The Life of Rossini

“‘Tancredi’ was your first opera which really made a great hit, maestro; how much did you get for it?”

“Five hundred francs,” replied Rossini; “and when I wrote my last Italian opera, ‘Semiramide,’ and stipulated for five thousand francs, I was looked upon, not by the impresario alone, but by the entire public, as a kind of pickpocket.”

“You have the consolation of knowing,” said Hiller, “that singers, managers, and publishers have been enriched by your means.”

“A fine consolation,” replied Rossini. “Except during my stay in England, I never gained sufficient by my art to be enabled to put by anything; and even in London I did not get money as a composer, but as an accompanyist.”

“But still,” observed Hiller, “that was because you were a celebrated composer.”

“That is what my friends said,” replied Rossini, “to decide me to do it. It may have been prejudice, but I had a kind of repugnance to being paid for accompanying on the piano, and I have only done so in London. However, people wanted to see the tip of my nose, and to hear my wife. I had fixed for our co-operation at musical soirées the tolerably high price of fifty pounds – we attended somewhere about sixty such soirées, and that was after all worth having. In London, too, musicians will do anything to get money, and some delicious facts came under my observation there. For instance, the first time that I undertook the task of accompanyist at a soirée of this description, I was informed that Puzzi, the celebrated horn-player, and Dragonetti, the more celebrated contrebassist, would also be present. I thought they would perform solos; not a bit of it! They were to assist me in accompanying. ‘Have you, then, your parts to accompany these pieces?’ I asked them.

“‘Not we,’ was their answer; ‘but we get well paid, and we accompany as we think fit.’

“These extemporaneous attempts at instrumentation struck me as rather dangerous, and I therefore begged Dragonetti to content himself with giving a few pizzicatos, when I winked at him and Puzzi to strengthen the final cadenzas with a few notes, which, as a good musician, as he was, he easily invented for the occasion. In this manner things went off without any disastrous results, and every one was pleased.”

“Delicious,” exclaimed Hiller. “Still it strikes me that the English have made great progress in a musical point of view. At the present time a great deal of good music is performed in London – it is well performed, and listened to attentively – that is to say, at public concerts. In private drawing-rooms music still plays a sorry part, and a great number of individuals, totally devoid of talent, give themselves airs of incredible assurance, and impart instruction on subjects of which their knowledge amounts to about nothing.”

“I knew in London a certain X., who had amassed a large fortune as a teacher in singing and the pianoforte,” said Rossini, “while all he understood was to play a little, most wretchedly, on the flute. There was another man, with an immense connection, who did not even know the notes. He employed an accompanyist, to beat into his head the pieces he afterwards taught, and to accompany him in his lessons; but he had a good voice.”

CHAPTER II

ROSSINI’S OPERA FOR THE KING’S THEATRE

DURING that season of 1824, which, at the King’s Theatre was so “successful,” that Mr. Ebers lost only seven thousand pounds, there certainly was no lack of money among the amateurs of London, for Madame Catalani, between the months of January and May, realised as much as ten thousand pounds, while Rossini and his wife are said to have gained seven thousand pounds – just what Mr. Ebers lost.

The small gains of the composer, and the large gains of the singer, have often been contrasted. But what a contrast is offered by the singer’s large gains and the manager’s large losses! A book, entitled “Operatic Martyrs,” might be written, showing how many fortunes have been lost, and who have lost them, in carrying on the struggle so gallantly maintained in England during the last century and a half in support of Italian Opera.

In Handel’s time, when opera was first set going in this country, the king, the court, certain members of the aristocracy, would subscribe to give the unfortunate manager some little chance – to give him, at least, enough “law” to prevent his being run down before the end of the season. When the English nobility became tired of offering their very modest contributions in support of art, the manager still went on failing; but rich dilettante speculators were found ready to throw their treasures into the gulf – Mr. Caldas, a wine merchant; Mr. Ebers, a librarian; Mr. Chambers, a banker; Mr. Delafield, a brewer.

Indeed, nothing is more certain than that opera as a speculation must always fail in England, – except that fresh operatic speculators will always be found ready to fail again.

The reason of these constant collapses may be explained by simple arithmetic. The English managers, without a subvention and with heavy rent to pay, have to make their remuneration to artistes at least equal to that of foreign managers who have no rent to pay, and are in the receipt of a heavy subvention.

For instance, in Mr. Ebers’s time, the manager of the Italian Opera of Paris was in a better position than the manager of the Italian Opera in London by fifteen thousand pounds a season, or three thousand seven hundred and fifty pounds a month.

Mr. Ebers paid ten thousand pounds a year for the King’s Theatre – practically, ten thousand pounds for a term or season of four months.

The manager of the Italian Opera in Paris paid no rent, and received a subvention of one hundred and twenty thousand francs, or four thousand eight hundred pounds.

The expenses, then, of the English manager were greater than those of the French manager by nearly fifteen thousand pounds, and he had to spend at least as much as his competitor (in fact, rather more,) in salaries to singers and musicians.

The prices of admission were, it is true, considerably higher in London than in Paris, as they are now; but to induce the public to pay these prices, it has always been found necessary to engage an unusually large number of first-rate artistes for London. In fine, the English manager has to spend more money in salaries than the French manager; he has a heavy rent to pay, and he receives no assistance from the government. If Mr. Ebers, in the year 1824, had been in the same position as the manager of the Italian Opera in Paris, instead of losing seven thousand pounds, he would have gained about eight thousand.

The position of the English manager relatively to that of foreign managers (not only in Paris, but in St. Petersburgh, Berlin, Vienna, &c.) remains in principle the same. He is weighted in the race, and always ends by ruining himself, or his backers, or both. —Bankrupturus vos salutat is the fitting motto of the British impresario on entering the managerial arena.

However, it is not true, as M. Azevedo imagines, that the manager of the King’s Theatre was so unsuccessful the year of Rossini’s visit, that he could not get through the season. On the contrary, we have seen that Mr. Ebers got through triumphantly – with the loss of only seven thousand pounds. He did not, according to the announcement made to the public, bring out Rossini’s opera; but it is not at all certain that in this matter Rossini himself was not to blame.

Indeed, the history of the opera Rossini was to compose for London, and of which he certainly finished one act, is very imperfect: and we have an English and a French version of the matter, which are, in some points, quite contradictory.

M. Azevedo says, that the libretto was entitled “La Figlia dell’Aria;” that Rossini was to receive six thousand francs for the opera, in three instalments; that he completed and delivered the first act; that he was unable to get paid for it; and that the manuscript was still at the King’s Theatre when he quitted London, after empowering a friend to take proceedings for its recovery – in spite of which, it seems never afterwards to have been heard of.

But Mr. Ebers being manager of the King’s Theatre at the time, must have known something about the matter, and according to his version the opera was entitled “Ugo re d’Italia,” and the only defaulter was Rossini, who did not supply it according to his agreement.

Mr. Ebers says that Rossini had promised at the beginning of the season in January, to compose the work; but that after it had been repeatedly announced for performance, it appeared at the end of May that it was “only half finished.”

That is to say, the first act was finished, on the delivery of which, Rossini should have received his second instalment.

But Rossini had at this time, says Mr. Ebers, quarrelled with the management [cause not given], and accepted the post of director at the Italian Opera of Paris; and he adds, that the score of the opera, or rather of the first act, was deposited with Messrs. Ransom, the bankers. To finish the story, Messrs. Ransom, asked by the present writer for information on the subject, declare that they never had a score of Rossini’s in their possession.

It would appear, then, that an entire act by Rossini got somehow lost in London, and it will have been observed, that there is a discrepancy between the English and French versions of the affair as to the title of the missing work. M. Azevedo, M. Félix Clement, and the French biographers of Rossini, generally call it “La Figlia dell’Aria.” Mr. Ebers, who says it was actually announced for representation, calls it “Ugo re d’Italia.”

To make the matter still more confused, not “Ugo,” but “Ottone re d’Italia” appears in Zanolini’s catalogue as the title of one of Rossini’s complete operas, and this “Ottone re d’Italia” is said by M. Azevedo to be nothing more than “Adelaida di Borgogna” under another name.

The general result, then, of Rossini’s visit to London may be thus summed up. As a composer he did worse than nothing; for he wrote an entire act, which was lost, or which at least he was never able to recover. He also produced “Zelmira,” with his wife in the principal part; but the music, though greatly admired by connoisseurs, made no impression on the public.

The other feature in the result was the seven thousand pounds; but though this sum may have given Rossini a high idea of English liberality, the general inability to appreciate “Zelmira,” and the bungling or bad faith manifested in connection with his opera, “Ugone re d’Italia,” or “La Figlia dell’Aria,” – whichever it was, – must have made him think but poorly of England as an artistic country.

CHAPTER III

ROSSINI IN PARIS

ROSSINI’S journey to London was not merely an excursion from Paris. But he started from Paris to come to London; he returned to Paris as soon as he had made his seven thousand pounds, and, owing, no doubt, to his horror of sea water, never paid us the compliment of calling again.

M. Castil-Blaze, whose works on musical subjects are full of interesting information, but quite without order, tells us somewhere that large sums were offered to Rossini if he would only put on the jacket of Figaro and appear at the Italian Opera of London in his own immortal “Barber.” But this proposition was not likely to suit Rossini, and it is even to be feared that concert singing was not altogether to his taste, though he managed to go through a certain amount of it when he was in London, in consideration of the few hundreds a week that it brought him.

Nor was he above giving lessons during this brief but lucrative visit to England; and a story is told of his having once accompanied the vocal efforts of George IV. himself. The king made a mistake and was about to stop, but as Rossini went on he did the same. He afterwards spoke of having got into the wrong key, and of Rossini’s continuing to play as though nothing had happened.

“It was my duty to accompany your Majesty,” replied Rossini. “I am ready to follow you wherever you may go.”

Before coming to London Rossini had been uncertain whether to return to Paris or not. At least he had not accepted a proposition made to him by the Duke de Lauriston to undertake the direction of the Italian Opera in Paris. He agreed to it, however, when the offer was renewed to him in London by Prince Polignac, the French ambassador, and it was made the basis of a formal contract, which Rossini signed in the prince’s presence.

Rossini’s arrival in the French capital was the signal for the renewal of disputes as to the merit of his music compared with the good old national music of the country he had come to reside in. It was a feeble attempt to get up the same sort of feud which had divided all Paris when an attempt was made to introduce Italian Opera seventy years before.

Until the end of the eighteenth century the French were unable to understand, or unwilling to acknowledge, the immense superiority of the Italians in everything pertaining to music; and in 1752 the performance of Pergolese’s “Serva Padrona” by an Italian company caused a series of pitched battles between the partisans of French and Italian opera, the end of which was that “La Serva Padrona” was hissed, and the two singers who appeared in it driven from Paris.

As the French, however, progressed in the study and knowledge of music, so did they progress in their appreciation of the music of the Italians; and the little cabal got up against Rossini when he went to Paris in the year 1824, had no power to injure him.

But Rossini’s relations with the Parisians had commenced in December the year previous. Before coming to London he had passed a month in Paris, during which time the sentiments of the musicians and amateurs of France towards their illustrious visitor had manifested themselves clearly enough. A representation of the “Barber of Seville” was given in Rossini’s honour immediately after his arrival. The composer on appearing in the theatre was received with great demonstrations of enthusiasm, and at the end of the first act was called on to the stage – at that time a novel and distinguished compliment. In the music lesson scene, Garcia pronounced with significant emphasis the words “Giovvane di gran genio!” which was the signal for renewed applause.

A dinner was given to Rossini a few days afterwards, at which Auber, Hérold, Boieldieu, Garcia, Horace Vernet, Madame Pasta, Mademoiselle Mars, and other artistic celebrities were present.

The toasts were interesting and characteristic. Lesueur, the greatest composer of the French school, began by proposing the health of Rossini, “whose ardent genius has opened a new road and marked a new epoch in musical art.”

Rossini replied by proposing “The French school and the prosperity of the Conservatoire;” and the formal, indispensable toasts having been disposed of, Lesueur drank to Glück, Boieldieu to Méhul, Hérold to Paisiello, Auber to Cimarosa, and Rossini to Mozart.

M. Scribe, then just beginning his career, made the banquet to Rossini the subject of a vaudeville, called “Rossini à Paris, ou le Grand Diner.” Rossini was invited to attend the rehearsal, and if any passages in the work displeased him to point them out. He went to the rehearsal, but nothing seems to have displeased him except the airs to which the vaudeville couplets were sung.

“If that is their national music,” he said, “I shall do no good here, and may as well pack up my things at once.”

It was a proof of good nature on the part of Rossini, better still of good sense, not to be offended by the vaudeville of which his arrival in Paris had been made the subject, and which, by the way, seems to have been the model of fifty similar works, showing how a man coming home from a masquerade may be mistaken for a true Eastern prince, a chorus singer for a great prima donna, a Quaker bearing the name of a prize-fighter, for the prize-fighter himself, &c., &c.

The piece entitled “Rossini à Paris” caused a good deal of excitement. There was a strong “national” party in the house, who wanted to know why an Italian composer should be set above composers of French origin (a mystery which Auber, Hérold, and Boieldieu could easily have explained), and who were pleased to see the enthusiastic admirers of Rossini exhibited as grotesque fanatics. On the other hand, many of Rossini’s friends, taking perhaps an unduly serious view of a piece of pleasantry, thought that M. Scribe had treated the great composer with too much levity.

A great deal has been said about the intrigues against Rossini, and the attacks made upon his music in the newspapers on his first arrival in Paris. Writers in the present day are astonished that writers in that day should have been so unjust. Musicians are not astonished that writers at any time should have been so ignorant.

After reading the extracts from the journals of the period, given by Stendhal, and by M. Azevedo, it is easy to see that Rossini was not nearly so ill-treated as is generally supposed; and it is worth noticing that the most important and persistent of the adverse criticisms and all the organised hostility proceeded from musicians. Indeed it is difficult to understand how any man with a natural taste for music, and a more or less cultivated ear, unless hampered by professional prejudices or professional interests, would not be charmed by the music of Rossini.

Among the enemies of Rossini in Paris were a few obscure journalists, who held absurd theories on the subject of French music and Italian music, music which appealed only to the senses, and music which appealed to the heart, &c.; but the chief of the cabal were Berton, the composer of “Montano et Stéphanie,” and Paer, the then celebrated Italian composer, who held the office of musical conductor at the Italian Opera of Paris.

Berton may have been quite sincere in not liking the brilliant dramatic music of the young Italian maestro, and he doubtless found sincere supporters among elderly amateurs, whose admiration for the milder and more meagre music of a previous age was connected with all sorts of impressions and associations of their youth. The music of Paisiello and Cimarosa was the music of their first love. Now when they went to hear Rossini’s music the gout troubled them.

As for Berton, who was treated by the Rossinists of the period as nothing less than a malefactor, and who was certainly of a mean and envious disposition, he began by criticising the music of the new and rising composer, severely, no doubt, and, in an artistic sense, unjustly; but it was not until he had been provoked by rejoinders – it was in the heat of discussion – that he uttered his grand absurdity, “que M. Rossini ne serait jamais qu’un petit discoureur en musique.” Stendhal quotes a letter of Berton’s from “L’Abeille,” in which the worst that the French composer of the past has to say against the Italian composer of the present and the future is what follows: —

“M. Rossini has a brilliant imagination, verve, originality, great fecundity; but he knows that he is not always pure and correct; and, whatever certain persons may say, purity of style is not to be disdained, and faults of syntax are never excusable. Besides, since the writers of our daily journals constitute themselves judges in music, having qualified myself by ‘Montano,’ ‘Le Délire,’ ‘Aline,’ &c., I think I have the right to give my opinion ex professo. I give it frankly and sign it, which is not done by certain persons who strive incognito to make and unmake reputations. All this has been suggested only by the love of art and in the interest of M. Rossini himself. This composer is beyond contradiction the most brilliant talent that Italy has produced since Cimarosa; but one may deserve to be called celebrated without being on an equality with Mozart.”

To understand the position and attitude of Berton in the war which for a time raged in Paris on the subject of Rossini’s merit, it is necessary to remember that the praise lavished upon the Italian composer was not only extravagant in regard to Rossini himself (which might be excused as the natural product of enthusiasm), but also unjust to other composers.

Berton, with all his love for art in the abstract, thought no doubt much more of his own reputation than of the reputation of Mozart; but Boieldieu seems also to have thought that the “Rossinists” were carrying their idolatry rather too far.

“The French Rossinists,” says Boieldieu, in a letter dated 1823,31 “want to put us completely under the feet of their idol. But the Italian Rossinists, and Rossini himself, are more just. He has no need of that to raise himself; his great talent will always put him in his proper place. If people would be reasonable, they would do in musical matters what is done in literature and in painting; it is possible to have Dante, and Tasso, and others, in the same library, and to admire Rubens and Raphael in the same gallery. Honour to Rossini, but honour also to Mozart, Glück, Cimarosa, &c. Rossini, with whom I have conversed a great deal, is quite of the same way of thinking. He has made a style of his own by taking, from other styles, examples which have guided him.”

Indeed, Boieldieu, Hérold, Auber, were all fervent admirers of Rossini, and all to a certain extent adopted him as a model. Hérold was “maestro al piano” at the Italian theatre of Paris when Rossini was director, and may almost be said to have studied under him. The influence of Rossini upon Auber was equally remarkable. With regard to Auber’s personal opinion of Rossini, and of his sentiments towards him when Rossini first visited Paris, the following passage32 from a highly interesting memoir of Auber, by M. Jouvin (well known to readers of the Paris Figaro), may be quoted: —

“M. Auber has told me,” says M. Jouvin, “how he met Rossini for the first time at a dinner given by Carafa in honour of his illustrious compatriot. On rising from table the maestro, at the request of his host, went to the piano and sang Figaro’s cavatina, ‘Largo al fattotum della cita.’

“I shall never forget,” said M. Auber to me, “the effect produced by his lightning-like execution. Rossini had a very beautiful baritone voice, and he sang his music with a spirit and verve which neither Pellegrini, nor Galli, nor Lablache approached in the same part. As for his art as an accompanyist, it was marvellous; it was not on a keyboard, but on an orchestra that the vertiginous hands of the pianist seemed to gallop. When he had finished I looked mechanically at the ivory keys; I fancied I could see them smoking. On arriving home I felt much inclined to throw my scores into the fire. ‘It will warm them, perhaps,’ I said to myself; ‘besides, what is the use of composing music, if one cannot compose like Rossini?’”

With Auber, Hérold, and Boieldieu on his side, it does not matter much what the views of any other of the French composers may have been.

As for Paer, the director of the Italian theatre, his position did not allow him to express any opinion publicly on the works of the rival by whose fame his own had already been eclipsed. But that position gave him, as we shall afterwards see, the opportunity of carrying on war against him in a much more practical manner. Paer possessed the right of keeping back Rossini’s operas, of presenting them as he thought fit, and finally, of producing, as if in contrast, works by other composers, whom Rossini’s adverse critics declared to be altogether his superiors.

Some years later, a few nights after the production of “Guillaume Tell,” a serenade was given to Rossini, by the artists of the Opera, under the direction of Habeneck, the chef d’orchestre. Méry, in the preface to his French version of “Semiramide,” has given a lively description of the scene.

“Habeneck,” he says, “conducted his army on to the boulevard, and made it execute the overture to ‘Guillaume Tell.’ Soulié, the charming writer of ‘La Quotidienne,’ had brought up a crowd of Royalists; Armand Marrast, Carrel, Rabbe, and myself, represented the Liberal journals. The applause shook the windows on the boulevard; and the enthusiasm became really frantic when Levasseur, Nourrit, and Dabadie, sang the trio of the oath.

“Boieldieu, that musician of genius and of heart, who lodged in the same house, went down to Rossini and embraced him.

“Paer and Berton sat at the Café des Variétés, taking an ice, and saying to one another, in a duet, ‘Art is lost!’”

Why, it may be asked, does Méry point out that Rossini’s music, in the year 1829, was applauded both by Royalists and Liberals?