The Life of Rossini

Here the bass again moves a little step forward, but Benedetti was nothing by the side of the two brilliant tenors. Iago, in the operatic version of “Othello,” is only a secondary character. Otello and Roderigo are two leading parts, and we may be sure that Barbaja, as an enterprising manager, having two popular tenors like Davide and Nozzare at his theatre, willing to appear together in the same opera, would have been very much shocked if his composer had objected to turn such a combination of talent to the best possible account.

Davide, as Otello, displayed much power; and his acting, equally with his singing, was praised by all who saw him. A French critic, M. Edouard Bertin, gives the following account of his performance in a letter dated 1823; the celebrated tenor had then been playing the part seven years: —

“Davide excites among the dilettanti of this town an enthusiasm and delight which could scarcely be conceived without having been witnessed. He is a singer of the new school, full of mannerism, affectation, and display, abusing, like Martin, his magnificent voice, with its prodigious compass (three octaves comprised between four B flats). He crushes the principal motive of an air beneath the luxuriance of his ornamentation, and which has no other merit than that of difficulty conquered. But he is also a singer full of warmth, verve, expression, energy, and musical sentiment; alone he can fill up and give life to a scene; it is impossible for another singer to carry away an audience as he does, and when he will only be simple he is admirable; he is the Rossini of song. He is a great singer; the greatest I have ever heard. Doubtless the manner in which Garcia sings and plays the part of Otello is preferable, taking it altogether, to that of Davide. It is purer, more severe, more constantly dramatic; but, with all his faults, Davide produces more effect, a great deal more effect. There is something in him, I cannot say what, which, even when he is ridiculous, commands, entrances attention. He never leaves you cold, and when he does not move you he astonishes you; in a word, before hearing him, I did not know what the power of singing really was. The enthusiasm he excites is without limits. In fact, his faults are not faults for Italians, who, in their opera seria, do not employ what the French call the tragic style, and who scarcely understand us when we tell them that a waltz or quadrille movement is out of place in the mouth of a Cæsar, an Assur, or an Otello. With them the essential thing is to please; they are only difficult on this point, and their indifference as to all the rest is really inconceivable; here is an example of it. Davide, considering apparently that the final duet of “Otello” did not sufficiently show off his voice, determined to substitute for it a duet from “Armida” (“Amor possente nome”), which is very pretty, but anything rather than severe. As it was impossible to kill Desdemona to such a tune, the Moor, after giving way to the most violent jealousy, sheathes his dagger, and begins in the most tender and graceful manner his duet with Desdemona, at the conclusion of which he takes her politely by the hand and retires, amidst the applause and bravos of the public, who seem to think it quite natural that the piece should finish in this manner, or, rather that it should not finish at all; for after this beautiful dénouement the action is about as far advanced as it was in the first scene. We do not in France carry our love of music so far as to tolerate such absurdities as these, and perhaps we are right.”

Lord Byron saw “Otello” at Venice soon after its first production. He speaks of it in one of his letters dated 1818, condemning and ridiculing the libretto, but praising the music and singing.

The chorus gains increased importance in “Otello.” The successive entry of two choruses, each with a fine crescendo effect, in the finale to the first act, is one of the striking features in this magnificent musical scene. But, full of beautiful and very dramatic music as Rossini’s opera decidedly is, it has the great disadvantage of reminding us constantly of what it does not resemble, – the “Othello” of Shakspeare. Roderigo is too much brought forward, Iago too much kept in the background; it is only when the part of Iago is given to such an actor as Ronconi that it regains its true dramatic importance.

However, “Otello” is one of Rossini’s finest works in the serious style. Each dramatic scene is one continuous piece of music, and the recitative, as in “Elisabetta,” is accompanied by the orchestra. “Otello” marks the end of the interminable recitatives with an accompaniment of piano or piano and double bass by which the rare musical pieces were separated in the serious works of Rossini’s predecessors. The Germans had abolished the pianoforte as an orchestral instrument long before, and Gluck had expelled it from the orchestra of the French Opera in the year 1774.

Instrumentation has of late years kept pace closely enough with the invention of new instruments, and orchestras are now similarly composed in Italy, France, Germany, and England – in short, throughout Europe. This was by no means the case when Rossini began to write for the stage, Italian orchestras by their constitution, if not by the skill of the executants, being at that time inferior to those of Germany, and even (in regard to the variety of instruments) to those of France.

The modern orchestra, if we reckon the military band which is often introduced on the stage, and the organ which is sometimes heard at the back of the stage, includes every available instrument that is known except the piano; which is an orchestra on a reduced scale, but ineffective and useless as an orchestral unit in the midst of so many instruments of superior sonority. The piano, employed in France until the time of Gluck, in Italy until that of Rossini, for accompanying recitative, is now banished generally from the orchestra, though it occasionally figures as a sort of non-combatant at the conductor’s desk, where it may serve at need to bring back an erring vocalist to the sense of musical propriety. Even in the “Barber of Seville” the piano to which Rosina sings her music lesson is dumb. Almaviva goes through the pantomime of a pianist, but the sound is the sound of the orchestra.

The history of some individual instruments has been written, notably that of the violin. But I know of no history of the orchestra, – say from the day of Nebuchadnezzar to that of Nabuchodonosore,21– from sackbuts and psalteries to trombones and opheicleides, cornets, saxhorns, saxotubas, and all kinds of saxophonous instruments.

However, up to about the middle of the eighteenth century the Italian orchestra, to judge by Pergolese’s “Serva Padrona,” as executed in 1862 in Paris, consisted entirely of stringed instruments. Few of the wind instruments now used in orchestras were known, and of those that were known fewer still had been sufficiently perfected for artistic purposes. Hautboys and bassoons were the first wind instruments admitted into Italian orchestras to vary the monotony inseparable from the use of stringed instruments alone.

The clarinet was not invented until the end of the seventeenth century, and was not recognised until long afterwards, even in Germany, as an orchestral instrument. It was introduced into French orchestras towards the end of the eighteenth century. In Italy it was sparingly used, and never as a solo instrument until Rossini’s time.

With the exception of hautboys and bassoons, no wind instrument seems to have come from the Italians. The so-called “German flute,” as distinguished from the old flute with a mouth-piece, a sort of large flageolet, was perfected by the celebrated Quantz, the friend and music-master of Frederick the Great; and, like all wind instruments, it has been much improved during the present century.

The horn, known in England as the “French horn,” in France, as the cor de chasse, was at first looked upon as an instrument to be sounded only in the woods and plains among dogs and horses. The Germans, not the French, made it available for orchestral purposes; but in Italy brass instruments of every description were long regarded as fit only for the use of sportsmen and soldiers. Wind instruments in wood were thought more tolerable, and after hautboys and bassoons, flutes and clarinets crept in, – the flute to be in time followed by its direct descendant, the piccolo.

Gluck invaded the orchestra of the French Opera with trombones, cymbals, and the big drum in the year 1774, when he at the same time ejected the harpsichord, the piano of the period. Thirteen years later Mozart’s trombones in “Don Giovanni” were considered a novelty at the Italian Opera of Vienna.

With the exception of opheicleides, cornets-à-piston, and the large and constantly increasing family of saxhorns, Rossini, in his latest Italian Operas, used all the instruments that are known in the present day, and used them freely with all sorts of new combinations. It was not for nothing that he and his father had played the horn together when the young Rossini was gaining his earliest experience of orchestral effects. He was always faithful to his first instrument. “The art,” says M. Fétis, “of writing parts for the horn, with the development of all its resources, is quite a new art, which Rossini, in some sort, created.”

In looking over the score of “Otello,” with Donizetti, ‘Sigismondi,’ the librarian of the Conservatory at Naples, is said to have complained of the prominence given to the clarinets, and to have exclaimed with horror at the employment of horns and trombones without number. “Third and fourth horns!” he cried; “what does the man want? The greatest of our composers have always been content with two. Shades of Pergolese, of Leo, of Jomelli! How they must shudder at the bare mention of such a thing! Four horns! Are we at a hunting party? Four horns! Enough to blow us to perdition!” The old professor was still more shocked by “1º, 2º, 3º tromboni,” which, according to an anecdote, the authenticity of which can scarcely be guaranteed, he mistook for “123” trombones.

The instrumentation of “Otello” is far more sonorous than that of “Tancredi;” but Rossini made a still more liberal use of the brass instruments in the “Gazza Ladra” overture, which again is surpassed by the march and chorus (with the military band on the stage) in the first act of “Semiramide.”

Rossini must have been on the watch for new instruments, whereas, if his predecessors in Italy looked out for them, it was only with the view of keeping them out of the orchestra.

In “Semiramide,” under the auspices of the composer, the key-bugle made its début at the Fenice of Venice in 1823. In 1829, in “Guillaume Tell,” the same composer brought out the cornet-à-piston at the French Opera.

Since “Guillaume Tell,” there has been no progress in dramatic music, but there has been further progress in instrumentation. At one moment the continued invasion of “the brass” seems to have startled Rossini himself. In 1834, when his young friend Bellini had just produced “I Puritani,” Rossini, writing an account of the first performance to a friend at Milan, said of the celebrated duet for Tamburini and Lablache, with its highly military accompaniments, “I need not describe the duet for the two basses. You must have heard it at Milan.” But neither Bellini nor Donizetti brought forward any new instruments.

In “Robert le Diable,” Meyerbeer introduced a melody for four kettledrums. Kettledrums were never so treated before! In “Le Juif Errant,” Halévy employed saxhorns to announce the Day of Judgment.

Nevertheless, the saxhorn turned out not to be the last trump. The ingenious inventor had saxophones, saxotubes, and other instruments of sounding brass, with names beginning in Sax, to offer to Meyerbeer, the Belgian Guides, and the musical and military world in general. Perhaps there is no more splendid example of modern instrumentation than the march in the “Prophète,” wherein every possible brass instrument is employed. If the benign Pergolese could hear it as executed by Mr. Costa’s band or bands (for one is not enough), he would fancy himself in Jericho, with the walls coming down.

CHAPTER VIII

ROSSINI’S REPRODUCTIONS FROM HIMSELF

“La Cenerentola” belongs to the composite order of operatic architecture. But no canon has been set against self-robbery; and Rossini, who never professed any theory on the subject of dramatic expression in music, had the right to take a piece from one of his works which had failed, or which seemed already to have had its day, to place it in another which was just about to appear. This was his constant practice, and its justification is to be found in its success.

Of course Rossini had a system, and of course music does possess dramatic expression, up to a certain point. Figaro’s air could not have been introduced into the trio of “Guillaume Tell;” the “Non piu mesta” of “Cenerentola” would not have seemed appropriate as the theme of the prayer in “Mosè.”

And it is to be noticed, moreover, that when Rossini made his own adaptations from himself, he was always successful, whereas other composers, who have manufactured pasticcios with motives borrowed from Rossini, have always failed. “Robert Bruce,” arranged by M. Carafa, with Rossini’s sanction, but not under Rossini’s superintendence, made no impression, and we have seen that Rossini quite mistrusted a M. Berettoni, who had constructed an opera called “Un Curioso Accidente,” from pieces contained in the composer’s early works.22 This is not the place in which to speak of the shameful adaptations of Rossini’s works produced in England, into which airs by nameless composers were introduced, and which were prefaced by absurd pots pourris called overtures, the work of the “conductor and composer” of the music attached to the theatre where Rossini was thus presented. The rule in regard to pasticcio-making is clear. It may be undertaken by the composer of the airs employed, but by no one else.

Rossini is by no means the only composer who has transferred themes (seldom pieces in their complete form) from one to another of his works. According to M. Blaze de Bury,23 Meyerbeer laid some of his early operas under contribution for “Dinorah,” which, perhaps for that reason, is so remarkably full of fresh spontaneous melody.

Auber enriched his “Fra Diavolo” in a similar manner, when he prepared it for the Italian stage. In the “Muette de Portici,” again, the prayer is borrowed from a mass, the barcarolle from “Emma,” the overture from “Le Maçon.”

Even Gluck, the favourite composer of those who maintain not only that music should render the character of a dramatic situation, but that it can and ought to reflect the meaning of particular phrases, – even Gluck, in arranging his works for the French stage, turned constantly for musical material to the works of his early days.

Persons who are of opinion that Rossini’s “Stabat Mater” is written in the operatic style, and that the airs of Handel’s oratorios are not in the operatic style, may be interested to hear that “Lord, remember David,” was originally composed for the opera of “Sosarme,” where it is set to the words “Rendi l’Sereno al Ciglio,” and that “Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty,” first appears in the opera of “Rodelinda,” as “Dove sei amato bene.”

That these changes have been made with success proves that there is no such thing as definite expression in music. The music of an impassioned love song may be adapted to the words of a prayer, and will only seem inappropriate to those who may chance to remember the words to which it was originally composed. A positive feeling of joy or of grief, of exultation or of depression, of liveliness or of solemnity, can be expressed by musical means, without the assistance of words, but not mixed feelings, into which several shades of sentiment enter. At least not with definiteness; though, once indicated by the words, they will obtain from music the most admirable colours, which will even appear to have been invented expressly and solely for them.

Rossini did not go back to the operas of his youth for motives, pieces and overtures merely, as is sometimes supposed, to save himself trouble, though in one or two exceptional cases, when much pressed for time, he may have done something of the kind; but his principle was, when he had once produced a really good piece, not to let it be lost – not to let it perish through the fault of an intolerable libretto.

A libretto is sometimes so bad that the best music in the world will not carry it off: in vain the composer gives it wings, it will not fly. In such a case as that, it was Rossini’s practice to disunite his living music from the dead body of the drama to which it had been attached, and to present it again to the public in what he thought would prove a happier alliance. If, again, the union was a failure, he had no hesitation in marrying his music to more or less immortal verse for the third time. The third time the result was invariably happy; witness the air, “Miei Rampolli,” which was tried first in “La Pietra del Paragone,” and secondly in “La Gazzetta,” before it at last found its proper place in “La Cenerentola;” and two of the finest pieces in the “Barber of Seville,” the overture which had previously belonged in succession to “Aureliano in Palmira” and “Elisabetta;” and Almaviva’s air, “Ecco ridente il Cielo,” a treasure saved from the wreck of “Aureliano in Palmira,” and which had before been picked out of the ruins of “Ciro in Babilonia.”

If Rossini had only pursued his laudable system half way, neither the overture to the “Barber” nor the Count’s cavatina would now have been heard; and his happiest, if not his greatest, work would have lost two of its most brilliant ornaments.

It must be observed that Rossini had never the slightest idea of allowing the same piece to belong to two different operas. “I get enraged,” he once said, speaking of the publication of his complete works, “when I think of that edition which contains every opera I have composed. The public will often find the same piece in different works, for I thought I had a right to take those which seemed to me the best from the operas which had failed, and place them in the new ones that I was composing. When an opera was hissed, I looked upon it as utterly dead, and now I find everything brought to life again.”24

The libretto of “Cenerentola” is an adaptation from Etienne’s “Cendrillon.” Rossini composed the opera for the Teatro Valle, at Rome, where it was produced on the 26th December, 1817, nearly one year after the “Barber,” a few months after “Otello” (winter season of 1816), and a few months before “La Gazza Ladra” (spring season of 1817). From the winter of 1815 to the spring of 1816, Rossini produced six operas, including the four masterpieces just named. The two minor works were “Torvaldo e Dorliska,” and “La Gazzetta.” “La Cenerentola” was not quite so successful as “Il Barbiere,” and no wonder, for though crammed full of beautiful music, it is not all of one piece like its predecessor at Rome, to which, moreover, “Cinderella” is very inferior in dramatic movement, and as a play generally.

The “Barber,” too, lends itself more readily to that perfect execution which it has so often attained.

It contains five excellent parts, each essentially necessary to the intrigue, and only one inferior character, who only appears for a few minutes during a necessary pause in the action, to sing a very pretty air. In regard to the two heroines, Rosina is certainly the most attractive, though Cinderella ought to be (but somehow is not) more sympathetic.

Indeed, as a purely theatrical part, a part for stage display, that of Rosina is quite unrivalled, and none is better adapted for the re-appearance of a favourite singer coming back to the scene of previous triumphs. Rosina makes her first entry on the balcony, as if only to receive the applause and congratulations of the public on her return. She has then to make a second entry, to sing a beautiful and very effective cavatina, and finally she has an admirable opportunity for gratifying the audience in the scene of the music lesson, by introducing some air which she knows, for national or sentimental reasons, or both, to be particularly agreeable to them.

Cenerentola, however, is far from being an insignificant heroine, and Madame Giorgi-Righetti sang the music admirably, as a year before she had sung that of Rosina. She was especially applauded for her brilliant delivery of the final rondo, “Non piu mesta.” This was the fourth and last time that Rossini concluded an opera with an air of display for the prima donna. It seemed to him, no doubt, that the device had now been sufficiently employed – which, however, did not force his successors to be of the same opinion.

As to the borrowed pieces in “Cenerentola,” the history of the air “Miei Rampolli” has been already traced through two operas. It belonged originally to “La Pietra del Paragone,” together with the duet “Un Soave non so che,” the drinking chorus, and the burlesque proclamation of the Baron. The sestet, the stretta of the finale, the duet “Zitto, Zitto,” were taken from “Il Turco in Italia.”

“Cenerentola” was the last of the great prima donna parts which Rossini composed for the contralto voice. He wrote nothing more, then, either for Madame Giorgi-Righetti, or for Madame Marcolini, the original Tancredi.

“La Cenerentola” seems to have been intended as a pendent to “Il Barbiere,” and at one time almost rivalled that work in popularity. Sontag, Malibran, Alboni, have appeared with brilliant success in the part of the heroine, which, like those of Rosina and Isabella, has often been sung by sopranos since the general dethronement of the contralto by the soprano voice in principal characters. But of late years this opera has seldom been played, and in England not since Madame Alboni’s last series of performances at Her Majesty’s Theatre.

CHAPTER IX

“LA GAZZA LADRA”: THE CONTRALTO VOICE

THE Patriarch of Moscow, arrayed in all his splendour, was about to lay the foundation stone of a new church, when his consecrated trowel, formed of massive gold, could nowhere be found. Dreadful things happened. No one could say what had become of the precious instrument. The question was put to the nobles, the merchants were put to the question, the peasants were knouted and sent to Siberia; still the golden trowel was not forthcoming.

At last the Tsar died of grief; the great bell of Ivan Velikoi, the sound of which is never heard except on the most solemn occasions, was about to be tolled, when the aged bell-ringer, on ascending the tower, was much startled at startling a magpie which had turned the sacred belfry into a receptacle for stolen goods. In the midst of the hoard accumulated by the thievish bird, which included a fur cap, a wooden spoon, a pair of goloshes, a hymn-book, and a tenpenny nail, the long-lost golden trowel was discovered.

The Patriarch, now advanced in years, laid the foundation stone of the new church. He then pronounced a curse, the terms of which are unfit for publication, on the magpies of Moscow, and forbad them to approach the holy city within a distance of forty versts. Accordingly, no magpie is ever seen in Moscow – except, of course, on the stage, when “La Gazza Ladra” is performed.

Wherever the legend on which the story of the Maid and the Magpie may have come from – and its birthplace is doubtless much further east than Moscow – the drama or melodrama of domestic, military, and judicial interest on which Rossini’s “Gazza Ladra” is founded, belongs, like the dramatic originals of “Il Barbiere” and “La Cenerentola,” to the French. The French playwrights, if not good librettists themselves, are certainly cunning contrivers of plots on which good libretti may be founded. “Le Nozze di Figaro,” “Il Barbiere di Siviglia,” are both derived from Beaumarchais; “La Cenerentola” from Etienne; “La Sonnambula” from Scribe; “Lucrezia Borgia,” “Ernani,” and “Rigoletto,” from Victor Hugo. “Linda di Chamouni” is only “La Grace de Dieu;” “La Gazza Ladra,” “La Pie Voleuse” in another form. If there should ever be a recognised national division of literary labour in the world, England, considering how much the works of Richardson, Fielding, Scott, Bulwer, Dickens, Thackeray have been read on the continent, may perhaps supply the novels; but the French already write plays in every shape for the whole world.