"FIDELIO"

It was the scalawag Schikaneder who had put together the singular

dramatic phantasmagoria known as Mozart's "Magic Flute," and acted

the part of the buffoon in it, who, having donned the garb of

respectability, commissioned Beethoven to compose the only opera

which that supreme master gave to the world. The opera is "Fidelio,"

and it occupies a unique place in operatic history not only because

it is the only work of its kind by the greatest tone-poet that ever

lived, but also because of its subject. The lyric drama has dealt

with the universal passion ever since the art-form was invented, but

"Fidelio" is the only living opera which occurs to me now, except

Gluck's "Orfeo" and "Alceste," which hymns the pure love of married

lovers. The bond between the story of Alcestis, who goes down to

death to save the life of Admetus, and that of Leonore, who ventures

her life to save Florestan, is closer than that of the Orphic

myth, for though the alloy only serves to heighten the sheen of

Eurydice's virtue, there is yet a grossness in the story of

Aristaeus's unlicensed passion which led to her death, that strongly

differentiates it from the modern tale of wifely love and devotion.

Beethoven was no ascetic, but he was as sincere and severe a

moralist in life as he was in art. In that most melancholy of human

documents, written at Heiligenstadt in October, 1802, commonly known

as his will, he says to his brothers: "Recommend to your children

virtue; it alone can bring happiness, not money. I speak from

experience. It was virtue which bore me up in time of trouble; to

her, next to my art, I owe thanks for my not having laid violent

hands on myself."

That Mozart had been able to compose music to such libretti as those

of "Don Giovanni" and "Così fan tutte" filed him with pained wonder.

Moreover, he had serious views of the dignity of music and of the

uses to which it might be put in the drama, and more advanced

notions than he has generally been credited with as to how music and

the drama ought to be consorted. Like all composers, he longed to

write an opera, and it is not at all unlikely that, like Mendelssohn

after him, he was deterred by the general tendency of the opera

books of his day. Certain it is that though he received a commission

for an opera early in the year 1803, it was not until an opera on

the story which is also that of "Fidelio" had been brought out

at Dresden that he made a definitive choice of a subject. The

production which may have infuenced him was that of Ferdinando

Paër's" Leonora, ossia l'Amore conjugale," which was brought forward

at Dresden, where its composer was conductor of the opera, on

October 3, 1804. This opera was the immediate predecessor of

Beethoven's, but it also had a predecessor in a French opera,

"Léonore, ou l'Amour conjugal," of which the music was composed by

Pierre Gaveaux, a musician of small but graceful gifts, who had been

a tenor singer before he became a composer. This opera had its first

performance on February 19, 1798, and may also have been known to

Beethoven, or have been brought to his notice while he was casting

about for a subject. At any rate, though it was known as early as

June, 1803, that Beethoven intended to compose an opera for the

Theater an der Wien, and had taken lodgings with his brother Caspar

in the theatre building more than two months before, it was not

until the winter of 1804 that the libretto of "Fidelio" was placed

in his hands. It was a German version of the French book by Bouilly,

which had been made by Joseph Sonnleithner, an intimate friend of

Schubert, founder of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, who had

recently been appointed secretary of the Austrian court theatres as

successor of Kotzebue. Beethoven had gone to live in the theatre

building for the purpose of working on the opera for Schikaneder,

but early in 1804 the Theater an der Wien passed out of his hands

into those of Baron von Braun. The intervening summer had been

passed by the composer at Baden and Unter Döbling in work upon the

"Eroica" symphony. The check upon the operatic project was but

temporary. Baron von Braun took Schikaneder into his service and

renewed the contract with Beethoven. This accomplished, the composer

resumed his lodgings in the theatre and began energetically to

work upon the opera. Let two facts be instanced here to show how

energetically and how painstakingly he labored. When he went into

the country in the early summer, as was his custom, he carried with

him 346 pages of sketches for the opera, sixteen staves on a page;

and among these sketches were sixteen openings of Florestan's great

air, which may be said to mark the beginning of the dramatic action

in the opera.

For the rest of the history of the opera I shall draw upon the

preface to "Fidelio," which I wrote some years ago for the vocal

score in the Schirmer collection. The score was finished, including

the orchestration, in the summer of 1805, and on Beethoven's return

to Vienna, rehearsals were begun. It was the beginning of a series

of trials which made the opera a child of sorrow to the composer.

The style of the music was new to the singers, and they pronounced

it unsingable. They begged him to make changes, but Beethoven was

adamant. The rehearsals became a grievous labor to all concerned.

The production was set down for November 20, but when the momentous

day came, it found Vienna occupied by the French troops, Bonaparte

at Schönbrunn and the capital deserted by the Emperor, the nobility,

and most of the wealthy patrons of art. The performance was a

failure. Besides the French occupation, two things were recognized

as militating against the opera's success:--the music was not to

the taste of the people, and the work was too long. Repetitions

followed on November 21 and 22, but the first verdict was upheld.

Beethoven's distress over the failure was scarcely greater than that

of his friends, though he was, perhaps, less willing than they to

recognize the causes that lay in the work itself. A meeting was

promptly held in the house of Prince Lichnowsky and the opera

taken in hand for revision. Number by number it was played on the

pianoforte, sung, discussed. Beethoven opposed vehemently nearly

every suggestion made by his well-meaning friends to remedy the

defects of the book and score, but yielded at last and consented to

the sacrifice of some of the music and a remodelling of the book for

the sake of condensation, this part of the task being intrusted to

Stephan von Breuning, who undertook to reduce the original three

acts to two. {1} When once Beethoven had been brought to give his

consent to the proposed changes, he accepted the result with the

greatest good humor; it should be noted, however, that when the

opera was put upon the stage again, on March 29, 1806, he was so

dilatory with his musical corrections that there was time for only

one rehearsal with orchestra. In the curtailed form "Fidelio" (as

the opera was called, though Beethoven had fought strenuously from

the beginning for the retention of the original title, "Leonore")

made a distinctly better impression than it had four months before,

and this grew deeper with the subsequent repetitions; but Beethoven

quarrelled with Baron von Braun, and the opera was withdrawn. An

attempt was made to secure a production in Berlin, but it failed,

and the fate of "Fidelio" seemed to be sealed. It was left to

slumber for more than seven years; then, in the spring of 1814, it

was taken up again. Naturally, another revision was the first thing

thought of, but this time the work was intrusted to a more practised

writer than Beethoven's childhood friend. Georg Friedrich Treitschke

was manager and librettist for Baron von Braun, and he became

Beethoven's collaborator. The revision of the book was completed by

March, 1814, and Beethoven wrote to Treitschke: "I have read your

revision of the opera with great satisfaction. It has decided me

to rebuild the desolate ruins of an ancient fortress." Treitschke

rewrote much of the libretto, and Beethoven made considerable

changes in the music, restoring some of the pages that had been

elided at the first overhauling. In its new form "Fidelio" was

produced at the Theater am Kärnthnerthor on May 23, 1814. It was a

successful reawakening. On July 18 the opera had a performance for

Beethoven's benefit; Moscheles made a pianoforte score under the

direction of the composer, who dedicated it to his august pupil, the

Archduke Rudolph, and it was published in August by Artaria.

The history of "Fidelio," interesting as it is, need not be pursued

here further than to chronicle its first performances in the English

and American metropoles. London heard it first from Chelard's German

company at the King's Theatre on May 18, 1832. It was first given in

English at Covent Garden on June 12, 1835, with Malibran as Leonore,

and in Italian at Her Majesty's on May 20, 1851, when the dialogue

was sung in recitative written by Balfe. There has scarcely ever

been a German opera company in New York whose repertory did not

include "Fidelio," but the only performances for many years after it

came were in English. A company of singers brought from England by

Miss Inverarity to the Park Theatre produced it first on September

19, 1839. The parts were distributed as follows: Leonore, Mrs.

Martyn (Miss Inverarity); Marcellina, Miss Poole; Florestan, Mr.

Manvers; Pizarro, Mr. Giubilei; and Rocco, Mr. Martyn. The opera

was performed every night for a fortnight. Such a thing would be

impossible now, but lest some one be tempted to rail against the

decadent taste of to-day, let it quickly be recorded that somewhere

in the opera--I hope not in the dungeon scene--Mme. Giubilei danced

a pas de deux with Paul Taglioni.

Beethoven composed four overtures for "Fidelio," but a description

of them will best follow comment on the drama and its music. Some

two years before the incident which marks the beginning of the

action, Don Pizarro, governor of a state prison in Spain, not far

from Seville, has secretly seized Florestan, a political opponent,

whose fearless honesty threatened to frustrate his wicked designs,

and immured him in a subterranean cell in the prison. His presence

there is known only to Pizarro and the jailer Rocco, who, however,

knows neither the name nor the rank of the man whom, under strict

command, he keeps in fetters and chained to a stone in the dimly

lighted dungeon, which he alone is permitted to visit. Florestan's

wife, Leonore, suspecting the truth, has disguised herself in man's

attire and, under the name of Fidelio, secured employment in the

prison. To win the confidence of Rocco, she has displayed so much

zeal and industry in his interests that the old man, whose one

weakness is a too great love of money, gives the supposed youth

a full measure of admiration and affection. Fidelio's beauty and

gentleness have worked havoc with the heart of Marcellina, the

jailer's pretty daughter, who is disposed to cast off Jaquino, the

turnkey, upon whose suit she had smiled till her love for Fidelio

came between. Rocco looks with auspicious eye upon the prospect of

having so industrious and thrifty a son-in-law as Fidelio promises

to be to comfort his old age. The action now begins in the courtyard

of the prison, where, before the jailer's lodge, Marcellina is

performing her household duties--ironing the linen, to be specific.

Jaquino, who has been watching for an opportunity to speak to her

alone (no doubt alarmed at the new posture which his love affair is

assuming), resolves to ask her to marry him. The duet, quite in the

Mozartian vein, breathes simplicity throughout; plain people, with

plain manners, these, who express simple thoughts in simple

language. Jaquino begins eagerly:--

[Musical excerpt--"Jetzt, Schätzchen, jetzt sind wir allein, wir

könnon vertraulich nun plaudern."]

But Marcellina affects to be annoyed and urges him to come to the

point at once. Quite delicious is the manner in which Beethoven

delineates Jaquino's timid hesitation:--

[Musical excerpt--"Ich--ich habe"]

Jaquino's wooing is interrupted by a knocking at the door

(realistically reproduced in the music)

[Musical excerpt]

and when he goes to open the wicket, Marcellina expresses no

sympathy for his sufferings, but ecstatically proclaims her love for

Fidelio as the reason why she must needs say nay. And this she does,

not amiably or sympathetically, but pettishly and with an impatient

reiteration of "No, no, no, no!" in which the bassoon drolly

supports her. A second knocking at the door, then a third, and

finally she is relieved of her tormentor by Rocco, who calls him

out into the garden. Left alone, Marcellina sings her longing for

Fidelio and pictures the domestic bliss which shall follow her union

with him. Rocco and Jaquino enter, and close after them Leonore,

wearied by the weight of some chains which she had carried to the

smith for repairs. She renders an account for purchases of supplies,

and her thrift rejoices the heart of Rocco, who praises her zeal in

his behalf and promises her a reward. Her reply, that she does not

do her duty merely for the sake of wage, he interprets as an allusion

to love for his daughter. The four now give expression to their

thoughts and emotions. Marcellina indulges her day-dream of love;

Leonore reflects upon the dangerous position in which her disguise

has placed her; Jaquino observes with trepidation the disposition of

Rocco to bring about a marriage between his daughter and Fidelio.

Varied and contrasting emotions, these, yet Beethoven has cast their

expression in the mould of a canon built on the following melody,

which is sung in turn by each of the four personages:--

[Musical excerpt]

From a strictly musical point of view the fundamental mood of the

four personages has thus the same expression, and this Beethoven

justifies by making the original utterance profoundly contemplative,

not only by the beautiful subject of the canon, but by the exalted

instrumental introduction--one of those uplifting, spiritualized

slow movements which are typical of the composer. This feeling he

enhances by his orchestration--violas and violoncellos divided, and

basses--in a way copying the solemn color with more simple means

which Mozart uses in his invocation of the Egyptian deities in "The

Magic Flute." Having thus established this fundamental mood, he

gives liberty of individual utterance in the counterpoint melodies

with which each personage embroiders the original theme when sung

by the others. Neither Rocco nor Marcellina seems to think it

necessary to consult Leonore in the matter, taking her acquiescence

for granted. Between themselves they arrange that the wedding shall

take place when next Pizarro makes his monthly visit to Seville to

give an account of his stewardship, and the jailer admonishes the

youthful pair to put money in their purses in a song of little

distinction, but containing some delineative music in the orchestra

suggesting the rolling and jingling of coins. Having been made

seemingly to agree to the way of the maid and her father, Leonore

seeks now to turn it to the advantage of her mission. She asks and

obtains the jailer's permission to visit with him the cells in which

political prisoners are kept--all but one, in which is confined one

who is either a great criminal or a man with powerful enemies ("much

the same thing," comments Rocco). Of him even the jailer knows

nothing, having resolutely declined to hear his story. However, his

sufferings cannot last much longer, for by Pizarro's orders his

rations are being reduced daily; he has been all but deprived of

light, and even the straw which had served as a couch has been taken

from him. And how long has he been imprisoned? Over two years. "Two

years! "Leonore almost loses control of her feelings. Now she urges

that she must help the jailer wait upon him. "I have strength and

courage." The old man is won over. He will ask the governor for

permission to take Fidelio with him to the secret cells, for he

is growing old, and death will soon claim him. The dramatic nerve

has been touched with the first allusion to the mysterious the

matter, taking her acquiescence for granted. Between themselves they

arrange that the wedding shall take place when next Pizarro makes

his monthly visit to Seville to give an account of his stewardship,

and the jailer admonishes the youthful pair to put money in their

purses in a song of little distinction, but containing some

delineative music in the orchestra suggesting the rolling and

jingling of coins. Having been made seemingly to agree to the way

of the maid and her father, Leonore seeks now to turn it to the

advantage of her mission. She asks and obtains the jailer's

permission to visit with him the cells in which political prisoners

are kept--all but one, in which is confined one who is either

a great criminal or a man with powerful enemies ("much the same

thing," comments Rocco). Of him even the jailer knows nothing,

having resolutely declined to hear his story. However, his

sufferings cannot last much longer, for by Pizarro's orders his

rations are being reduced daily; he has been all but deprived of

light, and even the straw which had served as a couch has been taken

from him. And how long has he been imprisoned? Over two years. "Two

years!" Leonore almost loses control of her feelings. Now she urges

that she must help the jailer wait upon him. "I have strength and

courage." The old man is won over. He will ask the governor for

permission to take Fidelio with him to the secret cells, for he is

growing old, and death will soon claim him. The dramatic nerve has

been touched with the first allusion to the mysterious prisoner who

is being slowly tortured to death, and it is thrilling to note how

Beethoven's genius (so often said to be purely epical) responds. In

the trio which follows, the dialogue which has been outlined first

intones a motif which speaks merely of complacency:--

[Musical excerpt--"Gut, Söhnchen, gut hab' immer"]

No sooner does it reach the lips of Leonore, however, than it

becomes the utterance of proud resolve:--

[Musical excerpt--"Ich habe Muth!"]

and out of it grows a hymn of heroic daring. Marcellina's utterances

are all concerned with herself, with an admixture of solicitude for

her father, whose lugubrious reflections on his own impending

dissolution are gloomily echoed in the music:--

[Musical excerpt--"Ich bin ja bald des Grabes Beute"]

A march accompanies the entrance of Pizarro. {2} Pizarro receives

his despatches from Rocco, and from one of the letters learns that

the Minister of Justice, having been informed that several victims

of arbitrary power are confined in the prisons of which he is

governor, is about to set out upon a tour of inspection. Such a

visit might disclose the wrong done to Florestan, who is the

Minister's friend and believed by him to be dead, and Pizarro

resolves to shield himself against the consequences of such a

discovery by compassing his death. He publishes his resolution in

a furious air, "Ha! welch' ein Augenblick!" in which he gloats over

the culmination of his revenge upon his ancient enemy. It is a

terrible outpouring of bloodthirsty rage, and I have yet to hear

the singer who can cope with its awful accents. Here, surely,

Beethoven asks more of the human voice than it is capable of giving.

Quick action is necessary. The officer of the guard is ordered to

post a trumpeter in the watch-tower, with instructions to give a

signal the moment a carriage with outriders is seen approaching

from Seville. Rocco is summoned, and Pizarro, praising his courage

and fidelity to duty, gives him a purse as earnest of riches which

are to follow obedience. The old man is ready enough until he

learns that what is expected of him is

[Musical excerpt--"Morden!"]

whereupon he revolts, nor is he moved by Pizarro's argument that the

deed is demanded by the welfare of the state. Foiled in his plan of

hiring an assassin, Pizarro announces that he will deal the blow

himself, and commands that a disused cistern be opened to receive

the corpse of his victim. The duet which is concerned with these

transactions is full of striking effects. The orchestra accompanies

Rocco's description of the victim as "one who scarcely lives, but

seems to float like a shadow" with chords which spread a cold,

cadaverous sheen over the words, while the declamation of "A

blow!--and he is dumb," makes illustrative pantomime unnecessary.

Leonore has overheard all, and rushes forward on the departure of

the men to express her horror at the wicked plot, and proclaim her

trust in the guidance and help of love as well as her courageous

resolve to follow its impulses and achieve the rescue of the doomed

man. The scene and air in which she does this ("Abscheulicher! wo

eilst du hin?") is now a favorite concert-piece of all dramatic

singers; but when it was written its difficulties seemed appalling

to Fräulein Milder (afterward the famous Frau Milder-Hauptmann), who

was the original Leonore. A few years before Haydn had said to her,

"My dear child, you have a voice as big as a house," and a few years

later she made some of her finest successes with the part; but in

the rehearsals she quarrelled violently with Beethoven because of

the unsingableness of passages in the Adagio, of which, no doubt,

this was one:--

[Musical excerpt--"sie wird's erreichen"]

and when called upon, in 1814, to re-create the part which had been

written expressly for her, she refused until Beethoven had consented

to modify it. Everything is marvellous in the scena--the mild

glow of orchestral color delineating the bow of promise in the

recitative, the heart-searching, transfigurating, prayerful

loveliness of the slow melody, the obbligato horn parts, the sweep

of the final Allegro, all stand apart in operatic literature.

At Leonore's request, and presuming upon the request which Pizarro

had made of him, Rocco permits the prisoners whose cells are above

ground to enjoy the light and air of the garden, defending his

action later, when taken to task by Pizarro, on the plea that he

was obeying established custom in allowing the prisoners a bit of

liberty on the name-day of the king. In an undertone he begs his

master to save his anger for the man who is doomed to die. Meanwhile

Leonore convinces herself that her husband is not among the

prisoners who are enjoying the brief respite, and is overjoyed to

learn that she is to accompany Rocco that very day to the mysterious

subterranean dungeon. With the return of the prisoners to their

cells, the first act ends.

An instrumental introduction ushers in the second act. It is a

musical delineation of Florestan's surroundings, sufferings, and

mental anguish. The darkness is rent by shrieks of pain; harsh,

hollow, and threatening sound the throbs of the kettle-drums. The

parting of the curtain discloses the prisoner chained to his rocky

couch. He declaims against the gloom, the silence, the deathly void

surrounding him, but comforts himself with the thought that his

sufferings are but the undeserved punishment inflicted by an enemy

for righteous duty done. The melody of the slow part of his air,

which begins thus,

[Musical excerpt--"In des Lebens Frühlingstaten ist das Glück von

mir gefloh'n."]

will find mention again when the overtures come under discussion.

His sufferings have overheated his fancy, and, borne upon cool and

roseate breezes, he sees a vision of his wife, Leonore, come to

comfort and rescue him. His exaltation reaches a frenzy which

leaves him sunk in exhaustion on his couch. Rocco and Leonore come

to dig his grave. Melodramatic music accompanies their preparation,

and their conversation while at work forms a duet. Sustained

trombone tones spread a portentous atmosphere, and a contra-bassoon

adds weight and solemnity to the motif which describes the labor

of digging:--

[Musical excerpt]

They have stopped to rest and refresh themselves, when Florestan

becomes conscious and addresses Rocco. Leonore recognizes his

voice as that of her husband, and when he pleads for a drink of

water, she gives him, with Rocco's permission, the wine left in

her pitcher, then a bit of bread. A world of pathos informs his song

of gratitude. Pizarro comes to commit the murder, but first he

commands that the boy be sent away, and confesses his purpose to

make way with both Fidelio and Rocco when once the deed is done. He

cannot resist the temptation to disclose his identity to Florestan,

who, though released from the stone, is still fettered. The latter

confronts death calmly, but as Pizarro is about to plunge the dagger

into his breast, Leonore (who had concealed herself in the darkness)

throws herself as a protecting shield before him. Pizarro, taken

aback for a moment, now attempts to thrust Leonore aside, but is

again made to pause by her cry, "First kill his wife!" Consternation

and amazement seize all and speak out of their ejaculations.

Determined to kill both husband and wife, Pizarro rushes forward

again, only to see a pistol thrust into his face, hear a shriek,

"Another word, and you are dead!" and immediately after the trumpet

signal which, by his own command, announces the coming of the

Minister of Justice:--

[Musical excerpt]

Pizarro is escorted out of the dungeon by Rocco and attendants with

torches, and the reunited lovers are left to themselves and their

frenetic rejoicings. Surrounded by his guard, the populace attracted

by his coming, and the prisoners into whose condition he had come to

inquire, Don Fernando metes out punishment to the wicked Pizarro,

welcomes his old friend back to liberty and honor, and bids Leonore

remove his fetters as the only person worthy of such a task. The

populace hymn wifely love and fidelity.

Mention has been made of the fact that Beethoven wrote four

overtures for his opera. Three of these are known as Overtures

"Leonore No. 1," "Leonore No. 2," and "Leonore No. 3"--"Leonore"

being the title by which the opera was known at the unfortunate

first performance. The composer was never contented with the change

to "Fidelio" which was made, because of the identity of the story

with the "Leonore" operas, of Gaveaux and Paër. Much confusion has

existed in the books (and still exists, for that matter) touching

the order in which the four overtures were composed. The early

biographers were mistaken on that point, and the blunder was

perpetuated by the numbering when the scores were published. The

true "Leonore No. 1," is the overture known in the concert-room,

where it is occasionally heard, as "Leonore No. 2." This was the

original overture to the opera, and was performed at the three

representations in 1805. The overture called "Leonore No. 3" was the

result of the revision undertaken by Beethoven and his friends after

the failure. In May, 1807, the German opera at Prague was

established and "Fidelio" selected as one of the works to be given.

Evidently Beethoven was dissatisfied both with the original overture

and its revision, for he wrote a new one, in which he retained the

theme from Florestan's air, but none of the other themes used in

Nos. 2 and 3. The performances at Prague did not take place, and

nobody knows what became of the autograph score of the overture.

When Beethoven's effects were sold at auction after his death,

Tobias Haslinger bought a parcel of dances and other things in

manuscript. Among them were a score and parts of an overture in C,

not in Beethoven's handwriting, but containing corrections made by

him. It bore no date, and on a violin part Beethoven had written

first "Overtura, Violino Imo." Later he had added words in red

crayon to make it read, "Overtura in C, charakteristische Overture,

Violino Imo." On February 7, 1828, the composition was played at a

concert in Vienna, but notwithstanding the reminiscence of

Florestan's air, it does not seem to have been associated with the

opera, either by Haslinger or the critics. Before 1832, when

Haslinger published the overture as Op. 138, however, it had been

identified, and, not unnaturally, the conclusion was jumped at that

it was the original overture. That known as "Leonore No. 2" having

been withdrawn for revision by Beethoven himself, was not heard of

till 1840, when it was performed at a Gewandhaus concert in Leipsic.

For the revival of the opera in 1814 Beethoven composed the overture

in E major, now called the "Fidelio" overture, and generally played

as an introduction to the opera, the much greater "Leonore No. 3"

being played either between the acts, or, as by Mahler in New York

and Vienna, between the two scenes of the second act, where it may

be said it distinctly has the effect of an anticlimax. The thematic

material of the "Leonore" overtures Nos. 2 and 3 being practically

the same, careless listeners may easily confound one with the other.

Nevertheless, the differences between the two works are many and

great, and a deep insight into the workings of Beethoven's mind

would be vouchsafed students if they were brought into juxtaposition

in the concert-room. The reason commonly given for the revision of

No. 2 (the real No. 1) is that at the performance it was found that

some of the passages for wind instruments troubled the players; but

among the changes made by Beethoven, all of which tend to heighten

the intensity of the overture which presents the drama in nuce

may be mentioned the elision of a recurrence to material drawn

from his principal theme between the two trumpet-calls, and the

abridgment of the development or free fantasia portion. Finally, it

may be stated that though the "Fidelio" overture was written for the

revival of 1814, it was not heard at the first performance in that

year. It was not ready, and the overture to "The Ruins of Athens"

was played in its stead.

Footnotes:

{1} As the opera is performed nowadays it is in three acts, but this

division is the work of stage managers or directors who treat each

of the three scenes as an act. At the Metropolitan Opera House, in

New York, Mr. Mahler introduced a division of the first scene into

two for what can be said to be merely picturesque effect, since the

division is not demanded by the dramatic situation.

{2} In Mr. Mahler's arrangement this march becomes entr'acte music

to permit of a change of scene from the interior of the jailer's

lodge to the courtyard of the prison prescribed in the book.

CHAPTER VI

"FAUST"

MM. Michel Carré and Jules Barbier, who made the book for Gounod's

opera "Faust," went for their subject to Goethe's dramatic poem. Out

of that great work, which had occupied the mind of the German poet

for an ordinary lifetime, the French librettists extracted the

romance which sufficed them--the story of Gretchen's love for the

rejuvenated philosopher, her seduction and death. This romance is

wholly the creation of Goethe; it has no place in any of the old

legends which are at the bottom of the history of Dr. Faust, or

Faustus. Those legends deal with the doings of a magician who has

sold his soul to the devil for the accomplishment of some end

on which his ambition is set. There are many such legends in

mediaeval literature, and their fundamental thought is older than

Christianity. In a sense, the idea is a product of ignorance

and superstition combined. In all ages men whose learning and

achievements were beyond the comprehension of simple folk were

thought to have derived their powers from the practice of

necromancy. The list is a long one, and includes some of the great

names of antiquity. The imagination of the Middle Ages made bondsmen

of the infernal powers out of such men as Zoroaster, Democritus,

Empedocles, Apollonius, Virgil, Albertus Magnus, Merlin, and

Paracelsus. In the sixth century Theophilus of Syracuse was said to

have sold himself to the devil and to have been saved from damnation

only by the miraculous intervention of the Virgin Mary, who visited

hell and bore away the damnable compact. So far as his bond was

concerned, Theophilus was said to have had eight successors among

the Popes of Rome.

Architects of cathedrals and engineers of bridges were wont, if we

believe popular tales, to barter their souls in order to realize

their great conceptions. How do such notions get into the minds

of the people? I attempted not an answer but an explanation in a

preface to Gounod's opera published by Schirmer some years ago,

which is serving me a good turn now. For the incomprehensible the

Supernatural is the only accounting. These things are products of

man's myth-making capacity and desire. With the advancement of

knowledge this capacity and desire become atrophied, but spring into

life again in the presence of a popular stimulant. The superstitious

peasantry of Bavaria beheld a man in league with the devil in the

engineer who ran the first locomotive engine through that country,

More recently, I am told, the same people conceived the notion that

the Prussian needle-gun, which had wrought destruction among their

soldiery a the war of 1866, was an infernal machine for which

Bismarck had given the immortal part of himself.

When printing was invented, it was looked upon in a double sense as

a black art, and it was long and widely believed that Johann Fust,

or Faust, of Mayence, the partner of Gutenberg, was the original

Dr. Johann Faustus (the prototype of Goethe's Faust), who practised

magic toward the end of the fifteenth and at the beginning of the

sixteenth century, made a compact with Mephistopheles, performed

many miraculous feats, and died horribly at the last. But Fust, or

Faust, was a rich and reputable merchant of Mayence who provided

capital to promote the art of Gutenberg and Schöffer, and Mr. H.

Sutherland Edwards, who gossips pleasantly and at great length about

the Faust legends in Volume I of his book, "The Lyrical Drama,"

indulges a rather wild fancy when he considers it probable that he

was the father of the real mediaeval in carnation of the ancient

superstition. The real Faust had been a poor lad, but money

inherited from a rich uncle enabled him to attend lectures at the

University of Cracow, where he seems to have devoted himself with

particular assiduity to the study of magic, which had at that period

a respectable place in the curriculum. Having obtained his doctorial

hat, he travelled through Europe practising necromancy and acquiring

a thoroughly bad reputation. To the fact that this man actually

lived, and lived such a life as has been described, we have the

testimony of a physician, Philip Begardi; a theologian, Johann Gast,

and no less a witness than Philip Melanchthon, the reformer. Martin

Luther refers to Faust in his "Table Talk" as a man lost beyond all

hope of redemption; Melanchthon, who says that he talked with him,

adds: "This sorcerer Faust, an abominable beast, a common sewer of

many devils (turpissima bestia et cloaca multorum diabolorum),

boasted that he had enabled the imperial armies to win their

victories in Italy."

The literary history of Faust is much too long to be even outlined

here; a few points must suffice us. In a book published in Frankfort

in 1587 by a German writer named Spiess, the legend received its

first printed form. An English ballad on the subject appeared within

a year. In 1590 there came a translation of the entire story, which

was the source from which Marlowe drew his "Tragical History of

the Life and Death of Dr. Faustus," brought forward on the stage

in 1593 and printed in 1604. New versions of the legend followed

each other rapidly, and Faust became a favorite character with

playwrights, romancers, and poets. Toward the end of the eighteenth

century, when Goethe conceived the idea of utilizing the subject for

publishing his comprehensive philosophy of human life, it seems to

have held possession of a large portion of literary Germany. All

together, it was in the mind of the great poet from his adolescence

till his death; but while he was working on his original plan,

literary versions of the legend were published by twenty-eight

German authors, including Lessing, whose manuscript, unhappily, was

lost. Goethe had known the legend from childhood, when he had seen

puppet-plays based on it--these plays being the vulgar progeny of

Marlowe's powerful tragedy, which is still an ornament of English

literature. Music was a part of these puppet-plays. In the first one

that fell into my hands I find the influence of opera manifest in

recitatives and airs put into the mouth of Mephistopheles, and comic

songs sung by Kasperle, the Punch of the German marionette

fraternity.

The love tale which furnished forth the entire opera book of MM.

Carré and Barbier is, as I have said, wholly the invention of

Goethe. There is the shadowy form of a maiden in some of the

versions of the legend, but not a hint of the romantic sentiment

so powerfully and pathetically set forth by the poet. Nor did the

passion either for good or evil play a part in the agreement between

Faust and the devil. That agreement covered five points only: Faust

pledged himself to deny God, hate the human race, despise the

clergy, never set foot in a church, and never get married. So

far from being a love episode in the story, when Faustus, in the

old book by Spiess, once expressed a wish to abrogate the last

condition, Mephistopheles refused him permission on the ground

that marriage is something pleasing to God, and for that reason in

contravention of the contract. "Hast thou," quoth Mephistopheles,

"sworn thyself an enemy to God and to all creatures? To this I

answer thee, thou canst not marry; thou canst not serve two masters,

God and thy prince. For wedlock is a chief institution ordained of

God, and that thou hast promised to defy as we do all, and that thou

hast not only done, but, moreover, thou hast confirmed it with thy

blood. Persuade thyself that what thou hast done in contempt of

wedlock, it is all to thine own delight. Therefore, Faustus, look

well about thee and bethink thyself better, and I wish thee to

change thy mind, for if thou keep not what thou hast promised in thy

writing, we will tear thee in pieces, like the dust under thy feet.

Therefore, sweet Faustus, think with what unquiet life, anger,

strife, and debate thou shalt live in when thou takest a wife.

Therefore, change thy mind." Faustus abandons his purpose for

the time being, but within two hours summons his spirit again

and demands his consent to marriage; whereupon up there comes a

whirlwind, which fills the house with fire and smoke and hurls

Faustus about until he is unable to stir hand or foot. Also there

appears an ugly devil, so dreadful and monstrous to behold that

Faustus dares not look upon him. This devil is in a mood for

jesting. "How likest thou thy wedding?" he asks of Faustus, who

promises not to mention marriage more, and is well content when

Mephistopheles engages to bring him any woman, dead or alive, whom

he may desire to possess. It is in obedience to this promise that

Helen of Troy is brought back from the world of shades to be

Faustus's paramour. By her he has a son, whom he calls Justus

Faustus, but in the end, when Faustus loses his life, mother and

child vanish. Goethe uses the scene of the amour between Faust and

the ancient beauty in the second part of his poem as does Boito in

his "Mefistofele," charging it with the beautiful symbolism which

was in the German poet's mind. In the Polish tale of Pan Twardowsky,

built on the lines of the old legend, there is a more amusing fling

at marriage. In return for the help which he is to receive, the

Polish wizard has the privilege of demanding three duties of the

devil. After enjoying to the full the benefits conferred by two, he

commands the devil to marry Mme. Twardowska. This is more than the

devil had bargained for, or is willing to perform. He refuses; the

contract is broken, and Twardowsky is saved. The story may have

inspired Thackeray's amusing tale in "The Paris Sketch-book,"

entitled "The Painter's Bargain."

For the facts in the story of the composition and production of

Gounod's opera, we have the authority of the composer in his

autobiography. In 1856 he made the acquaintance of Jules Barbier and

Michel Carré, and asked them to collaborate with him in an opera.

They assenting, he proposed Goethe's "Faust" as a subject, and it

met with their approval. Together they went to see M. Carvalho, who

was then director of the Théâtre Lyrique. He, too, liked the idea

of the opera, and the librettists went to work. The composer had

written nearly half of the score, when M. Carvaiho brought the

disconcerting intelligence that a grand melodrama treating the

subject was in preparation at the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin.

Carvalho said that it would be impossible to get the opera ready

before the appearance of the melodrama, and unwise to enter into

competition with a theatre the luxury of whose stage mounting

would have attracted all Paris before the opera could be produced.

Carvalho therefore advised a change of subject, which was such a

blow to Gounod that he was incapable of applying himself to work

for a week. Finally, Carvalho came to the rescue with a request for

a lyric comedy based on one of Molière's plays. Gounod chose "Le

Médecin malgré lui," and the opera had its production at the Théâtre

Lyrique on the anniversary of Molière's birth, January 15, 1858. The

melodrama at the Porte Saint-Martin turned out to be a failure in

spite of its beautiful pictures, and Carvalho recurred to the opera,

which had been laid aside, and Gounod had it ready by July. He read

it to the director in the greenroom of the theatre in that month,

and Mme. Carvalho, wife of the director, who was present, was so

deeply impressed with the rôle of Marguerite that M. Carvalho asked

the composer's permission to assign it to her. "This was agreed

upon," says Gounod, "and the future proved the choice to be a

veritable inspiration."

Rehearsals began in September, 1858, and soon developed

difficulties. Gounod had set his heart upon a handsome young tenor

named Guardi for the titular rôle, but he was found to be unequal

to its demands. This caused such embarrassment that, it is said,

Gounod, who had a pretty voice and was rather fond of showing it,

seriously pondered the feasibility of singing it himself. He does

not tell us this in his autobiography, but neither does he tell us

that he had chosen Mme. Ugalde for the part of Marguerite, and

that he yielded to M. Carvalho in giving it to the director's wife

because Mme. Ugalde had quarrelled with him (as prima donnas will),

about Massé's opera, "La Fée Carabosse," which preceded "Faust" at

the Lyrique. The difficulty about the tenor rôle was overcome by

the enlistment of M. Barbot, an artist who had been a companion of

Carvalho's when he sang small parts at the Opéra Comique. He was now

far past his prime, and a pensioned teacher at the Conservatoire,

but Gounod bears witness that he "showed himself a great musician

in the part of Faust." Of Belanqué, who created the part of

Méphistophélès, Gounod says that "he was an intelligent comedian

whose play, physique, and voice lent themselves wonderfully to this

fantastic and Satanic personage." As for Mme. Carvalho, it was the

opinion of the composer that, though her masterly qualities of

execution and style had already placed her in the front rank of

contemporary singers, no rôle, till Marguerite fell to her lot, had

afforded her opportunity to show in such measure "the superior

phases of her talent, so sure, so refined, so steady, so

tranquil--its lyric and pathetic qualities."

It was a distinguished audience that listened to the first

performance of "Faust" on March 19, 1859. Auber, Berlioz, Reyer,

Jules Janin, Perrin, Émile Ollivier, and many other men who had made

their mark in literature, art, or politics sat in the boxes, and

full as many more of equal distinction in the stalls. Among these

latter were Delacroix, Vernet, Eugène Giraud, Pasdeloup, Scudo,

Heugel, and Jules Lévy. The criticism of the journals which followed

was, as usual, a blending of censure and praise. Berlioz was

favorably inclined toward the work, and, with real discrimination,

put his finger on the monologue at the close of the third act ("Il

m'aime! Quel trouble en mon coeur") as the best thing in the score.

Scudo gave expression to what was long the burden of the critical

song in Germany; namely, the failure of the authors to grasp

the large conception of Goethe's poem; but, with true Gallic

inconsistency, he set down the soldiers' chorus as a masterpiece.

The garden scene, with its sublimated mood, its ecstasy of feeling,

does not seem to have moved him; he thought the third act monotonous

and too long. There was no demand for the score on the part of the

French publishers, but at length Choudens was persuaded to adventure

10,000 francs, one-half of an inheritance, in it. He was at that

time an éditeur on a small scale, as well as a postal official,

and the venture put him on the road to fortune. For the English

rights Gounod is said to have received only forty pounds sterling,

and this only after the energetic championship of Chorley, who made

the English translation. The opera was given thirty-seven times at

the Théâtre Lyrique. Ten years after its first performance it was

revised to fit the schemes of the Grand Opéra, and brought forward

under the new auspices on March 3, 1869. Mlle. Christine Nilsson was

the new Marguerite. No opera has since equalled the popularity of

"Faust" in Paris. Twenty-eight years after its first performance,

Gounod was privileged to join his friends in a celebration of its

500th representation. That was in 1887. Eight years after, the 1000

mark was reached, and the 1250th Parisian representation took place

in 1902.

Two years before "Faust" reached London, it was given in Germany,

where it still enjoys great popularity, though it is called

"Margarethe," in deference to the manes of Goethe. Within a few

weeks in 1863 the opera had possession of two rival establishments

in London. At Her Majesty's Theatre it was given for the first time

on June 11, and at the Royal Italian Opera on July 2. On January 23,

1864, it was brought forward in Mr. Chorley's English version at

Her Majesty's. The first American representation took place at the

Academy of Music, New York, on November 25, 1863, the parts being

distributed as follows: Margherita, Miss Clara Louise Kellogg;

Siebel, Miss Henrietta Sulzer; Martha, Miss Fanny Stockton; Faust,

Francesco Mazzoleni; Mephistopheles, Hanibal Biachi; Valentine, G.

Yppolito; Wagner, D. Coletti. It was sung in Italian, won immediate

popularity, and made money for Max Maretzek, who was at once the

manager and the conductor of the company. Forty years before an

English version of Goethe's tragedy (the first part, of course) had

been produced at the Bowery Theatre, with the younger Wallack as

Faust and Charles Hill as Mephistopheles.

The opera begins, like Goethe's dramatic poem, after the prologue,

with the scene in Faust's study. The aged philosopher has grown

weary of fruitless inquiry into the mystery of nature and its

Creator, and longs for death. He has just passed a night in study,

and as the morning breaks he salutes it as his last on earth and

pledges it in a cup of poison. As he is about to put the cup to his

lips, the song of a company of maidens floats in at the window. It

tells of the joy of living and loving and the beauty of nature and

its inspirations. Faust's hand trembles, strangely, unaccountably;

again he lifts the cup, but only to pause again to listen to a song

sung by a company of reapers repairing to the fields, chanting their

gratitude to God for the loveliness surrounding them, and invoking

His blessing. The sounds madden the despairing philosopher. What

would prayer avail him? Would it bring back youth and love and

faith? No. Accursed, therefore, be all things good--earth's

pleasures, riches, allurements of every sort; the dreams of love;

the wild joy of combat; happiness itself; science, religion,

prayers, belief; above all, a curse upon the patience with which he

had so long endured! He summons Satan to his aid. Méphistophélès

answers the call, in the garb of a cavalier. His tone and bearing

irritate Faust, who bids him begone. The fiend would know his will,

his desires. Gold, glory, power?--all shall be his for the asking.

But these things are not the heart's desire of Faust. He craves

youthfulness, with its desires and delights, its passions and

puissance. Méphistophélès promises all, and, when he hesitates,

inflames his ardor with a vision of the lovely Marguerite seated at

her spinning-wheel. Eagerly Faust signs the compact--the devil will

serve Faust here, but below the relations shall be reversed. Faust

drinks a pledge to the vision, which fades away. In a twinkling the

life-weary sage is transformed into a young man, full of eager and

impatient strength.

Méphistophélès loses no time in launching Faust upon his career of

adventures. First, he leads him to a fair in a mediaeval town.

Students are there who sing the pleasures of drinking; soldiers,

too, bent on conquest--of maidens or fortresses, all's one to them;

old burghers, who find delight in creature comforts; maids and

matrons, flirtatious and envious. All join in the merriest of

musical hubbubs. Valentin, a soldier who is about to go to the

wars, commends his sister Marguerite to the care of Siebel,

a gentle youth who loves her. Wagner, a student, begins a song,

but is interrupted by Méphistophélès, who has entered the circle of

merry-makers with Faust, and who now volunteers to sing a better

song than the one just begun. He sings of the Calf of Gold ("Le veau

d'or est toujours debout"), and the crowd delightedly shouts the

refrain. The singer accepts a cup of wine, but, finding it not at

all to his taste, he causes vintages to the taste of every one to

flow from the cask which serves as a tavern sign. He offers the

company a toast, "To Marguerite!" and when Valentin attempts to

resent the insult to his sister with his sword, it breaks in his

hand as he tries to penetrate a magic circle which Méphistophélès

draws around himself. The men now suspect the true character of

their singular visitor, and turn the cruciform hilts of their swords

against him, to his intense discomfort. With the return of the

women the merrymaking is resumed. All join in a dance, tripping it

gayly to one waltz sung by the spectators and another which rises

simultaneously from the instruments. Marguerite crosses the

market-place on her way home from church. Faust offers her his arm,

but she declines his escort--not quite so rudely as Goethe's

Gretchen does in the corresponding situation. Faust becomes more

than ever enamoured of the maiden, whom he had seen in the vision

conjured up in the philosopher's study.

Méphistophélès is a bit amused at Faust's first attempt at wooing,

and undertakes to point the way for him. He leads him into the

garden surrounding the cottage in which Marguerite dwells. Siebel

had just been there and had plucked a nosegay for the maiden of his

heart, first dipping his fingers in holy water, to protect them

from the curse which Méphistophélès had pronounced against them

while parading as a fortune-teller at the fair. Faust is lost in

admiration at sight of the humble abode of loveliness and innocence,

and lauds it in a romance ("Salut! demeure chaste et pure"), but is

taken aside by Méphistophélès, who gives warning of the approach

of Marguerite, and places a casket of jewels beside the modest

bouquet left by Siebel. Marguerite, seated at her spinning-wheel,

alternately sings a stanza of a ballad ("Il était un Roi de Thule")

and speaks her amazed curiosity concerning the handsome stranger

who had addressed her in the marketplace. She finds the jewels,

ornaments herself with them, carolling her delight the while, and

admiring the regal appearance which the gems lend her.

Here I should like to be pardoned a brief digression. Years ago,

while the German critics were resenting the spoliation of the

masterpiece of their greatest poet by the French librettists, they

fell upon this so-called Jewel Song ("Air des bijoux," the French

call it), and condemned its brilliant and ingratiating waltz

measures as being out of keeping with the character of Gretchen. In

this they forgot that Marguerite and Gretchen are very different

characters indeed. There is much of the tender grace of the

unfortunate German maiden in the creation of the French authors, but

none of her simple, almost rude, rusticity. As created by, let me

say, Mme. Carvalho and perpetuated by Christine Nilsson and the

painter Ary Scheffer, Marguerite is a good deal of a grande dame,

and against the German critics it might appositely be pleaded that

there are more traces of childish ingenuousness in her rejoicing

over the casket of jewels than in any of her other utterances. The

episode is poetically justified, of course, by the eighth scene of

Goethe's drama, and there was not wanting one German writer who

boldly came to the defence of Marguerite on the ground that she

moved on a higher moral plane than Gretchen. The French librettists,

while they emptied the character of much of its poetical contents,

nevertheless made it in a sense more gentle, and Gounod refined it

still more by breathing an ecstasy into all of its music. Goethe's

Gretchen, though she rejects Faust's first advances curtly enough to

be called impolite, nevertheless ardently returns Faust's kiss on

her first meeting with him in the garden, and already at the second

(presumably) offers to leave her window open, and accepts the

sleeping potion for her mother. It is a sudden, uncontrollable rush

of passion to which Marguerite succumbs. Gretchen remains in simple

amaze that such a fine gentleman as Faust should find anything to

admire in her, even after she has received and returned his first

kiss; but Marguerite is exalted, transfigured by the new feelings

surging within her.

Il m'aime! quel trouble en mon coeur!

L'oiseau chante! Le vent murmure!

Toutes les voix de la nature

Semblent me répéter en choeur:

Il t'aime!

I resume the story. Martha, the neighborhood gossip, comes to

encourage Marguerite in a belief which she scarcely dares cherish,

that the jewels had been left for her by some noble admirer, and

her innocent pleasure is interrupted by the entrance of Faust and

Méphistophélès. The latter draws Martha away, and Faust wooes the

maiden with successful ardor. They have indulged in their first

embrace, and said their farewells till to-morrow: Faust is about

to depart, when Méphistophélès detains him and points to Marguerite,

who is burdening the perfumed air with her new ecstasy. He rushes to

her, and, with a cry of delight, she falls into his arms.

Goethe's scene at the fountain becomes, in the hands of the French

librettists, a scene in the chamber of Marguerite. The deceived

maiden is cast down by the jeers and mockings of her erstwhile

companions, and comforted by Siebel. It is now generally omitted.

Marguerite has become the talk of the town, and evil reports reach

the ear of her brother Valentin on his return from the wars with the

victorious soldiery. Valentin confronts Faust and Méphistophélès

while the latter is singing a ribald serenade at Marguerite's door.

The men fight, and, through the machinations of Méphistophélès,

Valentin is mortally wounded. He dies denouncing the conduct of

Marguerite, and cursing her for having brought death upon him.

Marguerite seeks consolation in religious worship; but the fiend is

at her elbow even in the holy fane, and his taunts and the accusing

chant of a choir of demons interrupt her prayers. The devil reveals

himself in his proper (or improper) person at the end, and

Marguerite falls in a swoon.

The Walpurgis night scene of Goethe furnished the suggestion for

the ballet which fills the first three scenes of the fifth act, and

which was added to the opera when it was remodelled for the Grand

Opéra in 1869. The scene holds its place in Paris, but is seldom

performed elsewhere. A wild scene in the Harz Mountains gives way

to an enchanted hail in which are seen the most famous courtesans

of ancient history--Phryne, Laïs, Aspasia, Cleopatra, and Helen of

Troy. The apparition of Marguerite appears to Faust, a red line

encircling her neck, like the mark of a headsman's axe. We reach

the end. The distraught maiden has slain her child, and now lies in

prison upon her pallet of straw, awaiting death. Faust enters and

tries to persuade her to fly with him. Her poor mind is all awry and

occupies itself only with the scenes of her first meeting and the

love-making in the garden. She turns with horror from her lover when

she sees his companion, and in an agony of supplication, which rises

higher and higher with each reiteration, she implores Heaven for

pardon. She sinks lifeless to the floor. Méphistophélès pronounces

her damned, but a voice from on high proclaims her saved. Celestial

voices chant the Easter hymn, "Christ is risen!" while a band of

angels bear her soul heavenward.

CHAPTER VII

"MEFISTOFELE"

There is no reason to question Gounod's statement that it was he

who conceived the idea of writing a Faust opera in collaboration

with MM. Barbier and Carré. There was nothing novel in the notion.

Music was an integral part of the old puppet-plays which dealt with

the legend of Dr. Faustus, and Goethe's tragedy calls for musical

aid imperatively. A musical pantomime, "Harlequin Faustus," was

performed in London as early as 1715, and there were Faust operas

long before even the first part of Goethe's poem was printed, which

was a hundred and one years ago. A composer named Phanty brought out

an opera entitled "Dr. Faust's Zaubergürtel" in 1790; C. Hanke used

the same material and title at Flushing in 1794, and Ignaz Walter

produced a "Faust" in Hanover in 1797. Goethe's First Part had been

five years in print when Spohr composed his "Faust," but it is based

not on the great German poet's version of the legend, but on the old

sources. This opera has still life, though it is fitful and feeble,

in Germany, and was produced in London by a German company in 1840

and by an Italian in 1852, when the composer conducted it; but I

have never heard of a representation in America. Between Spohr's

"Faust," written in 1813 and performed in 1818, and Boito's

"Mefistofele," produced in 1868, many French, German, English,

Italian, Russian, and Polish Faust operas have come into existence,

lived their little lives, and died. Rietz produced a German "Faust,"

founded on Goethe, at Düsseldorf, in 1836; Lindpainter in Berlin, in

1854; Henry Rowley Bishop's English "Faustus" was heard in London,

in 1827; French versions were Mlle. Angélique Bertin's "Faust"

(Paris, 1831), and M. de Pellaert's (Brussels, 1834); Italian

versions were "Fausta," by Donizetti (Mme. Pasta and Signor Donzelli

sang in it in Naples in 1832), "Fausto," by Gordigiano (Florence,

1837), and "Il Fausto arrivo," by Raimondi (Naples, 1837); the

Polish Faust, Twardowsky, is the hero of a Russian opera by

Verstowsky (Moscow, 1831), and of a Polish opera by J. von Zaitz

(Agram, 1880). How often the subject has served for operettas,

cantatas, overtures, symphonies, etc., need not be discussed here.

Berlioz's "Dramatic Legend," entitled "La Damnation de Faust,"

tricked out with stage pictures by Raoul Gunsbourg, was performed as

an opera at Monte Carlo in 1903, and in New York at the Metropolitan

and Manhattan opera-houses in the seasons 1906-1907 and 1907-1908,

respectively; but the experiment was unsuccessful, both artistically

and financially.

I have said that there is no reason to question Gounod's statement

that it was he who conceived the idea of writing the opera whose

popularity is without parallel in the musical history of the Faust

legend; but, if I could do so without reflecting upon his character,

I should like to believe a story which says that it was Barbier who

proposed the subject to Gounod after Meyerbeer, to whom he first

suggested it, had declined the collaboration. I should like to

believe this, because it is highly honorable to Meyerbeer's artistic

character, which has been much maligned by critics and historians

of music since Wagner set an example in that direction. "'Faust,'"

Meyerbeer is reported to have replied to Barbier's invitation, "is

the ark of the covenant, a sanctuary not to be approached with

profane music." For the composer who did not hesitate to make an

opera out of the massacre of St. Bartholomew, this answer is more

than creditable. The Germans, who have either felt or affected great

indignation at the want of reverence for their great poet shown by

the authors of "Faust" and "Mignon," ought to admire Meyerbeer in

a special degree for the moral loftiness of his determination and

the dignified beauty of its expression. Composers like Kreutzer,

Reissiger, Pierson, Lassen, and Prince Radziwill have written

incidental music for Goethe's tragedy without reflecting that

possibly they were profaning the sanctuary; but Meyerbeer, compared

with whom they were pygmies, withheld his hand, and thereby brought

himself into sympathetic association with the only musician that

ever lived who was completely equipped for so magnificent a task.

That musician was Beethoven, to whom Rochlitz bore a commission for

music to "Faust" from Breitkopf and Härtel in 1822. The Titan read

the proposition and cried out: "Ha! that would be a piece of work!

Something might come of that!" but declined the task because he had

the choral symphony and other large plans on his mind.

Boito is not a Beethoven nor yet a Meyerbeer; but, though he did

what neither of them would venture upon when he wrote a Faust opera,

he did it with complete and lovely reverence for the creation of the

German poet. It is likely that had he had less reverence for his

model and more of the stagecraft of his French predecessors his

opera would have had a quicker and greater success than fell to

its lot. Of necessity it has suffered by comparison with the opera

of Barbier, Carré, and Gounod, though it was far from Boito's

intentions that it should ever be subjected to such a comparison.

Boito is rather more poet and dramatist than he is musician. He

made the book not only of "Mefistofele," but also of "Otello"

and "Falstaff," which Verdi composed, "La Gioconda," for which

Ponchielli wrote the music, and "Ero e Leandro," which he turned

over to Bottesini, who set it with no success, and to Mancinelli,

who set it with little. One of the musical pieces which the poet

composed for this last opera found its way into "Mefistofele," for

which work "Ero e Leandro" seems to have been abandoned. He also

translated Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde" into Italian. Being a

poet in the first instance, and having the blood of the Northern

barbarians as well as the Southern Romans in his veins, he was

unwilling to treat Goethe's tragedy as the Frenchman had treated it.

The tearful tale of the love of the rejuvenated philosopher, and the

village maiden, with its woful outcome, did not suffice him. Though

he called his opera "Mefistofele," not "Faust," he drew its scenes,

of which only two have to do with Marguerite (or Gretchen), from

both parts of Goethe's allegorical and philosophical phantasmagoria.

Because he did this, he failed from one point of view. Attempting

too much, he accomplished too little. His opera is not a well-knit

and consistently developed drama, but a series of episodes, which do

not hold together and have significance only for those who know

Goethe's dramatic poem in its entirety. It is very likely that, as

originally produced, "Mefistofele" was not such a thing of shreds

and patches as it now is. No doubt, it held together better in 1868,

when it was ridiculed, whistled, howled, and hissed off the stage

of the Teatro la Scala, than it did when it won the admiration of

the Italians in Bologna twelve years later. In the interval it had

been subjected to a revision, and, the first version never having

been printed, the critical fraternity became exceedingly voluble

after the success in Bologna, one of the debated questions being

whether Boito had bettered his work by his voluminous excisions,

interpolations, and changes (Faust, now a tenor, was originally a

barytone), or had weakly surrendered his better judgment to the

taste of the hoi polloi, for the sake of a popular success. It was

pretty fighting ground; it is yet, and will remain such so long as

the means of comparison remain hidden and sentimental hero-worship

is fed by the notion that Boito has refused to permit the opera

or operas which he has written since to be either published or

performed because the world once refused to recognize his genius.

This notion, equally convenient to an indolent man or a colossal

egoist--I do not believe that Boito is either--has been nurtured by

many pretty stories; but, unhappily, we have had nothing to help us

to form an opinion of Boito as a creative artist since "Mefistofele"

appeared, except the opera books written for Verdi and Ponchielli

and the libretto of "Ero e Leandro."

Boito's father was an Italian, his mother a Pole. From either one

or both he might have inherited the intensity of expression which

marks his works, both poetical and musical; but the tendency to

philosophical contemplation which characterizes "Mefistofele," even

in the stunted form in which it is now presented, is surely the

fruit of his maternal heritage and his studies in Germany. After

completing the routine of the conservatory in Milan, he spent a

great deal of time in Paris and the larger German cities, engrossed

quite as much in the study of literature as of music. Had he

followed his inclinations and the advice of Victor Hugo, who gave

him a letter of introduction to Émile de Girardin, he would have

become a journalist in Paris instead of the composer of "Mefistofele"

and the poet of "Otello," "Falstaff," "La Gioconda," and "Ero e

Leandro." But Girardin was too much occupied with his own affairs

to attend to him when Boito presented himself, and after waiting

wearily, vainly, and long, he went to Poland, where, for want of

something else to do, he sketched the opera "Mefistofele," which

made its memorable fiasco at Milan in March, 1868.

To show that it is impossible to think of "Mefistofele" except as a

series of disconnected episodes, it suffices to point out that its

prologue, epilogue, and four acts embrace a fantastic parody or

perversion of Goethe's Prologue in Heaven, a fragment of his Easter

scene, a smaller fragment of the scene in Faust's study, a bit

of the garden scene, the scene of the witches' gathering on the

Brocken, the prison scene, the classical Sabbath in which Faust

is discovered in an amour with Helen of Troy, and the death and

salvation of Faust as an old man. Can any one who knows that music,

even of the modern dramatic type, in which strictly musical forms

have given way to as persistent an onward flow as the text itself,

must of necessity act as a clog on dramatic action, imagine that

such a number and variety of scenes could be combined into a

logical, consistent whole, compassed by four hours in performance?

Certainly not. But Boito is not content to emulate Goethe in his

effort to carry his listeners "from heaven through the earth to

hell"; he must needs ask them to follow him in his exposition of

Goethe's philosophy and symbolism. Of course, that is impossible

during a stage representation, and therefore he exposes the workings

of his mind in an essay and notes to his score. From these we may

learn, among other things, that the poet-composer conceives Faust

as the type of man athirst for knowledge, of whom Solomon was

the Biblical prototype, Prometheus the mythological, Manfred and

Don Quixote the predecessors in modern literature. Also that

Mephistopheles is as inexhaustible as a type of evil as Faust is as

a type of virtue, and therefore that this picturesque stage devil,

with all his conventionality, is akin to the serpent which tempted

Eve, the Thersites of Homer, and--mirabile dictu!--the Falstaff of

Shakespeare!

The device with which Boito tried to link the scenes of his opera

together is musical as well as philosophical. In the book which

Barbier and Carré wrote for Gounod, Faust sells his soul to the

devil for a period of sensual pleasure of indefinite duration, and,

so far as the hero is concerned, the story is left unfinished. All

that has been accomplished is the physical ruin of Marguerite.

Méphistophélès exults for a moment in contemplation of the

destruction, also, of the immortal part of her, but the angelic

choir proclaims her salvation. Faust departs hurriedly with

Méphistophélès, but whether to his death or in search of new

adventures, we do not know. The Germans are, therefore, not so

wrong, after all, in calling the opera after the name of the heroine

instead of that of the hero. In Boito's book the love story is but

an incident. Faust's compact with Mefistofele, as in Goethe's

dramatic poem, is the outcome of a wager between Mefistofele and

God, under the terms of which the Spirit of Evil is to be permitted

to seduce Faust from righteousness, if he can. Faust's demand of

Mefistofele is rest from his unquiet, inquisitive mind; a solution

of the dark problem of his own existence and that of the world;

finally, one moment of which he can say, "Stay, for thou art lovely!

"The amour with Margherita does not accomplish this, and so Boito

follows Goethe into the conclusion of the second part of his drama,

and shows Faust, at the end, an old man about to die. He recalls the

loves of Margherita and Helen, but they were insufficient to give

him the desired moment of happiness. He sees a vision of a people

governed by him and made happy by wise laws of his creation. He

goes into an ecstasy. Mefistofele summons sirens to tempt him; and

spreads his cloak for another flight. But the chant of celestial

beings falls into Faust's ear, and he speaks the words which

terminate the compact. He dies. Mefistofele attempts to seize upon

him, but is driven back by a shower of roses dropped by cherubim.

The celestial choir chants redeeming love.

Thus much for the dramatic exposition. Boito's musical exposition

rests on the employment of typical phrases, not in the manner

of Wagner, indeed, but with the fundamental purpose of Wagner.

A theme:--

[Musical excerpt]

which begins the prologue, ends the epilogue. The reader may label

it as he pleases. Its significance is obvious from the circumstances

of its employment. It rings out fortissimo when the mystic chorus,

which stands for the Divine Voice, puts the question, "Knowest thou

Faust?" An angelic ascription of praise to the Creator of the

Universe and to Divine Love is the first vocal utterance and the

last. In his notes Boito observes: "Goethe was a great admirer of

form, and his poem ends as it begins,--the first and last words of

'Faust' are uttered in Heaven." Then he quotes a remark from Blaze

de Bury's essay on Goethe, which is apropos, though not strictly

accurate: "The glorious motive which the immortal phalanxes sing in

the introduction to the first part of 'Faust' recurs at the close,

garbed with harmonies and mystical clouds. In this Goethe has acted

like the musicians,--like Mozart, who recurs in the finale of 'Don

Giovanni' to the imposing phrase of the overture."

M. de Bury refers, of course, to the supernatural music, which

serves as an introduction to the overture to "Don Giovanni," and

accompanies the visitation of the ghostly statue and the death of

the libertine. But this is not the end of Mozart's opera as he

wrote it, as readers of this book have been told.

This prologue of "Mefistofele" plays in heaven. "In the heavens,"

says Theodore Marzials, the English translator of Boito's opera, out

of deference to the religious sensibilities of the English people,

to spare which he also changes "God" into "sprites," "spirits,"

"powers of good," and "angels." The effect is vastly diverting,

especially when Boito's paraphrase of Goethe's

Von Zeit zu Zeit seh' ich den Alten gern

Und hüte mich mit ihm zu brechen.

Es ist gar hübsch von einem grossen Herrn,

So menschlich mit dem Teufel selbst zu sprechen. {1}

is turned into: "Now and again 'tis really pleasant thus to chat

with the angels, and I'll take good care not to quarrel with them.

'Tis beautiful to hear Good and Evil speak together with such

humanity." The picture disclosed by the opening of the curtain is a

mass of clouds, with Mefistofele, like a dark blot, standing on a

corner of his cloak in the shadow. The denizens of the celestial

regions are heard but never seen. A trumpet sounds the fundamental

theme, which is repeated in full harmony after instruments of

gentler voice have sung a hymn-like phrase, as follows:--

[Musical excerpt]

It is the first period of the "Salve Regina" sung by Earthly

Penitents in the finale of the prologue. The canticle is chanted

through, its periods separated by reiterations of the fundamental

theme. A double chorus acclaims the Lord of Angels and Saints. A

plan, evidently derived from the symphonic form, underlies the

prologue as a whole. Prelude and chorus are rounded out by the

significant trumpet phrase. One movement is completed. There follows

a second movement, an Instrumental Scherzo, with a first section

beginning thus:--

[Musical excerpt]

and a trio. Over this music Mefistofele carries on converse with

God. He begs to disagree with the sentiments of the angelic hymn.

Wandering about the earth, he had observed man and found him in all

things contemptible, especially in his vanity begotten by what he

called "reason"; he, the miserable little cricket, vaingloriously

jumping out of the grass in an effort to poke his nose among the

stars, then falling back to chirp, had almost taken away from the

devil all desire to tempt him to evil doings. "Knowest thou Faust?"

asks the Divine Voice; and Mefistofele tells of the philosopher's

insatiable thirst for wisdom. Then he offers the wager. The scene,

though brief, follows Goethe as closely as Goethe follows the author

of the Book of Job:--

Now, there was a day when the sons of God came to present

themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them.

And the Lord said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan

answered the Lord and said, From going to and fro in the earth

and from walking up and down in it.

And the Lord said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant

Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and

an upright man, one that feareth God and escheweth evil?

Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, Doth Job fear God for

nought? . . .

And the Lord said unto Satan, Behold, all that he hath is in

thy power; only upon himself put not forth thine hand. So

Satan went forth from the presence of the Lord.

Boito treats the interview in what he calls a Dramatic Interlude,

which gives way to the third movement, a Vocal Scherzo, starting off

with a chorus of Cherubim, who sing in fugacious thirds and droning

dactyls:--

[Musical excerpt--"siam nimbi volanti dai limbi, nei santi"]

It is well to note particularly Boito's metrical device. He

seemingly counted much on the effect of incessantly reiterated

dactyls. Not only do his Cherubim adhere to the form without

deviation, but Helen and Pantalis use it also in the scene imitated

from Goethe's Classical Walpurgis Night,--use it for an especial

purpose, as we shall see presently. Rapid syllabication is also

a characteristic of the song of the witches in the scene on the

Brocken; but the witches sing in octaves and fifths except when

they kneel to do homage to Mefistofele; then their chant sounds like

the responses to John of Leyden's prayer by the mutinous soldiers

brought to their knees in "Le Prophète." Not at all ineptly,

Mefistofele, who does not admire the Cherubs, likens their monotonous

cantillation to the hum of bees. A fourth movement consists of a

concluding psalmody, in which the Cherubs twitter, Earthly Penitents

supplicate the Virgin, and the combined choirs, celestial and

terrestrial, hymn the Creator.

The tragedy now begins. Boito changes the order of the scenes which

he borrows from Goethe, presenting first the merrymaking of the

populace outside the walls of Frankfort-on-the-Main, and then the

interview between Faust and Mefistofele, in which, as in the opening

scene of Gounod's opera, the infernal compact is agreed upon. There

is some mediaeval pageantry in the first scene,--a cavalcade headed

by the Elector, and including dignitaries, pages, falconers, the

court fool, and ladies of the court. Students, townspeople,

huntsmen, lads, and lasses pursue their pleasures, and up and down,

through the motley groups, there wanders a gray friar, whose strange

conduct repels some of the people, and whose pious garb attracts

others. Faust and Wagner, his pupil, come upon the scene, conversing

seriously, and stop to comment on the actions of the friar, who is

approaching them, supposedly in narrowing circles. Wagner sees

nothing in him except a mendicant friar, but Faust calls attention

to the fact that to his eye, flames blaze up from his footprints.

This friar is the "poodle" of Goethe's poem, and Mefistofele in

disguise. It is thus that the devil presented himself to Faustus

in the old versions of the legend, and as a friar he is a more

practicable dramatic figure than he would have been as a dog; but

it cannot but provoke a smile from those familiar with Goethe's poem

to hear (as we do in the opera a few moments later) the familiar

lines:--

Das also war des Pudels Kern!

Ein fahrender Scolast?

turned into: "This, then, was the kernel of the friar! A cavalier?"

The music of the score is characterized by frequent changes from

triple to double time, as illustrated in the opening measures:

[Musical excerpt]

The rhythmical energy and propulsiveness thus imparted to the music

of the merrymaking is heightened by the dance. Peasants rush upon

the scene with shouts of "Juhé!" and make preparations to trip it

while singing what, at first, promises to be a waltz-song:--

[Musical excerpt]

The dance, however, is not a waltz, but an obertass--the most

popular of the rustic dances of Poland. Why should Boito have made

his Rhinelanders dance a step which is characteristically that of

the Poles? Sticklers for historical verity could easily convict him

of a most unpardonable anachronism, if they were so disposed, by

pointing out that even if German peasants were in the habit of

dancing the obertass now (which they are not), they could not have

done it in the sixteenth century, which is the period of the drama,

for the sufficient reason that the Polish dance was not introduced

in North Germany till near the middle of the eighteenth century.

But we need not inquire too curiously into details like this when

it comes to so arbitrary an art-form as the opera. Yet Boito was

his own poet, master of the situation so far as all parts of his

work were concerned, and might have consulted historical accuracy

in a department in which Gluck once found that he was the slave

of his ballet master. Gluck refused to introduce a chaconne into

"Iphigénie en Aulide." "A chaconne?" cried the composer. "When did

the Greeks ever dance a chaconne?" "Didn't they?" replied Vestris;

"then so much the worse for the Greeks!" A quarrel ensued, and

Gluck, becoming incensed, withdrew his opera and would have left

Paris had not Marie Antoinette come to the rescue. But Vestris

got his chaconne. In all likelihood Boito put the obertass into

"Mefistofele" because he knew that musically and as a spectacle

the Polish dance would be particularly effective in the joyous

hurly-burly of the scene. A secondary meaning of the Polish word is

said to be "confusion," and Boito doubtless had this in mind when

he made his peasants sing with an orderly disorder which is

delightful:--

Tutti vanno alla rinfusa

Sulla musica confusa,

or, as one English translation has it:--

All is going to dire confusion

With the music in collusion.

[Musical excerpt--"Juhé, Juhé! Tutti vanno alla rinfusa"]

Perhaps, too, Boito had inherited a love for the vigorous dance from

his Polish mother.

Night falls, and Faust is returned to his laboratory. The gray friar

has followed him (like Goethe's poodle) and slips into an alcove

unobserved. The philosopher turns to the Bible, which lies upon a

lectern, and falls into a meditation, which is interrupted by a

shriek. He turns and sees the friar standing motionless and wordless

before him. He conjures the apparition with the seal of Solomon, and

the friar, doffing cowl and gown, steps forward as a cavalier (an

itinerant scholar in Goethe). He introduces himself as a part of

the power that, always thinking evil, as persistently accomplishes

good--the spirit of negation. The speech ("Son lo Spirito che nega

sempre") is one of the striking numbers of Boito's score, and the

grim humor of its "No! "seems to have inspired the similar effect

in Falstaff's discourse on honor in Verdi's opera. The pair quickly

come to an understanding on the terms already set forth.

Act II carries us first into the garden of Dame Martha, where we

find Margherita strolling arm in arm with Faust, and Martha with

Mefistofele. The gossip is trying to seduce the devil into an avowal

of love; Margherita and Faust are discussing their first meeting

and the passion which they already feel for each other. Boito's

Margherita has more of Goethe's Gretchen than Gounod's Marguerite.

Like the former, she wonders what a cavalier can find to admire

in her simple self, and protests in embarrassment when Faust (or

Enrico, as he calls himself) kisses her rough hand. Like Goethe's

maiden, too, she is concerned about the religious beliefs of

her lover, and Boito's Faust answers, like Goethe's Faust, that

a sincere man dares protest neither belief nor unbelief in

God. Nature, Love, Mystery, Life, God--all are one, all to be

experienced, not labelled with a name. Then he turns the talk on

herself and her domestic surroundings, and presses the sleeping

potion for her mother upon her. The scene ends with the four people

scurrying about in a double chase among the flowers, for which

Boito found exquisitely dainty music.

There is a change from the pretty garden of the first scene, with

its idyllic music, to the gathering place of witches and warlocks,

high up in the Brocken, in the second. We witness the vile orgies of

the bestial crew into whose circles Faust is introduced, and see how

Mefistofele is acclaimed king and receives the homage. Here Boito

borrows a poetical conceit from Goethe's scene in the witches'

kitchen, and makes it a vehicle for a further exposition of the

character and philosophy of the devil. Mefistofele has seated

himself upon a rocky throne and been vested with the robe and

symbols of state by the witches. Now they bring to him a crystal

globe, which he takes and discourses upon to the following effect

(the translation is Theodore T. Barker's):--

Lo, here is the world!

A bright sphere rising,

Setting, whirling, glancing,

Round the sun in circles dancing;

Trembling, toiling,

Yielding, spoiling,

Want and plenty by turn enfold it--

This world, behold it!

On its surface, by time abraded,

Dwelleth a vile race, defiled, degraded;

Abject, haughty,

Cunning, naughty,

Carrying war and desolation

From the top to the foundation

Of creation.

For them Satan has no being;

They scorn with laughter

A hell hereafter,

And heavenly glory

As idle story.

Powers eternal! I'll join their laugh infernal

Thinking o'er their deeds diurnal. Ha! Ha!

Behold the world!

He dashes the globe to pieces on the ground and thereby sets the

witches to dancing. To the antics of the vile crew Faust gives no

heed; his eyes are fixed upon a vision of Margherita, her feet in

fetters, her body emaciated, and a crimson line encircling her

throat. His love has come under the headsman's axe! In the Ride to

Hell, which concludes Berlioz's "Damnation de Faust," the infernal

horsemen are greeted with shouts in a language which the mystical

Swedenborg says is the speech of the lower regions. Boito also uses

an infernal vocabulary. His witches screech "Saboé har Sabbah!" on

the authority of Le Loyer's "Les Spectres."

From the bestiality of the Brocken we are plunged at the beginning

of the third act into the pathos of Margherita's death. The episode

follows the lines laid down by Barbier and Carré in their paraphrase

of Goethe, except that for the sake of the beautiful music of the

duet (which Boito borrowed from his unfinished "Ero e Leandro"), we

learn that Margherita had drowned her child. Faust urges her to fly,

but her poor mind is all awry. She recalls the scene of their first

meeting and of the love-making in Dame Martha's garden, and the

earlier music returns, as it does in Gounod's score, and as it was

bound to do. At the end she draws back in horror from Faust, after

uttering a prayer above the music of the celestial choir, just as

the executioner appears. Mefistofele pronounces her damned, but

voices from on high proclaim her salvation.

The story of Faust and Margherita is ended, but, in pursuance of his

larger plan, already outlined here, Boito makes use of two scenes

from the second part of Goethe's drama to fill a fourth act and

epilogue. They tell of the adventure of Faust with Helen of Troy,

and of his death and the demon's defeat. The "Night of the Classical

Sabbath" serves a dramatic purpose even less than the scene on the

Brocken, but as an intermezzo it has many elements of beauty, and

its scheme is profoundly poetical. Unfortunately we can only attain

to a knowledge of the mission of the scene in the study with

Goethe's poem in hand and commentaries and Boito's prefatory notes

within reach. The picture is full of serene loveliness. We are on

the shore of Peneus, in the Vale of Tempe. The moon at its zenith

sheds its light over the thicket of laurel and oleanders, and floods

a Doric temple on the left. Helen of Troy and Pantalis, surrounded

by a group of sirens, praise the beauty of nature in an exquisite

duet, which flows on as placidly as the burnished stream. Faust

lies sleeping upon a flowery bank, and in his dreams calls upon

Helen in the intervals of her song. Helen and Pantalis depart, and

Faust is ushered in by Mefistofele. He is clad in his proper

mediaeval garb, in strong contrast to the classic robes of the

denizens of the valley in Thessaly. Mefistofele suggests to Faust

that they now separate; the land of antique fable has no charm for

him. Faust is breathing in the idiom of Helen's song like a delicate

perfume which inspires him with love; Mefistofele longs for the

strong, resinous odors of the Harz Mountains, where dominion over

the Northern hags belongs to him. Faust is already gone, and he is

about to depart when there approaches a band of Choretids. With

gentle grace they move through a Grecian dance, and Mefistofele

retires in disgust. Helen returns profoundly disquieted by a

vision of the destruction of Troy, of which she was the cause. The

Choretids seek to calm her in vain, but the tortures of conscience

cease when she sees Faust before her. He kneels and praises her

beauty, and she confesses herself enamoured of his speech, in which

sound answers sound like a soft echo. "What," she asks, "must I do

to learn so sweet and gentle an idiom?" "Love me, as I love you,"

replies Faust, in effect, as they disappear through the bowers. Now

let us turn to Goethe, his commentators, and Boito's explanatory

notes to learn the deeper significance of the episode, which, with

all its gracious charm, must still appear dramatically impertinent

and disturbing. Rhyme was unknown to the Greeks, the music of whose

verse came from syllabic quantity. Helen and her companions sing in

classic strain, as witness the opening duet:--

La luna immobile innonda l'etere d'un raggio pallido.

Callido balsamo stillan le ramora dai cespi roridi;

Doridi e silfidi, cigni e nereidi vagan sul l'alighi.

Faust addresses Helen in rhyme, the discovery of the Romantic

poets:--

Forma ideal purissima

Della bellezza eterna!

Un uom ti si prosterna

Innamorato al suolo

Volgi ver me la cruna

Di tua pupilla bruna,

Vaga come la luna,

Ardente come il sole.

"Here," says Boito, "is a myth both beautiful and deep. Helen and

Faust represent Classic and Romantic art gloriously wedded, Greek

beauty and Germanic beauty gleaming under the same aureole,

glorified in one embrace, and generating an ideal poesy, eclectic,

new, and powerful."

The contents of the last act, which shows us Faust's death and

salvation, have been set forth in the explanation of Boito's

philosophical purpose. An expository note may, however, profitably

be added in the poet-composer's own words: "Goethe places around

Faust at the beginning of the scene four ghostly figures, who utter

strange and obscure words. What Goethe has placed on the stage we

place in the orchestra, submitting sounds instead of words, in order

to render more incorporeal and impalpable the hallucinations that

trouble Faust on the brink of death." The ghostly figures referred

to by Boito are the four "Gray Women" of Goethe--Want, Guilt, Care,

and Necessity. Boito thinks like a symphonist, and his purpose is

profoundly poetical, but its appreciation asks more than the

ordinary opera-goer is willing or able to give. {2}

Footnotes:

{1} I like, at times, to hear the Ancient's word,

And have a care to be most civil:

It's really kind of such a noble Lord

So humnanly to gossip with the Devil.

--Bayard Taylor's Translation.

{2} "Mefistofele" had its first performance in New York at the

Academy of Music on November 24, 1880. Mlle. Valleria was the

Margherita and Elena, Miss Annie Louise Cary the Marta and Pantalis,

Signor Campanini Faust, and Signor Novara Mefistofele. Signor Arditi

conducted. The first representation of the opera at the Metropolitan

Opera-house took place on December 5, 1883, when, with one exception,

the cast was the same as at the first performance in London, at Her

Majesty's Theatre, on July 6, 1880--namely, Nilsson as Margherita

and Elena, Trebelli as Marta and Pantalis, Campanini as Faust and

Mirabella as Mefistofele. (In London Nannetti enacted the demon.)

Cleofonte Campanini, then maestro di cembalo at the Metropolitan

Opera-house, conducted the performance.

CHAPTER VIII

"LA DAMNATION DE FAUST"

In an operatic form Berlioz's "Damnation de Faust" had its first

representation in New York at the Metropolitan Opera-house on

December 7, 1906. Despite its high imagination, its melodic charm,

its vivid and varied colors, its frequent flights toward ideal

realms, its accents of passion, its splendid picturesqueness, it

presented itself as a "thing of shreds and patches." It was, indeed,

conceived as such, and though Berlioz tried by various devices to

give it entity, he failed. When he gave it to the world, he called

it a "Dramatic Legend," a term which may mean much or little as

one chooses to consider it; but I can recall no word of his which

indicates that he ever thought that it was fit for the stage. It was

Raoul Gunsbourg, director of the opera at Monte Carlo, who, in 1903,

conceived the notion of a theatrical representation of the legend

and tricked it out with pictures and a few attempts at action. Most

of these attempts are futile and work injury to the music, as will

presently appear, but in a few instances they were successful,

indeed very successful. Of course, if Berlioz had wanted to make an

opera out of Goethe's drama, he could have done so. He would then

have anticipated Gounod and Boito and, possibly, have achieved one

of those popular successes for which he hungered. But he was in his

soul a poet, in his heart a symphonist, and intellectually (as many

futile efforts proved) incapable of producing a piece for the

boards. When the Faust subject first seized upon his imagination, he

knew it only in a prose translation of Goethe's poem made by Gerald

de Nerval. In his "Memoirs" he tells us how it fascinated him. He

carried it about with him, reading it incessantly and eagerly at

dinner, in the streets, in the theatre. In the prose translation

there were a few fragments of songs. These he set to music and

published under the title "Huit Scènes de Faust," at his own expense.

Marx, the Berlin critic, saw the music and wrote the composer a

letter full of encouragement. But Berlioz soon saw grave defects in

his work and withdrew it from circulation, destroying all the copies

which he could lay hands on. What was good in it, however, he laid

away for future use. The opportunity came twenty years later, when

he was fired anew with a desire to write music for Goethe's poem.

Though he had planned the work before starting out on his memorable

artistic travels, he seems to have found inspiration in the

circumstance that he was amongst a people who were more

appreciative of his genius than his own countrymen, and whose

language was that employed by the poet. Not more than one-sixth of

his "Eight Scenes" had consisted of settings of the translations of

M. de Nerval. A few scenes had been prepared by M. Gaudonnière from

notes provided by the composer. The rest of the book Berlioz wrote

himself, now paraphrasing the original poet, now going to him only

for a suggestion. As was the case with Wagner, words and music

frequently presented themselves to him simultaneously. Travelling

from town to town, conducting rehearsals and concerts, he wrote

whenever and wherever he could--one number in an inn at Passau, the

Elbe scene and the Dance of the Sylphs at Vienna, the peasants' song

by gaslight in a shop one night when he had lost his way in Pesth,

the angels' chorus in Marguerite's apotheosis at Prague (getting

up in the middle of the night to write it down), the song of the

students, "Jam nox stellata velamina pandit" (of which the words

are also Berlioz's), at Breslau. He finished the work in Rouen and

Paris, at home, at his café, in the gardens of the Tuilleries, even

on a stone in the Boulevard du Temple. While in Vienna he made an

orchestral transcription of the famous Rakoczy march (in one night,

he says, though this is scarcely credible, since the time would

hardly suffice to write down the notes alone). The march made an

extraordinary stir at the concert in Pesth when he produced it,

and this led him to incorporate it, with an introduction, into his

Legend--a proceeding which he justified as a piece of poetical

license; he thought that he was entitled to put his hero in any part

of the world and in any situation that he pleased.

This incident serves to indicate how lightly all dramatic fetters

sat upon Berlioz while "La Damnation" was in his mind, and how

little it occurred to him that any one would ever make the attempt

to place his scenes upon the stage. In the case of the Hungarian

march, this has been done only at the sacrifice of Berlioz's

poetical conceit to which the introductory text and music were

fitted; but of this more presently. As Berlioz constructed the

"Dramatic Legend," it belonged to no musical category. It was

neither a symphony with vocal parts like his "Roméo et Juliette"

(which has symphonic elements in some of its sections), nor a

cantata, nor an oratorio. It is possible that this fact was long

an obstacle to its production. Even in New York where, on its

introduction, it created the profoundest sensation ever witnessed

in a local concert-room, it was performed fourteen times with the

choral parts sung by the Oratorio Society before that organization

admitted it into its lists.

And now to tell how the work was fitted to the uses of the lyric

theatre. Nothing can be plainer to persons familiar with the work in

its original form than that no amount of ingenuity can ever give the

scenes of the "Dramatic Legend" continuity or coherency. Boito, in

his opera, was unwilling to content himself with the episode of the

amour between Faust and Marguerite; he wanted to bring out the

fundamental ethical idea of the poet, and he went so far as to

attempt the Prologue in Heaven, the Classical Sabbath, and the death

of Faust with the contest for his soul. Berlioz had no scruples of

any kind. He chose his scenes from Goethe's poem, changed them at

will, and interpolated an incident simply to account for the

Hungarian march. Connection with each other the scenes have not, and

some of the best music belongs wholly in the realm of the ideal. At

the outset Berlioz conceived Faust alone on a vast field in Hungary

in spring. He comments on the beauties of nature and praises the

benison of solitude. His ruminations are interrupted by a dance of

peasants and the passage of an army to the music of the Rakoczy

march. This scene M. Gunsbourg changes to a picture of a mediaeval

interior in which Faust soliloquizes, and a view through the window

of a castle with a sally-port. Under the windows the peasants dance,

and out of the huge gateway come the soldiery and march off to

battle. At the climax of the music which drove the people of Pesth

wild at its first performance, so that Berlioz confessed that he

himself shuddered and felt the hair bristling on his head--when in a

long crescendo fugued fragments of the march theme keep reappearing,

interrupted by drum-beats like distant cannonading, Gunsbourg's

battalions halt, and there is a solemn benediction of the standards.

Then, to the peroration, the soldiers run, not as if eager to get

into battle, but as if in inglorious retreat.

The second scene reproduces the corresponding incident in Gounod's

opera--Faust in his study, life-weary and despondent. He is about

to drink a cup of poison when the rear wall of the study rolls up

and discloses the interior of a church with a kneeling congregation

which chants the Easter canticle, "Christ is risen!" Here is one of

the fine choral numbers of the work for which concert, not operatic,

conditions are essential. The next scene, however, is of the opera

operatic, and from that point of view the most perfect in the work.

It discloses the revel of students, citizens, and soldiers in

Auerbach's cellar. Brander sings the song of the rat which by good

living had developed a paunch "like Dr. Luther's," but died of

poison laid by the cook. The drinkers shout a boisterous refrain

after each stanza, and supplement the last with a mock-solemn

"Requiescat in pace, Amen." The phrase suggests new merriment to

Brander, who calls for a fugue on the "Amen," and the roisterers

improvise one on the theme of the rat song, which calls out hearty

commendation from Méphistophélès, and a reward in the shape of

the song of the flea--a delightful piece of grotesquerie with its

accompaniment suggestive of the skipping of the pestiferous little

insect which is the subject of the song.

The next scene is the triumph of M. Gunsbourg, though for it he is

indebted to Miss Loie Fuller and the inventor of the aerial ballet.

In the conceit of Berlioz, Faust lies asleep on the bushy banks of

the Elbe. Méphistophélès summons gnomes and sylphs to fill his mind

with lovely fancies. They do their work so well as to entrance,

not only Faust, but all who hear their strains, The instrumental

ballet is a fairy waltz, a filmy musical fabric, seemingly woven

of moonbeams and dewy cobwebs, over a pedal-point on the muted

violoncellos, ending with drum taps and harmonics from the harp--one

of the daintiest and most original orchestral effects imaginable.

So dainty is the device, indeed, that one would think that nothing

could come between it and the ears of the transported listeners

without ruining the ethereal creation. But M. Gunsbourg's fancy has

accomplished the miraculous. Out of the river bank he constructs a

floral bower rich as the magical garden of Klingsor. Sylphs circle

around the sleeper and throw themselves into graceful attitudes

while the song is sounding. Then to the music of the elfin waltz,

others enter who have, seemingly, cast off the gross weight which

holds mortals in contact with the earth. With robes a-flutter like

wings, they dart upwards and remain suspended in mid-air at will or

float in and out of the transporting picture. To Faust is also

presented a vision of Marguerite.

The next five scenes in Berlioz's score are connected by M.

Gunsbourg and forced to act in sequence for the sake of the stage

set, in which a picture of Marguerite's chamber is presented in the

conventional fashion made necessary by the exigency of showing an

exterior and interior at the same time, as in the last act of

"Rigoletto." For a reason at which I cannot even guess, M. Gunsbourg

goes farther and transforms the chamber of Marguerite into a sort of

semi-enclosed arbor, and places a lantern in her hand instead of

the lamp, so that she may enter in safety from the street. In this

street there walk soldiers, followed by students, singing their

songs. Through them Faust finds his way and into the trellised

enclosure. The strains of the songs are heard at the last blended

in a single harmony. Marguerite enters through the street with her

lantern and sings the romance of the King of Thule, which Berlioz

calls a Chanson Gothique, one of the most original of his creations

and, like the song in the next scene, "L'amour l'ardente flamme,"

which takes the place of Goethe's "Meine Ruh' ist hin," is

steeped in a mood of mystical tenderness quite beyond description.

Méphistophétès summons will-o'-the-wisps to aid in the bewilderment

of the troubled mind of Marguerite. Here realism sadly disturbs the

scene as Berlioz asks that the fancy shall create it. The customary

dancing lights of the stage are supplemented with electrical effects

which are beautiful, if not new. They do not mar if they do not help

the grotesque minuet. But when M. Gunsbourg materializes the ghostly

flames and presents them as a mob of hopping figures, he throws

douches of cold water on the imagination of the listeners. Later he

spoils enjoyment of the music utterly by making it the accompaniment

of some utterly irrelevant pantomime by Marguerite, who goes into

the street and is seen writhing between the conflicting emotions of

love and duty, symbolized by a vision of Faust and the glowing of a

cross on the façade of a church. To learn the meaning of this, one

must go to the libretto, where he may read that it is all a dream

dreamed by Marguerite after she had fallen asleep in her arm-chair.

But we see her awake, not asleep, and it is all foolish and

disturbing stuff put in to fill time and connect two of Berlioz's

scenes. Marguerite returns to the room which she had left only in

her dream, Faust discovers himself, and there follows the inevitable

love-duet which Méphistophétès changes into a trio when he enters to

urge Faust to depart. Meanwhile, Marguerite's neighbors gather in

the street and warn Dame Martha of the misdeeds of Marguerite. The

next scene seems to have been devised only to give an environment to

Berlioz's paraphrase of Goethe's immortal song at the spinning-wheel.

From the distance is heard the fading song of the students and the

last echo of drums and trumpets sounding the retreat. Marguerite

rushes to the window, and, overcome, rather unaccountably, with

remorse and grief, falls in a swoon.

The last scene. A mountain gorge, a rock in the foreground

surmounted by a cross. Faust's soliloquy, "Nature, immense,

impénétrable et fière," was inspired by Goethe's exalted invocation

to nature. Faust signs the compact, Méphistophétès summons the

infernal steeds, Vortex and Giaour, and the ride to hell begins.

Women and children at the foot of the cross supplicate the prayers

of Mary, Magdalen, and Margaret. The cross disappears in a fearful

crash of sound, the supplicants flee, and a moving panorama shows

the visions which are supposed to meet the gaze of the riders--birds

of night, dangling skeletons, a hideous and bestial phantasmagoria

at the end of which Faust is delivered to the flames. The picture

changes, and above the roofs of the sleeping town appears a vision

of angels welcoming Marguerite.

CHAPTER IX

"LA TRAVIATA"

In music the saying that "familiarity breeds contempt," is true only

of compositions of a low order. In the case of compositions of the

highest order, familiarity generally breeds ever growing admiration.

In this category new compositions are slowly received; they make

their way to popular appreciation only by repeated performances.

It is true that the people like best the songs as well as the

symphonies which they know best; but even this rule has its

exceptions. It is possible to grow indifferent to even high

excellence because of constant association with it. Especially

is this true when the form--that is, the manner of expression--has

grown antiquated; then, not expecting to find the kind of quality to

which our tastes are inclined, we do not look for it, and though it

may be present, it frequently passes unnoticed. The meritorious old

is, therefore, just as much subject to non-appreciation as the

meritorious new. Let me cite an instance.

Once upon a time duty called me to the two opera-houses of New

York on the same evening. At the first I listened to some of the

hot-blooded music of an Italian composer of the so-called school

of verismo. Thence I went to the second. Verdi's "Traviata" was

performing. I entered the room just as the orchestra began the

prelude to the last act. As one can see without observing, so one

can hear without listening--a wise provision which nature has made

for the critic, and a kind one; I had heard that music so often

during a generation of time devoted to musical journalism that I had

long since quit listening to it. But now my jaded faculties were

arrested by a new quality in the prelude. I had always admired the

composer of "Rigoletto," "Il Trovatore," and "Traviata," and I loved

and revered the author of "Aïda," "Otello," and "Falstaff." I had

toddled along breathlessly in the trail made by his seven-league

boots during the last thirty-five years of his career; but as I

listened I found myself wondering that I had not noticed before that

his modernity had begun before I had commenced to realize even what

maternity meant--more than half a century ago, for "La Traviata" was

composed in 1853. The quivering atmosphere of Violetta's sick-room

seemed almost visible as the pathetic bit of hymnlike music rose

upward from the divided viols of the orchestra like a cloud of

incense which gathered itself together and floated along with the

pathetic song of the solo violin. The work of palliating the

character of the courtesan had begun, and on it went with

each recurrence of the sad, sweet phrase as it punctuated the

conversation between Violetta and her maid, until memory of her

moral grossness was swallowed up in pity for her suffering.

Conventional song-forms returned when poet and composer gave voice

to the dying woman's lament for the happiness that was past and her

agony of fear when she felt the touch of Death's icy hand; but where

is melody more truthfully eloquent than in "Addio, del passato," and

"Gran Dio! morir so giovane"? Is it within the power of instruments,

no matter how great their number, or harmony with all the poignancy

which it has acquired through the ingenious use of dissonance, or

of broken phrase floating on an instrumental flood, to be more

dramatically expressive than are these songs? Yet they are, in

a way, uncompromisingly formal, architectural, strophic, and

conventionally Verdian in their repetition of rhythmical motives

and their melodic formularies. This introduction to the third act

recalls the introduction to the first, which also begins with the

hymnlike phrase, and sets the key-note of pathos which is sounded

at every dramatic climax, though pages of hurdy-gurdy tune and

unmeaning music intervene. Recall "Ah, fors' è lui che l'anima,"

with its passionate second section, "A quell' amor," and that most

moving song of resignation, "Dite all' giovine." These things

outweigh a thousand times the glittering tinsel of the opera and

give "Traviata" a merited place, not only beside the later creations

of the composer, but among those latter-day works which we call

lyric dramas to distinguish them from those which we still call

operas, with commiserating emphasis on the word.

That evening I realized the appositeness of Dr. von Bülow's remark

to Mascagni when the world seemed inclined to hail that young man

as the continuator of Verdi's operatic evangel: "I have found your

successor in your predecessor, Verdi," but it did not seem necessary

to think of "Otello" and "Falstaff" in connection with the

utterance; "La Traviata" alone justifies it. Also it was made plain

what Verdi meant, when after the first performance of his opera,

and its monumental fiasco, he reproached his singers with want of

understanding of his music. The story of that fiasco and the origin

of the opera deserve a place here. "La Traviata," as all the world

knows, is based upon the book and drama, "La Dame aux Camélias," by

the younger Dumas, known to Americans and Englishmen as "Camille."

The original book appeared in 1848, the play in 1852. Verdi

witnessed a performance of the play when it was new. He was writing

"Il Trovatore" at the time, but the drama took so strong a hold upon

him that he made up his mind at once to turn it into an opera. As

was his custom, he drafted a plan of the work, and this he sent

to Piave, who for a long time had been his librettist in ordinary.

Francesco Maria Piave was little more than a hack-writer of verse,

but he knew how to put Verdi's ideas into practicable shape, and

he deserves to be remembered with kindly interest as the great

composer's collaborator in the creation of "I due Foscari,"

"Ernani," "Macbetto," "Il Corsaro," "Stiffclio," "Simon Boccanegra,"

"Aroldo" (a version of "Stiffelio"), and "La Forza del Destino."

His artistic relations with Verdi lasted from 1844 to 1862, but the

friendship of the men endured till the distressful end of Piave's

life, which came in 1876. He was born three years earlier than Verdi

(in 1810), in Durano, of which town his father had been the last

podesta under the Venetian republic. He went mad some years

before he died, and thenceforward lived off Verdi's bounty, the

warm-hearted composer not only giving him a pension, but also caring

for his daughter after his death. In 1853 Verdi's creative genius

was at flood-tide. Four months was the time which he usually devoted

to the composition of an opera, but he wrote "La Traviata" within

four weeks, and much of the music was composed concurrently with

that of "Il Trovatore." This is proved by the autograph, owned

by his publishers, the Ricordis, and there is evidence of the

association in fraternity of phrase in some of the uninteresting

pages of the score. (See "Morrò! la mia memoria" for instance, and

the dance measures with their trills.) "Il Trovatore" was produced

at Rome on January 19, 1853, and "La Traviata" on March 6 of the

same year at the Fenice Theatre in Venice. "Il Trovatore" was

stupendously successful; "La Traviata" made a woful failure. Verdi

seems to have been fully cognizant of the causes which worked

together to produce the fiasco, though he was disinclined at the

time to discuss them. Immediately after the first representation

he wrote to Muzio: "'La Traviata' last night a failure. Was the

fault mine or the singers'? Time will tell." To Vincenzo Luccardi,

sculptor, professor at the Academy of San Luca in Rome, one of his

most intimate friends, he wrote after, the second performance: "The

success was a fiasco--a complete fiasco! I do not know whose fault

it was; it is best not to talk about it. I shall tell you nothing

about the music, and permit me to say nothing about the performers."

Plainly, he did not hold the singers guiltless. Varesi, the

barytone, who was intrusted with the part of the elder Germont,

had been disaffected, because he thought it beneath his dignity.

Nevertheless, he went to the composer and offered his condolences

at the fiasco. Verdi wanted none of his sympathy. "Condole with

yourself and your companions who have not understood my music," was

his somewhat ungracious rejoinder. No doubt the singers felt some

embarrassment in the presence of music which to them seemed new and

strange in a degree which we cannot appreciate now. Abramo Basevi,

an Italian critic, who wrote a book of studies on Verdi's operas,

following the fashion set by Lenz in his book on Beethoven, divides

the operas which he had written up to the critic's time into

examples of three styles, the early operas marking his first manner

and "Luisa Miller" the beginning of his second. In "La Traviata" he

says Verdi discovered a third manner, resembling in some things

the style of French oéera comique. "This style of music," he says,

"although it has not been tried on the stage in Italy, is, however,

not unknown in private circles. In these latter years we have

seen Luigi Gordigiani and Fabio Campana making themselves known

principally in this style of music, called da camera. Verdi, with

his 'Traviata,' has transported this chamber-music on to the stage,

to which the subject he has chosen still lends itself, and with

happy success. We meet with more simplicity in this work than in the

others of the same composer, especially as regards the orchestra,

where the quartet of stringed instruments is almost always

predominant; the parlanti occupy a great part of the score; we meet

with several of those airs which repeat under the form of verses;

and, finally, the principal vocal subjects are for the most part

developed in short binary and ternary movements, and have not, in

general, the extension which the Italian style demands." Campana

and Gordigiani were prolific composers of romanzas and canzonettas

of a popular type. Their works are drawing-room music, very

innocuous, very sentimental, very insignificant, and very far from

the conception of chamber-music generally prevalent now. How they

could have been thought to have influenced so virile a composer as

Verdi, it is difficult to see. But musical critics enjoy a wide

latitude of observation. In all likelihood there was nothing more in

Dr. Basevi's mind than the strophic structure of "Di Provenza," the

song style of some of the other arias to which attention has been

called and the circumstance that these, the most striking numbers

in the score, mark the points of deepest feeling. In this respect,

indeed, there is some relationship between "La Traviata" and "Der

Freischütz"--though this is an observation which will probably

appear as far-fetched to some of my critics as Dr. Basevi's does

to me.

There were other reasons of a more obvious and external nature for

the failure of "La Traviata" on its first production. Lodovico

Graziani, the tenor, who filled the rôle of Alfredo, was hoarse, and

could not do justice to the music; Signora Salvini-Donatelli, the

Violetta of the occasion, was afflicted with an amplitude of person

which destroyed the illusion of the death scene and turned its

pathos into absurdity. The spectacle of a lady of mature years and

more than generous integumental upholstery dying of consumption was

more than the Venetian sense of humor could endure with equanimity.

The opera ended with shrieks of laughter instead of the lachrymal

flood which the music and the dramatic situation called for. This

spirit of irreverence had been promoted, moreover, by the fact that

the people of the play wore conventional modern clothes. The lure

of realism was not strong in the lyric theatres half a century ago,

when laces and frills, top-boots and plumed hats, helped to confine

the fancy to the realm of idealism in which it was believed opera

ought to move. The first result of the fiasco was a revision of the

costumes and stage furniture, by which simple expedient Mr. Dumas's

Marguerite Gauthier was changed from a courtesan of the time of

Louis Philippe to one of the period of Louis XIV. It is an amusing

illustration of how the whirligig of time brings its revenges that

the spirit of verismo, masquerading as a desire for historical

accuracy, has restored the period of the Dumas book,--that is,

restored it in name, but not in fact,--with the result, in New York

and London at least, of making the dress of the opera more absurd

than ever. Violetta, exercising the right which was conquered by

the prima donna generations ago, appears always garbed in the very

latest style, whether she be wearing one of her two ball dresses or

her simple afternoon gown. For aught that I know, the latest fad in

woman's dress may also be hidden in the dainty folds of the robe

de chambre in which she dies. The elder Germont has for two years

appeared before the New York public as a well-to-do country

gentleman of Provence might have appeared sixty years ago, but his

son has thrown all sartorial scruples to the wind, and wears the

white waistcoat and swallowtail of to-day.

The Venetians were allowed a year to get over the effects of the

first representations of "La Traviata," and then the opera was

brought forward again with the new costumes. Now it succeeded and

set out upon the conquest of the world. It reached London on May 24,

St. Petersburg on November 1, New York on December 3, and Paris on

December 6--all in the same year, 1856. The first Violetta in New

York was Mme. Anna La Grange, the first Alfredo Signor Brignoli, and

the first Germont père Signor Amodio. There had been a destructive

competition between Max Maretzek's Italian company at the Academy of

Music and a German company at Niblo's Garden. The regular Italian

season had come to an end with a quarrel between Maretzek and the

directors of the Academy. The troupe prepared to embark for Havana,

but before doing so gave a brief season under the style of the La

Grange Opera Company, and brought forward the new opera on December

3, three days before the Parisians were privileged to hear it. The

musical critic of the Tribune at the time was Mr. W. H. Fry, who was

not only a writer on political and musical subjects, but a composer,

who wrote an opera, "Leonora," in which Mme. La Grange sang at the

Academy about a year and a half later. His review of the first

performance of "La Traviata," which appeared in the Tribune of

December 5, 1856, is worth reading for more reasons than one:--