Music, as speaking the language of feeling, emotion, and passion, found
its first full expansion in the operatic form. There had been attempts
to represent drama with chorus, founded on the ancient Greek drama, but
it was soon discovered that dialogue and monologue could not be embodied
in choral forms without involving an utter absurdity. The spirit of
the renaissance had freed poetry, statuary, and painting, from the
monopolizing elaims of the church. Music, which had become a well
equipped and developed science, could not long rest in a similar
servitude. Though it is not the aim of the author to discuss operatic
history, a brief survey of the progress of opera from its birth cannot
be omitted.
The oldest of the entertainments which ripened into Italian opera
belongs to the last years of the fifteenth century, and was the work
of the brilliant Politian, known as one of the revivalists of Greek
learning attached to the court of Cosmo de' Medici and his son Lorenzo.
This was the musical drama of "Orfeo." The story was written in Latin,
and sung in music principally choral, though a few solo phrases were
given to the principal characters. It was performed at Rome with great
magnificence, and Vasari tells us that Peruzzi, the decorator of the
papal theatre, painted such scenery for it that even the great Titian
was so struck with the _vraisemblance_ of the work that he was not
satisfied until he had touched the canvas to be sure of its not being in
relief. We may fancy indeed that the scenery was one great attraction
of the representation. In spite of spasmodic encouragement by the more
liberally minded pontiffs, the general weight of church influence was
against the new musical tendency, and the most skilled composers were at
first afraid to devote their talents to further its growth.
What musicians did not dare undertake out of dread of the thunderbolts
of the church, a company of _literati_ at Florence commenced in 1580.
The primary purpose was the revival of Greek art, including music. This
association, in conjunction with the Medicean Academy, laid down the
rule that distinct individuality of expression in music was to be sought
for. As results, quickly came musical drama with recitative (modern form
of the Greek chorus) and solo melody for characteristic parts of the
legend or story. Out of this beginning swiftly grew the opera. Composers
in the new form sprung up in various parts of Italy, though Naples,
Venice, and Florence continued to be its centres.
Between 1637 and 1700, there were performed three hundred operas at
Venice alone. An account of the performance of "Berenice," composed by
Domenico Freschi, at Padua, in 1680, dwarfs all our present ideas of
spectacular splendor. In this opera there were choruses of a hundred
virgins and a hundred soldiers; a hundred horsemen in steel armor; a
hundred performers on trumpets, cornets, sackbuts, drums, flutes, and
other instruments, on horseback and on foot; two lions led by two Turks,
and two elephants led by two Indians; Berenice's triumphal car drawn
by four horses, and six other cars with spoils and prisoners, drawn by
twelve horses. Among the scenes in the first act was a vast plain
with two triumphal arches; another with pavilions and tents; a square
prepared for the entrance of the triumphal procession, and a forest
for the chase. In the second act there were the royal apartments of
Berenice's temple of vengeance, a spacious court with view of the prison
and a covered way with long lines of chariots. In the third act there
were the royal dressing-room, the stables with a hundred live horses,
porticoes adorned with tapestry, and a great palace in the perspective.
In the course of the piece there were representations of the hunting of
the boar, the stag, and the lions. The whole concluded with a huge globe
descending from the skies, and dividing itself in lesser globes of fire
on which stood allegorical figures of fame, honor, nobility, virtue, and
glory. The theatriccal manager had princes and nobles for bankers and
assistants, and they lavished their treasures of art and money to
make such spectacles as the modern stagemen of London and Paris cannot
approach.
In Evelyn's diary there is an entry describing opera at Venice in 1645.
"This night, having with my lord Bruce taken our places before, we
went to the opera, where comedies and other plays are represented
in recitative musiq by the most excellent musicians, vocal and
instrumental, with variety of scenes painted and contrived with no
lesse art of perspective, and machines for flying in the aire, and other
wonderful motions; taken together it is one of the most magnificent and
expensive diversions the wit of man can invent. The history was Hercules
in Lydia. The sceanes changed thirteen times. The famous voices, Anna
Rencia, a Roman and reputed the best treble of women; but there was
a Eunuch who in my opinion surpassed her; also a Génoise that in my
judgment sung an incomparable base. They held us by the eyes and ears
till two o'clock i' the morning." Again he writes of the carnival
of 1640: "The comedians have liberty and the operas are open; witty
pasquils are thrown about, and the mountebanks have their stages at
every corner. The diversion which chiefly took me up was three noble
operas, where were most excellent voices and music, the most celebrated
of which was the famous and beautiful Anna Rencia, whom we invited to
a fish dinner after four daies in Lent, when they had given over at the
theatre." Old Evelyn then narrates how he and his noble friend took the
lovely diner out on a junketing, and got shot at with blunderbusses from
the gondola of an infuriated rival.
Opera progressed toward a fixed status with a swiftness hardly
paralleled in the history of any art. The soil was rich and fully
prepared for the growth, and the fecund root, once planted, shot into
a luxuriant beauty and symmetry, which nothing could check. The Church
wisely gave up its opposition, and henceforth there was nothing to
impede the progress of a product which spread and naturalized itself
in England, France, and Germany. The inventive genius of Monteverde,
Carissimi, Scarlatti (the friend and rival of Handel), Durante, and
Leonardo Leo, perfected the forms of the opera nearly as we have them
today. A line of brilliant composers in the school of Durante and Leo
brings us down through Pergolesi, Derni, Terradiglias, Jomelli, Traetta,
Ciccio di Majo, Galuppi, and Giuglielmi, to the most distinguished of
the early Italian composers, Nicolo Piccini, who, mostly forgotten
in his works, is principally known to modern fame as the rival of the
mighty Gluck in that art controversy which shook Paris into such bitter
factions. Yet, overshadowed as Piccini was in the greatness of his
rival, there can be no question of his desert as the most brilliant
ornament and exponent of the early operatic school. No greater honor
could have been paid to him than that he should have been chosen as
their champion by the _Italianissimi_ of his day in the battle royal
with such a giant as Gluck, an honor richly deserved by a composer
distinguished by multiplicity and beauty of ideas, dramatic insight, and
ardent conviction.