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[Illustration: Portrait of Rossini with a Signature
_Engraved by J. Brown, from a Sketch taken at Naples, 1820._]
THE
LIFE OF ROSSINI.
BY
H. SUTHERLAND EDWARDS.
IN ONE VOLUME.
LONDON:
HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS,
13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.
1869.
_The Right of Translation is Reserved._
LONDON:
BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.
CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION.
PAGE
Rossini's Influence, and Success 1
PART I.
ROSSINI AND HIS EARLY WORKS.
CHAPTER I.
ROSSINI'S YOUTH.
Pedigree and Arms--Rossini's First Work--Rondo Finale--Five
Operas in one Year--Rossini and the Conscription--"Un
Curioso Accidente"--The Mombelli Family--An
Operatic Burlesque 9
CHAPTER II.
ITALIAN OPERA UNTIL "TANCREDI."
Rossini's Innovations--Rossini and an old Habitué--The
Opera at Naples--Scarlatti and his School 27
CHAPTER III.
FOUR HISTORICAL OPERAS.
Pergolese and Gluck--Cimarosa and Paisiello 37
CHAPTER IV.
MOZART AND ROSSINI.
Mozart in Germany; and Abroad 43
CHAPTER V.
ROSSINI'S REFORMS IN SERIOUS OPERA.
The Basso Cantante--Overture to "Tancredi"--Rossini's
Crescendo--"Di tanti palpiti" 48
CHAPTER VI.
ROSSINI'S REFORMS IN COMIC OPERA.
"L'Italiana in Algeri"--Anecdote of a Duet--Liveliness
and Laziness 57
CHAPTER VII.
ROSSINI'S REFORMS IN WRITING FOR THE VOICE.
"Aureliano in Palmira"--The Sopranists--Porpora and
Caffarelli--Rossini and Velluti--Vocal Embroidery--Singers
and Composers--Change of System--A Royal
Singing-master 64
CHAPTER VIII.
FROM MILAN TO NAPLES.
"Il Turco in Italia"--A Fiasco--The Opera at Rome--The
Opera at Turin--Operatic Subventions--The Two-Act
Division--Baldness of Rossini's Managers 81
PART II.
ROSSINI AT NAPLES.
CHAPTER I.
ROSSINI, BARBAJA, AND MDLLE. COLBRAN.
The Illustrious Barbaja--Mademoiselle Colbran--A
Patriotic Hymn 99
CHAPTER II.
"ELISABETTA": ROSSINI'S DEBUT AT NAPLES.
"Elisabetta"--Accompaniment of Recitative 109
CHAPTER III.
ROSSINI VISITS ROME--"TORVALDO E DORLISKA."
Rossini's Barber 114
CHAPTER IV.
BEAUMARCHAIS, PAISIELLO, AND ROSSINI.
"Le Barbiere de Seville"--Beaumarchais' Preface--La
Calunnia--Paisiello's "Barbiere" 117
CHAPTER V.
"THE BARBER OF SEVILLE."
Contract for the "Barber"--Rossini and the Music-Publishers--Getting
to work--The Composer and
the Librettist--Hard work--Preface to the
"Barber" 127
CHAPTER VI.
"THE BARBER OF SEVILLE"--FIRST REPRESENTATION.
The Two Overtures--Madame Giorgi Righetti--Almaviva's
Air--Trio of the Music-Lesson--Transpositions 141
CHAPTER VII.
"OTELLO": FURTHER REFORMS IN OPERA SERIA.
Cast of "Otello"--Davide--Progress of Instrumentation--The
Clarinet--Brass Instruments--A Solo on the
Kettledrum 152
CHAPTER VIII.
ROSSINI'S REPRODUCTIONS FROM HIMSELF.
Religious and Secular Music--Borrowed Pieces--Parts in
"Il Barbiere"--"La Cenerentola" and "Il Barbiere" 165
CHAPTER IX.
"LA GAZZA LADRA": THE CONTRALTO VOICE.
The Magpie and the Trowel--Beethoven and Paer--Contralto
parts--Overture to "La Gazza Ladra"--A
Drum-hater--Operatic prayers 174
CHAPTER X.
"ARMIDA," "ADELAIDA," AND "ADINA."
"Adina," an Opera for Lisbon 187
CHAPTER XI.
"MOSÈ IN EGITTO": REFORMS IN OPERA SERIA.
Emancipation of the Serious Basso--Musical Fevers--Crossing
the Red Sea--The Preghiera 190
CHAPTER XII.
THREE UNFAMILIAR WORKS.
"Ermione"--Memory of a Neapolitan Merchant--New
Music and Old 200
CHAPTER XIII.
SACRED AND SECULAR SUBJECTS.
An Operatic Mass--Secular and Religious Music 206
CHAPTER XIV.
"LA DONNA DEL LAGO."
Operatic Subjects--Classical and Mythological Opera--Victor
Hugo on the Libretto--New Combination--"Robert
Bruce." 210
CHAPTER XV.
END OF ROSSINI'S ITALIAN CAREER.
Departure from Naples--"Matilda di Sabran"--Rossini's
Marriage--Carpani and "Zelmira"--Madame Rossini--"Semiramide"--Farewell
to the Italian Stage 222
PART III.
ROSSINI'S FRENCH CAREER.
CHAPTER I.
A VISIT TO LONDON--ROSSINI AND GEORGE IV.
A Successful Manager--Rossini's English Adapters--His
Popularity in London--Rossini and George IV.--Concert
at Almack's--Rossini on his stay in England--Art
in London Drawing-rooms 239
CHAPTER II.
ROSSINI'S OPERA FOR THE KING'S THEATRE.
Operatic Management in England--The Missing Act 254
CHAPTER III.
ROSSINI IN PARIS.
Musical Feuds in Paris--Rossini in a Vaudeville--Berton
and Paer--Boieldieu and the French Rossinists--Auber
and Rossini's Music--"Art is lost" 261
CHAPTER IV.
ROSSINI AND HIS CRITICS.
"Signor Crescendo"--Paisiello's "Barbiere"--Curious instance
of Antipathy 275
CHAPTER V.
ROSSINI AT THE ITALIAN OPERA OF PARIS.
Rossini and Paer--"Il Viaggio a Reims"--"Andiamo a
Parigi"--Rossini and Bellini 282
CHAPTER VI.
ROSSINI AT THE ACADEMIE.
Rossini on "Ermione"--Italian Artists at the French
Opera--"Le Siège de Corinthe"--Rossini's Profits as
a Composer--"Moïse"--M. Scribe as a Librettist--The
Royal Italian Opera 291
CHAPTER VII.
"GUILLAUME TELL."
The Libretto--Beauty of the Music--Avoidance of the
"Cavatina"--Dramatic Effects peculiar to Operas 307
CHAPTER VIII.
ROSSINI AFTER "WILLIAM TELL."
Windmills and Wind--Industry and Idleness--Rossini's
"Faust"--After "Guillaume Tell"--Rossini and M.
Guizot 319
CHAPTER IX.
THE "STABAT MATER."
Rossini and Mendelssohn--Religious and Secular Styles--Heine
on the "Stabat Mater"--Rossini's Mass--Three
Masterpieces 332
LIFE OF ROSSINI.
INTRODUCTION.
Rossini was a very celebrated man fifty years ago. Forty-seven years ago
he had already finished his Italian career. "Semiramide," the last opera
he composed for Italy, was produced in 1823; and that same year the Abbé
Carpani wrote the letters on which Stendhal founded, if not the best, at
least the best known life of Rossini that has appeared.
* * * * *
Stendhal's Life of Rossini was given to the world, and found a ready
acceptance, nearly half a century before Rossini's death. But it so
happened, what his biographer could not have known at the time, that, in
the year 1823, the composer of "Semiramide" had really completed an
important, probably the most important, period of his artistic life. He
began to write in the year 1808; and it was between the years 1813
("Tancredi") and 1823 ("Semiramide") that he made his immense
reputation.
During the next six years, from his visit to London in 1823 until the
production of "William Tell" in 1829, he made his fortune, while
continually adding to his reputation.
Finally he passed the third and comparatively inactive period of his
life, from the year of "William Tell" until his death, in the tranquil
enjoyment of his fortune and reputation, reminding the world from time
to time, by the "Stabat Mater," by the three choruses, "Faith," "Hope,"
and "Charity," and by some charming compositions for voice and piano,
that he was still the Rossini of former days; and proving by his last
production that, even in extreme old age, he retained his glorious
powers in all their fulness.
He composed a cantata when he was sixteen, and a mass when he was
seventy-two. He began to write ten years before Donizetti, and nearly
twenty years before Bellini; and he continued to write when these, his
immediate and most illustrious followers, were no more. It is clear,
then, that in Rossini the Italian music of the nineteenth century is
represented, and, as it were, comprised. Consider, in addition to this,
the vast popularity of his best works, and the influence of his style on
that of Herold, Auber, and Meyerbeer, and what can be more evident than
that Rossini was the chief operatic composer of his time, not only as
regards Italy but as regards all Europe?
* * * * *
The main incidents of Rossini's life are all connected directly or
indirectly with music. As a youth, when Prince Eugene was Viceroy of
Italy, he would have fallen a victim to the conscription but for the
proofs he had already given of rare musical genius. When, at the age of
30, he took a wife, he married a singer for whom he had written some of
his greatest parts. As a young man he was constantly travelling from one
Italian city to another to superintend the production of his works. For
the same reason he went to Vienna, just as his Italian career was coming
to an end, and there met Beethoven. He never crossed the sea but once,
and then only the Straits of Dover, to pay an artistic visit to England;
and he passed the latter portion of his life in the country to which he
had given "William Tell," and which he had almost adopted as his own.
Rossini had no ambition apart from music, and was quite satisfied with
being the first operatic composer of his epoch. He was observant, well
informed, talked well on a great variety of subjects, and possessed the
sort of cultivation which might have been expected from his long habit
of association with eminent persons in all branches of art and of the
highest social distinction.
With regard to his temperament, everyone has heard that when, writing in
bed, he let fall the piece he was just finishing, he did not rise to
pick it up, as a man of sluggish imagination would have done, but at
once, with true musical activity, wrote another. He did not like the
half-material bother of setting to work; but he was full of ideas, and,
when he _did_ begin, melody flowed from him as from an eternal spring.
Some of his most beautiful thoughts came to him suddenly as if by
inspiration. He conceived the _preghiera_ in "Mosè" on seeing the
words, and wrote "Di tanti palpiti" while his dinner was being served.
He was too delicately organised and had too much sense to love labour
for the sake of labour; but he produced five operas in 1812 when he was
preparing for "Tancredi;" he composed the "Barber of Seville" in
thirteen days, and the "Barber of Seville," "Otello," "La Cenerentola,"
and "La Gazza Ladra" (not to speak of some minor works) in little more
than a year. He wrote nothing operatic after the age of 37, but how he
worked for the theatre until he was 30!
As to money, he had a just regard for it. But he was neither extravagant
nor penurious; and when by working a few years in France he had secured
a fortune which he never could have gained in any other country by the
mere pursuit of his art, he gratefully abandoned his "author's rights"
to the "Société des Compositeurs de Musique."
There was nothing dramatic in Rossini's life. From an obscure origin he
rose in a very few years to be one of the most celebrated men in Europe;
but this gave him no trouble. His success was immediate, like that of a
beautiful woman, whose beauty every one can appreciate. He never met
with an obstacle of any importance, and his brilliant genius was never
seriously or persistently denied.
Nevertheless, he made no undue concessions to the public taste, and he
was a great innovator. In the course of ten years' very hard work he
completely changed the system of Italian opera. Into opera seria he
introduced the most valuable reforms; while for the farce of the old
opera buffa he substituted the comedy style in which "Il Barbiere" and
"La Cenerentola" are written.
It is a pity no musician has thought it worth while to write the
artistic life of Rossini, showing fully and explicitly what
modifications, developments, and new combinations in opera are due to
him. Without venturing too far into technicalities, I have attempted
something of the kind in this volume, which aims, however, at the
character of a complete biography.
PART I.
ROSSINI AND HIS EARLY WORKS.
CHAPTER I.
ROSSINI'S YOUTH.
Although Rossini's artistic life did not number precisely the "three
score and ten years" allotted to man, we must go back a full seventy
years from the date of his last work to the first incident in his
musical career. When, in 1799, Paer's "Camilla," written a few years
before for Vienna, was brought out at Bologna, Rossini, then little more
than an infant, took the part of the child. "Nothing," says Madame
Giorgi-Righetti,[1] the original _Rosina_ in the future composer's
"Barber of Seville," "could be imagined more tender, more touching than
the voice and action of this extraordinary child in the beautiful canon
of the third act, 'Senti in si fiero istante.' The Bolognese of that
time declared that he would some day be one of the greatest musicians
known. I need not say whether the prophecy has been verified."
Gioachino Antonio Rossini, born on the 29th of February, 1792, two
months after the death of Mozart, was only seven years of age when he
sustained a part in the work of a composer whose fame he was destined
before long to eclipse. The child came of musical parentage, for his
father held the office of trumpeter to the town of Pesaro, in the
Romagna; while his mother, who possessed a very beautiful voice, was
able, when the father fell into trouble, to support the family by
singing on the stage.
It has been said that Rossini was of obscure origin, but this only
applies to his immediate progenitors. In the year 1861, too late to be
of much service to him, the "Album di Roma" published Rossini's
pedigree, from which it appears that the great composer is a descendant
of Giovanni, head of the family of Russini (or Rossini),[2] who
"flourished" about the middle of the sixteenth century. Giovanni had two
sons--Giovanno Francesco, direct ancestor of the composer, and
Fabrizio, who was Governor of Ravenna, and died at Lugo in 1570. Next in
the line comes Bastiano; then Antonio, born 9th of March, 1600; then
Antonio, born the 16th February, 1637; then Antonio, born 7th September,
1667; then Giuseppe Antonio, born 1708; then Gioachino Sante, born 1739;
and, finally, Giuseppe Antonio, the composer's father, born in 1764.
The arms of the Rossini family have also been published. They consist of
three stars in the upper part of the escutcheon, and a hand holding a
rose, surmounted by a nightingale in the lower part. Giovanni Russini,
who "flourished" in the sixteenth century, must have adopted them in a
prophetic spirit.
Giuseppe Rossini, the trumpeter, that is, herald and town crier to the
sound of the trumpet, was a man of advanced political views, and seems
to have entertained the same sympathy for the French which was
afterwards manifested for that gallant and polite nation by his
illustrious son. When the French army entered Pesaro in 1796, after the
Italian campaign, the enthusiasm of old Rossini, in spite of his
official position, was so marked that on the withdrawal of the
Republican troops he was first deprived of his place, and afterwards
thrown into prison.
Then it was (1798) that Signora Rossini, who had been in the habit of
accompanying her husband to fairs and other musical gatherings, and
singing small parts on the stage, while he played the horn in the
orchestra, obtained a regular engagement; and it was probably under her
auspices that the child Rossini made his first appearance in public.
This much, however, is certain, that Rossini, while still very young,
joined his parents in their musical excursions, and took the second horn
in the orchestras where the part of first horn was assigned to his
father. No wonder that in after life he had an affection for wind
instruments!
When young Rossini was twelve years old, he was taken to Bologna to see
Professor Tesei of that city, who was much pleased with the little boy,
gave him lessons in singing and pianoforte playing, and put him in the
way of earning money by singing solos in the churches. At the end of two
years he could execute the most difficult music at first sight, and was
able to act as musical director to a travelling company, which gave
performances at Lugo, Ferrari, Forli, Sinigaglia, and other little towns
in the Romagna. In 1807 he returned to Bologna, and was admitted to the
Lyceum, where he studied composition under Father Mattei with so much
success, that in the following year he was chosen to write the cantata
which was expected annually from the Lyceum's best pupil.
"Pianto d'Armonia per la Morte d'Orfeo" was the subject of this,
Rossini's first work, written when he was sixteen years of age, and
executed at Bologna in August, 1808.
The success of the cantata was such that it procured for its composer
the appointment of director of the Philharmonic concerts, in which
capacity he superintended the production of Haydn's "Seasons." He had
previously got up a performance of the "Creation" in the Lyceum itself;
and it is interesting to know that at this period Rossini devoted
himself ardently to the study of Haydn's symphonies and quartets.
While on the subject of Rossini's early studies it would be wrong to
forget his eccentric pianoforte professor, Prinetti, who had two
remarkable peculiarities: he never went to bed, and he taught his pupils
to play the scales with two fingers, the first finger and the thumb.
Pianoforte music "for four hands" is common enough; but pianoforte music
for two fingers was probably never heard of except in connexion with
Prinetti and his scales.
In 1809 Rossini produced a symphony and a quartet, and in the year
following made his _début_ as a composer for the stage. The Marquis
Cavalli, impresario of the theatre of Sinigaglia, where Rossini had
officiated as musical conductor, was also director of the San Mosè[3]
theatre at Venice, and invited the young composer to write an opera for
the latter establishment. This, the first work addressed by Rossini to
the general public, was a trifle in one act, called "La Cambiale di
Matrimonio." It was produced in 1810, and Rossini received about eight
pounds for it.
* * * * *
The opera or operetta of "La Cambiale di Matrimonio" was followed by the
cantata of "Didone Abbandonata," which Rossini composed for a relation,
the afterwards celebrated Esther Mombelli, in 1811.
He produced the same year, also at Bologna, an opera buffa in two acts,
called "L'Equivoco Stravagante." This work, of which not even fragments
have been preserved, seems nevertheless to have been thoroughly
successful. One of Rossini's very earliest productions, it was probably
written, less in what we now consider his own particular style, than in
that of his immediate predecessors. The concerted pieces, however, were
much remarked, as was also a final rondo for the prima donna, Madame
Marcolini. The rondo is especially noticeable as the first of those
final airs for which Rossini seemed to have a particular liking, until
he produced the most brilliant specimen of the style in the "Non piu
Mesta" of "Cenerentola"--and then abandoned it to the after-cultivation
of other composers.
"L'Inganno Felice," written in 1812 for Venice, is the first of
Rossini's operas which, many years after its production, was thought
worthy of revival. It was played at Paris in 1819, and some years later
at Vienna, where the illustrious Barbaja, for whom Rossini wrote so
many fine works, at Naples, between the years 1814 and 1823, brought it
out.
After the success of "L'Inganno Felice" at Venice, Rossini was invited
to write an oratorio for the Teatro Communale of Ferrara. The result was
"Ciro in Babilonia," produced at the beginning of Lent, 1812. Madame
Marcolini, the prima donna of the "Equivoco Stravagante," played a
principal part in this work, which, as a whole, was not very successful.
Rossini saved from the remains of "Ciro," a chorus which he introduced
into "Aureliano in Palmira" (and from which he afterwards borrowed the
beautiful theme of _Almaviva's_ air, "Ecco ridente il Cielo," in "Il
Barbiere"), and a concerted finale which re-appeared, in the year 1827,
in the French version of "Mosè in Egitto."
One would like, as a curiosity, to hear the air Rossini wrote in this
opera of "Ciro" for the seconda donna. The poor woman, as Rossini
himself told Ferdinand Hiller, had only one good note in her voice, and
he accordingly made her repeat that note and no other, while the melody
of her solo was played by the orchestra.
In addition to the two works just mentioned, Rossini wrote "La Pietra
del Paragone," for Milan, and two one act operettas, "La Scala di Seta"
and "L'occasione fa il ladro," for Venice, in this fertile year of 1812.
"La Pietra del Paragone" contained leading parts for Galli, the
afterwards celebrated basso, and Madame Marcolini, who, as in the
"Equivoco Stravagante," was furnished with a brilliant and very
successful final rondo.
The libretto of "La Pietra" is based on an idea not absolutely new, and
which, for that very reason perhaps, is generally successful on the
stage. Count Asdrubal, a rich and inquisitive man, wishes to know
whether his friends and a certain young lady, the heroine of the piece,
are attracted to him by his wealth or really esteem and love him for his
own sake. To decide the question he causes a bill for an immense sum
drawn in favour of a Turk (the Turk was a great operatic character in
those days) to be presented at his house. He himself, in Turkish
costume, appears to receive the money, which the steward, having been
instructed to recognise the signature as that of the Count's father,
duly pays.
Some of the friends bear the test, others prove insincere. As for the
young lady she comes out in the most brilliant colours. Too timid and
too scrupulous before the appearance of the Turk to manifest in an
unmistakeable manner the love she really feels for Count Asdrubal, she
has now to force the count to make a declaration to _her_. For this
purpose she finds it necessary to appear before him in the uniform of a
captain of hussars; in which becoming costume Madame Marcolini sang her
final rondo, saluting the public with her sabre in acknowledgment of
their reiterated applause.
A still more successful piece in "La Pietra del Paragone" was the finale
to the first act, known as "La Sigillara," in which the sham Turk
insists that seals shall be placed on all Count Asdrubal's property.
It was the destiny of this work to be demolished, that its materials
might be used for building up "Cenerentola," in which the air "Miei
rampolli," the duet "Un soave non so che," the drinking chorus, and the
baron's burlesque proclamation, all belonged originally to "La Pietra
del Paragone." Indeed the air now known as "Miei rampolli," before
finding its last resting-place in "Cinderella," figured first in "La
Pietra del Paragone," and afterwards in "La Gazzetta," a little opera of
the year 1816.
* * * * *
The success of "La Pietra del Paragone" was an event in Rossini's life;
for just after its production the young composer, then twenty years of
age, was claimed by the army. He had a narrow escape of making the
Russian campaign; and though Paisiello and Cimarosa had both been to
Russia with profit to themselves, it is doubtful whether Rossini,
undertaking the journey under quite different circumstances, would have
derived from it the same advantages. Fortunately Prince Eugene, the
Viceroy of Italy--not the only one of Napoleon's generals who, like
Napoleon himself, had a cultivated taste for music--could appreciate the
merit of "La Pietra del Paragone;" and, in the interest of art, exempted
him from the perils of war. If Rossini had fallen due in 1811, before he
had written either "La Pietra del Paragone" or "L'Inganno Felice," the
conscription would have taken him. Napoleon would have gained one
soldier more, and the world would have lost the "Barber of Seville" and
"William Tell."
Of the two operettas written for the San Mosè of Venice in the year 1812
nothing need be said, except that the music of the second, "L'occasione
fa il ladro," was presented at Paris, in a new shape, and under rather
remarkable circumstances, only ten years ago.
An Italian poet, M. Berettoni, determined that so much good work should
not be lost, added to it some pieces from "La Pietra del Paragone" and
"Aureliano in Palmira," and arranged the whole in a new dramatic form.
"Un Curioso Accidente" was the title given to this pasticcio in two
acts, which was announced as a new Opera by Rossini.
Rossini, who is supposed to have been so entirely careless of his
reputation, did not choose that a production made up of pieces extracted
from the works of his youth, and put together without his sanction,
should be announced as a new and complete work from his pen; and lost no
time in addressing to M. Calzado the following letter:--
"_November 11, 1859._
"SIR,--I am told that the bills of your theatre announce a new
Opera by me under this title, 'Un Curioso Accidents.'
"I do not know whether I have the right to prevent the
representation of a production in two acts (more or less) made up
of old pieces of mine; I have never occupied myself with questions
of this kind in regard to my works (not one of which, by the way,
is named 'Un Curioso Accidente'). In any case I have not objected
to and I do not object to the representation of this 'Curioso
Accidente.' But I cannot allow the public invited to your theatre,
and your subscribers, to think either that it is a _new_ Opera by
me, or that I took any part in arranging it.
"I must beg of you then to remove from your bills the word _new_,
together with my name as author, and to substitute instead the
following:--'Opera, consisting of pieces by M. Rossini, arranged by
M. Berettoni.'
"I request that this alteration may appear in the bills of
to-morrow, in default of which I shall be obliged to ask from
justice what I now ask from your good faith.
"Accept my sincere compliments.
"Signed,
"GIOACHINO ROSSINI."
The effect of this letter was to cause the entire disappearance of "Un
Curioso Accidente," which was not heard of again. At the one
representation which took place a charming trio in the buffo style, for
men's voices, taken from the "Pietra del Paragone," and a very pretty
duet for soprano and contralto from "Aureliano in Palmira," were
remarked.
In addition to the five works already mentioned as having been written
by Rossini during the year 1812, "Demetrio e Polibio" may be mentioned
as belonging to that year by its production on the stage, if not by its
composition.
"Demetrio e Polibio" was Rossini's first opera. He wrote it in the
spring of 1809, when he was just seventeen years of age, but is said to
have re-touched it before its representation at Rome in the year 1812.
"Demetrio e Polibio" seems to have been altogether a family affair. The
libretto was written by Madame Mombelli. Her husband, Mombelli, a tenor
of experience, has the credit of having suggested to Rossini, from among
his copious reminiscences, some notions for melodies. The daughters,
Marianna and Esther, played two of the principal parts, while the third
was taken by the basso, Olivieri, a very intimate friend of the family,
of which Rossini himself was a relative.
An officer whom Stendhal met at Como one night when "Demetrio e Polibio"
was about to be played, furnished him with this interesting account of
the Mombellis, which tallies closely enough with the description of them
given some forty years afterwards by Rossini himself to Ferdinand
Hiller.
"The company," he said, "consists of a single family. Of the two
daughters, one who is always dressed as a man takes the parts of the
musico (or sopranist); that is Marianna. The other one, Esther, who has
a voice of greater extent though less even, less perfectly sweet, is the
prima donna. In 'Demetrio e Polibio' the old Mombelli, who was once a
celebrated tenor, takes the part of the _King_. That of the chief of the
conspirators will be filled by a person called Olivieri, who has long
been attached to Madame Mombelli, the mother, and who, to be useful to
the family, takes utility parts on the stage, and in the house is cook
and major domo. Without being pretty, the Mombellis have pleasing faces.
But they are ferociously virtuous, and it is supposed that the father,
who is an ambitious man, wishes to get them married."
The year 1813 was a much greater year for Rossini than that of 1812,
already sufficiently promising. The latter was the year of "L'Inganno
Felice" and "La Pietra del Paragone;" the former that of "Tancredi" and
"L'Italiana in Algeri."
Rossini's first work of the batch of three brought out in 1813 was a
trifle, but owing to peculiar circumstances, a very amusing trifle,
called "Il Figlio per Azzardo." This operetta, or _farza_, was written
for the San Mosè theatre, and was the last work furnished by Rossini to
that establishment.
The manager of the San Mosè was annoyed at Rossini's having engaged to
write for another Venetian theatre, the Fenice, and in consequence
treated him with great incivility, for which the young composer
determined to have his revenge. He had moreover deliberately, and of
malice prepense, given Rossini a libretto so monstrously absurd that to
make it the groundwork of even a tolerable opera was impossible; yet
Rossini was bound by his engagement to set it to music or pay damages.
He resolved to set it to music.
If the libretto was absurd, the music which Rossini composed to it was
ludicrous, grotesque, extravagant to the last degree of caricature. The
bass had to sing at the top of his voice, and only the very lowest notes
of the prima donna were called into requisition. One singer, whose
appearance was always a signal for laughter, had to deliver a fine-drawn
sentimental melody. Another artist who could not sing at all had a very
difficult air assigned to him, which, that none of his faults might pass
unperceived, was accompanied _pianissimo_ by a _pizzicato_ of violins.
In short, it was an anticipation of Offenbach, and it is astonishing
that this musical burlesque of Rossini's has never been reproduced
substantially, or by imitation (it is scarcely probable that the
original score was preserved), at the Bouffes Parisiens.
Nor must the orchestra be forgotten, which Rossini enriched on this
occasion by the introduction of instruments previously unknown. In one
movement the musicians, at the beginning of each bar, had to strike the
tin shades of the candles in front of them; when the sound extracted
from these new "instruments of percussion," instead of pleasing the
public, so irritated it, that the audacious innovator, hissed and hooted
by his audience, found it prudent to make his escape from the theatre.
This practical joke in music was one which few composers could have
afforded to make; but Rossini had to choose between a bad joke and a bad
opera, and he preferred the former.
CHAPTER II.
ITALIAN OPERA UNTIL "TANCREDI."
The first opera of Rossini's which became celebrated throughout Europe
was "Tancredi," which in the present day seems just a little
old-fashioned. In regard to the recitatives and their accompaniments
"Tancredi" is indeed somewhat antiquated. But it was new, strikingly
new, in the year 1813, when Mozart's great operas had scarcely been
heard out of Germany, and when, moreover, no one thought of comparing
Rossini's works with any but works by other Italian composers. It was
very unlike the serious operas of Rossini's Italian predecessors, and,
in the opinion of many who admired those operas even to prejudice, was
full of culpable innovations.
* * * * *
When Rossini began to write for the stage, the lyric drama of Italy was
divided by a hard line into the serious and the comic; and comic opera,
or rather opera buffa, was, musically speaking, in a much more advanced
state of development than opera seria. The dialogue, especially in
serious opera, was carried on for interminable periods in recitative.
Choruses were rarely introduced; and concerted pieces, though by no
means unknown, were still reserved, as a rule, for the conclusion of an
act.
The singers were allowed great liberty of adornment, and treated the
composer's melodies as so much musical canvas, to be embroidered upon at
will.
The orchestra was in a very subordinate position; the harmony was
meagre, the instrumentation mild--many instruments, that were afterwards
employed prominently and with great effect by Rossini, being kept in the
background or entirely ignored.
Clarinets, for instance, were only admitted into Italian orchestras on
condition of being kept quiet; while bassoons were used only to
strengthen the basses. Brass instruments, with the exception of horns,
were all but proscribed; and some of the brass instruments used by all
composers in the present day--opheicleids, for instance, cornets, and
all the family of saxhorns--were unknown.
Rossini did not stop, in the way of orchestrations, at "Tancredi;" and
the drums and trumpets of the "Gazza Ladra" overture, the military band
of "Semiramide," the sackbuts, psalteries, and all kinds of musical
instruments employed in his operas for the French stage, shocked the
early admirers of "Tancredi" as much as the innovations, vocal and
instrumental, in "Tancredi" had shocked those who cared only for the
much simpler works of Paisiello and Cimarosa. Thus we find Stendhal
complaining that in "Otello," "Zelmira," and above all "Semiramide,"
Rossini, in the matter of orchestration, had ceased to be an Italian,
and had become a German--which, in the opinion of Stendhal and his
Italian friends, was about as severe a thing as could be said.
* * * * *
Lord Mount Edgcumbe in his "Reminiscences of the Opera" gives a fair
account of the reforms introduced by Rossini into the operatic music of
Italy, which is interesting as proceeding from an old operatic habitué
to whom these changes were anything but acceptable. It would be a
mistake to suppose that Rossini's operas encountered formidable
opposition anywhere; and in England, as in France, those musicians and
amateurs who, here and there, made it their business to decry them, did
so with the more energy on account of the immense favour with which they
were received by the general public.
"So great a change," says Lord Mount Edgcumbe, "has taken place in the
character of the (operatic) dramas, in the style of the music and its
performance, that I cannot help enlarging on that subject before I
proceed further. One of the most material alterations is that the grand
distinction between serious and comic operas is nearly at an end, the
separation of the singers for their performance entirely so.[4] Not only
do the same sing in both, but a new species of drama has arisen, a kind
of mongrel between them called _semi seria_, which bears the same
analogy to the other two that that nondescript, melodrama, does to the
legitimate drama and comedy of the English."
Specimens of this "nondescript" style are of course to be found in
Shakspeare's plays and in Mozart's operas; but let Lord Mount Edgcumbe
continue his perfectly intelligible account of Rossini's reforms.
"The construction of these newly invented pieces," he proceeds, "is
essentially different from the old. The dialogue, which used to be
carried on in recitative, and which in Metastasio's operas is often so
beautiful and interesting, is now cut up (and rendered unintelligible if
it were worth listening to) into _pezzi concertati_, or long singing
conversations, which present a tedious succession of unconnected,
ever-changing _motivos_ having nothing to do with each other: and if a
satisfactory air is for a moment introduced which the ear would like to
dwell upon, to hear modulated, varied, and again returned to, it is
broken off before it is well understood, by a sudden transition into a
totally different melody, time and key, and recurs no more; so that no
impression can be made or recollection of it preserved. Single songs are
almost exploded ... even the prima donna, who would formerly have
complained at having less than three or four airs allotted to her, is
now satisfied with one trifling cavatina for a whole opera."
Rossini's concerted pieces and finales described are not precisely a
"tedious succession of unconnected, ever-changing motivos;" but from his
own point of view Lord Mount Edgcumbe's account of Rossini's innovations
is true enough.
It seems strange, that in the year 1813, when Rossini produced
"Tancredi," the mere forms of the lyric drama should have still been
looked upon as unsettled. For though opera could only boast a history of
two centuries--little enough considering the high antiquity of the
spoken drama--it had made great progress during the previous hundred
years, and was scarcely the same entertainment as that which popes,
cardinals, and the most illustrious nobles in Italy had taken under
their special protection in the early part of the seventeenth century.
No general history of the opera in Europe can well be written, for its
progress has been different in each country, and we find continual
instances of composers leaving one country to visit and even to settle
in another, taking with them their works, and introducing at the same
time and naturalising their style. But its development in Italy can be
followed, more or less closely, from its origin in a long series of
experiments to the time of Scarlatti, and from Scarlatti (1649) in an
unbroken line to Rossini.
Indeed, from Scarlatti to the immediate predecessors of Rossini, the
history of the development of the opera in Italy is the history of its
development at Naples; and Rossini himself, though not educated at
Naples, like almost all the other leading composers of Italy, soon
betook himself to the great musical capital, and composed for its
celebrated theatre all his best Italian operas in the serious style.
Without proposing to imitate those conscientious historians who cannot
chronicle the simplest events of their own time without going back to
the origin of all things, I may perhaps find it more easy to explain to
the unlearned reader what Rossini did in the way of perfecting operatic
forms if I previously mark down the steps in advance taken by his
predecessors.
* * * * *
The first operas seem to have been little more than spoken dramas
interspersed with choruses in the madrigal style. "Dafne," performed for
the first time in the Corsi palace in 1597, passes for the first _opera
musicale_ in which recitative was employed.
In "Euridice," represented publicly at Florence on the occasion of the
marriage of Henry IV. of France with Marie de Medicis in 1600, each of
the five acts concludes with a chorus, the dialogue is in recitative,
and one of the characters, _Tircis_, sings an air which is introduced by
an instrumental prelude. Here, then, in germ, are the overture, the
chorus, the air, the recitative of modern opera.
Monteverde (1568--1643), who changed the whole harmonic system of his
predecessors, gave greater importance in his operas to the
accompaniments, increased the number of musicians in the orchestra, and
made use of a separate combination of instruments to announce the entry
and return of each dramatic personage--an orchestral device which
passes in the present day for new.
Scarlatti (1649--1745), who studied in Rome under Carissimi, gave new
development to the operatic air, and introduced measured recitative.
Scarlatti's operas contain the earliest examples of airs with
_obbligato_ solo accompaniments, and this composer must always hold an
important place in the history of the opera as the founder of the great
Neapolitan school.
Alessandro Scarlatti was followed by Logroscino and Durante;[5] the
former of whom introduced concerted pieces and the dramatic finale,
which was afterwards developed by Piccinni, and introduced into serious
opera by Paisiello; while the latter succeeded his old master,
contemporaneously with Leo, as professor at Naples, where Jomelli,
Piccinni, Sacchini, Guglielmi, Paisiello, and Cimarosa, were formed
under his guidance.
The special innovations of Piccinni and Paisiello have been mentioned.
Cimarosa, without inventing or modifying any particular form, wrote the
best overtures that the Italian school had yet produced, and was the
first to introduce concerted pieces in the midst of dramatic action.
* * * * *
We have seen that Rossini was a pupil of the Bologna Lyceum; but though
he was the first great Italian composer who never studied at the
Conservatories of Naples, to him fell all the rich inheritance of the
Neapolitan school.
CHAPTER III.
FOUR HISTORICAL OPERAS.
In bringing forward Monteverde, Scarlatti, Durante, Logroscino, and
Pergolese, Jomelli, Piccinni, Paisiello, and Cimarosa, as the founders
of opera, one seems to be tracing operatic history merely through names.
To opera goers, who do not limit the sphere of their observation to
London, it would be simpler to cite four examples of works belonging to
the century before Rossini, which, if not living in the full sense of
the word, are, at least, capable of revival, and have been presented to
the public in their revived state during the last few years.
Pergolese's "Serva Padrona," an opera or operetta of the year 1731, was
reproduced at Paris in 1862, for the _début_ of Madame Galli-Marié. In
this little work, which passed for its composer's masterpiece, the
accompaniments are all for stringed instruments, and as there are only
two speaking characters in the drama, it naturally follows that all the
musical pieces are of the simplest form. But when "La Serva Padrona" was
produced, a composer, however many characters he might have to deal
with, was not expected to go in the way of concerted pieces beyond a
duet; and it was not until twenty years afterwards that Logroscino
ventured upon a trio, and upon the first very simple model of the
dramatic finale.
* * * * *
In Gluck's "Orfeo" we have a well-known specimen of an opera, somewhat
later in date, and much more advanced in regard to dramatic form, than
the one just named. It must be remembered that "Orfeo" was originally
produced in 1764, not in France, but in Italy. In Gluck's operas we find
an abundance of recitative; airs; choruses taking part in the dramatic
action; occasionally duets; very rarely concerted pieces, and never
finales. Gluck, like his rival Piccinni, but certainly not more than
Piccinni, extended the limits of operatic art. If, as is generally
admitted, he excelled in his dramatic treatment of chorus and orchestra,
he neglected concerted pieces, and was not equal to the handling of
those grand dramatic finales which Piccinni was the first to produce, in
anything like their modern form, which Paisiello naturalised in serious
opera, and which were brought to perfection in both styles by the
comprehensive genius of Mozart.
* * * * *
A third opera by a præ-Mozartian composer, which, as it is still
occasionally represented, may be cited for the further progress it
exhibits in the development of operatic forms, is Cimarosa's "Matrimonio
Segretto." Before writing this, one of his latest works (1792), its
composer had been already completely distanced by Mozart, who adopted
all that was worth adopting in the methods of all his contemporaries and
predecessors; but to Cimarosa all the same belongs the merit of having
introduced quartets and other concerted pieces, not as ornaments at the
end of an act, but as integral parts of the musical drama. This
important innovation occurs for the first time in Cimarosa's "Il
fanatico per le antichi Romani," composed in 1773, thirteen years before
the production of the "Marriage of Figaro."
Cimarosa's "Matrimonio Segretto" is also remarkable in an historical
point of view for its overture, the finest that the Italian school had
up to that time produced. Paisiello's overture to the "Frascatana" had
previously made a decided mark; but Rossini was the first composer of
his nation who wrote a whole series of operatic overtures--"Tancredi,"
"Barber of Seville," "Gazza Ladra," "Semiramide," "Siege of Corinth,"
"William Tell"--which became celebrated apart from the works to which
they are prefixed.
* * * * *
The only opera of Paisiello's which has been presented in recent times,
is his original musical setting of the "Barber of Seville," written in
1780 for the Court Theatre at St. Petersburgh. This interesting work,
which was revived a couple of years ago, and is still occasionally
played at one of the half dozen musical theatres in Paris called Les
Fantaisies Parisiennes, is anterior to Mozart, more even in character
than by date. Produced twenty years before "Il Matrimonio Segretto," and
only six years before the "Marriage of Figaro," it seems very much
further removed from Mozart's than from Cimarosa's work. Mozart went so
far beyond his contemporaries that he may almost be described as a great
anticipator. Like Shakspeare he is much more modern than his immediate
successors.
However Paisiello's "Barbiere" may sometimes be heard, and is therefore
better worth speaking of than works of equal or greater importance,
which can only be looked at on paper; and it is interesting as marking a
stage in the history of opera by the number and merit of its concerted
pieces.
* * * * *
The opera, then, was at first nothing but recitative, or recitative and
chorus; the chorus having no dramatic character, but confining itself,
in imitation of the most ancient models, to solemn criticism and
comment. To relieve the drawling recitative or chant, an occasional air
was introduced; then more airs; then airs and duets. We have to wait
until the middle of the eighteenth century for a simple trio. Then
trios, quartets, finales, fully developed finales, occur. In the
meantime Gluck had given great prominence to the chorus, and had
cultivated choral writing with the happiest dramatic effect; and while
operatic forms, especially in regard to the employment of the voices,
had been gradually varied and extended by the Italians, the instrumental
writers of Germany, more especially Haydn, had invented new orchestral
combinations. Mozart appeared; and appropriating all in music that had
gone before--joining to all the vocal forms of the Italians all the
instrumental forms of the Germans, while improving, developing, and
perfecting both--helped dramatic music on to that point at which even
now, speaking broadly, it may be said to remain.
CHAPTER IV.
MOZART AND ROSSINI.
New instruments have been introduced since Mozart's time. It has become
the fashion still farther to shorten recitatives; the chorus has been
made more prominent than ever in Italian Opera, and Verdi gives it
flowing melodies to sing as to a soloist of fifty-voice power.
Nevertheless, in all essentials, no progress in the composition of
dramatic music has been made since "Don Giovanni;" and if Mozart's
operas had been known in Italy when Rossini began to write, then,
instead of saying that Rossini took this idea from Cimarosa and from
Paisiello, that from Gluck, that from Haydn, it would be much simpler to
say that he took all that was new in the construction of his works from
Mozart.
Rossini could scarcely have studied Mozart's works--certainly not their
effect on the stage--when, in 1813, he produced "Tancredi;" in fact,
"Tancredi" presents much less modern forms than the "Marriage of Figaro"
and "Don Giovanni," written a quarter of a century earlier. But it must
be remembered that Rossini did not perfect his style until about 1816,
the year of "Otello" and of the "Barber of Seville;" and in the
meanwhile La Scala had represented "Don Giovanni" (1814), and with much
greater success "Le Nozze di Figaro" (1815).
Mozart may have prepared the way for Rossini's European success, and
Rossini certainly profited in a direct manner by all Mozart's reforms in
the lyric drama. Still he may be said to have arrived independently of
Mozart's influence at many of Mozart's results. Even in what passes
specially for a reform introduced by Rossini, the practice of writing
airs, ornaments, and all, precisely as they are to be sung, Rossini had
been anticipated by Mozart, by Gluck, by Handel, by all the German
composers. Nevertheless, it was not in deliberate imitation of the more
exact composers of Germany, it was for the sake of his own music that
Rossini made this important innovation, which no composer has since
departed from.
Out of Germany Mozart's operas only became known a very short time
before those of Rossini. Mozart was at once appreciated by the Bohemians
of Prague, but his success was contested, by the Germans of Vienna, and
it may be said with only too much truth that his masterpieces met with
no general recognition until after his death. Joseph II. cared only for
Italian music, and never gave his entire approbation to anything Mozart
produced, though some of the best musicians of the period, with Haydn
and Cimarosa at their head, acknowledged him to be the greatest composer
in Europe.
The Emperor thought there were "too many notes" in the "Entführung aus
dem Serail," in spite of Mozart's assurance that there were "precisely
the proper number." The "Marriage of Figaro," not much esteemed by the
Court, was hissed by the Viennese public on its first production; while
"Don Giovanni" itself, in spite of its success at Prague, was quite
eclipsed at Vienna by the "Assur" of Salieri. Cimarosa in the meanwhile
was idolised at Court. The Emperor Leopold, at the first representation
of "Matrimonio Segretto," encored the whole work, and loaded the
composer with honours and riches; but he never really appreciated
Mozart's works.
The influence of a clique of hostile Italian musicians living at Vienna,
also, no doubt, counted for something. In taking an important part in
the establishment of German Opera, Mozart threatened to diminish the
reputation of the Italian school. The "Entführung aus dem Serail" was
the first blow to the supremacy of Italian Opera; "Der
Schauspiel-direktor" was the second; and when, after the production of
this latter work at the New German Theatre of Vienna, Mozart proceeded
to write the "Nozze di Figaro" for the Italians, he simply placed
himself in the hands of his enemies.
It cannot be said that in Italy Mozart's recognition was delayed by mere
national prejudice; but his works presented great executive
difficulties; many of the pieces were too complex for the Italian taste,
while in others too much importance was assigned to the orchestra, too
little to the voices. Mozart, moreover, was not in the country to
propose and superintend the production of his works, and the Italian
composers, his contemporaries, thought, no doubt, that they did enough,
in getting their own brought out.
Ultimately it was through Italian singers that both "Don Giovanni" and
"Le Nozze di Figaro" became known throughout Europe; but Mozart's two
great operas, though written fully thirty years before Rossini's best
works, were not introduced in Italy, France, and England, until about
the same time. It took Mozart upwards of a quarter of a century to make
the journey from Vienna to London; whereas Rossini, from Rome and
Naples, reached both London and Paris in three or four years.
CHAPTER V.
ROSSINI'S REFORMS IN SERIOUS OPERA.
We have seen that when Rossini's "Tancredi" was first brought out in
London, Lord Mount-Edgcumbe did not know what to make of it, and thought
Italian Opera was coming to an end; whereas, as far as that generation
was concerned, it was only just beginning. "Tancredi" has, in the
present day, somewhat of an old-fashioned, or rather, let us say,
antique character. Many of the melodic phrases, by dint of fifty years'
wear, have lost their primitive freshness; and they are often decorated
in a style which, good or bad, does not suit the taste of the present
day. But it marks the commencement of the reforms introduced by Rossini
into opera seria, and it is the first work by which he became known
abroad. A very few years after its first production at Venice,
"Tancredi" was played all over Europe.
To most opera goers of the present-day, the recitatives of "Tancredi"
will appear sufficiently long--they are interminable compared with the
brief recitatives by which Verdi connects his pieces. But before the
time of "Tancredi," dialogue in recitative may be said to have formed
the ground-work and substance of opera; and many an opera seria
consisted almost entirely of recitative broken here and there by airs
for a single voice. The opera buffa was richer in concerted music; and
Rossini, speaking broadly, introduced the forms of opera buffa into
opera seria. For much declamation he substituted singing; for endless
monologues and duologues, ensembles connected and supported by a
brilliant orchestra. The bass singer was still kept somewhat in the
background. But he had a part; his personality was recognised; and some
of the amateurs of the old school pointed to him in "Tancredi" with
prophetic eye, and sadly foretold that, having been allowed to make his
first step, he would be gradually brought forward until, at last, he
would stand prominently in the front--as he in fact did a very few years
afterwards in Rossini's "Mosè."
Before "Tancredi" the bass took no part in tragic opera. Then, in
addition to the new distribution of parts, the new arrangement of the
dramatic scenes, the elaborate finale, the bright sonorous
instrumentation, there were the charming melodies, there was the
animation of the style, which, whatever the plan of the work, would
certainly have sufficed to ensure it a large measure of success. All who
heard the opera must, consciously or unconsciously, have felt the effect
of Rossini's admirable innovations; but what chiefly excited the
enthusiasm of the public was the beauty of the melodies. All Venice sang
the airs from "Tancredi," the gondoliers made them into serenades;
Rossini was followed by them wherever he went. It is said that they used
even to be introduced in the law courts, and that the judges had more
than once to stop the humming of "mi rivedrai, te revedro." "I thought
when they heard my opera," said Rossini, "that the Venetians would think
me mad. But I found that they were much madder than I was."
It was indeed with some fear and trepidation that Rossini witnessed the
preparations for the first performance of "Tancredi." He had not met
the Venetian public since that affair of the lamp-shade accompaniment,
into the humour of which they had positively refused to enter; and it
was not at all certain that by way of a practical joke on their side,
they would not hiss a work which the composer meant this time to be
enthusiastically applauded. The manager of the Mosè, moreover, was now
an enemy of Rossini, and, independently of that, would certainly not be
sorry to hear of a failure at the "other house." The Fenice, then, was
full, the musicians of the orchestra were at their posts, the time for
commencing the overture had arrived, and still Rossini was nowhere to be
found.
It was at that time the custom in Italy for the composer of a new opera
to preside at its representation three successive times; but Rossini
seemed determined to escape at least one of these trial performances.
However, he intended the overture as a sort of peace-offering. It was
begun in his absence under the leadership of the first violin; and the
first allegro was so much applauded that Rossini at once felt justified
in leaving his hiding place by the entrance to the orchestra and taking
his seat on the conductor's chair. The crescendo, a means not invented
by Rossini, but employed by him more persistently and with more success,
than by any other composer, produced an effect which was repeated again
and again in subsequent works, and never once too often. In fact, the
whole of the animated and rather joyous prelude to what, if not a very
serious opera, is at least an opera on a very serious subject, was
received with expressions of delight.
No operatic overture was at one time more popular than that of
"Tancredi." Perhaps it is our fault as much as that of the music, if it
appears a little old-fashioned now. Certainly it is trivial in
character. It does not fill the mind with thoughts and visions of noble
deeds; nor does it present the slightest picture of the crusades as a
modern programme-overture (with the aid of the programme) might do. But
it caused the Venetians to forget the affair of the lamp-shade
accompaniment; it predisposed them to enjoy the melodic beauties of
which "Tancredi" is full; and, reduced for the piano-forte, it became,
during only too long a period, an effective show-piece for young
ladies.
The crescendo, which pleased the audience in the overture, must have
delighted them in the concerted finale, where it is reproduced on a more
extended scale. This effect is said to have been suggested to Rossini by
a similar one in Paisiello's "Re Teodoro." But the great maker of
crescendo movements before Rossini was Mosca, who circulated numerous
copies of one of his pieces containing crescendo effects, by way of
proving his exclusive right to manufacture them. He was very indignant
with Rossini for interfering with what he had accustomed himself to
regard as his own private monopoly, and always declared that he, Mosca,
was the true author of Rossini's celebrated crescendi.
* * * * *
Considering the very delicate relations subsisting between Rossini and
the Venetian public, it must somewhat have alarmed him, when, the day
before "Tancredi" was to be produced, he found that Madame Malanotte,
the representative of the young hero, was dissatisfied with her first
air.
Probably Madame Malanotte was difficult to please. At all events, it
was necessary to please her; and Rossini went away from the theatre
wondering what he could improvise for her in place of the cavatina she
had rejected.
He went home to dinner--even the composer who has, at a moment's notice,
to satisfy the caprices of a prima donna, must dine--and told his
servant to "prepare the rice;" fried rice being the Venetian substitute
for macaroni, oysters, soup, no matter what first dish. During the few
minutes necessary for frying and serving the rice, Rossini had begun to
note down an air. The beautiful melody afterwards known as "Di tanti
palpiti" had occurred to him; and this he had made the principal subject
of the air to be sung by the fortunate Madame Malanotte on making her
entry. The whole of the cavatina is beautiful; and if, as Stendhal says,
the air of the allegro was borrowed by Rossini from a Greek hymn (Lord
Mount Edgcumbe says that it is taken from some Roman Catholic service),
then we ought to be very glad that Rossini _did_ borrow it.
But no one who has ever heard the very primitive music of the Greek
church will believe that the melody of "Di tanti palpiti" formed any
part of it--certainly not in its present shape and setting. Berlioz is
said to have admired the music of the Russian church; but then the
Russians admired the music of Berlioz, and it is doubtful whether
Berlioz admired "Di tanti palpiti."
"It is said at Venice," writes Stendhal, "that the first idea of this
delicious cantilena, which expresses so well the joy of meeting after a
long absence, is taken from a Greek litany; Rossini had heard it sung a
few days before at vespers in the church of one of the little islands of
the lagoons of Venice."[6]
"Aria dei rizzi," however, was the name popularly given to it; and
wherever the first idea came from, the melody, as it now exists, is
eminently Rossinian in form and style. How many great singers have sung
this lovely air, beginning with the celebrated Pasta, who played the
part of _Tancredi_ as long as she remained on the stage, and whose
favourite piece, after she had left it, to appear only at concerts, was
still "Di tanti palpiti?" It has been seen that Madame Malanotte was the
original _Tancredi_ at Venice; Madame Pasta was the first representative
of the character in France and England, and Pisaroni, Malibran, and
Madame Viardot-Garcia afterwards distinguished themselves in the same
part.
The most brilliant _Amenaide_ ever heard was probably Madame Sontag, who
appeared in that character in 1829 to Malibran's _Tancredi_.
CHAPTER VI.
ROSSINI'S REFORMS IN COMIC OPERA.
As Rossini found the opera seria of his day too serious, so he found the
opera buffa too broadly comic. He was accused of treating tragic
subjects melodramatically--which meant that he made them interesting. In
dealing with comic subjects he took care to keep above the level of
farce, his general tone being that of comedy, into which he now and
then, but not often, introduced a touch of sentiment ("Languir per una
bella" in "L'Italiana," "Ecco ridente il cielo" in "Il Barbiere").
The old opera buffa, with its separate set of characters and singers,
and its own separate style, musical as well as dramatic, died out under
the influence of Rossini's innovations. It is said to have been very
fine, by those who liked it; but apparently Rossini did not like it, for
after trying his hand at a few specimens (of which the notorious little
operetta or farza with the lamp-shade accompaniment seems to have been
the last) he abandoned it, as after a single trial (Velluti in
"Aureliano in Palmira") he abandoned the sopranists.
If Rossini ever wrote an opera seria in the old style, it must have been
that work of his early youth, "Demetrio e Polibio," of which all that
seems to be known is, that it was composed in 1809 for the Mombellis,
and produced at Rome in 1812.
It must have seemed strange and rather awful to some obstinate habitués
(and habitués are often as obstinate as habit itself) that the same
singer should come before them one night as _Moses_, and the next as
_Doctor Bartholo_, one night as _Figaro_, and the next as _Assur_ in
"Semiramide." At the same time they appear to have been annoyed with
Rossini both because in his serious works he was not more severe, and
because in his comic works he was not more grotesque.
The fact is, Rossini rendered both styles more natural, more like life,
as far as life can be represented in opera, and certainly more dramatic.
In "L'Italiana in Algeri" we see only the first essay in the style
which was to be brought to perfection in "Il Barbiere" and
"Cenerentola;" but "L'Italiana" was the forerunner of these works, just
as "Tancredi," in the serious style, was the forerunner of "Otello" and
"Semiramide."
"L'Italiana in Algeri," like "Tancredi," was composed for Venice; this
time neither for the San Mosè nor the Fenice, but for the San Benedetto.
The principal part was written for Madame Marcolini, who again, as in
"L'Equivoco Stravagante," and "La Pietra del Paragone," was provided
with a brilliant rondo finale.
In the concerted finale of the first act the prolonged crescendo was
found as effective as the same device had proved in "Tancredi." Rossini
had now adopted his crescendo, never to forsake it; and if he was
faithful to it, it certainly was faithful to him, and never once
deceived him.
The recitatives in "L'Italiana in Algeri," as in "Tancredi," are still
rather long. The dramatic progress, too, in "L'Italiana" is slow, and
the acts, as in all Rossini's two-act operas--that is to say, all his
important Italian operas, with the exception of "Otello"--last a
prodigious time.
It must be remembered that when these operas were written it was the
custom in Italy to give a divertissement, or even a long ballet, between
the acts. As to the lengthiness of the recitatives, that was an affair
of very little importance. No one was obliged to listen to them, and
private conversation took place between the pieces, as public dancing
took place between the acts.
Not only recitatives, but inferior airs, were neglected in this manner.
If _Tancredi's_ air was called "Aria dei rizzi," because it was composed
while rice was being cooked, _Berta's_ air in "Il Barbiere" got to be
known as the "Aria di sorbetto," because people used to eat ices while
it was being sung.
Rossini, no doubt, effected a reform in the conduct of his audiences as
well in that of his dramas. The public were quite right not to listen to
interminable recitatives; and when Rossini shortened his, and gave them
a more dramatic character, at the same time increasing the number and
variety of musical pieces in each act, he soon gained the full attention
of his audience; after which, one excuse at least for being tedious had
disappeared.
The worst of it was that, almost as soon as Rossini had brought the
Italian public to listen to his operas from beginning to end, he ceased
to write. "Il Barbiere" was composed in 1816, and he never gave Italy a
note after "Semiramide" in 1823.
* * * * *
The moment has now arrived for recording an anecdote. It is not pleasant
to tell it for the five hundredth time; but a place for the most
celebrated of all the Rossini anecdotes must somewhere be found, and it
belongs to the year 1813, of which we take leave with the present
chapter.
It was in the eventful year, then, of 1813--the year of "Il Figlio per
Azzardo," with its obbligato accompaniment for lamp-shades, of
"Tancredi," and of "L'Italiana in Algeri"--that Rossini was writing one
morning in bed, when the duet on which he was engaged fell from his
hands.
"Nothing easier," an ordinary composer would say, "than to pick it up
again."
"Nothing easier," said Rossini, "than to write a new one in its place."
Rossini would not get out of bed for a mere duet. He set to work and
composed another, which did not resemble the original one in the least.
A friend called. "I have just dropped a duet," said Rossini, "I wish you
would get it for me. You will find it somewhere under the bed."
The friend felt for the duet with his cane, fished it out, and handed it
to the composer.
"Now which do you like best?" asked Rossini; "I have written two."
He sang them both. The friend thought the character of the first was
most in keeping with the dramatic situation. Rossini was of the same
opinion, and decided to turn the second duet into a trio.
He finished his trio, got up, dressed, sent the two pieces to the
theatrical copyist, and went out to breakfast.
This anecdote is often told in illustration of Rossini's laziness, as if
a really active man would have got out of bed to pick up the fallen duet
rather than set to work, _lazily_, to compose a new one.
Many volumes might be written on this question. It will be sufficient,
however, to point out that activity is mere liveliness of the body, as
liveliness is activity of the mind. So laziness is dulness of the body,
dulness laziness of the mind. Rossini had a lively mind in a lazy body.
He could not have walked a thousand miles in a thousand hours; but he
wrote the "Barber of Seville" in thirteen days.
CHAPTER VII.
ROSSINI'S REFORMS IN WRITING FOR THE VOICE.
Rossini encountered no serious obstacles in his career. He was never
crossed in love like Beethoven--indeed, in his numerous affairs of the
heart, he seems always to have been met half way; nor did his works ever
remain unappreciated for more than about twenty-four hours at a time.
He was never lamentably poor, like Schubert; for though in the earlier
part of his career he was badly paid, he could always earn twenty or
thirty pounds, the price of an opera, by working for two or three weeks.
To tell the truth, he seems never to have been depressed or elevated by
the aspirations of Mozart; and he had (to use a favourite word of his)
the same "facility" in succeeding that he invariably manifested in
producing.
He attacked no subject that he did not make something of. If, as
occasionally happened, an opera of his fell to the ground, he literally
picked up the pieces and turned the best of them to account in building
up and adorning some new work. This great artist and practical
philosopher had already, as we know, written a "Cyrus in Babylon" for
Ferrara, when he was called upon to produce an "Aurelian in Palmyra" at
Milan.
"Ciro in Babilonia," though it contained some very beautiful pieces, had
not, as a whole, been particularly successful; and Rossini probably
thought that in its oratorio form it was not likely to be repeated. At
all events, he extracted from it a magnificent chorus for his
"Aureliano;" to be thence transplanted in another shape--when
"Aureliano" in its turn had failed--to the "Barber of Seville." He also
wrote for "Aureliano" an admirable overture, which a year afterwards was
taken to Naples to serve as introduction to "Elisabetta," and the year
after that ("Elisabetta" having perished) to Rome, where it got prefixed
to the immortal "Barber"--from whom may it never be separated!
Beethoven, for one opera, composed three overtures. Rossini made one
overture serve for three operas; and it is remarkable that of these, two
were serious, the third eminently comic.
Rossini's life, as has just been observed, presents no dramatic
interest. Such interest as it does possess belongs entirely to the
composer's artistic career, and consists in the reforms that he
introduced into operatic art.
After "Tancredi," in which we notice Rossini's first innovations in
opera seria, and "L'Italiana in Algeri," which holds a corresponding
place in the history of his comic operas, came "Aureliano in Palmira,"
which marks another step in advance, not, as in the two previous
instances, by reason of its success, but through failure.
In "Aureliano," Rossini had written a part for the celebrated sopranist,
Velluti ("non vir sed veluti"). Rossini did not like Velluti's singing,
and Velluti did not like Rossini's music; or, at least, did not like the
composer's objecting to his music being so disfigured under the pretext
of embellishment as to be rendered absolutely unrecognisable.
The result of this disagreement was that "Aureliano" was not played
after the first night, and that Rossini worked no more for sopranists.
"Velluti," the last of his order, went on singing for a dozen years
afterwards, and Rossini from that time wrote his own ornaments for the
singers, and so elaborately, that with the best will they were not
likely to add much of their own.
We hear a great deal of the decay of singing as an art; but that art was
thought so much of when Rossini began to write that more important
things--dramatic propriety and music itself--were sacrificed to it. What
would Italian singers of the year 1813 have thought of "William Tell?"
and how would their highly-decorative style have suited that simple,
energetic, thoroughly dramatic music? The development of Rossini's
dramatic faculty was, no doubt, delayed by his having often to write for
singers so accomplished, that they could think of nothing but the
exhibition of their own voice.
In spite of the praise lavished by contemporary writers on the vocalists
of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, it can be
shown by the very terms in which the praise is sounded that these
artists possessed a most undesirable talent, or, at least, exhibited
their talent in a most undesirable way.
In the present day, many singers who have come before the public with
considerable success, are said never to have studied singing
systematically at all. They have learned under a skilful professor so
many parts--as amateur pianists learn particular pieces, without
attempting to master the whole art of pianoforte playing.
The great singers of the eighteenth century acquired their facility of
execution, which was what chiefly distinguished them, by a very
different method. Far from studying parts, they sometimes did not even
learn airs. To take an oft-quoted case, in which the extreme of the
system seems to have been reached, Caffarelli was kept practising scales
and a few exercises for five years; after which his master, the
celebrated Porpora, is reported to have said to him,--
"Now go, Caffarelli; you have no more to learn! You are the first singer
in the world."
Yet, with all respect to Porpora, what, after such meagre, mechanical
instruction as this, would Caffarelli have been able to make of a great
dramatic part? What would a vocalist, taught as Caffarelli had been
taught, make in the present day of the part of _Arnold_ in "Guillaume
Tell," or of _Raoul_ in "Les Huguenots"?
Meyerbeer would certainly not have allowed such a singer to take the
part of _Vasco di Gama_ in "L'Africaine," which he reserved (in Germany)
for Wachtel--by no means a Caffarelli!
Rossini would have quarrelled with Caffarelli, as he did with Velluti,
and would have told him not to overload his music with absurd
embellishments.
Stendhal, who frequently takes the parts of the singers, sopranists and
all, against Rossini, for whose music he nevertheless professes
unbounded admiration, puts to himself this suggestive question,--
"If Rossini, in 1814, had found a greater number of good singers, could
he have thought of the revolution he has brought about, would he have
introduced the system of writing everything down?"
"His self-love," he replies, "would perhaps have suggested it, but that
of the singers would vigorously have opposed it. Look, in our own day,
at Velluti, who refuses to sing his music."
And, therefore, Stendhal adds, that if called upon to choose between
the two systems, he should decide in favour of the ancient system
somewhat modernised.
"I would not have all the ornaments written down, but I would have the
liberty of the singer restrained. It is not right that Velluti should
sing the cavatina of 'Aureliano' so that the author can scarcely
recognise it himself. In that case it is Velluti who is really the
author of the airs he sings, and it is better to keep two such different
arts separate."
These remarks occur in Stendhal's "Vie de Rossini," page 263 of the 1864
edition (chapter XXXI.--Rossini se répète-t-il plus qu'un autre?); but
they belong to the Abbé Carpani, on whose "Rossiniane" (as already
mentioned) Stendhal's "Vie de Rossini" is founded. Beyle, calling
himself Stendhal, took all his biographical facts, most of his critical
opinions, from Carpani, and added a number of those ingenious remarks on
love, Walter Scott's novels, temperaments in the North and in the South
of Europe, the points of difference between French, English, and Italian
society, &c., which, together with the inevitable, and, at first, rather
striking appeals to the reader to throw the book on one side if he does
not feel quite capable of appreciating it, are common to all the works
of Stendhal--a most original writer, in spite of his curious plagiarisms
in connection with music. Beyle had previously borrowed the same
Carpani's "Haydine," which he attributed to "Bombet." In thus plundering
Carpani to enrich Bombet and Stendhal, Beyle has caused much needless
confusion, especially in those passages where he speaks in the first
person. Thus "Stendhal" represents himself as well acquainted with
Rossini,--who though he constantly met Carpani in 1822, at Vienna, knew
nothing of "Stendhal."
However, it is Carpani who raises the question whether Velluti ought to
be sacrificed to Rossini, or Rossini to Velluti; and his views on the
subject as an Italian connoisseur of the year 1823, and an enthusiastic
admirer of Rossini's music, are certainly valuable.
The system--astonishing system!--of writing airs precisely as they are
to be sung, is now recognised by all composers. Nothing is left to the
singer. Formerly, even if restrained in regard to the body of the air,
the vocalist was at least allowed to take some little liberties in the
cadenza. Now cadenzas and everything are written for him, and it is
conceived a piece of bad taste if a singer substitutes a cadenza of his
own for the one already set down for him by the composer.
As a matter of serious criticism the question so clearly posed when the
singer Velluti, and the composer Rossini, came into collision at the
first representation of "Aureliano in Palmira," is scarcely worth
discussing. It may have been good practice for the singers of the
eighteenth century to exercise themselves on the composer's melodies;
but Rossini knew that it was not his part to supply these acrobats with
bits of carpet on which to perform their gymnastic feats.
Velluti is said to have been much applauded at the first representation
of "Aureliano in Palmira"--merely a sign of bad taste on the part of the
audience; but Rossini would have no more to do with him, and told him to
take his talent for "embroidery" elsewhere. He took it to Meyerbeer.
Fancy Meyerbeer--the Meyerbeer of "Le Prophète"--allowing his airs to be
"embroidered!" But this was the Meyerbeer of the year 1824; and in "Il
Crociato," Velluti, the last of the sopranists, found his last new part.
"The great singers," says Stendhal (meaning the sopranists from the end
of the seventeenth to the beginning of the nineteenth century), "did not
change the motive of their airs, which they presented the first time
with great simplicity.[7] Then they began to embroider."
Exactly so. If they had begun to "embroider" before presenting the
motive in all its simplicity, where would have been the proof of their
inventive talent?
"Millico, Aprile, Farinelli, Pacchierotti, Ansani, Babini, Marchesi,"
continues Carpani, "owed their glory to the system of the old composers,
who in certain parts of their operas gave them little more than a
canvas."
In exhibiting their talent first in the simple, and afterwards in the
highly decorative style, they appear in each case to have gone to
extremes. If they had a fault, Stendhal admits that they were sometimes
languishing and lackadaisical in their delivery of slow sustained
melody; and he applauds Rossini for introducing a brisker style of
sentiment into serious opera. But Rossini's great objection to them was
that they were too much addicted to ornament; and Stendhal has himself
told us that Velluti, in "Aureliano," decorated his music to such an
extent as to render it unrecognisable by the composer.
"Aureliano in Palmira," when it was brought out in London, met with no
more success than it had obtained at Milan. It is interesting to notice
that this was the only opera of Rossini's which pleased Lord Mount
Edgcumbe. The old habitué liked it because it was not a true Rossinian
opera at all, but an opera composed after the manner of Rossini's
predecessors.
"Rossini," says Stendhal, in his interesting account of the first
representation of "Aureliano in Palmira," which he claims to have
witnessed, "followed altogether, in his first works, the style of his
predecessors. He respected the voices, and only thought of bringing
about the triumph of singing. Such is the system in which he composed
'Demetrio e Polibio,' 'L'Inganno felice,' 'La Pietra del Paragone,'
'Tancredi,' etc. Rossini had found la Marcolini, la Malanotte, la
Manfredini, the Mombelli family, why should he not endeavour to give
prominence to the singing, he who is such a good singer, and who when he
sits down to the piano to sing one of his own airs, seems to transfer
the genius we know him to possess as a composer, into that of a singer?
The fact is, a little event took place which at once changed the
composer's views.... Rossini arrived at Milan in 1814 to write
'Aureliano in Palmira.' There he met with Velluti, who was to sing in
his opera: Velluti, then in the flower of his youth and talent, one of
the best-looking men of his time, and much given to abuse his prodigious
resources. Rossini had never heard this singer. He wrote a cavatina for
him. At the first rehearsal with full orchestra, he heard Velluti sing
it, and was struck with admiration. At the second rehearsal Velluti
began to embroider (_fiorire_). Rossini found some of his effects
admirable, and still approved: but at the third rehearsal, the richness
of the embroidery was such that it quite concealed the body of the air.
At last the grand day of the first representation arrived. The cavatina
and all Velluti's part were enthusiastically applauded, but Rossini
could scarcely recognise what Velluti was singing; he did not know his
own music. However, Velluti's singing was very beautiful and wonderfully
successful with the public, which after all does no wrong in applauding
what gives it so much pleasure. The pride of the young composer was
deeply wounded; the opera failed, and the sopranist alone succeeded.
Rossini's lively perception saw at once all that such an event could
suggest. 'It is by a fortunate accident,' he said to himself, 'that
Velluti happens to be a singer of taste;[8] but how am I to know that at
the next theatre I write for I shall not find another singer who, with a
flexible throat, and an equal mania for _fioriture_, will not spoil my
music so as to render it not only unrecognisable to me, but also
wearisome to the public, or at least remarkable only for some details
of execution? The danger of my unfortunate music is the more imminent in
so much as there are no more singing schools in Italy. The theatres are
full of artists who have picked up music from singing-masters about the
country. This style of singing violin concertos, endless variations,
will not only destroy all talent for singing, but will also vitiate the
public taste. All the singers will be imitating Velluti, each according
to his means. We shall have no more cantilenas; they would be thought
poor and cold. Everything will undergo a change, even to the nature of
the voices which, once accustomed to embroider and overlay a cantilena
with elaborate ornaments, will soon lose the habit of singing sustained
legato passages, and be unable to execute them. I must change my system,
then. I know how to sing; everyone acknowledges that I possess that
talent; my _fioriture_ will be in good taste; moreover, I shall discover
at once the strong and weak points of my singers, and shall only write
for them what they will be able to execute. I will not leave them a
place for adding the least appoggiatura. The _fioriture_, the
ornaments, must form an integral part of the air, and be all written in
the score.'"
* * * * *
Velluti, who is said to have been prepared with three elaborate cadenzas
of his own composition for every air he sang, must have been highly
disgusted to find that Rossini objected altogether to his departing from
the written text. For the sopranists were very great personages. When
Caffarelli heard that the accomplished Farinelli had been made prime
minister to the King of Spain, he is reported to have said: "He is a
magnificent singer, and fully deserves the honour." The sopranist,
Marchesi, stipulated, when he was at the height of his fame, that he
should be allowed to make his entry and sing his cavatina on horseback
or from the summit of a mountain, also that the plume in his helmet
should be at least five feet high!
Rossini's dislike to Velluti's style of singing, being founded on
principle, was permanent; and on his visiting Paris many years
afterwards, Mr. Eben tells us ("Seven Years at the King's Theatre") that
"Rossini being at this time engaged at Paris under his agreement to
direct there, Velluti did not enter into his plans, and having made no
engagement there, came over to England."
Perhaps one of the best singing masters of the eighteenth century was
Frederick the Great, who, as Dr. Burney tells us, was accustomed to take
up his position in the pit of his opera-house, behind the conductor of
the orchestra, so as to have a view of the score; when if a singer
ventured to alter a single passage in his part, his Majesty severely
reprimanded him, and ordered him to keep to the notes written by the
composer. The Berlin opera would have been a good school for the
sopranists, "who," says M. Castil-Blaze,[9] "were at all times extremely
insolent. They forced the greatest masters to conform to their caprices.
They changed, transformed everything to suit their own vanity. They
would insist on having an air or a duet placed in such a scene, written
in such a style, with such and such an accompaniment. They were the
kings, the tyrants, of theatres, managers, and composers; that is why in
the most serious works of the greatest masters of the last century long,
cold passages of vocalisation occur, which had been exacted by the
sopranists for the sake of exhibiting in a striking manner the agility
and power of their throats. 'You will be kind enough to sing my music,
and not yours,' said the venerable and formidable Guglielmi to a certain
virtuoso, threatening him at the same time with his sword. In fact the
vocal music and the whole Italian lyrical system of the eighteenth
century was much more the work of the singers than of the composers."
Rossini then was not only a great composer, he was also a sort of Jack
the Giant Killer. To be sure these giants of sopranists, with their
vocal equestrianism, their shouting from the summits of mountains, and
their plumes five feet high, were already approaching their last days.
Still the great Velluti was in his vigour in 1814, and it was in that
year that the young Rossini declared war against these Philistines, and
succeeded in liberating vocal music from the tyranny of vocalists.
CHAPTER VIII.
FROM MILAN TO NAPLES.
Rossini would have been amused if any one had written a book about him
and his music entitled "Rossini and his Three Styles." He liked
discussing the principles and also the practice of his art in good
company--witness the "Conversations with Rossini," recorded by Ferdinand
Hiller. But he cared little for fine distinctions, and he is reported to
have said that he knew nothing of French music, German music, or Italian
music; that he only knew of two kinds of music--good and bad.
* * * * *
Nevertheless, all writers, painters, musicians, who have a style at all,
have at least three styles--an imitative style, a tentative style, and
finally, a style of their own. This division being admitted, Rossini
entered upon his second style in writing "Tancredi," and "L'Italiana in
Algeri" (1813); and did not attain his third style until he wrote in
the same year (1816) "Otello" for Naples, and "Il Barbiere" for Rome.
If it be thought absolutely necessary to place "Guillaume Tell" and
Rossini's French operas in a category by themselves, then we must say
that Rossini had three styles (the consecrated number); and "Guillaume
Tell" being manifestly in the third and last style, "Otello" must be put
back to the second, and "Tancredi" to the first.
Theory apart, it is quite certain that Rossini, after his collision with
Velluti, altered his system of writing for the voice--embellishing his
airs, where he thought embellishments necessary, in such a manner that
to embellish them further, at the will of the singer, was out of the
question.
It is also certain that at Naples, from his arrival there in 1815, he
passed under the artistic influence of Madame Colbran, his future wife,
for whom he wrote no less than ten important parts, beginning with
_Elisabetta_, and _Desdemona_, and ending with _Zelmira_ and
_Semiramide_.
In the meanwhile, between the historical "Aureliano," which represents
his breach with decorative vocalists, priding themselves on their
individuality and their power of invention, on the one hand, and the
equally historical "Elisabetta," which represents his arrival at Naples,
and the commencement of the period in which he cultivated serious opera
alone, on the other, an interval of more than eighteen months must be
supposed to elapse, during which Rossini wrote two operas, "Il Turco in
Italia," and "Sigismondo."
The manager of La Scala wanted a pendent to "L'Italiana in Algeri."
The basso Galli, who had for several years played with great success the
part of the _Bey_ in the "Italiana," was now provided with the part of a
young Turk who finds himself alone among Christians, as the "Italiana"
had found herself alone among Mahomedans. Shipwrecked on the Italian
coast, the youthful infidel reaches land and falls in love with the
first pretty woman he meets. The pretty woman has, after the fashion of
her native land, both a husband and a lover, and she torments them both
by affecting a deep regard for the Turkish stranger. Galli was
especially successful in his first air--a salutation to Italy, which was
found very appropriate, inasmuch as the singer had just returned to
Milan from Barcelona. The composer, however, was not so fortunate as the
vocalist, the house resounded with cries of "Bravo Galli," but "Bravo
Maestro" was not once heard. The critics of the period found that there
was a want of novelty in Rossini's music, in fact that he had repeated
himself. The truth is, continuations of successful works are seldom
successful themselves. So much do first impressions count for, that the
merit of a continuation must be superior to that of the original under
pain of appearing inferior.
The shipwrecked Turk could not be permanently saved; but, true to his
principles, Rossini rescued what he could from the general disaster. He
had written an admirable overture for this "Turk in Italy," which, when
"Otello" was brought out, served with more or less appropriateness to
introduce the Moor of Venice.
* * * * *
"Sigismondo" has left even fainter traces than "Il Turco in Italia." It
was produced at Venice (Fenice theatre) towards the close of 1814; and
the night of its production Rossini, who always gave his mother the
earliest news of the fate his works had met with, enclosed her a drawing
of a bottle--or _fiasco_.
Rossini was not progressing. He had written nothing successful (though
"Aureliano in Palmira" contained much that deserved to succeed) since
the summer of 1813, when "L'Italiana in Algeri" was produced. This year
of 1814 was the only one in which he ever received anything like a
check; perhaps he was collecting himself for the great achievements of
1816, the year of "Otello" and "Il Barbiere." In the meanwhile, even in
1814, he had done his year's work. He had written two operas, besides a
cantata, "Egle e Irene," composed for the princess Belgiojoso.
At this time Rossini received only the miserable sum of about forty
pounds for an opera. This money was paid to him by the impresario and
represented the exclusive right of performing the work for two years.
Few if any of his operas seem to have been engraved at the time of
production, so that there was nothing to receive from music publishers,
the sole refuge of dramatic composers in England (if dramatic composers
in England still exist) to whom no payment is paid by managers for the
right of representation.
Rossini at least derived one advantage from the non-publication of his
works: he could borrow from them, or turn the old ones into new with
greater facility. Rumours would be circulated when a new work of
Rossini's was brought out that this or that piece was only a
reproduction from a previous opera, and the audiences were not always
well pleased when they fancied they were being "imposed upon" in this
manner. The manager at the theatre was usually one of the principal
noblemen, or sometimes a rich banker of the place, and not only every
capital, every important city, in Italy had its opera, but also every
large and many very small towns.
Stendhal speaks of a town of ten thousand inhabitants where the grass
grew in the street, which contrived to maintain its opera in good
condition. The principal cities kept up several operas. We have seen
that at Venice there were three: the Fenice, the San Benedetto, and the
San Mosè. The two principal theatres in Italy were those of La Scala at
Milan, and San Carlo at Naples; but Rome, thanks to the influence of the
eminent dilettante, Cardinal Gonsalvi[10] (who with infinite trouble
succeeded in persuading Pope Pius VII. to remove the prohibition laid
upon theatrical entertainments), had also its opera-houses,--the
Argentina, the Valle, the Apollo, the Alberti, and the Tordinona.
The best of these theatres were well organised, and the performances at
Rome during the carnival were particularly renowned. "Il Barbiere" was
composed for Rome, and produced at the Argentina theatre during the
carnival of 1816; "La Cenerentola" was also written for Rome, and
brought out at the Valle theatre during the carnival of 1817. "Matilda
di Sabran" was given for the first time at Rome at the Apollo theatre
during the carnival of 1821. The Roman theatres were badly built,
chiefly of wood; but the Argentina and the Valle theatres, where "Il
Barbiere" and "Cenerentola" were produced, may be remembered in the
history of art when many magnificent edifices in stone are forgotten.
For the Argentina theatre not only Rossini's masterpiece in the comic
style, but also (as for the Alberti) many of the best works of
Pergolese, Cimarosa, and Paisiello were composed.
The Fenice theatre, where Rossini produced his first important opera in
the serious style, "Tancredi," and also the last in that style which he
wrote for Italy, "Semiramide," ranked next to the theatres of La Scala
and San Carlo, or rather, it should be said, immediately after La
Scala--the Neapolitan Opera House holding the first place among all.
"This singular town," says Stendhal, "now the gayest in Europe, will
thirty years hence [1823] be only an unhealthy village unless Italy
wakes up and gives herself but one king, in which case I shall vote for
Venice, an impregnable city, as capital."
Stendhal possessed a certain amount of foresight. He had an idea that
somewhere about the year 1853 a united Italy would be formed. He also
prophesied, or rather pointed out, that in the natural course of things
(1), Mozart would outlive Rossini; (2) that the composer who obtained
the next great success after Rossini would compose simple expressive
melodies (fulfilled in the case of Bellini); (3) that the Italian style
of Rossini and the German style of Weber would be united in one
composer, whose works would be produced at Paris (an evident prevision
of Meyerbeer).
After the Fenice ranked the Court theatre of Turin, for which Rossini
never composed a note, and which seems to have been a singularly formal
and dull establishment in Rossini's days. "Forming part of the king's
palace, it was considered disrespectful to appear there in a cloak,
disrespectful to laugh, and disrespectful to applaud, till the queen had
applauded." This, the fourth theatre in Italy, gave its best
representations during the carnival; it was also opened from time to
time during Lent.
Florence, Bologna, Genoa, Sienna, Ferrara, had all their Operas, which
were of repute at certain seasons of the year--sometimes during the
carnival, sometimes in the autumn. At Bergámo the best performances took
place during the local fair at Leghorn during the summer season. Most of
the lyrical theatres in the capitals and large towns were protected by
the sovereign. In the small towns the magnates of the place contributed
to the maintenance of the opera either by absolute donations or by nobly
risking their money.
The Emperor of Austria gave a subscription of about eight thousand
pounds a year to La Scala, the King of Naples nearly twelve thousand to
San Carlo. These magnificent opera houses, at one time the two finest in
the world, now eclipsed in architectural splendour, if not in fame, were
also supported by public gambling tables established in spacious saloons
adjoining the theatre. The keeper of the bank did a sufficiently good
business to be able to pay a large sum out of his profits to the
"Impresario." The Austrian Government suppressed the gambling in the
saloons of La Scala in the year 1822, and King Ferdinand, finding that
it had been forbidden at San Carlo during the revolution which brought
him to the throne, did not authorise its re-introduction.
Opera is a costly entertainment, and has never flourished anywhere
unless sustained by the munificence of sovereigns, or of a rich and
cultivated aristocracy. We know what the theatres of La Scala and San
Carlo did under the system of large subventions. They will never regain
their ancient splendour under a parliamentary government involving
discussion of the state budget and limitation of state expenditure.
The municipalities and small towns made grants to the local operas, as
Ascot, Epsom, and a hundred towns in England give plates to be run for
at the annual races. All these musical theatres, great and small, were
bound at certain periods to bring out new works. The composers were not
liberally paid, but a large number of operas had to be furnished every
year, and the demand caused a supply.
Musical composition was maintained as a living art. The new works
attracted new audiences, who again called out for new works. The
production of opera was artificially encouraged and protected, like
horse-racing in England. It was contrary to the principles of political
economy, but it succeeded. The native breed of singers and composers was
decidedly improved.
The order of performance at the Italian theatres was rather absurd. This
has already been mentioned, but it is worth remembering in connection
with Rossini's operas. First one act of an opera was given, then a
ballet, which frequently lasted upwards of an hour, then the second act
of the opera, and finally a short ballet or divertissement. With the
representation composed in this manner, the natural division of an
opera, for no artistic reasons, but simply as a matter of convenience,
was into two acts.
This division being accepted the concerted finale, the great test-piece
of the work, was placed at the end of the first act. Here the dramatic
knot was tied, the solution of which is celebrated in all Rossini's
comic operas by a joyous air for the prima donna at the end of Act II.
If Rossini had been composing for theatres where, as in Germany, France,
and England, it is the custom to perform an opera continuously from
beginning to end, certainly neither he nor his librettist would have
thought of reducing the five acts of Beaumarchais's "Barbier de
Séville," of Voltaire's "Sémiramis," to only two. In the operatic system
of Rossini's time the three first acts of a five act drama went to form
the first act of a two act opera. Naturally, then, these first acts are
rather long. In the first act of "Semiramide" the finale alone lasts a
good half-hour, considerably more than the entire first act in many of
the operas of Signor Verdi, whose favourite division is into four acts.
I may once more mention, to explain the otherwise inexplicable patience
of the Italian audiences beneath the interminable recitatives which are
to be found, not only in the works of Rossini's predecessors, but also
(though at much more moderate length) in the earlier works of Rossini
himself, that these recitatives were not listened to except at the first
representation, when nothing was lost. At the succeeding performances
conversation was carried on freely during the intervals between the
principal pieces. The place for determined listeners who wished to hear
everything, was supposed to be the pit.
A really successful opera was performed some thirty times. At the first
three representations the execution was directed by the composer, who
presided at the piano, until that instrument was expelled from the
orchestra by Rossini. The position then of the maestro when the work was
hissed was by no means an agreeable one. Rossini wrote thirty-four
operas for Italy in fourteen years, or at the rate of about two and a
half a year. In no other country could such a number of new operas have
been produced on the stage in the same time; but each of the great
Italian theatres made a point of bringing out at least two new operas
every year, and we have seen that the minor theatres were also regularly
supplied with new and original works.
The Italian managers, to be sure, had no idea, of wasting the time and
money expended in France and England on the production of operas in
which the spectacle and general _mise en scène_ are thought quite as
important, if not more so, than the music. The Italian theatres,
nevertheless, had admirable scene painters; and new scenery, of high
artistic excellence, was painted for every opera brought out.
Rossini, until he established his head-quarters at Naples, was
constantly travelling about Italy. Each journey was a triumphal
progress. The dilettanti of each town he arrived at welcomed him, fêted
him, and overwhelmed him with attentions of all kinds. He seldom began
to write until a few weeks, sometimes a very few weeks indeed, before
the day fixed for the first representation. Occasionally these weeks
dwindled into days. Then the impresario, from nervous became delirious;
and stories are told of Rossini's being locked up in the manager's room,
and egress absolutely denied to him until the work he was engaged upon
was finished.
These periodical fits of despair were not without their effect, and
Rossini used, many years afterwards, to say that to them and to the
tearing of hair which accompanied them, might be attributed the
premature baldness by which all the Italian managers of his time were
afflicted.
PART II.
ROSSINI AT NAPLES.
CHAPTER I.
ROSSINI, BARBAJA, AND MDLLE. COLBRAN.
Naples and Dresden had long been the two great operatic centres of
Europe. For the sake of harmony and regularity, it is usual to mention
Sebastian Bach as the founder of the German school, in contrast to
Alessandro Scarlatti, the founder of the Italian school of music. But as
regards the opera, Germany inherited from Scarlatti almost as much as
Italy herself. If Durante, the celebrated Neapolitan professor, was a
pupil of Scarlatti, so also was Hasse, who raised the Dresden theatre to
a pitch of excellence unequalled elsewhere out of Italy. Hasse directed
the music at Dresden for more than a quarter of a century, and, thanks
to the liberality of Augustus of Saxony, better connoisseur than king,
was able to make its orchestra one of the finest, if not absolutely the
finest, in Europe.
"The first orchestra in Europe," says Rousseau,[11] "in respect to the
number and science of the symphonists, is that of Naples. But the
orchestra of the Opera of the King of Poland at Dresden, directed by the
illustrious Hasse, is better distributed, and forms a better ensemble."
The magnificence of the Saxon kings declined with the power of Poland;
and towards the close of the eighteenth century the musical glory of the
Dresden opera may be said to have been "partitioned," like Poland
itself, between Joseph II., who presided at the production of Mozart's
"Nozze di Figaro," Catherine II., who invited Paisiello and Cimarosa to
her court, and Frederic, the great flute player and general director of
the opera at Berlin. Seriously, the two great musical capitals of
Germany were Vienna and Prague, and the dilettanti of Naples thought
more than ever that the supremacy of their opera in all Europe was not
to be questioned.
When Rossini's fame, thanks to "Tancredi" and "L'Italiana in Algeri,"
was spreading all over Italy, the impresario of the San Carlo at
Naples, who had also undertaken the management of the Teatro del Fondo
in the same city, was the celebrated Barbaja, a personage to whom an
important place belongs in operatic history.
Barbaja was not one of those Italian grand seigneurs who from time to
time, for the love of art and of a prima donna, ruined themselves in the
management of an opera. Neither was he a rich banker in the general
sense of the word--though he had kept the bank in the gambling saloon of
La Scala at Milan. Previously he had fulfilled the less lucrative duties
of waiter at the La Scala café; and he is also said to have taken part
in the speculations of the French army contractors. One way and another
he made a large fortune, and arriving at Naples obtained the
directorship of the San Carlo theatre.
Barbaja knew nothing of music or he might have ruined himself--he might
have insisted, for instance, on producing "le Nozze di Figaro," "Don
Giovanni," or even "Fidelio." But he could tell a successful from an
unsuccessful composer, and he saw that the young Rossini of "Tancredi"
and "L'Italiana in Algeri" celebrity was the man of the day.
Barbaja had previously speculated in Cimarosa, and he afterwards
invested in Donizetti and Bellini. He deserves a biography to himself,
and certainly no one could have furnished better materials for a
biography of Rossini, with whom he had constant relations for nine years
during the most active and brilliant period of Rossini's career.
Literary honours have been paid to the great impresario by Scribe, who
introduces him into one of his ingenious opera-books ("La Sirène," is it
not?); and he has even been casually mentioned by the immortal Balzac.
If he had lived long enough, if he had lived in the days of railways and
the electric telegraph, he might have directed half the opera houses in
Europe. As it was, he contented himself in the year 1824 with conducting
two theatres at Naples and one at Vienna.
At the Vienna Opera House he collected the finest company ever known,
including Davide, Nozzari, Donzelli, Rubini, Cicimarra, as tenors;
Lablache, Bassi (Niccolo), Ambroggi, Tamburini, Botticelli, as basses;
Mesdames Mainvielle-Fodor, Colbran, Féron, Mombelli (Esther),
Dardanelli, Sontag, Unger, Grisi (Giuditta), Grimbaun, as sopranos;
Mesdames Rubini, Cesar-Cantarelli, Eckerlin, as contraltos.
* * * * *
In the year 1814 Barbaja went to Bologna, called upon Rossini, and, with
the liberality of an intelligent speculator dealing with an evidently
rising artist, offered him a very much better engagement than had ever
been within his reach before.
On his arrival at Naples Rossini signed a contract with Barbaja for
several years, by which he agreed to write two new operas annually, and
to arrange the music of all old works the manager might wish to produce,
either at the San Carlo or at the Teatro del Fondo. For this the maestro
was to receive two hundred ducats (nearly forty pounds) a month and a
share in the profits of the bank in the San Carlo gambling saloon.
This was not much compared to what Rossini afterwards received as
retaining salary, and in the shape of author's fees, during his
engagement at Paris; but it was magnificent considering the paltry sums
he had earned at Venice and Milan. In point of fact, Rossini had now
something more to do than compose operas; he had undertaken the musical
direction of two opera houses, one of which was the most important in
Europe. In addition to his own work as composer, he had to do a
prodigious amount of transposition to suit the voices of new and old
singers; he had to improve, to correct, to reset, to re-score, to
fulfil, in short, all the arduous and laborious duties of a musical
conductor.
For a "lazy" man it was severe; but Rossini did all that was expected of
him to perfection, and ended by marrying the prima donna--which Barbaja
had not bargained for at all.
Mademoiselle Colbran, the future Madame Rossini, was a great beauty, in
the queenly style--dark hair, brilliant eyes, imposing demeanour. One
would think she must already have seen her best days when Rossini first
met her at Naples in 1815; for she was born at Madrid in 1785. But only
women of the happiest organisation succeed as great dramatic singers;
and Mademoiselle Colbran seems to have preserved youthfulness and beauty
of voice, and doubtless, therefore, of person, until long afterwards.
Mademoiselle Colbran studied under Pareja, Marinelli, and Crescentini,
and made her début with success at Paris in 1801, together with the
celebrated violinist, Rode. Rossini wrote as many as ten parts for her,
including those of _Desdemona_, _Elcia_ ("Mosé in Egitto"), _Elena_
("Donna del Lago"), _Zelmira_, and _Semiramide_.
Fortunately and unfortunately for her, Mademoiselle Colbran's name was
constantly mixed up with political questions, and was at one time quite
a party word among the royalists at Naples. Those who admired the king
made a point of applauding his favourite singer. A gentleman from
England asked a friend one night at the San Carlo theatre how he liked
Mademoiselle Colbran.
"Like her? I am a Royalist," was the reply.
Stendhal was _not_ a Royalist, and, in opposition to Carpani, his
ordinary unacknowledged authority on all matters connected with
Rossini's name, did not much admire Mademoiselle Colbran's voice, which,
he says, "began to deteriorate about the year 1816"--the year after
Rossini's arrival at Naples.
When the Revolutionists gained the upper hand, Mademoiselle Colbran used
to get hissed; but the discomfiture of the popular party was always
followed by renewed triumphs for the singer.
Then the anti-Royalists, afraid to express their disapprobation openly,
would leave the theatre in a body, pretending that Mademoiselle Colbran
sang out of tune.
* * * * *
One can guess what Rossini's own politics must have been, from his
temperament. Plots and stratagems were not to his taste. He had "music
in his soul," and a horror of discord.
Nevertheless, overtaken by a revolutionary movement just as he was about
to leave Bologna to enter upon his new duties at Naples, he could not
refuse to compose a hymn in honour of Italian liberty. Indeed, without
having the least affection for brawlers and Red Republicans, Rossini may
all the same have felt an antipathy for the Austrian domination in
Italy. Without entering too far into this profound and really
inscrutable question, it may be enough to mention that Rossini's
cantata, or hymn, of the year 1815, gained for its composer some
reputation as an Italian patriot.
But this was nothing to the fame he derived from a little transaction
he was reported to have had with the Austrian governor of Bologna, to
whom he had to apply for permission to leave the town.
The patriotic hymn had been sung day and night at Bologna until the
arrival of the Austrians, without its being generally known as the work
of Rossini. The Austrian governor was a great dilettante, and rather
piqued himself on his musical knowledge; so, on going to him for a
passport, Rossini, with whose name the general was, of course, familiar,
presented to him a piece of music set to verses full of enthusiasm on
behalf of the Austrians.
The governor read the words, and approved. He looked at the music with
the eye of a connoisseur, and approved more than ever. He called to one
of his secretaries to make out Rossini's passport forthwith, thanked the
composer cordially for his attention, and in wishing him farewell,
informed him that the music should be executed that very afternoon by
the military band.
Rossini's anthem in praise of Austria and paternal government was soon
arranged for the regimental orchestra, and the same evening was played
in the market-place before a large concourse of curious amateurs.
The townspeople knew that they were about to hear their patriotic hymn.
Its performance was decidedly effective; but Rossini had started some
hours before, and the musical governor had no opportunity of renewing to
him the expression of his thanks.
If any one doubts the truth of this story, let him refer to the list of
Rossini's works, from which he will see that Rossini did really write a
patriotic cantata in the year 1815.