The Life of Rossini

H. Sutherland Edwards

The 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 Mosè3 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.