He sort of clung to the iron pickets, did the boy, and pressed his face
through the fence and listened. Some one was playing the piano in the
big house, and the windows with their little diamond panes were flung
open to catch the evening breeze. He listened.
His big gray eyes were open wide, the pupils dilated--he was trying to
see the music as well as hear it.
The boy's hair matched the yellow of his face, being one shade lighter,
sun-bleached from going hatless. His clothes were as yellow as the
yellow of his face, and shaded off into the dust that strewed the
street. He was like a quail in a stubble-field--you might have stepped
over him and never seen him at all. He listened. Almost every evening
some one played the piano in the big house. He had discovered the fact a
week before, and now, when the dusk was gathering, he would watch his
chance and slide away from the hut where his parents lived, and run fast
up the hill, and along the shelving roadway to the tall iron fence that
marked the residence of Signore Barezzi. He would creep along under the
stone wall, and crouching there would wait and listen for the music.
Several evenings he had come and waited, and waited, and waited--and not
a note or a voice did he hear.
Once it had rained and he didn't mind it much, for he expected every
moment the music would strike up, you know--and who cares for cold, or
wet, or even hunger, if one can hear good music! The air grew chill and
the boy's threadbare jacket stuck to his bony form like a postage-stamp
to a letter. Little rivulets of water ran down his hair and streamed off
his nose and cheeks. He waited--he was waiting for the music.
He might have waited until the water dissolved his insignificant cosmos
into just plain, yellow mud, and then he would have been simply
distributed all along the gutter down to the stream, and down the stream
to the river, and down the river to the ocean; and no one would ever
have heard of him again.
But Signore Barezzi's coachman came along that night, keeping close to
the fence under the trees to avoid the wet; and the coachman fell over
the boy.
Now, when we fall over anything we always want to kick it--no matter
what it is, be it cat, dog, stump, stick, stone or human. The coachman
being but clay (undissolved) turned and kicked the boy. Then he seized
him by the collar, and accused him of being a thief. The lad
acknowledged the indictment, and stammeringly tried to explain that it
was only music he was trying to steal; and that it really made no
difference because even if one did fill himself full of the music, there
was just as much left for other people, since music was different from
most things.
The thought was not very well expressed, although the idea was all
right, but the coachman failed to grasp it. So he tingled the boy's bare
legs with the whip he carried, by way of answer, duly cautioning him
never to let it occur again, and released the prisoner on parole.
But the boy forgot and came back the next night. He sat on the ground
below the wall, intending to keep out of sight; but when the music began
he stood up, and now, with face pressed between the pickets, he
listened.
The wind sighed softly through the orange-trees; the air was heavy with
the perfume of flowers; the low of cattle came from across the valley,
and on the evening breeze from an open casement rose the strong,
vibrant, yet tender, strains of Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata." The lad
listened.
"Do you like music?" came a voice from behind. The boy awoke with a
start, and tried to butt his head through the pickets to escape in that
direction. He thought it was the coachman. He turned and saw the kindly
face of Signore Barezzi himself.
"Do I like music? Me! No, I mean yes, when it is like that!" he
exclaimed, beginning his reply with a tremolo and finishing bravura.
"That is my daughter playing; come inside with me." The hand of the
great man reached out, and the urchin clutched at it as if it were
something he had been longing for.
They walked through the big gates where a stone lion kept guard on each
side. The lions never moved. They walked up the steps, and entering the
parlor saw a young woman seated at the piano.
"Grazia, dear, here is the little boy we saw the other day--you
remember? I thought I would bring him in." The young woman came forward
and touched the lad on his tawny head with one of her beautiful
hands--the beautiful hands that had just been playing the "Sonata."
"That's right, little boy, we have seen you outside there before, and if
I had known you were there tonight, I would have gone out and brought
you in; but Papa has done the service for me. Now, you must sit down
right over there where I can see you, and I will play for you. But won't
you tell us your name?"
"Me?" replied the little boy, "why--why my name is Giuseppe Verdi--I am
ten years old now--going on 'leven--you see, I like to hear you play
because I play myself, a little bit!"
* * * * *
For over a hundred years three-fourths of Italy's population had been on
reduced rations. Starvation even yet crouches just around the corner.
In his childhood young Verdi used to wear a bit of rope for a girdle,
and when hunger gnawed importunately, he would simply pull his belt one
knot tighter, and pray that the ravens would come and treat him as well
as they did Elijah. His parents were so poor that the question of
education never came to them; but desire has its way, so we find the boy
at ten years of age running errands for a grocer with a musical
attachment. This grocer, at Busseto, Jasquith by name, hung upon the
fringe of art, and made the dire mistake of mixing business with his
fad, for he sold his wares to sundry gentlemen who played in bands. This
led the good man to moralize at times, and he would say to Giuseppe, who
had been promoted from errand-boy to clerk: "You can trust a first
violin, and a 'cello usually pays, but never say yes to a trombone nor
an oboe; and as for a kettle-drum, I wouldn't believe one on a stack of
Bibles!"
Over the grocer's shop was a little parlor, and in it was a spinet that
young Giuseppe had the use of four evenings a week. In his later years
Verdi used to tell of this, and once said that the idea of prohibition
and limit should be put on every piano--then the pupil would make the
best of his privileges. In those days there was a tax on spinets, and I
believe that this tax has never been rescinded, for you are taxed if
you keep a piano, now, in any part of Italy. Several times the poor
grocer's spinet stood in sore peril from the publicans and sinners, but
the bailiffs were bought off by Signore Barezzi, who came to the rescue.
The note of thrift was even then in Verdi's score, for he himself has
told how he induced the Barezzi household to patronize the honest grocer
with musical proclivities.
When twelve years of age Verdi occasionally played the organ in the
village church at Busseto. It will be seen from this that he had
courage, and even then possessed a trace of that pride and self-will
that was to be his disadvantage and then his blessing. Signore Barezzi's
attachment to the boy was very great, and we find the youngster was on
friendly terms with the family, having free use of their piano, with
valuable help and instruction from Signorina Grazia. When he was
seventeen he was easily the first musician in the place, and Busseto had
nothing more to offer in the way of advantages. He thirsted for a wider
career, and cast longing looks out into the great outside world. He had
played at Parma, only a few miles away, and the Bishop there, after
hearing him improvise on the organ, had paid him a doubtful compliment
by saying, "Your playing is surely unlike anything ever before heard in
Parma." Fair fortune smiled when Signore Barezzi secured for young Verdi
a free scholarship at the Conservatory at Milan.
The youth went gaily forth, attended by the blessings of the whole
village, to claim his honors.
Arriving at the Conservatory, the directors put him through his paces,
after the usual custom, to prove his fitness for the honor that had been
thrust upon him. He played first upon the piano, and the committee
advised together in whispered monotone. Then they asked him to play on
the organ, and there was more consultation, with argument which was
punctuated by rolling adjectives and many picturesque gesticulations.
Then they asked him to play the piano again. He did so, and the great
men retired to deliberate and vote on the issue.
Their decision was that the youth was self-willed, erratic, and that he
had some absurd mannerisms and tricks of performance that forbade his
ever making a musician. And therefore, they ruled that his admission to
the Conservatory was impossible.
Barezzi, who was present with his protege, stormed in wrath, and
declared that Verdi was the peer of any of his judges; in fact, was so
much beyond them that they could not comprehend him.
This only confirmed the powers in the stand they had taken, and they
intimated that a great musician in Busseto was something different in
Milan--Signore Barezzi had better take his young man home and be content
to astonish the villagers with noisy acrobatics. There being nothing
else to do, the advice was first flouted and then followed. They
arrived home, and Grazia and the grocer were informed that the
Conservatory at Milan was a delusion and a snare--"a place where pebbles
were polished and diamonds were dimmed." Shortly after, the townspeople,
to show faith in the home product, had Verdi duly installed as organist
of the village church at a salary equal to forty dollars a year.
Under the spell of this good fortune, Verdi proposed marriage to the
daughter of Jasquith, the grocer, his friend and benefactor. Gratitude
to the man who had first assisted him had much to do with the alliance;
and in wedding the daughter, Verdi simply complied with what he knew to
be the one ardent desire of the father.
The girl was a frail creature, of fine instincts, but her intellect had
been starved just as her body had been. Her chief virtue seems to have
been that she believed absolutely in the genius of Verdi.
The ambition of Verdi began to show itself. He wrote an opera, and
offered it to Merelli, the impresario of "La Scala" at Milan. The
impresario had heard of Verdi, through the fact that the Conservatory
had blackballed him. This of itself would have been no passport to fame,
but the Committee saw fit to defend themselves in the matter by making a
public report of the considerations which had moved them to shut the
doors on the young man from Busseto. This gave the subject a weight and
prominence that simple admission never would have given.
Merelli, the Major Pond of Milan, saw the expressions "bizarre,"
"erratic," "peculiar," "unprecedented," and kept his eye on Verdi. And
so when the opera was written he pounced upon it, thinking possibly a
new star had appeared on the horizon. The opera was accepted. Verdi,
feverish with hope, moved his scanty effects to Milan, and there, with
his frail and beautiful girl-wife and their baby-boy, lived in a garret
just across from the theater.
Preparations for the performance were going on apace. The night of
November Seventeenth, Eighteen Hundred Thirty-nine came, and the play
was presented. The critics voted it a failure. Merelli, the manager, saw
that it was not strong enough with which to storm the town, and so
decided to abandon it. He liked the young composer, though, and admired
his work; and inasmuch as he had brought him to Milan, he felt a sort of
obligation to help him along. So Verdi was given an order for an opera
bouffe. That's it! Opera bouffe!--the people want comedy--they must be
amused. Even Verdi's serious work ran dangerously close to farce--bouffe
is the thing!
Merelli's hope was infectious. Verdi began work on the new play that was
to be presented in the Spring. The winter rains began. There was no fire
in the garret where the composer and his frail girl-wife lived. They
were so proud that they did not let the folks at Busseto know where they
were: even Merelli did not know their place of abode. Under an assumed
name Verdi got occasional work as an underling in one of the theaters,
and also played the piano at a restaurant. The wages thus earned were a
pittance, but he managed to take home soup-bones that the baby-boy
sucked on as though they were nectar.
Another baby was born that winter. The mother was unattended, save by
her husband--no other woman was near. Verdi managed to bring home scraps
of food by stealth from the restaurant where he played, but it was not
the kind that was needed. There was no money to buy goat's milk for the
new-born babe, and the famishing mother, ever hopeful, assured the
husband it wasn't necessary--that the babe was doing well. The child
grew aweary of this world before a month had passed, and slept to wake
no more.
But the opera bouffe was taking shape. It was rehearsed and hummed by
husband and wife together. They went over it all again and again, and
struck out and added to. It was splendid work--subtle, excruciatingly
funny, and possessed a dash and go that would sweep all carping and
criticism before it.
Food was still scarce, and there was no fuel even to cook things; but as
there was nothing to cook, it really made no difference. Spring was
coming--it was cold, to be sure, but the buds were swelling on the trees
in the park. Verdi had seen them with his own eyes, and he hastened home
to tell his wife--Spring was coming!
The two-year-old boy didn't seem to thrive on soup-bones. The father
used to hold him in his arms at night to warm the little form against
his own body. He awoke one morning to find the child cold and stiff. The
boy was dead.
The mother used to lie abed all day now. She wasn't ill she said--just
tired! She never looked so beautiful to her husband. Two bright pink
spots marked her cheeks, and set off the alabaster of her complexion.
Her eyes glowed with such a light as Verdi had never before seen. No,
she was not ill--she protested this again and again. She kept to her bed
merely to be warm; and then if one didn't move around much, less food
was required--don't you see?
Spring had come. The opera was being rehearsed. The title of the play
was "Un Giorno di Regno." Merelli said he thought it would be a success;
Verdi was sure of it.
The night of presentation came. After the first act Verdi ran across the
street, leaped up the stairs three steps at a time, and reached the
garret. The play was a success. The worn woman there on her pallet, the
pale moonlight streaming in on her face, knew it would be. She raised
herself on her elbow and tried to call, "Viva Verdi!" But the cough cut
her words short. Verdi kissed her forehead, her hands, her hair, and
hurried back in time to see the curtain ascend on the second act. This
act went without either applause or disapproval. Verdi ran home to say
that the audience was a trifle critical, but the play was all right--it
was a success! He said he would remain at home now, he would not go to
hear the third and last act. He would attend his wife until she got well
and strong. The play was a success!
She prevailed upon him to leave her and then come back at the finale and
tell her all about it.
He went away.
When he returned he stumbled up the stairway and slowly entered the
door.
The last act had not been completed--the audience had hissed the players
from the stage!
Upon the ashen face of her husband, the stricken woman read all. She
tried to smile. She reached out one thin hand on which loosely hung a
marriage-ring. The hand dropped before he could reach it. The eyes of
the woman were closed, but upon the long, black lashes glistened two big
tears. The spirit was brave, but the body had given up the great
struggle.
* * * * *
The calamities that had come sweeping over Verdi well-nigh broke his
proud heart. He was only twenty-six, but he had had a taste of life and
found it bitter.
He lost interest in everything. All his musical studies were abandoned,
his excursions into science went by default, and he was quite content to
bang the piano in a concert saloon for enough to secure the bare
necessaries of life. Suicide seemed to present the best method of
solving the problem, and the various ways of shuffling off this mortal
coil were duly considered. Meanwhile he filled in the time reading
trashy novels--anything to forget time and place, and lose self in
poppy-dreams of nothingness.
Two years of such blankness and blackness followed. He was sure that the
desire to create, to be, to do, would never come again--these were all
of the past. One day on an idle stroll through the park he met Merelli.
As they walked along together, Merelli took from his pocket a book, the
story of "Nabucco," and handing it to Verdi, asked him to look it over,
and see if he thought there was a chance to make an opera out of it.
Verdi responded that he was not in the business of writing operas--he
had quit all such follies. He took the volume, however, but neglected to
look at it for several days. At last he read the pages. He laid the book
down and began to pace the floor. Possibilities of creation were looming
large before him--a rush of thought was upon him. His soul was not
dead--it had only been lying fallow.
He secured the loan of a piano and set to work. In a month the opera was
completed. Merelli hesitated about accepting it--twice he had lost money
on Verdi. Finally he decided he would put the play on, if Verdi would
waive all royalties for the first three performances, if it were a
success, and then sell the opera outright "at a reasonable price," if
Merelli should chance to want it. The "reasonable price" was assumed to
be about a thousand francs--two hundred dollars--pretty good pay for a
month's work.
Verdi took no interest in the production of the piece. He had come to
the conclusion that the public was a fickle, foolish thing, and no one
could tell what it would hiss or applaud. Then he remembered the
blackness of the night when only two years before his other opera was
produced.
He made his way to his dingy little room and went to bed.
Very early the next morning there was a loud pounding on his door. It
was Merelli. "How much for your opera?" asked the impresario, pushing
his way into the room.
"Thirty thousand francs," came a voice, loud and clear out of the
bedclothes.
"Don't be a fool," returned Merelli--"why do you ask such a sum!"
"Because you are here at five o'clock in the morning--the price will be
fifty thousand this afternoon."
Ten minutes of parley followed, and then Merelli drew his check for
twenty thousand francs, and Verdi gave his quitclaim, turned over in
bed, and went to sleep again.
* * * * *
The success of "Nabucodonosor" was complete. Its author had his twenty
thousand francs, but Merelli made more than that. From Eighteen Hundred
Forty-two to Eighteen Hundred Fifty-one may be called the First Verdi
Period. A dozen successful operas were produced, and simultaneously at
Rome, Naples, Venice, Milan, Genoa and Florence, Verdi's compositions
were being presented. The master was a businessman, as well as an
artist--the combination is not so unusual as was long believed--and knew
how to get the most for the mintage of his mind. Money fairly flowed his
way.
Verdi married again in Eighteen Hundred Fifty. His life now turns into
what may be called the Second Verdi Period. After this we shall see no
more such curious exhibitions of bad taste as a ballet of forty witches
in "Macbeth," capering nimbly to a syncopated melody, with "Lady
Macbeth" in a needlessly abbreviated skirt singing a drinking-song to an
absent lover. In strenuous efforts to avoid coarseness Verdi may
occasionally give us soft sentimentality, but the change is for the
best.
His mate was a woman of mind as well as heart. She was his intellectual
companion, his friend, his wife. For nearly fifty years they lived
together. Her dust now lies in the "House of Rest," at Milan, a home for
aged artists, founded by Verdi. This "House of Rest" was a
Love-Offering, dedicated to the woman who had given him, without stint,
of the richness of her nature; who had bestowed rest, and peace, and
hope and gentle love. She had no feverish ambitions and petty plans and
schemes for secretly corralling pleasure, power, place, attention, or
selfish admiration. By giving all, she won all. She devoted herself to
this man in whom she had perfect faith, and he had perfect faith in her.
She ministered to him. They grew great together. When each was over
eighty years of age, Henry James met them at Cremona, at a musical
festival in honor of the birthday of Stradivari. And thus wrote Henry
James: "Verdi and his wife were there, admired above all others. And why
not? Think of whom they are, and what they stand for--nearly a century
of music, and a century of life! The master is tall, straight, proud,
commanding. He has a courtly old-time grace of bearing; and he kissed
his wife's hand when he took leave of her for an hour's stroll. And the
Madame surely is not old in spirit; she is as sprightly as our own Mrs.
John Sherwood, who translated 'Carcassonne' so well that she improved on
the original, because in her heart spring fresh and fragrant every day
the flowers of tender, human, Godlike sympathy."
* * * * *
"Rigoletto," produced in the year Eighteen Hundred Fifty-one at Venice,
is founded on Victor Hugo's "Le Roi s'Amuse"; and the music has all the
dramatic fire that matches the Hugo plot. Verdi's devotion to Victor
Hugo is seen again in the use of "Hernani" for operatic purposes. "Il
Trovatore" and "La Traviata" followed "Rigoletto," and these three
operas are usually put forward as the Verdi masterpieces. The composer
himself regarded them with a favor that may well be pardoned, since he
used to say that he and his wife collaborated in their production--she
writing the music and he looking on. The proportion of truth and poetry
in this statement is not on record. But the simple fact remains that "Il
Trovatore" was always a favorite with Verdi, and even down to his death
he would travel long distances to hear it played. A correspondent of the
"Musical Courier," writing from Paris in Eighteen Hundred Eighty-seven,
says: "Verdi and his wife occupied a box last evening at the Grand Opera
House. The piece was 'Il Trovatore,' and many smiles were caused by the
sight of the author and his spouse seemingly leading the claque as if
they would split their gloves."
The flaming forth of creative genius that produced the "Rigoletto," "Il
Trovatore," and "La Traviata," subsided into a placid calm.
The serene happiness of Verdi's married life, the fortune that had come
to him, and the consciousness of having won in spite of great
obstacles, led him to the thought of quiet and well-earned rest. The
master interested himself in politics, and was elected to represent the
district of Parma in the Italian Parliament. He proved himself a man of
power--practical, self-centered and businesslike--and as such served his
country well.
The sentiment of the man is shown in his buying the property at Busseto,
his old home, which was owned by Signore Barezzi. He removed the high
picket fence, replacing it with a low stone wall; remodeled the house
and turned the conservatory into a small theater, where free concerts
were often given with the help of the villagers. The adjoining grounds
and splendid park were free to the public.
The master's attention to music was now limited to enjoying it. So
passed the days.
Ten years of the life of a country gentleman went by, and the Shah of
Persia, who had been on a visit to Italy and met Verdi, sent a command
for an opera. The plot must be laid in the East, the characters Moorish,
and the whole to be dedicated to the immortal Son of the Sun--the Shah.
It is a little doubtful whether the Shah knew that operas are produced
only in certain moods and can not be done to order as a carpenter builds
a fence. But it was the way that Eastern Royalty had of showing its high
esteem.
Verdi smiled, and his wife smiled, and they had quite a merry little
time over the matter, calling in the neighbors and friends, and drinking
to the health of a real live Shah who knew a great musical genius when
he found one. But suddenly the matter began to take form in the master's
mind. He set to work, and the result was that in a few weeks "Aida" was
completed. The stories often told of the long preparation for composing
this opera reveal the fine imagination of the men who write for the
newspapers. Verdi seized upon knowledge as a devilfish absorbs its
prey--he learned in the mass.
"Aida" was first produced at Cairo in Eighteen Hundred Seventy-one, with
a grand setting and the best cast procurable. A new Verdi opera was an
event, and critics went from London, Paris, and other capitals to see
the performance.
The first thing the knowing ones said was that Verdi was touched with
Wagnerism, and that he had studied "Lohengrin" with painstaking care. If
Verdi was influenced by Wagner it was for good; but there was no servile
imitation in it. The "Aida" is rich in melody, reveals a fine balance
between singers and orchestra, and the "local color" is correct even to
the chorus of Congo slaves that was introduced at the performance in
Cairo.
All agreed that the rest had done the master good, and the
correspondents wrote, "We will look anxiously for his next." They
thought the stream had started and there would be an overflow.
But they were mistaken. Sixteen years of quiet farming followed. Verdi
was more interested in his flowers than his music, and told Philip Hale,
who made a pious pilgrimage to Busseto in Eighteen Hundred Eighty-three,
that he loved his horses more than all the prima donnas on earth.
But in Eighteen Hundred Eighty-seven, the artistic and music-loving
world was surprised and delighted with "Otello." This grand performance
made amends for the mangling of "Macbeth." James Huneker says: "The
character-drawing in 'Otello' is done with the burin of a master; the
plot moves in processional splendor; the musical psychology is subtle
and inevitable. At last the genius of Verdi has flowered. The work is
consummate and complete."
"Falstaff" came next, written by a graybeard of eighty as if just to
prove that the heart does not grow old. It is the work of an
octogenarian who loved life and had seen the world of show and sense
from every side. Old men usually moralize and live in the past--not so
here. The play flows with a laughing, joyous, rippling quality that
disarmed the critics and they apologized for what they had said about
Wagnerian motives. There were no sad, solemn, recurring themes in the
full-ripened fruit of Verdi's genius. When he died, at the age of
eighty-seven, the curtain fell on the career of a great and potent
personality--the one unique singer of the Nineteenth Century.
[Illustration: WOLFGANG MOZART]