ROSSINI
Nowadays it is difficult to form any idea of Rossini's position in our
beautiful city of Paris half a century ago. He had retired from active
life a long time before, but he had a greater reputation in his idleness
than many others in their activity. All Paris sought the honor of being
admitted to his magnificent, high-windowed apartment. As the demigod
never went out in the evening, his friends were always sure of finding
him at home. At one time or another all sorts of social sets rubbed
elbows at his great soirees. The most brilliant singers and the most
famous virtuosi appeared at these "evenings." The master was surrounded
by sycophants, but they did not influence him, for he knew their true
worth. He ruled his regular following with the hauteur of a superior
being who does not deign to reveal himself to the first comer. It is a
question how he came to be held in such honor.
His works, outside of the _Barbier_ and _Guillaume Tell_, and some
performances of _Moïse_, belonged to the past. They still went to see
_Otello_ at the Théâtre-Italien, but that was to hear Tamberlick's C
diesis. Rossini was under so little illusion that he tried to oppose the
effort to have _Semiramide_ put into the repertoire at the Opéra. And,
nevertheless, the Parisian public actually worshipped him.
This public--I am speaking now of the musical public or what is called
that--was divided into two hostile camps. There were the lovers of
melody who were in the large majority and included the musical critics;
and, on the other side, the subscribers to the Conservatoire and the
Maurin, Alard and Amingaud quartets. They were devotees of learned
music; "poseurs," others said, who pretended to admire works they did
not understand at all.
There was no melody in Beethoven; some even denied that there was any in
Mozart. Melody was found, we were told, only in the works of the
Italian school, of which Rossini was the leader, and in the school of
Herold and Auber, which was descended from the Italian.
The Melodists considered Rossini their standard bearer, a symbol to
rally around, even though they had just obtained good prices for his
works at the second-hand shops and now permitted them to fall into
oblivion.
From some words he let fall during our intimacy I can state that this
neglect was painful to him. But it was a just--perhaps too
just--retribution for the fatality with which Rossini, doubtless in
spite of himself, served as a weapon against Beethoven. The first
encounter was at Vienna where the success of _Tancred_ crushed forever
the dramatic ambitions of the author of _Fidelio_; later, at Paris, they
used _Guillaume Tell_ in combating the increasing invasion of the
symphony and chamber music.
I was twenty when M. and Mme. Viardot introduced me to Rossini. He
invited me to his small evening receptions and received me with his
usual rather meaningless cordiality. At the end of a month, when he
found that I asked to be heard neither as a pianist nor as a composer,
he changed his attitude. "Come and see me tomorrow morning," he said.
"We can talk then."
I was quick to respond to this flattering invitation and I found a very
different Rossini from the one of the evening. He was intensely
interested in and open-minded to ideas, which, if they were not
advanced, were at least broad and noble. He gave proof of this when
Liszt's famous _Messe_ was performed for the first time at St. Eustache.
He went to its defense in the face of an almost unanimous opposition.
He said to me one day,
"You have written a duet for a flute and clarinet for Dorus and Leroy.
Won't you ask them to play it at one of my evenings?"
The two great artists did not have to be urged. Then an unheard of thing
happened. As he never had a written programme on such occasions, Rossini
managed so that they believed that the duet was his own. It is easy to
imagine the success of the piece under these conditions. When the encore
was over, Rossini took me to the dining-room and made me sit near him,
holding me by the hand so that I could not get away. A procession of
fawning admirers passed in front of him. Ah! Master! What a masterpiece!
Marvellous!
And when the victim had exhausted the resources of the language in
praise, Rossini replied, quietly:
"I agree with you. But the duet wasn't mine; it was written by this
gentleman."
Such kindness combined with such ingenuity tells more about the great
man than many volumes of commentaries. For Rossini was a great man. The
young people of to-day are in no position to judge his works, which were
written, as he said himself, for singers and a public who no longer
exist.
"I am criticised," he said one day, "for the great _crescendo_ in my
works. But if I hadn't put the _crescendo_ into my works, they would
never have been played at the Opéra."
In our day the public are slaves. I have read in the programme of one
house, "All marks of approbation will be severely repressed." Formerly,
especially in Italy, the public was master and its taste law. As it came
before the lights were up, a great overture with a _crescendo_ was as
necessary as cavatinas, duets and ensembles: they came to hear the
singers and not to be present at an opera. In many of his works,
especially in _Otello_, Rossini made a great step forward towards
realism in opera. In _Moïse_ and _Le Siège de Corinthe_ (not to mention
_Guillaume Tell_) he rose to heights which have not been surpassed in
spite of the poverty of the means at his disposal. As Victor Hugo has
victoriously demonstrated, such poverty is no obstacle to genius and
wealth in them is only an advantage to mediocrity.
I was one of the regular pianists at Rossini's. The others were
Stanzieri, a charming young man of whom Rossini was very fond and who
lived but a short time, and Diemer, who was also young but already a
great artist. One or the other of us would often play at the evening
entertainments the slight pieces for the piano which the Master used to
write to take up his time. I was only too willing to accompany the
singers, when Rossini did not do so himself. He accompanied them
admirably for he played the piano to perfection.
[Illustration: Mme. Patti]
Unfortunately I was not there the evening that Patti sang for Rossini
the first time. We know that after she had sung the aria from _Le
Barbier_, he said to her, after the usual compliments,
"Who wrote that aria you just sang?"
I saw him three days afterwards and he hadn't cooled off even then.
"I am fully aware," he said, "that arias should be embellished. That's
what they are for. But not to leave a note of them even in the
recitatives! That is too much!"
In his irritation he complained that the sopranos persisted in singing
this aria which was written for a contralto and did not sing what had
been written for the sopranos at all.
On the other hand the diva was irritated as well. She thought the matter
over and realized that it would be serious to have Rossini for an enemy.
So some days later she went to ask his advice. It was well for her that
she took it, for her talent, though brilliant and fascinating, was not
as yet fully formed. Two months after this incident, Patti sang the
arias from _La Gaza Ladra_ and _Semiramide_, with the master as her
accompanist. And she combined with her brilliancy the absolute
correctness which she always showed afterwards.
Much has been written about the premature interruption of Rossini's
career after the appearance of _Guillaume Tell_. It has been compared
with Racine's life after _Phèdre_. The failure of _Phèdre_ was brutal
and cruel, which was added to by the scandalous success of the _Phèdre_
of an unworthy rival. Racine's friends, the Port Royalists, did not
hesitate to make the most of the opportunity. "You've lost your soul,"
they told him. "And now you haven't even success." But later, when he
took up his pen again, he gave us two masterpieces in _Esther_ and
_Athalie_.
Rossini was accustomed to success and it was hard for him to run into a
half-hearted success when he knew he had surpassed himself. This was
doubtless due to the extravagant phraseology of Hippolyte Bis, one of
the librettists. But _Guillaume Tell_ had its admirers from the start.
I heard it spoken of constantly in my childhood. If the work did not
appear on the bills of the Opéra, it furnished the amateurs with choice
bits.
In my opinion, if Rossini committed suicide as far as his art was
concerned, he did so because he had nothing more to say. Rossini was a
spoiled child of success and he could not live without it. Such
unexpected hostility put an end to a stream which had flowed so
abundantly for so long.
The success of his _Soirées Musicales_ and his _Stabat_ encouraged him.
But he wrote nothing more except those slight compositions for the piano
and for singing which may be compared to the last vibrations of a sound,
as it dies away.
Later--much later--came _La Messe_ to which undue importance has been
attributed. "_Le Passus_," one critic wrote, "is the cry of a stricken
spirit." La Messe is written with elegance by an assured and expert
hand, but that is all. There are no traces of the pen which wrote the
second act of _Guillaume Tell_.
Apropos of this second act, it is not, perhaps, generally known that the
author had no idea of ending it with a prayer. Insurrections are not
usually begun with so serious a song. But at the rehearsals the effect
of the unison, _Si parmi nous il est des Traîtres_, was so great that
they did not dare to go on beyond it. So they suppressed the real
ending, which is now the brilliant entrancing end of the overture. This
finale is extant in the library at the Opéra. It would be an interesting
experiment to restore it and give this beautiful act its natural
conclusion.