Verdi is the most nervous, theatric, sensuous composer of the present
century. Measured by the highest standard, his style must be criticised
as often spasmodic, tawdry, and meretricious. He instinctively adopts
a bold and eccentric treatment of musical themes; and, though there are
always to be found stirring movements in his scores as well as in his
opera stories, he constantly offends refined taste by sensation and
violence.
With a redundancy of melody, too often of the cheap and shallow kind, he
rarely fails to please the masses of opera-goers, for his works enjoy
a popularity not shared at present by any other composer. In Verdi a
sudden blaze of song, brief spirited airs, duets, trios, etc., take
the place of the elaborate and beautiful music, chiseled into order and
symmetry, which characterizes most of the great composers of the past.
Energy of immediate impression is thus gained at the expense of that
deep, lingering power, full of the subtile side-lights and shadows of
suggestion, which is the crowning benison of great music. He stuns the
ear and captivates the senses, but does not subdue the soul.
Yet, despite the grievous faults of these operas, they blaze with gems,
and we catch here and there true swallow-flights of genius, that the
noblest would not disown. With all his puerilities there is a mixture
of grandeur. There are passages in "Ernani," "Rigoletto," "Traviata,"
"Trovatore," and "Aida," so strong and dignified, that it provokes a
wonder that one with such capacity for greatness should often descend
into such bathos.
To better illustrate the false art which mars so much of Verdi's
dramatic method, a comparison between his "Rigoletto," so often claimed
as his best work, and Rossini's "Otello" will be opportune. The air sung
by _Gilda_ in the "Rigoletto," when she retires to sleep on the eve of
the outrage, is an empty, sentimental yawn; and in the quartet of
the last act, a noble dramatic opportunity, she ejects a chain of
disconnected, unmusical sobs, as offensive as _Violetta's_ consumptive
cough. _Desdemona's_ agitated air, on the other hand, under Rossini's
treatment, though broken short in the vocal phrase, is magnificently
sustained by the orchestra, and a genuine passion is made consistently
musical; and then the wonderful burst of bravura, where despair and
resolution run riot without violating the bounds of strict beauty in
music--these are master-strokes of genius restrained by art.
In Verdi, passion too often misses intensity and becomes hysterical.
He lacks the elements of tenderness and humor, but is frequently
picturesque and charming by his warmth and boldness of color. His
attempts to express the gay and mirthful, as for instance in the
masquerade music of "Traviata" and the dance music of "Rigoletto," are
dreary, ghastly, and saddening; while his ideas of tenderness are apt
to take the form of mere sentimentality. Yet generalities fail in
describing him, for occasionally he attains effects strong in their
pathos, and artistically admirable; as, for example, the slow air for
the heroine, and the dreamy song for the gypsy mother in the last act
of "Trovatore." An artist who thus contradicts himself is a perplexing
problem, but we must judge him by the habitual, not the occasional.
Verdi is always thoroughly in earnest, never frivolous. He walks on
stilts indeed, instead of treading the ground or cleaving the air,
but is never timid or tame in aim or execution. If he cannot stir the
emotions of the soul he subdues and absorbs the attention against
even the dictates of the better taste; while genuiue beauties gleaming
through picturesque rubbish often repay the true musician for what he
has undergone.
So far this composer has been essentially representative of melodramatic
music, with all the faults and virtues of such a style. In "Aida,"
his last work, the world remarked a striking change. The noble
orchestration, the power and beauty of the choruses, the sustained
dignity of treatment, the seriousness and pathos of the whole work,
reveal how deeply new purposes and methods have been fermenting in the
composer's development. Yet in the very prime of his powers, though
no longer young, his next work ought to settle the value of the hopes
raised by the last.