of Gluck, Mozart, and

the Wagner who wrote "Tristan und Isolde" and "Die Meistersinger"

rather than one of the tribe of Debussy.

The great opera composers of the nineteenth century were of one mind

touching the greatness of "Don Giovanni." Beethoven was horrified by

its licentious libretto, but tradition says that he kept before him

on his writing-table a transcript of the music for the trombones in

the second finale of the opera. Shortly after Mme. Viardot-Garcia

came into possession of the autograph score of the masterpiece,

Rossini called upon her and asked for the privilege of looking at

it, adding, "I want to bow the knee before this sacred relic."

After poring over a few pages, he placed his hands on the book and

said, solemnly: "He is the greatest, the master of them all; the

only composer who had as much science as he had genius, and as

much genius as he had science." On another occasion he said to a

questioner: "Vous voulez connaître celui de mes ouvrages que j'aime

le mieux; eh bien, c'est 'Don Giovanni.'" Gounod celebrated the

centenary of the opera by writing a commentary on it which he

dedicated to young composers and artists called upon to take part

in performances of the opera. In the preface of his book he

characterizes it as "an unequalled and immortal masterpiece," the

"apogee of the lyrical drama," a "wondrous example of truth, beauty

of form, appropriateness of characterization, deep insight into the

drama, purity of style, richness and restraint in instrumentation,

charm and tenderness in the love passages, and power in pathos"--in

one word, a "finished model of dramatic music." And then he added:

"The score of 'Don Giovanni' has exercised the influence of a

revelation upon the whole of my life; it has been and remains for

me a kind of incarnation of dramatic and musical impeccability. I

regard it as a work without blemish, of uninterrupted perfection,

and this commentary is but the humble testimony of my Veneration and

gratitude for the genius to whom I owe the purest and most permanent

joys of my life as a musician." In his "Autobiographical Sketch"

Wagner confesses that as a lad he cared only for "Die Zauberflöte,"

and that "Don Giovanni" was distasteful to him on account of the

Italian text, which seemed to him rubbish. But in "Oper und Drama"

he says: "Is it possible to find anything more perfect than every

piece in 'Don Juan'? . . . Oh, how doubly dear and above all honor

is Mozart to me that it was not possible for him to invent music

for 'Tito' like that of 'Don Giovanni,' for 'Cosi fan tutte' like

that of 'Figaro'! How shamefully would it have desecrated music!"

And again: "Where else has music won so infinitely rich an

individuality, been able to characterize so surely, so definitely,

and in such exuberant plenitude, as here?" {1}

Mozart composed "Don Giovanni" for the Italian Opera at Prague,

which had been saved from ruin in the season 1786-1787 by the

phenomenal success of "Le Nozze di Figaro." He chose the subject and

commissioned Lorenzo da Ponte, then official poet to the imperial

theatres of Austria, to write the book of words. In doing so, the

latter made free use of a version of the same story made by an

Italian theatrical poet named Bertati, and Dr. Chrysander (who in

1886 gave me a copy of this libretto, which Mozart's biographer,

Otto Jahn, had not succeeded in finding, despite diligent search)

has pointed out that Mozart also took as a model some of the music

to which the composer Gazzaniga had set it. The title of the opera

by Bertati and Gazzaniga was "Il Convitato di Pietra." It had been

brought forward with great success in Venice and won wide vogue

in Italy before Mozart hit upon it. It lived many years after

Mozart brought out his opera, and, indeed, was performed in London

twenty-three years before Mozart's opera got a hearing. It is

doubtful, however, if the London representation did justice to the

work. Da Ponte was poet to the opera there when "Il Convitato" was

chosen for performance, and it fell to him to prepare the book to

suit the taste of the English people. He tried to persuade the

management to give Mozart's opera instead, and, failing in that,

had the malicious satisfaction of helping to turn the work of

Bertati and Gazzaniga into a sort of literary and musical pasticcio,

inserting portions of his own paraphrase of Bertati's book in place

of the original scenes and preparing occasion for the insertion of

musical pieces by Sarti, Frederici, and Guglielmi.

Mozart wrote the music to "Don Giovanni" in the summer of 1787.

Judging by the circumstance that there is no entry in his autograph

catalogue between June 24 and August 10 in that year, it would seem

that he had devoted the intervening seven weeks chiefly, if not

wholly, to the work. When he went to Prague in September he carried

the unfinished score with him, and worked on it there largely in the

summer house of his friends, the Duscheks, who lived in the suburbs

of the city. Under date of October 28 he entered the overture in his

catalogue. As a matter of fact, it was not finished till the early

morn of the next day, which was the day of the first production of

the opera. Thereby hangs the familiar tale of how it was composed.

On the evening of the day before the performance, pen had not been

touched to the overture. Nevertheless, Mozart sat with a group of

merry friends until a late hour of the night. Then he went to his

hotel and prepared to work. On the table was a glass of punch, and

his wife sat beside him--to keep him awake by telling him stories.

In spite of all, sleep overcame him, and he was obliged to interrupt

his work for several hours; yet at 7 o'clock in the morning the

copyist was sent for and the overture was ready for him. The tardy

work delayed the representation in the evening, and the orchestra

had to play the overture at sight; but it was a capital band, and

Mozart, who conducted, complimented it before starting into the

introduction to the first air. The performance was completely

successful, and floated buoyantly on a tide of enthusiasm which set

in when Mozart entered the orchestra, and rose higher and higher as

the music went on. On May 7, 1788, the opera was given in Vienna,

where at first it made a fiasco, though Mozart had inserted new

pieces and made other alterations to humor the singers and add to

its attractiveness. London heard it first on April 12, 1817, at the

King's Theatre, whose finances, which were almost in an exhausted

state, it restored to a flourishing condition. In the company which

Manuel Garcia brought to New York in 1825 were Carlo Angrisani, who

was the Masetto of the first London representation, and Domenico

Crivelli, son of the tenor Gaetano Crivelli, who had been the

Don Ottavio. Garcia was a tenor with a voice sufficiently deep to

enable him to sing the barytone part of Don Giovanni in Paris and

at subsequent performances in London. It does not appear that he

had contemplated a performance of the opera in New York, but here

he met Da Ponte, who had been a resident of the city for twenty

years and recently been appointed professor of Italian literature

at Columbia College. Da Ponte, as may be imagined, lost no time in

calling on Garcia and setting on foot a scheme for bringing forward

"my 'Don Giovanni,'" as he always called it. Crivelli was a

second-rate tenor, and could not be trusted with the part of Don

Ottavio, and a Frenchman named Milon, whom I conclude to have been

a violoncello player, afterward identified with the organization of

the Philharmonic Society, was engaged for that part. A Mme. Barbieri

was cast for the part of Donna Anna, Mme. Garcia for that of Donna

Elvira, Manuel Garcia, Jr. (who died in 1906 at the age of 101

years) for that of Leporello, Angrisani for his old rôle of Masetto,

and Maria Garcia, afterward the famous Malibran, for that of

Zerlina. The first performance took place on May 23, 1826, in the

Park Theatre, and the opera was given eleven times in the season.

This success, coupled with the speedily acquired popularity of

Garcia's gifted daughter, was probably the reason why an English

version of the opera which dominated the New York stage for nearly

a quarter of a century soon appeared at the Chatham Theatre. In

this version the part of the dissolute Don was played by H. Wallack,

uncle of the Lester Wallack so long a theatrical favorite in the

American metropolis. As Malibran the Signorina Garcia took part in

many of the English performances of the work, which kept the Italian

off the local stage till 1850, when it was revived by Max Maretzek

at the Astor Place Opera-house.

I have intimated that Bertati's opera-book was the prototype of Da

Ponte's, but the story is centuries older than either. The Spanish

tale of Don Juan Tenorio, who killed an enemy in a duel, insulted

his memory by inviting his statue to dinner, and was sent to hell

because of his refusal to repent him of his sins, was but a literary

form of a legend of considerable antiquity. It seems likely that

it was moulded into dramatic shape by monks in the Middle Ages; it

certainly occupied industriously the minds of playwrights in the

seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Spain, Italy, Germany, and

England. The most eminent men who treated it at various times were

the Spaniard known as Tirza di Molina, the Frenchman Molière,

the Italian Goldoni, and the Englishman Thomas Shadwell, whose

"Libertine Destroyed" was brought forward in 1676. Before Mozart,

Le Tellier had used it for a French comic opera, Righini and

Gazzaniga for Italian operas, and Gluck for a ballet.

But we are concerned now only with the play as Da Ponte and Mozart

gave it to us. In the dramatic terminology of the eighteenth century

"Don Giovanni" was a dramma giocoso; in the better sense of the

phrase, a playful drama--a lyric comedy. Da Ponte conceived it as

such, but Mozart gave it so tragical a turn by the awful solemnity

with which he infused the scene of the libertine's punishment that

already in his day it was felt that the last scene as written and

composed to suit the conventional type of a comic opera was an

intolerable anticlimax. Mozart sounds a deeply tragical note at the

outset of his overture. The introduction is an Andante, which he

drew from the scene of the opera in which the ghostly statue of the

murdered Commandant appears to Don Giovanni while he is enjoying

the pleasures of the table. Two groups of solemn chords command

attention and "establish at once the majestic and formidable

authority of divine justice, the avenger of crime." {2} They are

followed by a series of solemn progressions in stern, sinister,

unyielding, merciless, implacable harmonies. They are like the

colossal strides of approaching Fate, and this awfulness is twice

raised to a higher power, first by a searching, syncopated phrase

in the violins which hovers loweringly over them, and next by a

succession of afrighted minor scales ascending crescendo and

descending piano, the change in dynamics beginning abruptly as the

crest of each terrifying wave is reached. These wonderful scales

begin thus:--

[Musical excerpt]

in the last scene of the opera. They were an afterthought of the

composer's. They did not appear in the original score of the scene,

as the autograph shows, but were written in after the music had once

been completed. They are crowded into the staves in tiny notes which

sometimes extend from one measure into the next. This circumstance

and the other, that they are all fairly written out in the autograph

of the overture, indicate that they were conceived either at one of

the rehearsals or while Mozart was writing the overture. They could

not have been suggested at the first performance, as Jahn seems to

imply. {3} The introduction is only thirty measures long, and the

Allegro which follows is made up of new material. I quote again

from Gounod: "But suddenly, and with feverish audacity, the Allegro

breaks out in the major key, an Allegro full of passion and

delirium, deaf to the warnings of Heaven, regardless of remorse,

enraptured of pleasure, madly inconstant and daring, rapid and

impetuous as a torrent, flashing and swift as a sword, overleaping

all obstacles, scaling balconies, and bewildering the alguazils." {4}

From the tragic introduction through the impetuous main section we

are led to a peaceful night scene in the garden before the house

of Donna Anna. There Leporello, the servant of Don Giovanni, is

awaiting in discontented mood for the return of his master, who has

entered the house in quest of amatory adventure. Leporello is weary

of the service in which he is engaged, and contrasts his state with

that of the Don. (Air: "Notte e giorno faticar.") He will throw off

the yoke and be a gentleman himself. He has just inflated himself

with pride at the thought, when he hears footsteps, and the poltroon

in his nature asserts itself. He hides behind the shrubbery. Don

Giovanni hurries from the house, concealing his features with his

cloak and impeded by Donna Anna, who clings to him, trying to get a

look into his face and calling for help. Don Giovanni commands

silence and threatens. The Commandant, Donna Anna's father, appears

with drawn sword and challenges the intruder. Don Giovanni hesitates

to draw against so old a man, but the Commandant will not parley.

They fight. At first the attacks and defences are deliberate (the

music depicts it all with wonderful vividness), but at the last it

is thrust and parry, thrust and parry, swiftly, mercilessly. The

Commandant is no match for his powerful young opponent, and falls,

dying. A few broken ejaculations, and all is ended. The orchestra

sings a slow descending chromatic phrase "as if exhausted by the

blood which oozes from the wound," says Gounod. How simple the means

of expression! But let the modern composer, with all his apparatus

of new harmonies and his multitude of instruments, point out a scene

to match it in the entire domain of the lyric drama! Don Giovanni

and his lumpish servant, who, with all his coward instincts, cannot

help trying his wit at the outcome of the adventure, though his

master is in little mood for sportiveness, steal away as they see

lights and hear a commotion in the palace. Donna Anna comes back to

the garden, bringing her affianced lover, Don Ottavio, whom she had

called to the help of her father. She finds the Commandant dead,

and breaks into agonizing cries and tears. Only an accompanied

recitative, but every ejaculation a cry of nature! Gounod is wrought

up to an ecstasy by Mozart's declamation and harmonies. He suspends

his analysis to make this comment:--

But that which one cannot too often remark nor too often endeavor

to make understood, that which renders Mozart an absolutely unique

genius, is the constant and indissoluble union of beauty of form

with truth of expression. By this truth he is human, by this beauty

he is divine. By truth he teaches us, he moves us; we recognize each

other in him, and we proclaim thereby that he indeed knows human

nature thoroughly, not only in its different passions, but also in

the varieties of form and character that those passions may assume.

By beauty the real is transfigured, although at the same time it

is left entirely recognizable; he elevates it by the magic of a

superior language and transports it to that region of serenity and

light which constitutes Art, wherein Intelligence repeats with a

tranquillity of vision what the heart has experienced in the trouble

of passion. Now the union of truth with beauty is Art itself.

Don Ottavio attempts to console his love, but she is insane with

grief and at first repulses him, then pours out her grief and calls

upon him to avenge the death of her father. Together they register

a vow and call on heaven for retribution.

It is morning. Don Giovanni and Leporello are in the highway near

Seville. As usual, Leporello is dissatisfied with his service and

accuses the Don with being a rascal. Threats of punishment bring

back his servile manner, and Don Giovanni is about to acquaint him

of a new conquest, when a lady, Donna Elvira, comes upon the scene.

She utters woful complaints of unhappiness and resentment against

one who had won her love, then deceived and deserted her. (Air:

"Ah! chi mi dice mai.") Don Giovanni ("aflame already," as Leporello

remarks) steps forward to console her. He salutes her with soft

blandishment in his voice, but to his dismay discovers that she is

a noble lady of Burgos and one of the "thousand and three" Spanish

victims recorded in the list which Leporello mockingly reads to her

after Don Giovanni, having turned her over to his servant, for

an explanation of his conduct in leaving Burgos, has departed

unperceived. Leporello is worthy of his master in some things.

In danger he is the veriest coward, and his teeth chatter like

castanets; but confronted by a mere woman in distress he becomes

voluble and spares her nothing in a description of the number of

his master's amours, their place, the quality and station of his

victims, and his methods of beguilement. The curious and also

the emulous may be pleased to learn that the number is 2065,

geographically distributed as follows: Italy, 240; Germany, 231;

France, 100; Turkey, 91; and Spain, 1003. Among them are ladies from

the city and rustic damsels, countesses, baronesses, marchionesses,

and princesses. If blond, he praises her dainty beauty; brunette,

her constancy; pale, her sweetness. In cold weather his preferences

go toward the buxom, in summer, svelte. Even old ladies serve to

swell his list. Rich or poor, homely or beautiful, all's one to him

so long as the being is inside a petticoat. "But why go on? Lady,

you know his ways." The air, "Madamina," is a marvel of malicious

humor and musical delineation. "E la grande maestoso"--the music

rises and inflates itself most pompously; "la piccina"--it sinks in

quick iteration lower and lower just as the Italians in describing

small things lower their hands toward the ground. The final words,

"Voi sapete, quel che fa," scarcely to be interpreted for polite

readers, as given by bass singers who have preserved the Italian

traditions (with a final "hm" through the nose), go to the extreme

of allowable suggestiveness, if not a trifle beyond. The insult

throws Elvira into a rage, and she resolves to forego her love

and seek vengeance instead.

Don Giovanni comes upon a party of rustics who are celebrating in

advance the wedding of Zerlina and Masetto. The damsel is a somewhat

vain, forward, capricious, flirtatious miss, and cannot long

withstand such blandishments as the handsome nobleman bestows

upon her. Don Giovanni sends the merrymakers to his palace for

entertainment, cajoles and threatens Masetto into leaving him alone

with Zerlina, and begins his courtship of her. (Duet: "Là ci darem

la mano.") He has about succeeded in his conquest, when Elvira

intervenes, warns the maiden, leads her away, and, returning, finds

Donna Anna and Don Ottavio in conversation with Don Giovanni,

whose help in the discovery of the Commandant's murderer they are

soliciting. Elvira breaks out with denunciations, and Don Giovanni,

in a whisper to his companions, proclaims her mad, and leads her

off. Departing, he says a word of farewell, and from the tone of

his voice Donna Anna recognizes her father's murderer. She tells

her lover how the assassin stole into her room at night, attempted

her dishonor, and slew her father. She demands his punishment at

Don Ottavio's hands, and he, though doubting that a nobleman and

a friend could be guilty of such crimes, yet resolves to find out

the truth and deliver the guilty man to justice.

The Don commands a grand entertainment for Zerlina's wedding party,

for, though temporarily foiled, he has not given up the chase.

Masetto comes with pretty Zerlina holding on to the sleeve of his

coat. The boor is jealous, and Zerlina knows well that he has cause.

She protests, she cajoles; he is no match for her. She confesses to

having been pleased at my lord's flattery, but he had not touched

"even the tips of her fingers." If her fault deserves it, he may

beat her if he wants to, but then let there be peace between them.

The artful minx! Her wheedling is irresistible. Listen to it:--

[Musical excerpt--"Batti, batti, o bel Masetto"]

The most insinuating of melodies floating over an obbligato of the

solo violoncello "like a love charm," as Gounod says. Then the

celebration of her victory when she captures one of his hands and

knows that he is yielding:--

[Musical excerpt--"Pace, pace o vita mia"]

A new melody, blither, happier, but always the violoncello murmuring

in blissful harmony with the seductive voice and rejoicing in the

cunning witcheries which lull Masetto's suspicions to sleep. Now all

go into Don Giovanni's palace, from which the sounds of dance music

and revelry are floating out. Donna Elvira, Donna Anna, and Don

Ottavio, who come to confront him who has wronged them all, are

specially bidden, as was the custom, because they appeared in masks.

Within gayety is supreme. A royal host, this Don Giovanni! Not only

are there refreshments for all, but he has humored both classes of

guests in the arrangement of the programme of dances. Let there be a

minuet, a country-dance, and an allemande, he had said to Leporello

in that dizzying song of instruction which whirls past our senses

like a mad wind: "Finch' han dal vino." No one so happy as Mozart

when it came to providing the music for these dances. Would you

connoisseurs in music like counterpoint? We shall give it you;--three

dances shall proceed at once and together, despite their warring

duple and triple rhythms:--

[Musical excerpts]

Louis Viardot, who wrote a little book describing the autograph of

"Don Giovanni," says that Mozart wrote in the score where the three

bands play thus simultaneously the word accordano as a direction

to the stage musicians to imitate the action of tuning their

instruments before falling in with their music. Of this fact the

reprint of the libretto as used at Prague and Vienna contains no

mention, but a foot-note gives other stage directions which indicate

how desirous Mozart was that his ingenious and humorous conceit

should not be overlooked. At the point where the minuet, which was

the dance of people of quality, is played, he remarked, "Don Ottavio

dances the minuet with Donna Anna"; at the contra-dance in 2-4 time,

"Don Giovanni begins to dance a contra-dance with Zerlina"; at the

entrance of the waltz, "Leporello dances a 'Teitsch' with Masetto."

The proper execution of Mozart's elaborate scheme puts the resources

of an opera-house to a pretty severe test, but there is ample reward

in the result. Pity that, as a rule, so little intelligence is shown

by the ballet master in arranging the dances! There is a special

significance in Mozart's direction that the cavalier humor the

peasant girl by stepping a country-dance with her, which is all lost

when he attempts to lead her into the aristocratic minuet, as is

usually done.

At the height of the festivities, Don Giovanni succeeds in leading

Zerlina into an inner room, from which comes a piercing shriek a

moment later. Anticipating trouble, Leporello hastens to his master

to warn him. Don Ottavio and his friends storm the door of the

anteroom, out of which now comes Don Giovanni dragging Leporello

and uttering threats of punishment against him. The trick does not

succeed. Don Ottavio removes his mask and draws his sword; Donna

Anna and Donna Elvira confront the villain. The musicians, servants,

and rustics run away in affright. For a moment Don Giovanni loses

presence of mind, but, his wits and courage returning, he beats down

the sword of Don Ottavio, and, with Leporello, makes good his escape.

The incidents of the second act move with less rapidity, and, until

the fateful dénouement is reached, on a lower plane of interest than

those of the first, which have been narrated. Don Giovanni turns his

attentions to the handsome waiting-maid of Donna Elvira. To get the

mistress out of the way he persuades Leporello to exchange cloaks

and hats with him and station himself before her balcony window,

while he utters words of tenderness and feigned repentance. The lady

listens and descends to the garden, where Leporello receives her

with effusive protestations; but Don Giovanni rudely disturbs them,

and they run away. Then the libertine, in the habit of his valet,

serenades his new charmer. The song, "Deh vieni alla finestra,"

is of melting tenderness and gallantry; words and music float

graciously on the evening air in company with a delightfully piquant

tune picked out on a mandolin. The maid is drawn to the window, and

Don Giovanni is in full expectation of another triumph, when Masetto

confronts him with a rabble of peasants, all armed. They are in

search of the miscreant who had attempted to outrage Zerlina. Don

Giovanni is protected by his disguise. He feigns willingness to help

in the hunt, and rids himself of Masetto's companions by sending

them on a fool's errand to distant parts of the garden. Then he

cunningly possesses himself of Masetto's weapons and belabors him

stoutly with his own cudgel. He makes off, and Zerlina, hearing

Masetto's cries, hurries in to heal his hurts with pretty endearments.

(Air: "Vedrai carino.") Most unaccountably, as it will seem to those

who seek for consistency and reason in all parts of the play, all

of its actors except Don Giovanni find themselves together in a

courtyard (or room, according to the notions of the stage manager).

Leporello is trying to escape from Elvira, who still thinks him Don

Giovanni, and is first confronted by Masetto and Zerlina and then by

Ottavio and Anna. He is still in his master's hat and cloak, and is

taken vigorously to task, but discloses his identity when it becomes

necessary in order to escape a beating. Convinced at last that Don

Giovanni is the murderer of the Commandant, Don Ottavio commends his

love to the care of her friends and goes to denounce the libertine

to the officers of the law.

The last scene is reached. Don Giovanni, seated at his table, eats,

drinks, indulges in badinage with his servant, and listens to the

music of his private band. The musicians play melodies from popular

operas of the period in which Mozart wrote--not Spanish melodies of

the unfixed time in which the veritable Don Juan may have lived:--

[Musical excerpts--From Martin's "Una cosa rara." From "Fra i due

litiganti" by Sarti. From "Nozze di Figaro."]

Mozart feared anachronisms as little as Shakespeare. His Don

Giovanni was contemporary with himself and familiar with the

repertory of the Vienna Opera. The autograph discloses that the

ingenious conceit was wholly Mozart's. It was he who wrote the words

with which Leporello greets the melodies from "Una cosa rara," "I

due Litiganti," and "Le Nozze di Figaro," and when Leporello hailed

the tune "Non piu andrai" from the last opera with words "Questo poi

la conosco pur troppo" ("This we know but too well"), he doubtless

scored a point with his first audience in Prague which the German

translator of the opera never dreamed of. Even the German critics

of to-day seem dense in their unwillingness to credit Mozart with a

purely amiable purpose in quoting the operas of his rivals, Martin

and Sarti. The latter showed himself ungrateful for kindnesses

received at Mozart's hands by publicly denouncing an harmonic

progression in one of the famous six quartets dedicated to Haydn as

a barbarism, but there was no ill-will in the use of the air from

"I due Litiganti" as supper music for the delectation of the Don.

Mozart liked the melody, and had written variations on it for the

pianoforte.

The supper is interrupted by Donna Elvira, who comes to plead on her

knees with Don Giovanni to change his mode of life. He mocks at her

solicitude and invites her to sit with him at table. She leaves the

room in despair, but sends back a piercing shriek from the corridor.

Leporello is sent out to report on the cause of the cry, and returns

trembling as with an ague and mumbling that he has seen a ghost--a

ghost of stone, whose footsteps, "Ta, ta, ta," sounded like a mighty

hammer on the floor. Don Giovanni himself goes to learn the cause of

the disturbance, and Leporello hides under the table. The intrepid

Don opens the door. There is a clap of thunder, and there enters the

ghost of the Commandant in the form of his statue as seen in the

churchyard. The music which has been described in connection with

the overture accompanies the conversation of the spectre and his

amazed host. Don Giovanni's repeated offer of hospitality is

rejected, but in turn he is asked if he will return the visit. He

will. "Your hand as a pledge," says the spectre. All unabashed, the

doomed man places his hand in that of the statue, which closes upon

it like a vise. Then an awful fear shakes the body of Don Giovanni,

and a cry of horror is forced out of his lips. "Repent, while there

is yet time," admonishes the visitor again and again, and still

again. Don Giovanni remains unshaken in his wicked fortitude. At

length he wrests his hand out of the stony grasp and at the moment

hears his doom from the stony lips, "Ah! the time for you is past!"

Darkness enwraps him; the earth trembles; supernatural voices

proclaim his punishment in chorus; a pit opens before him, from

which demons emerge and drag him down to hell.

Here the opera ends for us; but originally, after the catastrophe

the persons of the play, all but the reprobate whom divine justice

has visited, returned to the scene to hear a description of the

awful happenings he had witnessed from the buffoon who had hidden

under the table, to dispose their plans for the future (for Ottavio

and Anna, marriage in a year; for Masetto and Zerlina, a wedding

instanter; for Elvira, a nunnery), and platitudinously to moralize

that, the perfidious wretch having been carried to the realm of

Pluto and Proserpine, naught remained to do save to sing the old

song, "Thus do the wicked find their end, dying as they had lived."

Footnotes:

{1} See my preface to "Don Giovanni" in the Schirmer Collection of Operas.

{2} Gounod.

{3} "The Life of Mozart," by Otto Jahn, Vol. III, p. 169.

{4} "Mozart's Don Giovanni," by Charles Gounod, p. 3.

CHAPTER V