beginning only catches glimpses of the dawn, as it were. So I kept these
glorious ideas at the bottom of my knapsack, and they gave me spirit to
eat the dry crust I often dipped in the water of a spring. I worked, I
composed airs, and, after playing them on any instrument that came to
hand, I went off again on foot across Italy. Finally, at the age of
two-and-twenty, I settled in Venice, where for the first time I
enjoyed rest and found myself in a decent position. I there made the
acquaintance of a Venetian nobleman who liked my ideas, who encouraged
me in my investigations, and who got me employment at the Venice
theatre.
“Living was cheap, lodging inexpensive. I had a room in that Capello
palace from which the famous Bianca came forth one evening to become a
Grand Duchess of Tuscany. And I would dream that my unrecognized fame
would also emerge from thence one day to be crowned.
“I spent my evenings at the theatre and my days in work. Then came
disaster. The performance of an opera in which I had experimented,
trying my music, was a failure. No one understood my score for the
_Martiri_. Set Beethoven before the Italians and they are out of their
depth. No one had patience enough to wait for the effect to be produced
by the different motives given out by each instrument, which were all at
last to combine in a grand _ensemble_.
“I had built some hopes on the success of the _Martiri_, for we votaries
of the blue divinity Hope always discount results. When a man believes
himself destined to do great things, it is hard not to fancy them
achieved; the bushel always has some cracks through which the light
shines.
“My wife’s family lodged in the same house, and the hope of winning
Marianna, who often smiled at me from her window, had done much to
encourage my efforts. I now fell into the deepest melancholy as I
sounded the depths of a life of poverty, a perpetual struggle in which
love must die. Marianna acted as genius does; she jumped across every
obstacle, both feet at once. I will not speak of the little happiness
which shed its gilding on the beginning of my misfortunes. Dismayed at
my failure, I decided that Italy was not intelligent enough and too much
sunk in the dull round of routine to accept the innovations I conceived
of; so I thought of going to Germany.
“I traveled thither by way of Hungary, listening to the myriad voices
of nature, and trying to reproduce that sublime harmony by the help
of instruments which I constructed or altered for the purpose. These
experiments involved me in vast expenses which had soon exhausted
my savings. And yet those were our golden days. In Germany I was
appreciated. There has been nothing in my life more glorious than that
time. I can think of nothing to compare with the vehement joys I found
by the side of Marianna, whose beauty was then of really heavenly
radiance and splendor. In short, I was happy.
“During that period of weakness I more than once expressed my passion in
the language of earthly harmony. I even wrote some of those airs, just
like geometrical patterns, which are so much admired in the world of
fashion that you move in. But as soon as I made a little way I met
with insuperable obstacles raised by my rivals, all hypercritical or
unappreciative.
“I had heard of France as being a country where novelties were favorably
received, and I wanted to get there; my wife had a little money and we
came to Paris. Till then no one had actually laughed in my face; but in
this dreadful city I had to endure that new form of torture, to which
abject poverty ere long added its bitter sufferings. Reduced to lodging
in this mephitic quarter, for many months we have lived exclusively on
Marianna’s sewing, she having found employment for her needle in working
for the unhappy prostitutes who make this street their hunting ground.
Marianna assures me that among those poor creatures she has met with
such consideration and generosity as I, for my part, ascribe to the
ascendency of virtue so pure that even vice is compelled to respect it.”
“Hope on,” said Andrea. “Perhaps you have reached the end of your
trials. And while waiting for the time when my endeavor, seconding
yours, shall set your labors in a true light, allow me, as a
fellow-countryman and an artist like yourself, to offer you some little
advances on the undoubted success of your score.”
“All that has to do with matters of material existence I leave to
my wife,” replied Gambara. “She will decide as to what we may accept
without a blush from so thorough a gentleman as you seem to be. For my
part,--and it is long since I have allowed myself to indulge such full
confidences,--I must now ask you to allow me to leave you. I see
a melody beckoning to me, dancing and floating before me, bare and
quivering, like a girl entreating her lover for her clothes which he
has hidden. Good-night. I must go and dress my mistress. My wife I leave
with you.”
He hurried away, as a man who blames himself for the loss of valuable
time; and Marianna, somewhat embarrassed, prepared to follow him.
Andrea dared not detain her.
Giardini came to the rescue.
“But you heard, signora,” said he. “Your husband has left you to settle
some little matters with the Signor Conte.”
Marianna sat down again, but without raising her eyes to Andrea, who
hesitated before speaking.
“And will not Signor Gambara’s confidence entitle me to his wife’s?”
he said in agitated tones. “Can the fair Marianna refuse to tell me the
story of her life?”
“My life!” said Marianna. “It is the life of the ivy. If you wish to
know the story of my heart, you must suppose me equally destitute of
pride and of modesty if you can ask me to tell it after what you have
just heard.”
“Of whom, then, can I ask it?” cried the Count, in whom passion was
blinding his wits.
“Of yourself,” replied Marianna. “Either you understand me by this time,
or you never will. Try to ask yourself.”
“I will, but you must listen. And this hand, which I am holding, is to
lie in mine as long as my narrative is truthful.”
“I am listening,” said Marianna.
“A woman’s life begins with her first passion,” said Andrea. “And my
dear Marianna began to live only on the day when she first saw Paolo
Gambara. She needed some deep passion to feed upon, and, above all, some
interesting weakness to shelter and uphold. The beautiful woman’s nature
with which she is endowed is perhaps not so truly passion as maternal
love.
“You sigh, Marianna? I have touched one of the aching wounds in your
heart. It was a noble part for you to play, so young as you were,--that
of protectress to a noble but wandering intellect. You said to yourself:
‘Paolo will be my genius; I shall be his common sense; between us we
shall be that almost divine being called an angel,--the sublime creature
that enjoys and understands, reason never stifling love.’
“And then, in the first impetus of youth, you heard the thousand voices
of nature which the poet longed to reproduce. Enthusiasm clutched you
when Paolo spread before you the treasures of poetry, while seeking to
embody them in the sublime but restricted language of music; you admired
him when delirious rapture carried him up and away from you, for you
liked to believe that all this devious energy would at last come down
and alight as love. But you knew not the tyrannous and jealous despotism
of the ideal over the minds that fall in love with it. Gambara, before
meeting you, had given himself over to the haughty and overbearing
mistress, with whom you have struggled for him to this day.
“Once, for an instant, you had a vision of happiness. Paolo, tumbling
from the lofty sphere where his spirit was constantly soaring, was
amazed to find reality so sweet; you fancied that his madness would be
lulled in the arms of love. But before long Music again clutched
her prey. The dazzling mirage which had cheated you into the joys of
reciprocal love made the lonely path on which you had started look more
desolate and barren.
“In the tale your husband has just told me, I could read, as plainly as
in the contrast between your looks and his, all the painful secrets of
that ill-assorted union, in which you have accepted the sufferer’s part.
Though your conduct has been unfailingly heroical, though your firmness
has never once given way in the exercise of your painful duties,
perhaps, in the silence of lonely nights, the heart that at this moment
is beating so wildly in your breast, may, from time to time, have
rebelled. Your husband’s superiority was in itself your worst torment.
If he had been less noble, less single-minded, you might have deserted
him; but his virtues upheld yours; you wondered, perhaps, whether his
heroism or your own would be the first to give way.
“You clung to your really magnanimous task as Paolo clung to his
chimera. If you had had nothing but a devotion to duty to guide and
sustain you, triumph might have seemed easier; you would only have
had to crush your heart, and transfer your life into the world of
abstractions; religion would have absorbed all else, and you would have
lived for an idea, like those saintly women who kill all the instincts
of nature at the foot of the altar. But the all-pervading charm of
Paolo, the loftiness of his mind, his rare and touching proofs of
tenderness, constantly drag you down from that ideal realm where virtue
would fain maintain you; they perennially revive in you the energies
you have exhausted in contending with the phantom of love. You never
suspected this! The faintest glimmer of hope led you on in pursuit of
the sweet vision.
“At last the disappointments of many years have undermined your
patience,--an angel would have lost it long since,--and now the
apparition so long pursued is no more than a shade without substance.
Madness that is so nearly allied to genius can know no cure in this
world. When this thought first struck you, you looked back on your
past youth, sacrificed, if not wasted; you then bitterly discerned the
blunder of nature that had given you a father when you looked for a
husband. You asked yourself whether you had not gone beyond the duty
of a wife in keeping yourself wholly for a man who was bound up in his
science. Marianna, leave your hand in mine; all I have said is true. And
you looked about you--but now you were in Paris, not in Italy, where men
know how to love----”
“Oh! Let me finish the tale,” cried Marianna. “I would rather say things
myself. I will be honest; I feel that I am speaking to my truest friend.
Yes, I was in Paris when all you have expressed so clearly took place
in my mind; but when I saw you I was saved, for I had never met with
the love I had dreamed of from my childhood. My poor dress and my
dwelling-place had hidden me from the eyes of men of your class. A few
young men, whose position did not allow of their insulting me, were all
the more intolerable for the levity with which they treated me. Some
made game of my husband, as if he were merely a ridiculous old man;
others basely tried to win his good graces to betray me; one and all
talked of getting me away from him, and none understood the devotion I
feel for a soul that is so far away from us only because it is so near
heaven, for that friend, that brother, whose handmaid I will always be.
“You alone understood, did you not? the tie that binds me to him. Tell
me that you feel a sincere and disinterested regard for my Paolo----”
“I gladly accept your praises,” Andrea interrupted; “but go no further;
do not compel me to contradict you. I love you, Marianna, as we love in
the beautiful country where we both were born, I love you with all my
soul and with all my strength; but before offering you that love, I will
be worthy of yours. I will make a last attempt to give back to you the
man you have loved so long and will love forever. Till success or defeat
is certain, accept without any shame the modest ease I can give you
both. We will go to-morrow and choose a place where he may live.
“Have you such regard for me as will allow you to make me the partner in
your guardianship?”
Marianna, surprised at such magnanimity, held out her hand to the Count,
who went away, trying to evade the civilities of Giardini and his wife.
On the following day Giardini took the Count up to the room where the
Gambaras lodged. Though Marianna fully knew her lover’s noble
soul,--for there are natures which quickly enter into each other’s
spirit,--Marianna was too good a housewife not to betray her annoyance
at receiving such a fine gentleman in so humble a room. Everything
was exquisitely clean. She had spent the morning in dusting her motley
furniture, the handiwork of Signor Giardini, who had put it together, at
odd moments of leisure, out of the fragments of the instruments rejected
by Gambara.
Andrea had never seen anything quite so crazy. To keep a decent
countenance he turned away from a grotesque bed, contrived by the
ingenious cook in the case of an old harpsichord, and looked at
Marianna’s narrow couch, of which the single mattress was covered with
a white muslin counterpane, a circumstance that gave rise in his mind to
some sad but sweet thoughts.
He wished to speak of his plans and of his morning’s work; but Gambara,
in his enthusiasm, believing that he had at last met with a willing
listener, took possession of him, and compelled him to listen to the
opera he had written for Paris.
“In the first place, monsieur,” said the composer, “allow me to explain
the subject in a few words. Here, the hearers receiving a musical
impression do not work it out in themselves, as religion bids us work
out the texts of Scripture in prayer. Hence it is very difficult to make
them understand that there is in nature an eternal melody, exquisitely
sweet, a perfect harmony, disturbed only by revolutions independent of
the divine will, as passions are uncontrolled by the will of men.
“I, therefore, had to seek a vast framework in which effect and cause
might both be included; for the aim of my music is to give a picture of
the life of nations from the loftiest point of view. My opera, for
which I myself wrote the _libretto_, for a poet would never have fully
developed the subject, is the life of Mahomet,--a figure in whom the
magic of Sabaeanism combined with the Oriental poetry of the Hebrew
Scriptures to result in one of the greatest human epics, the Arab
dominion. Mahomet certainly derived from the Hebrews the idea of a
despotic government, and from the religion of the shepherd tribes or
Sabaeans the spirit of expansion which created the splendid empire of
the Khalifs. His destiny was stamped on him in his birth, for his father
was a heathen and his mother a Jewess. Ah! my dear Count, to be a great
musician a man must be very learned. Without knowledge he can get no
local color and put no ideas into his music. The composer who sings for
singing’s sake is an artisan, not an artist.
“This magnificent opera is the continuation of the great work I
projected. My first opera was called _The Martyrs_, and I intend to
write a third on Jerusalem delivered. You perceive the beauty of this
trilogy and what a variety of motives it offers,--the Martyrs, Mahomet,
the Deliverance of Jerusalem: the God of the West, the God of the East,
and the struggle of their worshipers over a tomb. But we will not dwell
on my fame, now for ever lost.
“This is the argument of my opera.” He paused. “The first act,” he went
on, “shows Mahomet as a porter to Kadijah, a rich widow with whom his
uncle placed him. He is in love and ambitious. Driven from Mecca, he
escapes to Medina, and dates his era from his flight, the _Hegira_. In
the second act he is a Prophet, founding a militant religion. In
the third, disgusted with all things, having exhausted life, Mahomet
conceals the manner of his death in the hope of being regarded as a
god,--last effort of human pride.
“Now you shall judge of my way of expressing in sound a great idea, for
which poetry could find no adequate expression in words.”
Gambara sat down to the piano with an absorbed gaze, and his wife
brought him the mass of papers forming his score; but he did not open
them.
“The whole opera,” said he, “is founded on a bass, as on a fruitful
soil. Mahomet was to have a majestic bass voice, and his wife
necessarily had a contralto. Kadijah was quite old--twenty! Attention!
This is the overture. It begins with an _andante_ in C major, triple
time. Do you hear the sadness of the ambitious man who is not satisfied
with love? Then, through his lamentation, by a transition to the key
of E flat, _allegro_, common time, we hear the cries of the epileptic
lover, his fury and certain warlike phrases, for the mighty charms of
the one and only woman give him the impulse to multiplied loves which
strikes us in _Don Giovanni_. Now, as you hear these themes, do you not
catch a glimpse of Mahomet’s Paradise?
“And next we have a _cantabile_ (A flat major, six-eight time), that
might expand the soul that is least susceptible to music. Kadijah has
understood Mahomet! Then Kadijah announces to the populace the Prophet’s
interviews with the Angel Gabriel (_maestoso sostenuto_ in F Major). The
magistrates and priests, power and religion, feeling themselves attacked
by the innovator, as Christ and Socrates also attacked effete or
worn-out powers and religions, persecute Mahomet and drive him out of
Mecca (_stretto_ in C major). Then comes my beautiful dominant (G major,
common time). Arabia now harkens to the Prophet; horsemen arrive (G
major, E flat, B flat, G minor, and still common time). The mass of men
gathers like an avalanche; the false Prophet has begun on a tribe the
work he will achieve over a world (G major).
“He promises the Arabs universal dominion, and they believe him because
he is inspired. The _crescendo_ begins (still in the dominant). Here
come some flourishes (in C major) from the brass, founded on the
harmony, but strongly marked, and asserting themselves as an expression
of the first triumphs. Medina has gone over to the Prophet, and the
whole army marches on Mecca (an explosion of sound in C major). The
whole power of the orchestra is worked up like a conflagration; every
instrument is employed; it is a torrent of harmony.
“Suddenly the _tutti_ is interrupted by a flowing air (on the minor
third). You hear the last strain of devoted love. The woman who had
upheld the great man dies concealing her despair, dies at the moment of
triumph for him in whom love has become too overbearing to be content
with one woman; and she worships him enough to sacrifice herself to the
greatness of the man who is killing her. What a blaze of love!
“Then the Desert rises to overrun the world (back to C major). The whole
strength of the orchestra comes in again, collected in a tremendous
quintet grounded on the fundamental bass--and he is dying! Mahomet is
world-weary; he has exhausted everything. Now he craves to die a god.
Arabia, in fact, worships and prays to him, and we return to the first
melancholy strain (C minor) to which the curtain rose.
“Now, do you not discern,” said Gambara, ceasing to play, and turning to
the Count, “in this picturesque and vivid music--abrupt, grotesque, or
melancholy, but always grand--the complete expression of the life of
an epileptic, mad for enjoyment, unable to read or write, using all his
defects as stepping-stones, turning every blunder and disaster into
a triumph? Did not you feel a sense of his fascination exerted over a
greedy and lustful race, in this overture, which is an epitome of the
opera?”
At first calm and stern, the maestro’s face, in which Andrea had been
trying to read the ideas he was uttering in inspired tones, though the
chaotic flood of notes afforded no clue to them, had by degrees glowed
with fire and assumed an impassioned force that infected Marianna and
the cook. Marianna, too, deeply affected by certain passages in which
she recognized a picture of her own position, could not conceal the
expression of her eyes from Andrea.
Gambara wiped his brow, and shot a glance at the ceiling of such fierce
energy that he seemed to pierce it and soar to the very skies.
“You have seen the vestibule,” said he; “we will now enter the palace.
The opera begins:--
“Act I. Mahomet, alone on the stage, begins with an air (F natural,
common time), interrupted by a chorus of camel-drivers gathered
round a well at the back of the stage (they sing in contrary
time--twelve-eight). What majestic woe! It will appeal to the most
frivolous women, piercing to their inmost nerves if they have no heart.
Is not this the very expression of crushed genius?”
To Andrea’s great astonishment,--for Marianna was accustomed to
it,--Gambara contracted his larynx to such a pitch that the only sound
was a stifled cry not unlike the bark of a watch-dog that has lost
its voice. A slight foam came to the composer’s lips and made Andrea
shudder.
“His wife appears (A minor). Such a magnificent duet! In this number I
have shown that Mahomet has the will and his wife the brains. Kadijah
announces that she is about to devote herself to an enterprise that will
rob her of her young husband’s love. Mahomet means to conquer the world;
this his wife has guessed, and she supports him by persuading the people
of Mecca that her husband’s attacks of epilepsy are the effect of his
intercourse with the angels (chorus of the first followers of Mahomet,
who come to promise him their aid, C sharp minor, _sotto voce_). Mahomet
goes off to seek the Angel Gabriel (_recitative_ in F major). His wife
encourages the disciples (_aria_, interrupted by the chorus; gusts of
chanting support Kadijah’s broad and majestic air, A major).
“Abdallah, the father of Ayesha,--the only maiden Mahomet has found
really innocent, wherefore he changed the name of Abdallah to Abubekir
(the father of the virgin),--comes forward with Ayesha and sings against
the chorus, in strains which rise above the other voices and supplement
the air sung by Kadijah in contrapuntal treatment. Omar, the father
of another maiden who is to be Mahomet’s concubine, follows Abubekir’s
example; he and his daughter join in to form a quintette. The girl
Ayesha is first soprano, Hafsa second soprano; Abubekir is a bass, Omar
a baritone.
“Mahomet returns, inspired. He sings his first _bravura_ air, the
beginning of the _finale_ (E major), promising the empire of the world
to those who believe in him. The Prophet seeing the two damsels, then,
by a gentle transition (from B major to G major), addresses them in
amorous tones. Ali, Mahomet’s cousin, and Khaled, his greatest general,
both tenors, now arrive and announce the persecution; the magistrates,
the military, and the authorities have all proscribed the Prophet
(_recitative_). Mahomet declares in an invocation (in C) that the Angel
Gabriel is on his side, and points to a pigeon that is seen flying away.
The chorus of believers responds in accents of devotion (on a modulation
to B major). The soldiers, magistrates, and officials then come on
(_tempo di marcia_, common time, B major). A chorus in two divisions
(_stretto_ in E major). Mahomet yields to the storm (in a descending
phrase of diminished sevenths) and makes his escape. The fierce and
gloomy tone of this _finale_ is relieved by the phrases given to the
three women who foretell Mahomet’s triumph, and these motives are
further developed in the third act in the scene where Mahomet is
enjoying his splendor.”
The tears rose to Gambara’s eyes, and it was only upon controlling his
emotion that he went on.
“Act II. The religion is now established. The Arabs are guarding the
Prophet’s tent while he speaks with God (chorus in A minor). Mahomet
appears (a prayer in F). What a majestic and noble strain is this that
forms the bass of the voices, in which I have perhaps enlarged the
borders of melody. It was needful to express the wonderful energy of
this great human movement which created an architecture, a music, a
poetry of its own, a costume and manners. As you listen, you are walking
under the arcades of the Generalife, the carved vaults of the Alhambra.
The runs and trills depict that delicate mauresque decoration, and the
gallant and valorous religion which was destined to wage war against the
gallant and valorous chivalry of Christendom. A few brass instruments
awake in the orchestra, announcing the Prophet’s first triumph (in a
broken _cadenza_). The Arabs adore the Prophet (E flat major), and the
Khaled, Amru, and Ali arrive (_tempo di marcia_). The armies of the
faithful have taken many towns and subjugated the three Arabias. Such a
grand recitative!--Mahomet rewards his generals by presenting them with
maidens.