The Life of Rossini

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.