^ «& «S> THE OPERi^ MSTliD'FRBSfflT'-*'' 3? BY W - F - APTMCJtP * Cornell University Library ML 1700.A65 The opera, past and present.an,,hi5torlca 3 1924 022 384 634 CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND GIVEN IN 1 89 1 BY HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE MUS «, iu Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924022384634 The Music Lover's Library WAGNER. The Music Lover's Library The Opera Past and Present An Historical Sketch By William Foster Apthorp Author of " Musicians and Music-Lovers," Etc. With Portraits Charles Scribner's Sons New York :: :: :: 1901 Copyright J 190F, hjf Charles Scrihnefs Sons Trow Directory Printing and Bookbinding Company New York TO B. J. LANG Preface FOR a History of Opera — covering, as it does, over three centuries in four countries — to be brought within the compass of a volume like this, it must be either one of two things : something little better than a time-table, an an- notated list of names and dates, or else a com- pendious sketch. The former plan might be excusably followed in a school text - book ; though some grave doubts of its advisability might be entertained, even there. But, in a book that hopes to be read otherwise than under compulsion, it would be a self-stultifying impertinence. The other plan, of making the History a compendious sketch, is the only one to the purpose. In writing the present Historical Sketch of the Opera, I have thrown the whole weight of my endeavour upon giving a clear and con- nected account of the first establishment and gradual evolution of this form of art, and upon Preface pointing out the general quasi-philosophical rationale of the same. I have, accordingly, con- sidered different schools, composers and works far more with reference to the influence ex- erted by them in furthering, or retarding, this evolution than to their intrinsic excellence. I have let the historical scythe swing high, cut- ting off only the most significant heads ; and the most significant have not always been those the worjd calls greatest. Only in^two instances have I departed from this general plan : in the cases of Mozart and Beethoven. The puissant genius of these men was too closely in harmony with the funda- mental idea of the Opera for them to be negli- gible, although they exerted infinitely little in- fluence upon either their contemporaries or their successors in this field of composition. Of two other men, again, — Alessandro Scarlatti and Handel, — I have said extremely, perhaps surprisingly, little. Though the greatness of their genius is beyond doubt, the part they played in the history of Opera was at once un- important and, as far as it went, antagonistic to the real evolution of the form. Far too much importance has, it seems to me, been hitherto attributed to Scarlatti, as what Preface may be called an evolutionary force in Opera. He merely propagated the influence of Gia- como Carissimi — as it had been transmitted to the seventeenth-century Venetians through Marc' Antonio Cesti, and through the Vene- tians to Francesco Provenzale in Naples. It may even be doubted whether the title of " Founder of the Neapolitan School," so oftfen bestowed upon Scarlatti, do not properly be- long to Provenzale. And it may be well to say here, by the way of Scarlatti's continuing the Carissimi influence, that Romain Rolland seems to have dealt rather a severe blow to the legend that he was Carissimi's pupil, in esta- blishing the fact that he studied under Proven- zale — a man of extraordinary genius, whom Rolland may fairly be said to have redisco- vered for the benefit of a too forgetful world. For forty-six years Carissimi had been living without intermission in Rome, as Maestro di cappella at S. Apollinare, when he died there in 1674 ; Scarlatti was born only fifteen years before this, in 1659, at Trapani in Sicily. The proximity of these dates, and the distance between the two places, make it at least im- probable that the one man ever studied under the other ; at most, Scarlatti could only have Preface begun his education under Carissimi. Fur- thermore, the hypothesis of his having been Carissirai's pupil is not needed to account for his spreading that master's influence ; for this influence was already the dominant one over Opera when Scarlatti first came upon the field. He may have transferred a remaining musical form or two, which had been established by Carissimi, from the Oratorio to the Opera ; but such transfers had been made so copiously by his Venetian predecessors, that not much, if anything, can have been left for him to do in that line. Succinctly stated, the main object of the present volume is this: To show how a ge- neral desire for some such form of dramatico- lyric art as the Opera was manifested in France and Italy considerably before any possibility existed of its coming into actual being ; how this possibility was at last realized by the de- vising of a style of artistic monodic composi- tion by the Florentine Music Reform, and how the Opera itself was among the first practical results of that Reform. That the theoretical principles in accordance with which the Opera was first established in Florence, in 1595, were essentially identical with those promulgated in Preface the nineteenth century by Richard Wagner. That the Opera was first diverted from its original artistic purpose through the influence of Carissimi, and, from being an essentially dra- matic and scenic form of art, became a purely musical one. And finally, how this Carissimi influence continued to make itself felt, even through and in spite of the Gluck reaction against it, until Wagner at last gave it its death-blow. In telling the story of this long warfare be- tween two opposite principles, — the original Florentine dramatic one, and the Carissimi anti-dramatic, — I have, with the two exceptions mentioned above, considered only such men as took a prominent active part in the fight, and more especially such as fought on the dramatic side. For the history of this conflict is real- ly the history of Opera. Looked at from this point of view, some of the greatest geniuses, like Scarlatti, and even Handel himself, — who had it all their own way, their party being so much in the ascendant at the time that there was virtually no opposition, — are seen to be of less importance than, say, a man like Rossini, — who, after arrogantly fighting on the wrong side when he ought to have known (and did Preface know) better, gave at least one mighty blow for the right, — or even a mediocrity like Giovanni Pacini,— who, in his mild way, did some fighting in the good cause. Of the men who dealt no blows on either side, or whose feeble strokes left no mark, nothing has been said. I should perhaps say a word or two in ex- planation of my dwelling so almost exclusively upon the tragic, or " high-romantic " forms of Opera, and saying so little about the comic. I had two reasons for this. In the first place, the comic forms — opera buffa, op^ra-comique, Sing- spiel — have everywhere been the distinctly na- tional ones throughout ; the tragic, or romantic forms, — opera seria, trag^die-lyrique, and Grand Opera in general, — the more universal, the more cosmopolitan. Then, the influence of the comic forms upon the development of the tragic, or romantic, has been generally but slight ; where- as the converse influence has often been very noteworthy. And I have taken the more in- fluential and cosmopolitan forms as the more important. For a similar reason I have omitted all con- sideration of the development of the Opera outside of Italy, France, Germany, and Eng- Preface land. What developments it has had in Spain^ Scandinavia, Russia, Hungary, or Bohemia have had no Influence whatever upon the rest of the world. What these countries have done in Opera has, it is true, often reflected foreign influences, but has not exerted any frontier- crossing influence of its own in return. Per- haps, on this principle, all reference to Opera in England might have been omitted as well ; but we are Anglo - Saxons, and the subject touches us more near. I wish to express my deep obligation to the admirable articles on Monteverdi and Marco da Gagliano by E. VOGEL in the Leipzig Viertel- jahrsschrift fur Musikwissenschaft (Vols. III. and v.), to the article in the same publication (Vol. VIII.) on Die venezianische Oper und die Werke Cavallis und Cesti's by HERMANN Kretzschmar, and to Romain Rolland's Les origines du tMdtre lyrique moderne ; histoire de I'Opira en Europe avant Lully et Scarlatti (Paris, 1895) for a great deal in the first two chapters of this volume. Vogel's and Rolland's careful and energetic research has, indeed, consider- ably topsy - turvied previous histories of the Florentine and Venetian periods of the Opera. For the rest of the volume, I have relied. Preface partly upon older standard authorities, but mainly upon my own investigations — especially in the matter of criticism. W. F. A. Boston, December 13, 1900. Contents Page 1. Beginnings 3 II. The European Conquest 23 III. Gluck 54 IV. Mozart 73 V. The Italians 92 VI. The French School 113 VII. The Germans 134 VIII. Wagner 153 IX. The Development of the Art of the Opera- Singer 180 X. The Present 193 Appendix : Peri's Preface to Euridice 221 Cluck's Preface to Alceste 227 Portraits Wagner ....... Frontispiece Lully Gluck Mozart Rossini Verdi Meyerbeer Weber FACING PAGE 46 60 76 98 108 126 150 THE OPERA Past and Present A truly princely spectacle, and delightful beyond all others, being one in which are combined all the most noble oblectations, such as contrivance and interest of plot, diction, style, mellifluous rhyme, musical art, the concert of voices and instruments, excel- lency in singing, grace in dancing and gesture ; and it may also be said that painting plays therein no unimportant part, in the matters of scenery and costume ; so that the intellect and every noblest sentiment are fascinated at one and the same moment by the most delectable arts ever devised by human genius. Marco da Gagliano, Preface to Dafne. Beginnings LET us take the Egyptians and Assyrians for granted ; enough that the consociation of the arts of Poetry, Music, and Dancing in the Drama dates back at least to Thespis's cart. How intimate the union of these three arts may have been in the classic Greek Drama, and its later Roman imitation, is a question little to our present purpose; for, though all three still had a place in what remained of the Drama in the Middle Ages, they were bound together by no intimate bond of union. Of that, so to speak, "chemical" union of this clover-, leaf of arts, of that mutually helpful cooperation toward a common dramatic end, which is the essence of Opera, nothing was to be found. And, as just this cooperative union is the es- sence of Opera, as a special form of dramatic art, it is evident that the Opera could not come into being until such an union had been estab- lished, or — supposing it really to have existed in the old Greek Drama — re-established. The Opera Past and Present A drama with incidental music is not an opera ; such dramas were not uncommon long before anything like Opera was known. The type of Drama which we now know as vaude- ville — a play interspersed with songs — is to be recognized in the old French satire-plays and dramatic pastorals. A noteworthy example is Xdam de l a Halle's Li gieus de Robin et de.Ma - rwn, given _al~tlie-cottFfe-^-CharlesujdlA.ilQia in Naples, probably in 12&5. This little pastoral play was long looked upon as the first operain history, and the trouv^re Adam de la Halle, as the first opera-composer. Unluckily for this time-honoured distinction, recent research has proved beyond a doubt that neither the music nor the text of the songs was written by Adam, but only the connecting dialogue, ^s was the fashion of the day, he took a certain number of popular ballads, constructed a dramatic story out of them, and bound them together into a play with spoken dialogue of his own invention. The thing can not be called an opera, but, at the very most, an operatic symptom. Neither was it the first nor last of its kind. * That playwrights and musicians — especially the latter — had a vague premonition of some- thing like Opera long before they had the means of writing one, is more than likely. What may ,be called premonitory symptoms of Opera were Beginnings not uncommon in the musical and dramatic life of the Middle Ages and the earlier Renais- sance period ; they became especially recogniz- able as symptomatic about the middle of the sixteenth century, both in France and Italy. One finds a distinct yearning after Opera, and manifold attempts to create something as nearly like it as possible. Furthermore, some of these attempts show plainly, not only a desire on the part of musicians to do something operatic, but also a total lack of adequate means of satis- fying this desire at the time. Leaving the Art of Dancing out of considera- tion, for the moment, as of secondary theoretic importance, we can see that nothing like Opera was possible, so long as the Art of Music was in no condition to fulfil, not only certain dra- matic, but also (and more especially) certain scenic requirements. Such scenic requirements were, to be sure, fulfilled to some extent by the folk-song or popular ballad ; but this form of music, as then practised, had no dramatic cha- racter. Moreover, the folk-song lay outside the then domain of what would be called artistic composition ; technically well-trained musicians who had an ambition to be recognized as com- posers would have nothing to do with it ; at best, they would take a folk-song, as they would a Gregorian chaunt, as material to be worked 5 The Opera Past and Present up in strict counterpoint — which latter was the only form of soi-disant " artistic " composi- tion known at the time. And counterpoint was essentially polyphonic— in several inter- woven voices, or parts — and, as such, abso- lutely unfit for all but an exceedingly limited range of scenic uses. In a composition for the concert-room a polyphonic or choral passage may, at a pinch, stand for the utterance of a single individual ; * but it can not do so on the dramatic stage. A single actor can not sing in four or five parts (" real" or otherwise), and to put a visible quartet or quintet of singers upon the stage, to impersonate a single individual, would be a slap in the face of dramatic realism against which even the most imaginatively dis- posed audience would protest. So composers who wished to write dramatic music — counterpoint being the only known medium — had perforce to forego actual drama- tic representation of their works, and content themselves with performances in the concert- room. But let no one think contrap untaLpQ» lyphofljLan impossible vehicle for dramatic ex- pression. True, strict vocal counterpoi nt in the old modal system, quite devoid of sighing * Modern instances of this sort of thing are not wanting. Men- delssohn, in his Paulus, makes the Lord speak in a four-part chorus of female voices. Beginnings or yearning chromatics, does not seem a very poignantly expressive medium to us now ; but there resided in it at least some expressive potentialities, which the then composers were eager to make the most of ; in any case, the will was not wanting. Indeed, an ever-grow- ing tendency to lay stress upon the intentional expression of definite emotion is noticeable in the great contrapuntists of the fifteenth and six- teenth centuries, from old Josquin Despr6s (1450-1521) down; and from the emotionally expressive to the dramatic is but a step. The parly mgHr^'fral-plays — what We shouM call dramatic cantatas — in France and Italy were really far more significant operatic sym- ptoms than the older stage-plays of the Robin et Marion sort, even though these latter were given with scenery, costumes, and dramatic action on a real stage. Although written for the concert-room, the madrigal-plays showed a distinct striving on the part of composers to do something more dramatic with music than had been done theretofore, which the vaudeville-like stage-plays did not in the least. It is noteworthy that, especially in Italy, these madrigal-plays generally took a comic direction. Alessandro Striggio Qf _.Maat]ua, (1 5.^ S-i 584) w rites a series of rustic scenes for ibur and five voices, carrying the listener The Opera Past and Present through the various occurrences of a village day : scenes of village gossip and scandal, ser- vants' complaints of their masters, bickerings and hand-to-hand fight of washerwomen, re- conciliation, kisses, and sunset. Giovanni Croce of Chioggia (1550-1609) sets the whole Vene- tian carnival to music, often with no little real- istic vis comica. At last we come to the comic cantatas of Orazio Vecchi of Modena (1551- 1605) and his pupil, Adriano Banchieri of Bo- logna (i 567-1634). These were sung on the stage by costumed singers ; the text was a regu- lar play, but there was no acting, and the music of each dramatis persona was for from three to five voices, quite in the traditional contrapun- tal madrigal style, but often overbrimming with picturesque suggestiveness and comic realism. These cantatas represent the dra- matic culmination of the old modal coun- terpoint, the last stage of the preliminary evo- lution which preceded the advent of Opera in Italy. ^ Equally symptomatic, if in a different way, were some of the developments of the court ballet in France under the Valois. The ballet, as in favour at the French court about the mid- dle of the sixteenth century, was essentially what we should now call a ballet d' action; it was based on some timely theme, generally of 8 Beginnings a classico-mythological character, and this cen- tral idea was developed in recited verses, songs, choruses, dancing, and pantomime, often with the aid of very ingenious stage-machinery. The scheme was artless enough, the thing had little dramatic consistency ; but the elements of po- etry, music, dancing, and dramatic action were here associated together, and the bond of union between all four was not so loose but that a light touch of the magician's wand would suffice to turn the whole thing into Opera. The eye of History even descries something very like that magician in Balthasar de Beaujoyeulx, a Piedmontese violinist — his real name was Baltazarini — who came to Paris with a company of Italian fiddlers in iS 77, being recommended by the mar6chal de Brissac to Catherine de M6dicis ; she made him her valet de chambre. This Beaujoyeulx associated wiHTtrhnself- se- veral court poets, musicians, and painters * in organizing a grand ballet called Circd, ou le bal- let comique de la Reine, which was given by Henri III in the salle des cariatides of the palais du Petit-Bourbon on Sunday, October 15, 1 581, in honour of the marriage of the due de Joyeuse and Marguerite de Vaud6mont de * La Chesnaye, de Beaulieu, Maistre Salmon, Jacques Patin, Desportes, Baif, Ronsard, and Th. Agrippa d'Aubigne are men- tioned as having a hand in it. 9 The Opera Past and Present Lorraine, the queen's sister* The plot was of the simplest: a gentleman, hastening to an- nounce the reign of Peace and Plenty to His Most Christian Majesty, is waylaid by Circ6, and by her changed into a lion. Half the gods and goddesses of Olympus, not to mention other mythological personages, try to liberate him, but either return discomfited to whence they came, or are likewise transformed into beasts. At last the Royal Word does the business, and all ends happily. The whole is interspersed with harangues, — distilling an amount of court holy-water suggestive of His Most Christian Majesty's having a fine stomach for adulation, — songs, duets, choruses, instrumental intermez- zi, and two grand ballet-interludes.t The per- * Balthasar de .BEAUjOYEULX^.^a/, expressive) style " ; something very like what we now call recitative. Kind Fortune smiled. What could, for in- stance, have been luckier — we having made a tabula rasa of the Art of Music — than the oppor- tune publication, in 1592, of Claudio Montever- di's third book of madrigals, an epoch-making volume, big with a whole new Tonal System, with " free dominant 7ths " and other luxuries, unheard-of before ? A most fitting novelty for a new era to begin with ! The point of depart- 16 Beginnings ure for all Modern Music, did we but know it ! Then, how well our new monodic style, quite dazzling in its Hellenic purity, fits in with that other great factor of the Renaissance : the growth of Individualism in Art. Really the prime product of the whole Renaissance move- ment, the wheat, of which our vaunted classi- cism is but the chaff. For our classicism is, in the end, but a blind, a manifesto, something to sign and swear to ; but the Individualism is a natural, instinctive growth, and has more than the force of signed parchment. Painters and sculptors have, for the last half century and more, been forswearing their allegiance to the classic type, and limning the features of the woman most after their own heart; poets have sung what they themselves have seen and felt — and let the Academy go hang. And now we composers can do likewise in our way: turn our backs upon the typical generalities of coun- terpoint, and put our inmost selves into har- mony and melody. You singers, too, can at last stand forth from the choir, and be your- selves alone. Here, if anywhere, is a free field for Individualism ; pity only that we have no working technique ready-made for the occa- sion; for the old contrapuntal technique will surely not carry us far on our new road. But courage ! a technique has been developed once, 17 The Opera Past and Present and can be developed again. We will enter upon our new era of the Art of Music with hearts undaunted, and put our forebears to the blush yet ! Strange, though, what ideals men in an inter- esting condition will set up for themselves, and how little the most ardent players see of the game. Here was the Camerata with a brand- new musical style (fondly believed by them to be authentically antique), eminently adapted to scenic use. And to what use, think you, did they purpose putting it ? To a revival of the Greek Drama, the crowning consummation of 'that Hellenic palingenesis which was the proud- est boast of the Renaissance ! Of all imaginable projects, probably the most hopeless — in Italy in the last decade of the sixteenth century. Yet this was what the Camerata were bent upon bringing about, cost what it might ; and that they could do it they had never a doubt. That they did not do it, nor anything like it, need hardly be said ; they did better, they gave birth to the Opera. To think that this, of all forms of art, should owe its existence to a set of as arrant pedants as ever drew breath ! — for that '^the members of the Camerata (always excepting Caccini and Peri) distinctly were, pedants to the finger-tips. The first high festival of the new musical cult iS Beginnings was the performance of Dafne — dLfavola in mu- sica, or opera, the libretto by Rinuccini, the music by Peri — at Corsi's palace in 1595. This was the first opera on record, and so successful that it was repeated at several successive carni- vals. It was written in the stile rappresentativo ; yet hear what Pietro della Valle (a most com- petent witness) wrote afterwards about the singing of Vittoria Archilei, who took the part of Dafne : " She was no beauty, but the fore- most songstress of the time. She ornamented the written monody with long flourishes and turns {lunghi giri e gruppi) which disfigured it, but were much in fashion, and the singer Peri praises them highly."* So, at the very first dawn of Opera did the virtuoso singer have her share in the business, and have her " disfiguring" flourishes condoned by the com- poser! The fact is not without its signifi- cance, f The score of Dafne has been lost; all the performances were in private, before invited audiences. But the Opera made its official, public entry into the world five years later. * In a letter to Lelio Guidiccioni, January i6, 1640 — forty and odd years after the performance ; but some men have tenacious memories. Note, too, that "the singer Peri" was the composer himself. t Vide Peri's preface to Euridice in Appendix, page 221. 19 The Opera Past and Present By order of the grand duke, Rinuccini wrote the libretto of Euridice ; it was set to music separately by both Caccini and Peri, each com- poser writing his own complete score. The opera was given, as part of the festivities in honour of the wedding of Henri IV, of France, and Maria de' Medici, in the Pitti Palace on October 6, 1600 ; at this first performance part of Peri's music and part of Caccini's were given. But both scores were published separately. In Caccini's and Peri's Euridices we have fair samples of what serious Itahan Opera was in its first estate. There are some few choruses in the madrigal style ; the dialogue is all carried on in the stile rappresentativo. But many vocal flourishes are actually written down, especially in Caccini's score, so they can not be charged to any whim of the Archilei, who sang the part of Euridice, unless, indeed, she exerted some personal influence over the composers, who, between pedantic noble patrons, on the one hand, and an indispensable prima donna, on, the other, may well have had moments of doubt as to which was the devil and which the deep sea. \ Yet this personal influence, though quite sup- posable, is not necessary to account for tJhe flourishes ; it is more than probable that Cac- cini and Peri would have written them in any Beginnings event. They, men of original genius, must have felt that Music, as the idealizing element in Opera, ought to be treated with something of ideality. Now, it happens that the idealiz- ing power of this mysterious Art of Tones re- sides in its sensuous beauty of line and colour ; and, owing to the primordial, amorphous con- dition into which the Reform had thrown Music, — with counterpoint abolished, the or- chestra merely rudimentary, tonal harmony in its infancy, and true melody unborn, — well-nigh the only sensuous appeal to the musical ear they had at command was that of florid vocali- zation by a beautiful voice. Those long "giri e gruppi" were the sacrifice they forced the stern stile rappresentativo to offer up at the altar of musical beauty and ideality. Th us was the Opera born : of a determin ed, if utterbgJ[QQli&b~-anjL.f Mti 2 e ,.a^^ ttiF"HassicGTeek Drama,Jii.,-lb£ j.a^l-decade of the siSfiS5iE~y:' With them, the frankest outpouring of ^-^'enuinely warm emotion went hand in hand with a calculated appeal to a highly cultured taste. But their passion was none the less real for all this super-refined preciosity of expres- sion; all the rose-water they poured upon it could not quench its flame. Of the two, Donizetti had the larger scope, the more virile nature. He was also the more careless and unequal. But, at his best, he had no mean power. Few things on the lyric stage are more admirably brilliant in the way of dra- matic characterization than the prologue of his Lucrezia Borgia (Milan, 1834) ; the music gives you the very quintessence of the Venetian life of the period — its luxurious insouciance, its atmo- sphere of intrigue, its undercurrent of hot pas- sion ; it is Paolo Veronese in Music ! Light music enough, if you will, but full of matter. Lucrezia is probably his best opera, though Lucia di Lammermoor (Naples, 1835) has had * It was in reference to Bellini that the late Julius Eichberg once said : " Clarity is a precious thing j but there is no artis- tic need of music's being clearer than crystal ! " 104 The Italians more recognition outside of Italy ; but in Lucre- zia he strikes and sustains a more original note, there is more brilliancy and snap, a fiercer dramatic blaze. For one thing, as a piece of musical character-drawing, — in the Mozart and Wagner sense, — Maffeo Orsini (in Lucrezia) overtops anything else of the sort done in the whole period; the elegant, devil-may-care young rake lives and breathes before you ! Donizetti also did admirable work in opera buffa; his Don Pasquale (Paris, 1843), though by no means quite in the Rossini vein, can rank with any of Rossini's, save the Barbiere alone. But there was not a spark of fun in Bellini ; he was great only in opera seria. Despite a cer- tain besetting effeminacy of sentiment, too, too naive at times, he rises now and then to an im- pressive grandeur of which one finds little in Donizetti. Norma (Milan, 1831) has generally been accounted his masterpiece,* and it is per- haps the opera in which he most rose out of his ordinary self. But La sonnambula is more characteristic, in a more congenial vein ; it is a chef-d'oeuvre of sensibility. In this charming opera (brought out in Milan in the same year as Norma) Bellini best shows his peculiar melo- * Schopenhauer has brought forward the libretto of Norma (by Felice Romani) as an unsurpassed example of the dramatic treat- ment of a tragic subject. 105 The Opera Past and Present die power ; few melodies give a stronger pluck to the heartstrings — yet wholly without pas- sionateness ; expressing merely the vibrant joie de vivre of innocent, love-struck sweet sixteen — than Amina's " Come per me sereno oggi rinacque il d\ ! " Here, as also in the foregoing recita- tive, " Care compagne" we have something of Gluck's tear-provoking power of expressing perfect happiness. Of course, in Donizetti's and Bellini's day, no composers in their senses would have bitten their own noses off by reacting too radically against Rossini's florid style ; these two Ita- lians were no Richard Wagners, and knew enough not to set the whole race of singers against them by a too ascetic return to merely expressive cantilena. They wrote vocal flour- ishes galore ; but theirs were, for the most part, the natural efflorescence of an originally simple melody, which, in their hands, blos- somed out into flowery bedizenment, like the apple-branches in spring ; the fioritura is pure- ly ornamental, not the main business in hand, as it was too often with Rossini. Upon the whole, though, it was rather a de- bilitating business, this Opera of sweet senti- ment, beautiful melody, and ear-tickling ; a matter of exquisite taste rather than of sturdy artistic vitality. For one thing, it eventually io6 ■ The Italians became the theme of probably the worst mu- sical literature (written by amateurs) the world has ever had to blush for. ; Into the midst of all this rose-water preci- osity suddenly sprang Giuseppe VerdT! . '' No man ever came ihto~the~world"at a fitter moment ; everything was just ready for him. Even the most delicate palates had begun to cloy with the Donizetti-Bellini syrup, and to yearn for a tarter fillip ; and Verdi, of all men in the world, was the one to give it them. A born son of the people, — his parents were inn- keepers in the smallest of ways at the little hamlet of Roncole, near Busseto in Parma, — the hottest-blooded man of passion the Art of Music had known since Beethoven, Verdi came into Italian Opera as a veritable sansculotte. His was a voice from the nether stratum, frank, fierce, lurid, unheard before on the lyric stage ; he brought into over-sophisticated Opera the popular song (or something very like it), and turned its siren warblings to passionate utter- ance, — his detractors said, to screaming. His volcanic heat fairly singed the . boards ; people began to wake up, and say : Here verily is a man ! Verdi was no better technician than the oth- ers, no more inclined to be squeamish about old conventions. He took the Opera quite as IC7 The Opera Past and Present he found it ; only, he breathed into it a new spirit. The 'most hopelessly reticent man in private life, the despair of prying reporters, in his art Verdi unbuttoned freely, was out- spokenness itself; what he said was unmis- takable, no composer in the whole list ever had less reserve. He was absolutely fearless in going to all lengths, had no respect at all for any sort of Mrs. Grundy, and, at first, little disposition to be self-critical ; his genius, always of a rather sombre cast, carried him by fits and starts from majestic dignity or courtly ele- gance to the depths of triviality and vulgarity ; to one thing alone was he ever constant : to his own genuineness. In time he became at once the most popular and the most decried opera- composer alive ; the musical plebs swore by him, while to musicians (especially outside of Italy) his name was a by-word for everything artistically reprehensible. To sum him up in a sentence, he was the diametrical antithesis of Felix Mendelssohn. Apart from the force of his genius, the most noteworthy thing about Verdi has been his in- comparable and never-flagging power of artis- tic growth. He was born on October 9, 1813, and is still living. This length of life has given him the opportunity, which surely few would have exploited as well as he, to have four di- 108 VERDI. The Italians stinct periods, or manners — most great compos- ers stop at their third ! In his earlier operas — Nabucco (Milan, 1842), T Lombardi alia prima croctala {ib., 184$), Ernani (Venice, 1844), I due Foscart(Rome, 1844), up to Luisa Miller (Naples, 1849) — he shows, with all his melodic power, a certain formal stiffness; as good an example of this as another is Zaccaria's aria with chorus, "D'Egitto let sui lidi" in Nabucco, a grandly broad melody, not without impressive majesty, but still breathing something of well-starched, " official " formalism ; it is a little academic. With Rigoletto (Venice, 1851) his style grows more elastic, his melody freer and more ori- ginal, his passion and dramatic fire burn at their hottest. In this second period come his most popular, as well as, in one sense, his most cha- racteristic operas : // trovatore (Rome, 1853), La traviata (Venice, 1853), Un ballo in maschera (Rome, 1859), and a few others of less note. Strangely enough, this second manner of Ver- di's has none of those transitional characteris- tics that mark the second period of most com- posers ; his style is individual and fully formed, his technique, if not conspicuous by any high standard, is yet his own and entirely adequate to its task. Noteworthy is a certain relaxing of the curb of strict form, perhaps due in some measure to the Meyerbeer influence, which 109 The Opera Past and Present had by that time well made the round of Eu- rope ; in the last scene in the Trovatore (surely one of the greatest he ever wrote) we already find the musical form conditioned by hardly anything save a dramatic conception of the text ; in this respect, the scene was twenty years in advance of all else done in Italy at the time. The apparent finality of Verdi's second man- ner was, however, deceptive ; the man had by no means got to the end of his tether yet ! His third was really his transition period — La forza del destino (St. Petersburg, 1862), Don Carlos (Paris, 1867), ^i'^« (Cairo, 1871). Here we find distinctly French influence at work, also a touch of the "new romantic" Liszt-Berlioz- Wagner eleutheromania. Aida may well be compared, as a transitional work, with Wag- ner's Lohengrin ; side by side with much that is conventional, the final (fourth) manner is more than foreshadowed in it. In this period Verdi's style becomes vastly more complex ; you find him taking unwonted pains with himself, with his orchestra, with larger and more complex musical developments, with the finer subtleties of dramatic expression and local colour. In a word, though still thoroughly an Italian, Verdi evinces a determination not to lag behind with the rest of his countrymen, but to show himself as well abreast of the age. The Italians With At'da we must now leave Verdi for a while ; his fourth manner belongs to the pres- ent, probably still more to the future. He has been considered here as a man of the Donizetti- Bellini epoch, and as the bridge that led over therefrom to the Italian Opera of to-day. One thing is, however, important to esta- blish : no matter how intrinsically unscenic were the forms of Italian Opera from Rossini to the " younger " Verdi, the music was distinctly written to be sung with the intensest dramatic stress; herein it differs most fundamentally from that of the old Scarlatti-Handel Opera. Then, a certain amount of dramatic action is not only possible but, so to speak, inevitable in Donizetti's, Bellini's, and Verdi's operas ; with a Handel aria it is simply inconceivable. So much scenic quality the music undeniably had. With all its conventional formality, it was re- ally dramatic in its essence. Some very strik- ing examples may be adduced: the quartet, " BeUa figlia" in Rigoletto, where three, aye, four different emotions are expressed simultane- ously, and with perfect truth to nature — a feat unparalleled in the annals of Opera ! Take, again, the final terzet, " Ferma, crudele," in Er- nani, where the music, though of perfectly re- gular construction, never for a moment relaxing the strictness of its dance-rhythm, lends itself The Opera Past and Present to every subtle change of expression in the text, and gradually swells to a lava-stream of dramatic impetuosity. Upon the whole, it is quite significant of the fitness of this music for the stage that it loses more than half its zest, and well-nigh collapses, in the concert-room. How and why it fits the stage is not so easy to show, but it certainly does fit it wondrous well in its way.* * Some points omitted in this chapter — to economize space — are brought up in Chapter VIII. Vide foot-note on page 158, con- cerning the act-finale, and also page 167. VI The French School IF any nation has done its full share toward proving the truth of the saying that, in Opera, the comic is everywhere the more di- stinctively national form, France has. French opira-comique has been illustrated almost exclu- sively by native composers, around the heads of many of whom Fame has drawn the aureola of immortality — no matter how perishable Time may have proved their works to be. But, in the list of composers who, for hard upon two centuries, supplied the Acad6mie de Musique — the chosen home of Grand Opera in France — with works, the greatest and most world- famous names are, with one or two excep- tions, not French. Rameau may fairly be rated as a first-class man ; but the two Bertons (old Fierre-Montan and his son, Henri- Montan), Lesueur, M^hul, Kreutzer, Persuis, Catel, Ha- 16vy, and others of less note can not stand in history on a level with Lully, Gluck, Cheru- bini, Spontini, Rossini, and Meyerbeer. Even "3 The Opera Past and Present Auber, whose Muette de Portici might be taken as a fairish claim to fellowship with these great foreigners, did his best and most characteristic work for the Op6ra-Comique, as did also se- veral of his above-mentioned compatriots. But, such has been the inflexibility of French taste, of French ideas, so irresistible the force of French influence, when exerted near-to and ( at home, that, with and in spite of all the fo- reign genius that has been welcomed, first and last, to the Acad6mie de Musique, the school of Grand Opera is indefeasibly French. What may be called the French idea has ruled throughout. Nevertheless, the high-sweeping scythe of cursory History will cut off, for the most part, un-French heads ! Gluck's first successor in Paris was his pupil, Antonio Salieri, born at Legnano in Venetia on August 19, 1750, died in Vienna on May 7, 1835. What may be called a first-rate second- class man, Salieri founded himself entirely upon Gluck ; his Les Danaides (1784), Les Horaces (1786), Tarare (1787), and a few other operas served to keep the Gluck tradition fresh for a while. Cherubini, who, unlike most of the great foreigners, did better work for the Op6ra- Comique than for the Acad6mie de Musique, may still be mentioned here as filling up the gap between Salieri and Spontini with his 114 The French School Ddmophon (1788), Anacrion (1807), and a few in- tervening operas. Cherubini, however, made something of a temporary break in the Gluck tradition, for he held more by Mozart than by the Viennese reformer. The thread of the tradition is, however, knotted again by Spontini. Gasparo Spon- tini (afterwards conte di Sant' Andrea) was born at Majolati in the Marches of Ancona on November 14, 1774, and died there on January 24, 185 1. After writing a number of Italian operas of the conventional sort in his native country, he came to Paris in 1803 ; here he sub- mitted himself willingly to French influence, and his style soon underwent a noteworthy change ; it was in Paris that his great, indeed his only considerable, period began. He ac- cepted the Gluck formula in toto ; temperamen- tally, too, there was no little resemblance be- tween him and the Vienna master: he had a similar poignancy of feeling, a similar noble reserve in expression, the same at-homeness in the classic atmosphere. His music, however, strongly reflects native Italian influence ; in some of his melodies, still more in some of his orchestral passage-work, he even foreshadows Rossini. Upon the whole, he can stand as a very Italian Gluck. He was immeasurably the strongest figure in French Grand Opera IIS The Opera Past and Present between Gluck and the romantic movement of 1830; his Vesiale {1807), Fernand Cortez (1809), and Olympie (1819) lived well into the second half of the century both in France and in Ger- many. He was the last of the great " classi- cists " of the lyric stage ; a man of no mean grandeur, sombre sublimity, and dramatic force, one who could be at white heat with seemingly unmoved countenance. With an ounce more of genius, of the genius that sur- vives, his works might even now be as viable as Gluck's own ; but, like his older fellow- countryman, Cimarosa, he fell just short of this mark, and the romantic movement of 1830 was the beginning of his end. A form which has stood for over a century and a quarter with its chief traditions unbroken — for the Gluck Reform was an enlarging and consolidating, rather than a breaking, of the Lully-Rameau traditions — may fairly be re- garded as settled. The form of French Grand Opera, as we find it firmly established in Spon- tini's time, was, in the main, this : a five-act libretto, set in musical numbers (airs, duets, concerted pieces, finales) with the connecting dialogue in stately accompanied recitative (not the more glib recitativo secco of the Italians), and with grand ballet-divertissements in the second and fourth acts. This was the standard 116 The French School norm, and departures from it were few and insignificant; at the Acad6mie de Musique it was as the law of the Medes and Per- sians.* If the Grand Opera — called tragddie-lyrique when the libretto conformed to the rules of the classic French tragidie — was, in the end, but a quasi-academic adaptation of the Italian opera seria to French taste, the opdra-comique may be called the natural growth, in French soil, of a slip cut from the Italian opera buffa. The Grand Opera exemplified French taste; the opira-comique was a perfectly natural and frank expression of French feeling and instinct. It even came only in part from the Italian opera buffa; its other parent was the native French vaudeville. Its distinctive feature was the spo- ken dialogue connecting the set musical num- bers ; and this owed its origin partly to the vau- deville, partly also to the impossibility at the time of finding a viable French equivalent for the Italian recitativo secco. In French stage terminology, any opera with spoken dialogue * Such a tradition dies hard, and may, moreover, acquire a con- siderable social importance. The fiasco of Tannhduser at the Academic de Musique in 1861 was chiefly owing to the rage of the more influential class of patrons at the ballet's coming in the first, instead of in the second act — thus interfering with their precious dinners ! 117 The Opera Past and Present is an opira-comique, no matter what the cha- racter of its subject. Two different sorts, or styles, of op^ra-comique are to be distinguished: the older and the newer. The one was but a higher develop- ment of the vaudeville, the other tended more in the direction of Grand Opera. Up to with- in, roughly speaking, twenty years of the end of the eighteenth century, the works of Phili- dor (1726-1795), Monsigny (1729-1817), Gretry (1741-1813), Dalayrac (1753-1809), and others of their school were, in general, characterized by exceeding musical simplicity ; it was often only by the greater proportion of music in them that they were distinguishable from vaude- villes ; they were strongly imbued with the French chanson spirit. With Mehul (1763-1817), Gluck's pupil and ardent follower, larger musi- cal developments came in ; some of the musical numbers, notably the act-finales, might have shown their faces without discredit in Grand Opera.* This tendency was carried farther by Boieldieu (i77S-i834)^whose Dame blanche (1825) is probably the only opira-comique of the first quarter of the nineteenth century practi- * It is significant that, some years ago, there was talk in Paris of the Academie de Musique making an exchange with the Opera- Comique, the former to exchange Auber's Le philtre (which was its property) for Mehul's Joseph (owned by the Opera-Comique). 118 The French School cally known to most readers of this book — and reached its culmination (that is, without over- stepping the bounds of the style) with Auber (1784-1871) and H6rold (1791-1833), There are many things in works like Auber's Fra Diavolo (1830), Les diamants de la couronne (1841), or Hayd^e (1847), or Harold's Zampa (1831) or Le pri aux clercs ( 1 832) that would not be out of place at the Acad6mie de Musique. After 1 79 1 these two styles of opira-comique were respectively represented by two rival theatres : the Th6Mre Favart (now the Th6§,tre de rOp6ra-Comique) cultivating the older, clas- sical style, the Th6ltre-Feydeau, the newer, more elaborate one. To be sure, no very sharp line of demarcation can be drawn between the two styles; you can find hints at the newer even as far back as Gr6try, and many operas savour of both. Probably the composer most on the fence between them was Luigi Cheru- bini (1760-1842), whose Midie (1797), though given at the Feydeau, is virtually a grand opera, and whose Les deux j'ourn/es — known here as The Water Carrier, and admittedly his masterpiece — carries the old style to almost vaudeville simplicity in all the music but the act-finales, and in these presents developments of an extent and complexity quite worthy of the most elaborate form of Grand Opera. Indeed 119 The Opera Past and Present it is probably owing, as Hanslick shrewdly surmised, to Cherubini's pushing both princi- ples to such extremes, thus showing the con- trast between them as so glaring, that a work of the exquisite genius of Les deux journ^es has failed to hold the boards all over the musical world to this day. It fell down between two stools ! The change destined to be worked in French Grand Opera by the romantic ideas, generally known as of 1830, began in 1828, when Auber's La muette de Portici (better known here as Masanielld) was brought out at the Academic de Musique on February 29. This in every sense epoch-making work came like a thunder- clap out of the blue. Auber, who had hither- to written only for the Op6ra-Comique, now brought all the brisk, nimble dash of his style to bear upon a tragic subject, and a subject, too, taken straight from the heart of the people — as Wagner, somewhat too satirically, said: " a revolution of fishermen and costermon- gers " — with no halo of classic grandeur about it, but white hot with the breath of the pro- letariat. And his treatment fitted the subject to a T ; he outdid himself, showing unwonted dramatic fire, picturesqueness in his orchestra, and a skilful handling of choral masses (that is, dramatically) worthy of the ablest Italians The French School of the seventeenth century. The old regular forms of air, duet, etc., are still there ; but ma- naged with such deftness, so full of dramatic ap- positeness, that they are hardly noticed as such. Eminently the most brilliant work the stage of the Acad6mie de Musique had ever known. Hard upon the heels of La muette followed, on August 3, 1829, Rossini's Guillaume Tell, an opera which may aptly be described as the ef- fort of the composer's life. Effort is the word ! Here, too, was a romantic subject, taken from the life of the people, or at least, from popular (not antique) Legend, the dramatic form bor- rowed from Schiller's Wilhelm Tell. For his musical treatment of this theme Rossini surely needed no more brilliancy than he had by na- ture ; but, after thrilling the public of the Aca- d6mie de Musique with revamped versions of two of his harum-scarum Italian operas, — Le siige de Corinthe (1826) and Moise en Egypt e (1827),* — he now took himself more seriously, came over to the French school as far as lay within his Italian nature, took infinite pains with all he had hitherto been careless about, and produced a work worthy of a great genius. Like Auber before him, he outdid himself, if not quite in the same way. * Respectively, remodelled versions of Maometto II (Naples, 1820) and Mosi in Egitto (ib., 1818). The Opera Past and Present The effort seems to have been somewhat too much for him. At least, how else explain the singular course he pursued after it, a course absolutely without parallel in history ? When he wrote Guillaume Tell, Rossini was thirty- seven, a strong man in perfect health and spirits; he lived thirty-nine years longer, to the age of seventy-six, and Tell was his last opera, almost his last composition of any sort! His thus throwing up an incomparably brilliant career, at a time when he hardly can be said to have attained to the full development of his powers, can not possibly have been owing to Louis-Philippe's government refusing to ratify a contract he had made with Charles X ; no man of his flibbertigibbet humour could have stuck to his huff so long as all that ! The only plausible explanation is that, after Tell, his pride would not allow him to return to his earlier Italian manner, — he had a keen eye for signs of the times, and these were not consoling, — while the prospect of the hard work needed to pro- duce more Tells was more than his laziness could stomach. He is the only great composer on record who ever abdicated in the prime of life ; he preferred not writing at all to not writ- ing easily. Unfortunately for both La muette and Guil- laume Tell, they were, with all their force of The French School genius, all their come-outer boldness, merely transitional works; moreover, the particular march of progress they had set in motion so soon acquired speed and momentum that they found it doubly hard to hold their own against it. It is no mean testimony to their intrinsic strength that they held out as long as they did ; they have not quite lapsed from the repertory yet. But they were quick in growing old- fashioned. Before the next decade was out (it had even hardly begun !), there came along a man to sum them both up, as far as regarded novelty of matter or manner, and outdo them quite. This man was Meyerbeer. Wagner's sarcastic account of the matter was received with outraged scorn when it first ap- peared, but is now seen to be substantially true. " Meyerbeer composed operas h la Rossini in Italy only till the great wind began to veer about in Paris, and Auber and Rossini blew the new gale to a hurricane with the ' Muette ' and ' Tell.' How soon Meyerbeer was in Paris ! But there he found, in the Gallicised Weber (remem- ber ' Robin des bois ') * and the be-Berliozed Beet- hoven, active forces which neither Auber nor "Robin des bois was what Berlioz quite rightly called an "in- famous pasticcio " on Weber's FreischUtz, cooked up by Castil- Blaze, and brought out at the Odeon in Paris in 1824. 123 The Opera Past and Present Rossini had noticed, as too far removed from their purpose, but which he, with his all-the- world's capacity, knew very well how to value aright. He accordingly grasped together all that thus offered itself to him into a mon- strously variegated, composite phrase, before the shrill outcry of which Auber and Rossini suddenly became inaudible ; the grim devil ' Robert ' fetched them both together." * Meyerbeer's genius has been variously esti- mated ; forty or fifty years ago, it was rated very high in France ; now time has consider- ably tarnished its fabled brilliancy. But, what- ever his genius, his influence upon the Opera, not in France alone, but all over Europe, was stronger and farther-reaching than that exert- ed by any other man in the nineteenth century, save Richard Wagner. He alone can rank with Lully and Gluck in having ushered in a new epoch of French Grand Opera ; of such well-differentiated epochs French Grand Opera as yet counts only three : the Lully, the Gluck, and the Meyerbeer. To be sure, in comparing him with Gluck, there is a certain notable moral difference to be got over; Gluck was essentially a reformer, a worshipper of eternal Truth, while Meyerbeer was no reformer (in • Richard Wagner, Gesammelte Schriftm und Dicktungen, III., 364- 124 The French School the Gluck sense) at all, and worshipped no- thing but the everlasting Get-There. Jakob Meyer Beer, known to the world as Giacomo Meyerbeer, was born in Berlin on September 5, 1791 (1794?), and died in Paris on May 2, 1864. His father was a Jew, of the rich banker sort. He studied under Franz Lauska, Muzio Clementi, old Zelter (Mendelssohn's master), and finally under the abb6 Vogler. As an opera-composer, he at first imitated Weber, then (after studying vocal writing in Italy, by Salieri's advice) took up with the ex- treme Rossini style ; his Crociato in Egitto (Ve- nice, 1824) may be called as good a reproduction of the Rossini manner as exists. But his ear- lier operas (in his first and second manners) are historically unimportant. In 1826 he went to Paris.* Here he stopped composing for a while, and began to make a careful study of French literature and art, above all, of the French character ; these four years, 1826-30, marked the turning-point in his career. He was eminently a man of enterprise, a born eclectic, unsurpassed in his faculty for turning every opportunity to account; Paris gave him food for thought. There were La muette and Guillaume Tell ; there was the new * That is, before, not, as Wagner implies, after the production of La muette and Tell. 125 The Opera Past and Present Berlioz orchestration, — vehemently discussed at the time, but descriable by the discerning eye as big with a whole great future for the Art of Music, — not yet applied to the Lyric Drama ; there were, in churches and conservatories, end- less old contrapuntal subtleties, long neglected by composers for the stage ; best of all, there was, as Wagner has said, a new wind blowing, it was good weather for inventive audacity ! Meyerbeer plodded quietly on, catching idea after idea, and silently perfecting a whole new scheme of Opera ; he was plainly not satisfied until he had the plan complete in his brain, well thought-out in every detail. For, when he took to active composition again, we find his third, or " grand," manner fully formed ; he had no transition period. The work in which he embodied the results of those four years of thinking and study was Robert le Diable, brought out at the Acad6mie de Musique on November 21, 1831. The man- ner was quite new ; a most composite style, if you will, a mosaic style, made up of bits taken from about every composer who had anything worth taking, but — and here is the miracle ! — thoroughly personal and individual. No mat- ter how great or how small a genius, there was one force which Meyerbeer indisputably possessed : the force of sharply defined indi- 126 MEYERBEER. The French School viduality; whencever he may have got an idea, once it had passed through his brain, it came out bearing his mark. No musical style was ever more composite than his ; none more un- mistakably the composer's own. No doubt, other folk's ideas got more or less distorted in the process, and perverted from their original meaning. Often, what had been an irrepressible expression of a composer's in- most self was turned into a mere bid for effect. Meyerbeer was a man of no artistic conscience, and his artistic honesty was more than du- bious ; take him in the most charitable way, if Effect was really his god, he served that god with perfect single-heartedness. Few operas have made so strong a first im- pression upon any public as Robert le Diable made in Paris in 1831. Success is not quite the word for it ; cela faisait explosion, it made a tremendous noise in the world, was discussed, pro and con, with a vigour that left no one in doubt as to the work's being, at least, some- thing ! Whether great or puny, admirable or outrageous, it was clearly no nothing -at -all. The style was so new, and hence so incompre- hensible at first, that everyone connected with the rehearsals — singers, players, conductor — predicted a flat failure. But, when the open- ing night came, the excitement of the audience 137 The Opera Past and Present was so irrepressible and contagious that, after the duet, " Sij'aurai ce courage?" in the third act, Adolphe Nourrit, who sang the part of Robert, lost head completely and, from sheer madness of nervous tension, took a desperate header down a trap - door that was open by mistake — luckily falling upon a mattress, and so saving his neck.* It is difficult for us now to appreciate how new Robert was in 1 83 1. It seems old-fashioned enough to-day ! But look at the duet between Alice and Bertram, '^ Mais Alice, qu'as-tu done?" in the third act, and think of what an audacity of originality it took to offer those suppressed intermittent whisperings, strung on the barest thread of a melodic idea, to a public brought up on Spontini, Cherubini, Auber, and Rossini ! It must have seemed the very impudence of crass, unacademic realism. Take the unaccompanied terzet, "Fatal moment, cruel my stir e," in the same act, where a parody on the four-voice cadenza in Beethoven's ninth symphony compelled a whole public to applaud to the echo what, in Beet- hoven, they had scouted as incomprehensible.f * The author has never seen this anecdote in print ; it comes orally from an eye-witness. t At a rehearsal of the ninth symphony in Boston, some years ago, a certain musician was overheard muttering, after the famous quartet-cadenza, ' ' There goes one of Meyerbeer's strongest claims to originality / " The French School Robert is, after all, Meyerbeer's freshest and most original work. In Les Huguenots (1836) the style is more matured, there are moments of deeper inspiration — passages in the duet, " O del! oU courez-vous ? " between Raoul and Valen- tine, in the fourth act, have won sincere homage even from Wagner — but the first bloom is wiped off. In Le Prophlte (1849) maturity of style already degenerates into mannerism ; it out- Meyerbeers Meyerbeer. All that can be said of L'Africaine, his last opera (1864), is that, if no less mannered than the ProphHe, it shows greater heartiness of inspiration. In Robert le Diable there is a superior freshness of melodic invention, more genuine dash and brilliancy. With all his deplorable elasticity of artistic conscience, his flirting, now with grandeur, now with courtly elegance, and anon with down- right vulgarity, Meyerbeer did the Opera no little good technical service. He loosened the bonds of musical form, and, though not quite obliterating the old landmarks, did much to render traditional forms more scenic. What most composers before him had done only in the act-finale he did at any point in an act where he saw a chance of making the music go hand in hand with a continuous dramatic de- velopment, no matter how brief. He obtained many of his dramatic and scenic results, to be 129 The Opera Past and Present sure, more by an extension than by a sacrifice of the old forms ; but this was, after all, what most of his predecessors had done in the act- finale. His style, composite as it was, was in the main essentially dramatic ; nevertheless he did not discard the Rossini coloratura, over which his early Italian studies had given him a certain mastery. He was particularly fond of giving his second soprani — generally queens or prin- cesses, of but secondary dramatic importance— intrinsically florid parts ; his dramatic heroines, on the other hand, seldom have anything purely ornamental to sing, save in closing cadenzas; he seems to have felt that he could ill afford to withhold this concession to the vanity of singers. Meyerbeer also did noteworthy work in op&a-comique, though he could never quite rid himself of a certain ponderousness, not wholly in accord with the genre. But nothing he did was in vain ; and, if there had been no ^toiledu Nord (1854) or Pardon de Ploermel (1859), there surely would never have been a Bizet's Carmen. In the last analysis, the Meyerbeer Opera was just as characteristic an expression of the romantic spirit of 1830 as Victor Hugo's and Dumas's dramas, Alfred de Musset's poetry, Delacroix's canvases, Berlioz's symphonies, or 130 The French School Chopin's pianoforte - music. It was virtually the Dumas Drama set to music,* and had all the flaunting virtues and unnatural vices of that school. If it was something very different from the Wagnerian Music-Drama, this was simply because nothing like the Wagnerian Music- Drama could possibly have sprung from the order of ideas which formed the point of departure for the 1830 movement in France. The most that can be expected of a tree is to bear its own fruit ! Meyerbeer's chief follower was Jacques- Fromenthal Hal6vy (1799-1862), a man of far greater sincerity and warmth of feeling, but of considerably less force. His reputation was very high in his time, both in and out of France, but only his Lajuive (1835) remains on the ac- tive list to-day. f * Eugene Scribe happens to have been Meyerbeer's librettist, but that does not matter. t Wagner tells a significant and instructive anecdote about La Juive (the great Richard was a man of imagination, and one never knows quite how far to trust him in matters of fact ; but this story bears all due internal evidence of truth). When Du- prez was to succeed Nourrit in the part of Eleazar, he asked Halevy one day at rehearsal if he might not hold back the tempo a little in his great phrase, " O ma filU chirie" in the first finale, as he found that he could make no effect with it at the general tempo of the movement (Allegro brillante). Halevy willingly granted his request ; the news of this concession made by com- 131 The Opera Past and Present The first native-born Frenchman, since Ra- meau, to win a higher reputation at the Acad6- mie de Musique than at the Op6ra-Comique was Charles Gounod, born in Paris on June 17, 18 18, died there on October 19, 1893. Formally and technically, he did nothing new ; in these matters he was purely and simply a follower of Meyerbeer, as none but the mightiest original genius could well have helped being in his time; for the Meyerbeer cult in France from 1840 to 1880 was as general and enthusiastic as the Mendelssohn cult in England ; Meyerbeer ruled unquestioned and supreme. But Gou- nod did bring in a new personal temperament ; he was the great love-poet of the French lyric stage in the nineteenth century. Not particu- larly profound in feeling, but none the less ge- nuine, well-nigh fanatical in his sincerity, he could mirror in his music all the dreamy ecstasy of a refined sensual passion — purely sensual, but thoroughly refined. Gounod was really a one-work man, though box-office keepers may tell you another story ; all he really had to say he said in his Faust (first given at the Theatre - Lyrique on March 19, poser to singer was soon bruited abroad, with the result that, be- fore long, this phrase was dragged out to a slow Andante in every opera-house in Europe. Many, if not most, operatic "tradi- tions " have a very similar origin. 132 The French School 1859, then, after making the round of the world, at the Acad6mie de Musique on March 3, 1869, as a grand opera, with added ballet in the fourth act). His other surviving opera, Ront^o et Juliette (Academic de Musique, 1867), needs only to be compared with Faust to show the limitations of the man's genius. In a discon- nected succession of dramatic situations, with few characters (Faust), he was completely at home ; in a strenuously developed drama, like Rom^o et Juliette, with multitudinous opportu- nities for drawing character, he was out of his element ; out of his element, too, with the heavier orchestration demanded by the Acade- mic de Musique — for remember, Faust was originally written for the smaller Th6^tre-Ly- rique. A small, tenuous voice, not devoid of a certain searching sweetness, Gounod has been listened to with delight for hard upon half a century ; he even managed to make a sort of epoch of his own in a small way. But, save for his individual temperament, he left no mark upon the history of Opera; his formula was still the Meyerbeer formula, if somewhat re- laxed — as formulae have a way of relaxing, with the course of time. Gounod did not add a fourth to the trio of men who left the deepest impress on French Grand Opera : Lully, Gluck, and Meyerbeer. 133 VII The Germans EIGHTEEN years after the production of Mozart's Don Giovanni in Prag, there came in Vienna another notable first perform- ance: that of Beethoven's Fidelio at the The- ater an der Wien on November 20, 1805. If Beethoven (i 770-1 827) wrote only one opera, he was clearly determined that that one should be a lion ! Probably no other opera in the whole list was ever so worked over by its composer as this Fidelio, oder die eheliche Liebe. The text was originally adapted by Joseph Sonnleithner from Jean-Nicolas Bouilly's L^o- note, ou r amour conjugal, which had been twice set to music : first, in the original French, by Pierre Gaveaux (1761-1825), and brought out at the Feydeau in Paris on February 19, 1798; then in an Italian translation, by Ferdinando Paer (1771-1839), and given in Dresden on Oc- tober 3, 1804. By no means a great text, of eternal significance, like that of Don Giovanni, 134 The Germans but a mere bit of sentimental-heroic Melo- drama, thoroughly bourgeois, a play for mon- sieur Poirrier to weep delicious tears over. The best that can be said of it is that it is good of its kind. As at first given, Beethoven's opera was in three acts, the overture being the one gene- rally known as the " Leonore No. 2 " ; it was withdrawn after three performances. The li- bretto was next given to Stephen Breuning to work over ; he reduced it to two acts, and the opera was given in this remodelled shape, with a new overture, known as the " Leonore No. 3," at the Imperial Pri vat- Theater on March 29, 1806; it was again withdrawn, after two per- formances. There was some talk of giving the opera in Prag in 1807, and Beethoven wrote the overture known as the " Leonore No. i " for the purpose ; but the plan came to nothing. At last the libretto was given to Friedrich Treitsch- ke for a second revision, Beethoven also re- modelling his score; in this final shape the opera was given, with the overture known as " to Fidelio " (in E major), at the Karnthner- thor-Theater on May 13, 18 14. Fidelio was the second great opera in the form of the German Singspiel (that is, with spoken dialogue), Mozart's Zauberflote being the first. If Beethoven showed little distinction of 135 The Opera Past and Present taste in his choice of libretto, he certainly made up for it in his treatment ; Fidelia is unquestion- ably the greatest German opera between Mo- zart and Wagner. It is as idle to compare the music with that of Don Giovanni — though this has too often been foolishly done — as to com- pare the two libretti. Fidelio is as thoroughly German as Don Giovanni is Italian. But its falling short of the Don Giovanni mark is chief- ly owing to the composer's well-nigh fanatical fidelity to his libretto : of that unvarying level of the highest sort of opera buffa, suddenly ris- ing at the close to the sublimest heights of Lyric Tragedy, which characterizes Mozart's masterpiece, we find nothing; Beethoven lets, not only his expression, but his very style fol- low the text, step by step ; the music accord- ingly keeps oscillating between good, comfort- able op^ra-comique and the most impassioned tragedy — for, when the strenuous moments come, Beethoven takes his melodramatic text quite seriously, and writes music on a level with any greatest lines you please in ^schylus, Sophocles, or Shakspere. Then, at the end, when all is over, he suddenly throws off the stage shackles — really shackles to him, as they never were to Mozart — and launches out into a jubilant cantata (you can call it nothing else, it can not be acted to) in the ninth symphony 136 The Germans vein,* as if fairly drunk with the joy of being once more on his own ground. It is in its music, and in that alone, that Fidelia is great ; and, compared with the ex- quisite finish of vocal and orchestral writing in Don Giovanni, this music is as if hewn out with a broad-axe. Of Mozart's admirable science in writing for the human voice Beethoven had little ; he is known to have said once : " Singers ought to be able to do anything, except bite their own noses ! " But, in spite of its lack of homogeneity of style, there is not a moment in the music that is not great in its way ; for one thing, the outburst, " Es schlagt der Rache Stunde" near the close of the " Pistol "-quartet in the second act (after the trumpet-calls), is probably the most overwhelming moment of sheer unbridled fury in all Opera. When it came to passion, Beethoven could make the best of them look small. With all its shortcom- ings, this uncouth cub of a Fidelio is still a lion ! It is, after all, only because of its intrinsic greatness that Fidelio has any historical im- portance ; there was nothing new in it, save *The librettist has even paraphrased the lines, ■' Wer ein holdes Weib errungen, mische scinen Jubel ein ! " in Schiller's Ode an die Freude, — which Beethoven afterwards set in his ninth symphony, — changing them to " Wer ein holdes Weib errungen, stimm' in unsem Jubel ein." 137 The Opera Past and Present the Beethoven temperament; it marks no epoch. It is only eternal. But something new was soon to come ; the German Romantic Movement was in the wind. This new departure in German Music, and espe- cially in German Opera, should not be con- founded with the so-called movement of 1830 in France. This latter, which embraced all the fine arts and belles-lettres generally, was, in the last analysis, a revolt against the classic; not only against the formal principles of classic Art, but against well-nigh all classic artistic habitudes and points of view. For the Renais- sance revival of the Antique, it substituted a modern revamping of the Middle Ages ; the traditional themes of the Drama, in particular, were transformed, and its ethical gist, as Nie- tzsche would say, transvalued. The inexorable- ness of Fate could, to be sure, hardly die out as a dramatic mainspring; but Patriotism and Duty — after Fate, the most important themes of the classic Drama — were superseded by Passion. Of all this, little is to be found in the Ger- man romantic Opera ; in Germany the Roman- tic Movement meant merely a discarding of traditional tragico-heroic subjects in favour of subjects taken from national, or even local, folk- lore. Practically the most conspicuous item in 138 The Germans it all was the prominent part played by the supernatural element; without the superna- tural, folk-lore is no longer folk-lore ! The heads of the new romantic school were Weber and Spohr.* Louis Spohr was born in Brunswick on April 5, 1784, and died in Cassel on November 22, 1859. With his reputation as a great master of the violin we have nothing to do here ; he in- terests us simply as an opera-composer, and, in this field, his reputation equalled any in Ger- many in his time. After writing three operas which were still-born, he brought out Der Zwei- kamph mit der Geliebten in Hamburg in 181 1. Of his eleven operas, Faust (18 18) and Jessonda (1823) are the most famous; his last. Die Kreuz- fakrer, was given in Cassel in 1845. Karl Maria, Freiherr von Weber, was born at Eutin in the grand-duchy of Oldenburg on December 18, 1786, and died in London on June 5, i826.f After passing from one teacher * Weber was, at first, unhesitatingly credited with originating the movement; later, this credit was given to Spohr, because his Faust (produced in 1818) antedated Weber's Freischiitz (1821). But this specious argument is stultified by the fact that, though Spohr's Faust was completed five years before its production (that is in 1813), Weber had written his Rilbezahl (unfinished and never brought out) for a theatre in Breslau as early as 1806. t It has already been mentioned that Weber was first cousin to Mozart's wife ; it may also be of interest that, with the exception 139 The Opera Past and Present to another (Michael Haydn was among them), he, like Meyerbeer, completed his musical studies under the abb6 Vogler. After writing (more or less completely) three operas which never saw the foot-lights, he brought out his Sylvana in Frankfort-on-the-Main in 1810 — a y«ar before Spohr's Zweikampf. But his repu- tation could not fairly be called national before the production of Der Freischutz in Berlin in 1 82 1, and its subsequent triumphal progress all over Germany. This was followed by Eiiryan- the (Vienna, 1823) and Oberon (London, 1826). Der Freischutz was in every sense an epoch- making work ; it marked the first unquestion- able victory scored by the new romantic school. To understand the impression it produced in Germany, we must appreciate what had been the operatic conditions in that country when Weber and Spohr came upon the scene, and what those conditions were in their day. Up to the close of the eighteenth century, native operatic production in Germany was in of the Bachs, he had the longest musical pedigree of any note- worthy composer on record. Philipp Emanuel Bach and his brothers belonged to the fifth consecutive generation of profes- sional musicians in the direct line of descent. Karl Maria von Weber belonged to the fourth generation of musicians in his fa- mily — the first two of these being, however, represented by ama- teurs. 140 The Germans much the same case as in France : it had only one foreign rival to compete with, the imported Italian article. But the difficulty of this com- petition was far more serious in Germany than in France ; the Italian composers who came to Germany did not turn German in their music, as Gluck, Cherubini, Spontini, Rossini, and others turned French in Paris ; and, with the beginning of the new century, a fresh set of rivals sprang up — the French themselves. The importation of French operas began, while that of Italian operas in no wise diminished. Among a host of more or less important fo- reign names may be mentioned Ferdinando Paer (1771-1839),* who, as court Kapellmeister to the Elector of Saxony, ruled over the Hofoper in Dresden from 1801 to 1806; Cherubini (who, though Italian by birth, must count as half- German, half-French as a composer) was in Vienna from 1805 to 1808, where his Faniska (Karnthnerthor-Theater, 1806) made such a suc- cess that it was deemed excessive praise to Beethoven's Fidelia to predict, as someone did, that, one day, it would " rank as high as Cheru- bini's Faniska" and Beethoven himself recog- nized Cherubini as the leading opera-composer of the day. Spontini was called in 1820 to the *He Teutonized himself to the extent of signing his name " Par " while in Germany. 141 The Opera Past and Present Hofoper in Berlin, and brought his Vestale and Cortez with him.* Beside the personal pres- ence of these crowned representatives of the Acad6mie de Musique and the Opera-Comique, the importation of French operas soon began to assume very considerable dimensions. What with having to compete with both Italians and French, — and in vernacular translations, too, to be understood by the vulgar, — German com- posers were hard put to it. There was nothing to offend or unsettle Ger- man habits in the French opdra-comique, for its form (with spoken dialogue) was the same as that of the native Spieloper. This was not quite true of Italian Opera, when sung in the original tongue ; but the Germans adapted both the opera seria and the opera buffa to their taste easily enough in translated versions, by sub- stituting spoken dialogue for the "unaccom- panied " recitative secco. But French Grand Opera — in which all the recitative was of the " accompanied " sort, for which no spoken dia- logue could be substituted with any semblance of fidelity to the original — was a new and unac- customed form to the German public ; for the * The operas he wrote especially for Berlin — Nurmahal, oder das Rosenfest zu Kaschmir (1822) and Agnes von Hohenstauf- fen (1829) — fall after the Weber period — at least, after his death. 142 The Germans old Reiser school was long since a thing of the past, and forgotten. An opera in which every- thing was sung presented a new problem for German perspicacity to struggle with ; for, whether naturally gifted with a keen dramatic sense or not, this public had formed the habit of at least wishing to understand what it heard in the vernacular, and singing was not favour- able to easy comprehension.* It is probably owing to this insatiate thirst for understanding on the part of the public that the form of the German Spieloper was as long-lived as it was ; a form bastard in itself, and especially, even ludicrously unfit for the treatment of heroic or highly poetic subjects. In France it never rose higher than the op^ra-comique. This unfitness — which seems to have escaped Mozart's perception completely, as it did also Beethoven's — was felt keenly by both Spohr and Weber, especially as they had the better French example under their very noses — in * It is characteristic at once of German economy and of the Ger- man desire to understand things that the opera-libretti published in Germany (for the benefit of opera-goers) contain, as a rule, only the text of the musical numbers and recitatives, but not that of the spoken dialogue — which everyone is expected to understand without following, book in hand. The standard formula on the title-page is, not the title of the opera, as with us, but " Lieder und Gesdnge aus (Songs and Vocal Pieces from) " whatever the opera may be. 143 The Opera Past and Present Gluck's operas and others still more French. No doubt the Freischutz owed part of its suc- cess to its Spieloper form ; Weber's genius, the homelike quality of the legend on which the text was based, the general sylvan atmosphere of both text and music,* were also for much in this success ; but it was nevertheless the putting of these familiar things in the familiar way that unfailingly brought the work home to the popu- lar heart. Still, Weber was not blind to the imperfection of the form. Both he and Spohr, apparently without collusion, determined to remedy it. In the year 1823 were brought out the first two entirely " durchcomponierte " (set to music all through) German operas since Keiser : Spohr's Jessonda, in Cassel on July 28, and Weber's ^Mrj/awM^", in Vienna on October 25. f Neither experiment was a success with the public, who, though willing enough to forgive that sort of thing in foreign operas (as an irremediable product of Gallic perverseness), kicked lustily against it in a work of native growth. This matter of recitative vs. spoken dialogue was really of no small importance ; and it is highly probable that the German objection to * The average German can be brought to the verge of tears by the mere mention of the word Wald ! tHere, at least, Spohr has the priority — by three months ! 144 The Germans giving up the latter was not based solely upon its being more easily understood by the listener. To go to the root of the business, we must re- member that the so-called "accompanied" re- citative {recitativo stromentato) was a common property of every form of Opera, — in Italy, France, and Germany, — whereas the recitativo secco was purely Italian. The Italians were the only people who had devised an appropriate style for the musical setting of familiar, collo- quial dialogue ; and this style was the ra- pid, flexible recitativo quasi-parlando (or almost spoken recitative), which was free from all re- straint from musical rhythm, and had become, by long convention, less bound by considera- tions of tonality than any other known form of composition.* In the delivery of this sort of recitative, rhythm and emphasis depended solely upon the rhetorical sense of the text, the singer was free to use the same diction (as the French say) that he would in ordinary speech. The accompanied recitative, on the other hand, was a much more heroic business; all opera- writing nations seem to have agreed, as by common consent, that it was applicable only in * It is significant that, as far back as Handel, one seldom finds any "signature " (indication of key) at the beginning of a secco recitative ; the composer set out with the expectation of changing key frequently and at short notice. 145 The Opera Past and Present the "grand style"; there was nothing collo- quial about it. The (real or supposed) incompatibility of the French and German languages with anything like the Italian recitativo parlando — which, after all, only carried the natural sing-song of South- Italian (Neapolitan or Sicilian) speech an inch farther in the musical direction — was one of the reasons why the French took to the make-shift of spoken dialogue in their opdra-comique, and the Germans, in every sort of Opera. Both felt that there were many situations in Opera where the more magniloquent accompanied recitative would be out of place ; and for the homelier Italian form they could find no better substitute than bare spoken dialogue. More- over, as time wore on, and traditions crystallized into habits, French and German singers, having had to do only with accompanied recitative, got to associate a certain grandiosity of manner with every sort of musically set dialogue or monologue ; so that, had composers sought to introduce a more colloquial style, there would have been little chance of their having it fitly sung.* • Particularly instructive on this head is what Berlioz writes about his experience with the recitatives he had written to take the place of the spoken dialogue in Weber's Der Freischiitz, for the production of that opera in French, under his direction, at the 146 The Germans Now, the German public, being accustomed to have nearly all the important part of the story of the opera told them in (generally ra- ther homely) spoken dialogue, naturally re- sented having it told them in stately recitative, which, beside rendering the text less easy to understand, was often too evidently grandiosely out of place, and took up an unwarrantable amount of time. For neither Spohr nor Weber gave them anything corresponding to the Ita- lian parlando, but followed the more orotund French model. Still other causes, too, militated against the experiment's being accepted as successful. Spohr, with all his virtues, was not a genius of the epoch-making sort, not a man to shake the Academie de Musique in 1841 — spoken dialogue being against the rules of the house. " I never could get the singers to aban- don their slow, heavy, bombastic way of singing recitative ; especially in the scenes between Max and Caspar did their deli- very of the essentially simple and familiar conversation have all the pomp and solemnity of a scene of Lyric Tragedy." {Mimoires, 328.) Wagner (Ges. Schr. u. Dicht., I., 287) writes of this perform- ance : " The way in which the recitatives were sung increased in no small degree the weight of blame cast upon them ; all the sing- ers thought to have to do with Norma or Moses, they brought in throughout portamenti, tremolff-Tmaaces, and such like noble things. " These recitatives of Berlioz's, by the way, were probably the first attempt at doing anjrthing colloquial in that line in French. 147 The Opera Past and Present world out of old habits ; and Weber, who cer- tainly was, had the ill luck to find, in Euryanthe, about the most deplorable libretto that can be imagined. If Mozart's music could float Die Zauberflote, Weber's certainly could not ^o?Lt Euryanthe ; the self-complacent Helmine von Ch^zy had hardly put worse balderdash upon paper when she cooked up the book of Rosamunde, in five days, for Franz Schubert. Neither was the text the only trouble ; Weber betrayed something of the 'prentice hand in his recitatives, he did not fall easily and na- turally into the vein, and gave little evidence of that dramatic power which he showed in his grand scenas in the Freischutz and Oberon. The best that can be said of his experiment is that it was a well-meant, if rather blundering, move in an artistic direction. But, if, in this instance, the will was some- what better than the deed, Weber's service to Opera in other ways was none the less conspi- cuous. He brought — as Cavalli did before him, in Venice, if not quite in the same way — the popular element into serious Opera, and the form itself closer to the hearts of the German people. This Mozart, one of the most intrinsi- cally aristocratic geniuses in all Music, had never done ; neither had Beethoven — notwith- standing the bourgeois quality of the Fidelio-text 148 The Germans — done it much more than he. But in Weber's melody, no matter how broad in style or ela- borately ornamented, you get all the romantic, out-of-door freshness of the Suabian folk-song, the peculiarly Teutonic sentimentality in its best expression ; one might almost say he wrote in dialect. And if, in this, he did the Opera good service in Germany, he did other things, of a technical sort, the influence of which was far- ther-reaching. He effected a sort of inter- weaving of the scena * with the aria that did much to relax strictness of conventional form, and rendered the form more scenically plastic. The so-called Incantation - scene in the Frei- schutz even reaches out toward the Wagnerian Music-Drama, almost as much as the Statue- scene in Don Giovanni. It positively terrified contemporary pedants ; but, when someone * The term scena is applied to an accompanied recitative of more than usual length and dramatic quality, often (but not ne- cessarily) containing passages in the arioso style. Donna Anna's recitative " Era gici. alquanto avanzata la notte," which debouch- es into the aria, " Or sai chi I'onore," in the first act of Don Gio- vanni, is a transcendent example of the older form of scena. Leonore's ' ' Ascheulicher ! wo eilst du hin ?" in Fidelia, is an- other. Of Weber's intermingling of the scena with the aria, Max's " Nein ! langer irag' ich nicht die Qualen," and Agathe's " Nie nahte mir der Schlummer," in Der Freisckutz, and Rezia's "Ocean ! thou mighty monster," in Oberon, are conspicuous ex- amples. 149 The Opera Past and Present showed it to Beethoven, that appreciative great man said : " If the scene was to be set to music, I don't see how it could have been done in any other way." In this scene Weber shows all his romantic deviltry ; probably no other composer in the whole list ever supped with the Devil with so short a spoon. Upon the whole, the supernatural was an element very congenial to him ; few composers have treated it so to the manner born, with so little of the melodramatic, as he. The fairy music in Obe- ron stands unapproached ; well might Wagner exclaim : " Compared with those fairies, Men- delssohn's* are, at best, flies.'" As a mere matter of record, perhaps not uninteresting as such to Anglo-Saxons, be it said that Weber, the German, wrote the only modern English opera that can in any way stand in the first class : Oberon ; or, The Elf-King's Oath (to a text by James R. Planche, brought out at Covent Giarden in London on April 12, 1826, not two months before the composer's death). It is, after all, more by his interweaving of /the scena with the aria than by his banishing spoken dialogue that Weber did the best service to the Opera in Germany, and elsewhere. In this dramatic extension of the aria — and of cog- nate ensemble forms — he was most especially * In ^ Midsummer Night's Dream. 150 WEBER. The Germans imitated by Meyerbeer in France ; indeed, this sort of thing was one of the chief items in the Meyerbeer formula. If Euryanthe, in spite of much admirable mu- sic, was a failure, Der Freischiitz was surely not ; it made an epoch in German Opera, and imi- tators were not wanting. Among Weber's followers, two are important : Heinrich Marsch- ner (1796-1861) and Peter von Lindpaintner (1791-1856). These were men of a certain amount of genius ; though their works hardly crossed the German frontier, they held the' stage long and prosperously throughout Ger- many ; their operas were not mere " Kapell- meister work." Marschner was decidedly the stronger of the two ; his Der Vampyr (Leipzig, 1828), Der Templer und die Jiidin (the libretto after Scott's Ivanhoe ; ib., 1829), and especially his masterpiece, Hans Heiling (Berlin, 1833), must rank not far below Weber's operas. Lindpaintner's talent was of a more ordinary, showier cast; his best-known works are Der Vampyr (Vienna, 1829) and Lichtenstein (the text after Wilhelm Hauff' s novel ; Stuttgart, 1846).* * In a book like the present, many a subject of secondary im- portance must perforce be treated summarily; such a subject is the German comic Opera, or Singspiel. Although filling quite an enormous place in the national artistic life, it has been absolutely 151 The Opera Past and Present without influence upon anything outside of Germany, or upon the higher forms of classic and romantic Opera in Germany itself. With the exception of Mozart's thrice-admirable Entfuhrung aus dem Serail (Vienna, 1782), Otto Nicolai's Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor (Berlin, 1849), and Ignaz Briill's Das goldene Kreuz (ib., 1875), exceedingly few works of this order are known outside of Germany ; most of the older ones of the school have passed into the antique-curiosity stage, and are more than dead now. Let the following list of composers and characteristic operas do duty for anything further on the subject : Josef Haydn (1732-1809), Der neue krumme Teufel (Vienna, 1752) ; Johann Adam Hiller (1728-1804), Der Teufelist los (Leip- zig, 1766), Der Dorfbarbier, Die Jagd (ib., 1 772); Karl Ditters von Dittersdorf (I739-I799)> Doktor und Apotheker (Vienna, 1786); Johann Friedrich Reichardt (1752-1814), Hdnschen und Gretchen (Kbnigsberg, 1772), Das Zauberschloss (Berlin, 1802); Peter von Winter (1754-1825), Das unterbrochene Opferfest (Vi- enna, 1796) ; Joseph Weigl (1766-1846), Die Schweizer/amilie (Vienna, 1809); Konradin Kreutzer (1780-1849), Jery und Bdthely (Vienna, 1810), Das Nachtlager in Granada (ib., 1834); Franz Schubert (1797-1828), Der hdusliche Krieg (Vienna, 1861) ; Albert Lortzing (1803-185 1), Czar und Zimmermann (Leipzig, 1837), Der Wildschiitz (ib., 1843), Der Waffenschmied zu Worms (Vienna, 1846) ; Ignaz Briill (1846 — still living). Das steinerne Herz (text after Hauff ; Prag, 18 152 VIII Wagner AFTER Scarlatti and Handel, Gluck ; after Donizetti and Meyerbeer, Wagner — born in Leipzig on May 22, 181 3, died in Venice on February 13, 1883. He began as anything but a reformer; his first viable opera, Rienzi (brought out in Dres- den in 1842), was nothing but an Acad^raie de Musique grand opera in five acts. Indeed^ it was written especially for the great Paris house, though never accepted there ; and the style of its music is closely modelled upon that of the then reigning Grand Opera favourites in France : Spontini, Meyerbeer, and Donizetti.* * Donizetti's Les martyrs and La favorite were produced at the Academie de Musique in 1840 ; the latter is still in the repertory to this day. Wagner's two earlier operas — Die Feen (written in 1833, but only brought out posthumously in Munich in 1888) and Das Liebes- verbot (Magdeburg, 1836) — have no historical importance. A certain biographical importance they surely have, if only in show- ing how unsettled Wagner's artistic convictions were in his youth ; Das Liebesverbot is written mainly in imitation of Bellini — of all men in the world ! 153 The Opera Past and Present It is virtually a Meyerbeer grand opera, writ- ten with more sincerity, full of youthful exces^ siveness in every direction, but lacking the highly-developed Meyerbeer technique. It was Wagner's first and last work of the sort. In his next opera, Der fliegende Hollander (Dresden, 1843), he quite abandoned the French model, and turned back to Germany and Weber. To be sure, he gave up spoken dia- logue, — a far safer experiment in the 'forties than in the 'twenties, — but, if there had never been a Freischiitz, there never would have been a Hollander. Yet, notwithstanding the strong Weberish streak in this opera,* there is less homogeneity of style in the music than in any other of Wagner's works; beside the Weber influence, there is, at times, distinctly that of French opera-comique.\ All these borrowings are, however, recognizably coloured with Wag- ner's own individuality ; now and then you * There is an almost perplexing variety of Weber in it : Weber very nearly pure and simple, only slightly Wagnerized ; Weber Spontinified and Meyerbeerized (Senta's and Hollander's duet, " Wie aus der Feme Idngst vergang'ner Zeiten," in the second act); Weber Donizettified (Erik's cavatina, " Willst jenes Tag's du nicht dick mehr entsinnen ? ") ; and what not else. t The spinning chorus, the chattering little chorus of girls, " Sie sind dakeim!" and, above all, Daland's air, " Mogst du, mein JCind," — which last may be described as indifferent good Mehul. 154 Wagner even get Wagner pure and simple.* Tech- nically speaking, the musical forms are very considerably relaxed ; more, upon the whole, than in any opera of Meyerbeer's. The sepa- rate numbers are often, so to speak, ravelled out at the ends, that they may be woven together into some semblance of a continuous whole ; only a semblance as yet, but Wagner is plainly coming to himself. He took a good while to do it, though ; in his next opera, Tannhduser und der Sanger- krieg auf Wartburg (Dresden, 1845), he makes a new experimental throw of the dice. Wagner was essentially a man of vast ideas, most com- fortably at home in "large frames," as the French say. In Tannhduser we have what is intrinsically a romantic opera masquerading in the guise of Grand Opera ; although only in three acts, it is on the largest French scale. Shortly before his death, Wagner called it: " meine schlechtste Oper (my worst opera) " ; and not wholly without justice. The musical style is more homogeneous than in the Holldnder, but Weber still stands largely in the fore- * Notably in Senta's ballad, " Traft ihr das Schiff im Meere an ? " — though with the last outburst {Allegro con fuoco), " Ich set 's, die dich durch ihre Treu^ erl'dse!" Weber stands out more prominently than ever. A comparison of this passage with Agathe's "All' meine Pulse schlagen" in Der Freischiitz, will leave no doubt on this head. 155 The Opera Past and Present ground. A most strangely transmogrified Weber, however: at times pretty thoroughly Wagnerized,* but, for the most part, washed over with a coat of the most bourgeois sort of German thoosy-moosy, redolent of the merely Bdnkelsdnger spirit of men like Franz Abt and F. W. Kucken ! Never before nor since did Wagner strike so essentially vulgar a vein of melody. What saves Tannhduser is the beau- ty of the story, the complete sincerity of the music, and Wagner's unerring dramatic touch — which last he had by nature. The technique, however, is still rather feeble, except in the matter of a skilful handling of material means — the orchestra and choral masses ; the score is defaced by some mere school-boy clumsinesses, which were called Wagnerish at the time, but are now seen to be anything but that. Yet in Tannhduser we do descry at times the beginning of Wagner's third manner ;f developed with " As in Tannhauser's song to Venus, and in one or two of the songs in the Singing-Contest (Walther's and two of Tann- hauser's). t Especially in Tannhauser's Narrative, " Inbrunst im Herzen," in the third act, and all the ensuing struggle between him and Wolfram before the opened Venus Mountain. Remember, by the way, that the now authorized " Paris " version of the first Bac- chanale and the scene between Tannhauser and Venus was written some fifteen or sixteen years later (after Tristan) and is no crite- rion of the style of the original opera. 156 Wagner no very conspicuous technical skill, but already wiping out all traditional musical forms ; here the plastic form of the music is based upon nothing but the dramatic development of the scene. With Lohengrin (Weimar, 1850) comes a mag- nificent change. It is still romantic Opera pa- rading as Grand Opera ; but of the Abt-Kiicken melodic roture there is no longer a trace ; the musical style is distinction itself. Weber al- most disappears ; what there is left of him is no more than the little occasional touch of Haydn to be found in the works of Beethoven's second period. For the first time, Wagner succeeds in raising his music to the full level of his poetic conception ; the vehicle is worthy of the load !* The third manner crops up, too, in a far more developed condition in the opening scene of the second act (Ortrud and Telramund on the church steps by night). Lohengrin was em- * The score of Lohengrin is, in one particular, an interesting commentary on the absolute naivete of Wagner's mental attitude toward old conventions. A convention was never bad in his eyes because it was conventional, but merely because it was intrinsically bad. One of the old fashions most laughed at by the come-outers of Wagner's time — by Berlioz, Liszt, and himself — was the fre- quently recurring perfect authentic cadence. Yet Lohengrin may be called a very apotheosis of the perfect cadence; there are nearly as many perfect cadences in it as in a Handel oratorio, or an opera by Cimarosa. 157 The Opera Past and Present phatically Wagner's transition opera ; after it, he left the " Opera " entirely for the Music- Drama. It was Lohengrin that fully opened Wagner's eyes to what he wanted. And, now that we have followed him so far in his career, we can see how very purblind his vision in this matter had been. Taking the ground, both by instinct and rational conviction, that the Opera must be primarily a form of Drama, and only se- condarily a form of Music, he was some time in discovering the way in which he personally could best make it a worthy form of Drama ; Rienzi, the Hollander, Tannhduser, and Lohengrin were but experiments to this end, and experi- ments, too, guided by no particularly definite theoretical hypothesis.* * One point in all these operas is exceedingly hard to explain, unless it be explicable by the strong hold convention and example still had upon Wagner. He wrote all his own libretti, and so could not fall back upon his text as an excuse for any dramatic shortcoming. It is accordingly very curious that, even up to Lohengrin, he should so frequently have followed one of the least commendable Italian examples: in what may be called the de- dramatization of the act-finale. In Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini, and the younger Verdi is often to be found a most signal falling-off from the high standard set by Mozart in this matter. Instead of that extended period of continuous dramatic development which we find, say, in both the finales in Don Giovanni, these Italians give us, for the most part, act-finales built on the aria plan : con- sisting, after some essentially dramatic preluding, of a concerted 158 Wagner But between the productions of Tannhduser and Lohengrin came his exile, for participating in the revolutionary business of 1848, and flight to Switzerland. Here he had leisure to think, to account to himself for those artistic instincts for which he had hitherto found no adequate form of expression, and to formulate his theory of the Music-Drama. In this period fall the writing and publication of Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft and Oper und Drama, his principal theoretico-controversial works. But what best helped to open his eyes was what he had done, and left undone, in writing Lohengrin. What his opened eyes saw clearly was, up- slow movement, followed by a quick one, with just enough dra- matic business intervening, logically to explain the change of temfo. It is like the confidante's consolatory philosophical reflec- tions'after the prima donna's cavatina, that give her the desired cue for her cabaUtta. During neither slow movement nor stretto does anything dramatic happen ; these two movements are intrinsically nothing but concert-pieces sung in costume. Now, for just this undramatic sort of act-finale Wagner shows a considerable fond- ness in his "operas." Characteristic instances are the second finale in Rienzi, the first and second in Tannhauser, and the first in Lohengrin. He does this sort of thing decidedly oftener than Meyerbeer. To be sure, he also follows the better Mozart model — say, in the fourth and fifth finales in Rienzi, the third in both Tannhduser and Lohengrin — and even his undramatic finales can not truly be said to be " out of situation " ; they are amply justified by the text. But it seems nevertheless strange that a man of his dramatic aspirations should have given himself the opportunities he did to write them at all. 159 The Opera Past and Present on the whole, this.* Ever since Marc' Antonio Cesti, emulating his master Carissimi's exploits, had driven the operatic chariot into that Orato- rio no-thoroughfare (in Venice, about 1649), no composer had had the radical insight and skill to back the hapless vehicle out again. Man after man had sprung to the horses' heads and tried to turn them back, to make an exit in that dignified fashion. But there was not room enough to turn round in ; there the chariot stood, a stone wall across the end of the pole, musical haberdashery shops on either side, ad- vance and retrogression alike impracticable ; for, with the heavy load accumulated while in the cul-de-sac, backing was out of the question. Then came Gluck, who, after lightening the load a bit, — throwing out ornamental frippery, four-times-repeated words, needless ritornelli, and the like, — gave such a sturdy tug at the reins that his team really did back — half-way out ; but there he stuck fast. The Opera still remained virtually what Cesti had made it : not a Drama with auxiliary Music, but a Dramma per musica — a Drama for (the sake of) Music. Wagner was the first to see clearly what the true state of the case was : that there was no- thing for it but to throw out the whole load that * It may be as well to say at once that this is the author's, not Wagner's own, statement of the case. 160 Wagner had been accumulated during two centuries' lingering in that hopeless no-thoroughfare — all, save one thing alone ! — and then back the lightened chariot the whole way out. Throw to the four winds of Orcus well-nigh all that had been gained in two centuries, and start afresh on the open highway — from what point, think you ? From precisely the point whence the Florentine Camerata and Peri and Caccini had set out in 1595. With this important dif- ference, however: whereas Caccini and Peri had the whole Art of Music lying before them in the problematical condition of a new-made tabula rasa, with no technique at their beck at all adequate to grapple with the problem, Wag- ner had a whole two centuries' development of technique ready-made to his hand — which tech- nique, moreover, he purposed considerably augmenting for his own behoof. The Wagner Reform was, as Carlyle said of the French Revolution, a sudden return to primordial con- ditions, but with all the appliances of civiliza- tion. When it takes a book of over four hundred pages to expound a theory of the Music-Drama, that theory is not easily epitomized in a few paragraphs. Yet the task is not quite so impracticable as it looks. Oper und Drama, Wagner's theoretical magnum opus, is full of i6x The Opera Past and Present redundancies, of poetico-philosophical specula- tions, hair-splitting meticulosities, and hazy dreams. With due insight for a reagent, an enormous mass of useless matter can be pre- cipitated out from it, leaving a clear solution of artistic principles, not over-hard to deal with. Upon the whole, Oper und Drama is the work of a man who had not got over the first splenetic teeth-gnashing at his exile, who, for the first time in his life, had set himself to think out his problem to the bitter end, and, being by nature more poet than philosopher, had the nimblest faculty for taking pregnant hints from every- thing that caught his notice, and that un- quenchable, naif enthusiasm which impels the amateur logician to swear by every wildest de- duction he may have drawn from his premisses. Wagner gave ample evidence, in after life, of how little finality he imputed to his Oper und Drama ; the book really marks but one stage in his mental and artistic growth, and takes points of view which he considerably outgrew later.* * Compare, for instance, the dogged obstinacy with which he in- sists, in Oper und Drama, upon the popular Myth, or Legend, being the only fit material for a drama, with the frank ebulliency of his reply (at Bayreuth, in 1882, the first Parsifal year) to a cer- tain musician who had expressed a preference for his Meistersing- er over all his other works: "Yes!" cried he, "you maybe 162 Wagner Stripped of its dialectic trappings, and with its metaphysical convolutions straightened out, Wagner's theory is briefly this. In any sort of Drama, whether musical or otherwise, the play's the thing ; and, in the Music-Drama, the music must lend itself unreservedly and continuously to intensifying the emotional ex- right, there ; you see, the Meistersinger was, after all, an inspira- tion, it came straight out of the blue ; no rummaging about among musty old myths was needed to make that ! " Again, as a fair example of the amateurish futility of much of his reasoning, take his theory of the Supernatural in the Drama. His argument (much condensed) is this. In real life, every act of ours is the result of a well-nigh endless chain of causes, and is hence not thoroughly comprehensible until all these causes and their interconnection are known. For setting forth such a causal chain — to explain the actions of his dramatis fersona — the drama- tist has no time; the novelist can do it, but the dramatist can not. Yet a work of art must be able to make itself understood im- mediately and through and through ; nothing in it must seem un- accountable. So the dramatist has to condense the whole chain of hidden causes into one immediately visible and comprehensible cause, which, from this very process of potentization, must needs appear as supernatural. An excellent explanation of the function of the Supernatural in the Drama, if you will ; but so utterly need- less ! Everyone in his senses knows, unless he be an impenitent realist, that the Supernatural (in modern romantic Drama, at least) is always symbolical ; and most of us are perfectly ready to recog- nize its symbolism. But Wagner, who, with all his romanticism, was a pretty hard-and-fast realist at bottom, could not rest content with his equally inborn fondness for the Supernatural until he had argued himself into the paradox of recognizing it as a realistic necessity. 163 The Opera Past and Present pression of the text, and to giving an illustra- tive colouring to the dramatic action. In the end, — aye, and even down to minute details, — it is the theory of the old Florentine Camerata, and nothing else under the sun. As to the practical means by which Music can best fulfil this its allotted mission, two points in Wagner's theory are noteworthy ; the first fundamental, the second more adven- titious. The first point is that Music must abandon all those forms which were devel- oped, not so much from its own intrinsic na- ture as from its first application to human uses — that is, from the Dance- — and assume only such plastic forms as spring naturally and Iree- ly from the nature of the dramatic subject it seeks to illustrate. The second point is what is known as the Leitmotiv. Be it said at once that the Leitmotiv idea — the association of a theme, or musical phrase, with a particular personage, idea, or incident in a drama — was not original with Wagner; neither do we find anything new in his use of it until we come to his third manner.* * Manifold attempts have proved the hopelessness of trying to discover the first appearance of the Leitmotiv in dramatic music. Let only two pre- Wagnerian instances of it be mentioned here. In Mozart's Don Giovanni, the duel between the Don and the Commendatore is accompanied in the orchestra by a series of 164 Wagner The episodic use of the Leitmotiv was no new thing ; and all that distinguishes Wagner's use of it in his earlier operas — from Rienzi to Lo- hengrin — is that it is more frequent than is to be found in other composers. But, in the last struggle between Tannhauser and Wolfram (in the third act of Tannhauser), still more, in the scene on the church steps between Ortrud and Telramund (in the second act of Lohengrin), we begin to find something of the use Wagner makes of the Leitmotiv in his later music- dramas. This use is no longer merely episodic, but distinctly functional. In Wagner's third manner, almost the whole web of the music is woven out of Leitmotiv en ; they come either rapid ascending scales, alternately in the first violins and the basses ; these scales suggest the quickly-alternating sword-thrusts. In the closing scene of the opera, when the statue of the dead Commendatore has got the libertine hero by the hand, and is urg- ing him to repent, these same scales return in the orchestra — but now only in the basses, the violins (Don Giovanni's sword) being silenced, showing this second, ideal struggle between the two combatants to be merely one-sided. Again, in Meyerbeer's Robert le Viable, when Alice, Robert's foster-sister, calls his attention to the likeness between his friend Bertram and the Fiend's face in the picture of St. Michael and the Dragon in the old church in her native village, the orchestra takes up the theme of Raimbaut's ballad, " Jadis r/gnait en Norman- die," in which the young pilgrim had previously told the story of Robert's birth and infernal parentage. The listener sees at once that Bertram is the Evil One in person, and Robert's father. 165 The Opera Past and Present singly and in succession, or else simultaneously and interwoven.* There is no melodic con- stituent of the music that is not a Leitmotiv- This gives the music, if not greater dramatic force, at least an unflagging dramatic sugges* tiveness. Such was Wagner's theory in its main out- lines ; of details like alliterative verse, infi- nite melody, and das Reinmenschliche in general, nothing need be said here.f This theory he applied fully in all the works of his third pe- riod — the Nibelungen tetralogy, Tristan und Isolde, Die Meistersinger von Niirnberg, and Par- * A particularly complex example is the closing stretto in C major of the great love-scene between Siegfried and Briinnhilde, in the third act of Siegfried. Here the music is woven out of five distinct Leitmotiven. t The elaborate treatise on the Stabreim (alliterative rhyme) in Oper und Drama is but another proof of how much more Wag- ner had the artistic than the philosophico-critical temperament, in his readiness to elevate any passing fad into an eternal truth. He was already at work on the text of Der Ring des Nibelungen ; and the appropriateness of the old Teutonic Stabreim to the poetic treatment of a subject taken from the folk-lore of the race would naturally not escape him. But he used the Stabreim only in the Ring ; his other texts (on Romance subjects) are in ordinary rhymed verse, occasionally in blank verse. As for "das Reinmenschliche (the Purely Human)" about which he talks so much, one may agree with Immanuel Flohjager that, in Wagner's conception, it differed little, in the last analysis, from Don Giovanni's " sostegno e gloria d'umaniti." {Don Gio- vanni, Act II., scene 14.) 166 Wagner sifal; the practical artistic expression of it was his third manner. And now, apart from all considerations of theory, also apart from all questions of indivi- dual style, exactly what was the fundamental principle of this third manner of Wagner's, as a musico-dramatic method ? Considered from this point of view, we find the third manner to be little else than a higher development of something quite old, of a method largely em- ployed by the Italians of the first half of the nineteenth century, and traceable back at least as far as Mozart — if not considerably farther. Both Mozart and the Italians who came after him often wrote passages in which the musical development was carried on entirely by the orchestra, while the text was delivered by the singers in a style which ran (according to the nature of the sentiments to be expressed) all the way from the bald rhetorical colloquialism of the recitativo secco to the more dramatic stress of " grand " recitative, and even to the poignant expressiveness of distinctly melodic phrases. Considered from a purely musical point of view, the only connection between the voice- parts and the orchestra was that the two went well together ; but what the orchestra played was a self-consistent musical development, not in any true sense an accompaniment ; the voice- 167 The Opera Past and Present parts oscillated between the purely rhetorical and the musically significant. The prototype of the Wagnerian method is to be found in the first part {Allegro) of Leporello's " Madamina, il catalogo I questo," and Don Giovanni's " Metct di voi quel vadano." * Of course, the musical style is very different indeed ; but the musico- dramatic method is essentially the same. The whole business is but a higher musical develop- ment of the old recitativo stromentato ; a higher dramatic development was hardly possible. If Wagner's third manner is found fully de- veloped in Das Rheingold (the first of the Ring dramas, written in 1853-54), we do not find his style completely matured and individualized, nor his technique fully grown, until we come to Siegfried (the third drama of the Ring tetra- logy, begun in i8S7).f Completely Wagnerian * Other examples of this sort of thing are : nearly the whole of the first part of the finale (No. 9) to the second act of Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor (up to the beginning of the sestettino, " Chi mi frena ? ") ; the first few pages of the final quartet (No. 23) in Verdi's // trovatore (up to Leonora's " Prima che d'altrui vivere "). Such passages are common enough with composers of that school. t It has generally been deemed convenient to date the full devel- opment of Wagner's musical individuality and technique with Tristan (begun in 1857, after stopping short half-way through the second act of Siegfried) ; but the full development of style and individuality stares one in the face from the very first page of 168 Wagner though the method may be, there is not a little in Das Rheingold and Die WalkUre that is not wholly Wagner's ; not only are some of the themes appropriated from other composers, having not quite the true later- Wagner ring, but even up to far on in Die Walkure does one find now and then a distinctly Meyerbeerish detail.* Wagner, like other great men, had a way of taking his own where he found it ; but, with Siegfried, he began to find it only in him- self. Siegfried. Not the faintest difference in style is to be detected between the first and second halves of Act II. (the second half was not begun till 1865 ; that is after the whole of Tristan und Isolde and most of the Meistersinger had been written); whereas a marked difference in style is to be noted between the third act of Die Walkilre and the first of Siegfried. As a matter of mere technique, compare the whole musical de- velopment of the scene between Briinnhilde and Siegmund {Die WalkUre, Act II., sc. 4) with that of the very similar scene be- tween The Wanderer and Mime {Siegfried, Act I, sc. 2), and see how vastly more secure is the technical skill shown in the latter. * One of the Rhine-daughter themes is taken from Men- delssohn's Schone Melusine ; the theme beginning at Siemund's "Derdir nun folgt, wohin fiihrst du den Helden?" {WalkUre, Act II., sc. 4) comes from Marschner's Der Vampyr. The sob- bing figure in the 'celli under Briinnhilde's " War es soehrlos, was ich beging, doss mein Vergek'n nun die Ehre mir raubt? " ( Wal- kUre, Act III., sc. 3) is nothing if not very familiar and character- istic Meyerbeer. Wagner owed much to Meyerbeer from the first, and only succeeded in ridding himself entirely of his influence with the beginning of Siegfried. 169 The Opera Past and Present Not the least merit of Wagner's third man- ner is its wondrous flexibility and adaptability. It can lend itself to every conceivable kind of drama, from the most exalted tragedy to the broadest farce. In its more colloquial phase it becomes the first German substitute for the Italian recitativo quasi-parlando ever discovered, a fit musical vehicle for homely dialogue. Nor does it lose caste amid the grandest and most elaborate musical developments. It is at once thoroughly dramatic and thoroughly musical. The general consensus of the world seems to be to-day that Wagner's greatest works are Tristan und Isolde, the infinite tragedy (brought out in Munich in 1865), and Die Meistersinger von Niirnberg, the homely comedy (originally con- ceived as a satirical counterpart to Tannhauser, brought out in Munich in 1868). These two are probably the only works for the lyric stage which, for poetry and intellectuality of concep- tion, perfection of execution, vividness of cha- racter-drawing, and general wealth of genius at its highest, can justly be ranked with Mozart's Don Giovanni. Of the two, Tristan may be deemed the more temporal and evanescent, it sums up the whole nineteenth century, the whole " Now " of artistic feeling ; Die Meister- singer has more of the monumental, of the eter- nally valid. 170 Wagner If it is difficult to determine which was the dominant bent of Wagner's genius, — the musi- cal, the dramatic, or the poetico-picturesque, — one can hardly escape recognizing the domi- nant trait of his character to have been com- bative energy. He was a born lighter; with his well-nigh excessive craving for human sym- pathy, his character was distinctly militant. Adverse criticism hurt him sorely ; it seemed to him a wanton refusal of that sympathy which, his whole nature told him, he had a right to demand of the world. But it spurred him on, was the stimulant which his militant genius most needed. Indeed, one can hardly help suspecting that the opposition he met with during the better part of his life may have been for something in shaping his work, and that much therein might have been different with- out it.* He was not in the least an intellectual hermit, could not live happily out of commu- nion with the rest of mankind. Not that his thirst for sympathy ever led him to alter his course by an iota for the sake of winning it, — there was not a grain of diplomacy in his com- position, and he carried firmness to the pitch of obstinacy, — but that, he looking instinctively upon sympathy as his natural right, it set his * In this respect, Wagner was very like another militant genius, who, in most others, is his diametrical opposite : Emile Zola. 171 The Opera Past and Present moral teeth on edge to find that, where he had asked for bread, he was offered a stone. He found the whole world out of joint, and was fully persuaded that he was the predestined man to set it right. Opposition was but fuel to his energy. With every successive work he brought forth, he seemed to say to the world : You found that, in my last work, I had gone too far in my chosen direction ; well, here you will see that I have gone still farther ! * Probably the finest practical illustration of Wagner's indomitable energy and faith in him- self was his conception and carrying-out of the Bayreuth scheme. This was to be the setting * Nothing could have shown more characteristically Wagner's craving for sympathy, his inflexibility in face of opposition, and also a certain naive inability of his to look at things otherwise than from his own point of view, than his writing Tristan und Isolde in 1857. He was half-way through the score of his Nibelungen- Ring, and interrupted his work because he felt an imperative need of renewing his relations with the general public, which had been severed ever since Lohengrin ; and the completion, let alone the production, of the Sing seemed then in a very dim and distant future. He accordingly set to work upon something which he thought would easily renew his relations with the public at large, something "simple and easily brought-out," not even requiring the paraphernalia of a court opera-house. And this work was Tristan, which was given up in despair, as "impossible," after nearly sixty rehearsals at the Vienna Hofoper, and, when at last produced in Munich, called forth a shriek of utter dismay from all but a few determined adherents. It was probably the direst dis- appointment of his life, 172 Wagner right of a disjointed world, as thorough a de- struction and reorganization of social operatic conditions as his Music-Drama itself was of the artistic form of the Opera — an event quite unique in the history of that form of art!* Seemingly wild as this Bayreuth scheme was, Wagner's energy made it a success — at least, in so far as he actually brought the Festspiel- haus and the performances into being. Well- nigh everything at Bayreuth was new : a new form of Lyric Drama was there to be given under new conditions ; it was to be the death- knell, not only of the old Opera, but of the old Opera-House as well. In speaking of Bayreuth, one enters upon delicate, quasi-political ground. The institu- tion already has a history, but does not quite belong to history ; it is still active. Yet Bay- reuth has been so important a factor in the ar- tistic life of the world for hard upon a quarter of a century, that it is impossible not to try to sum up the main results of the experiment — so far. * Unique, yes — as a whole. But how old some details are ! Remember how, at Bayreuth, the beginning of every act is an- nounced by apposite Leitmotiven, played on brass instruments. Well, at the performance of Monteverdi's Orfeo, in Mantua in 1607, the signals for raising the curtain were every time given by trumpets. 173 The Opera Past and Present Like the only other institution in the world which at all resembles it (if with some impor- tant differences), the Com^die - Frangaise in Paris, Bayreuth has helped teach one valuable lesson : that the first principle of all dramatic performance whatsoever is infinite painstaking and sinking the individual in the cooperative mass. To this principle Bayreuth has been unswervingly true from the first ; this, too, has been the prime element in what artistic success it has had. As a repository for firmly-established, au- thentic, and authoritative traditions, on the other hand, Bayreuth has been considerably a failure. Yet such a repository Wagner in- tended it primarily to be ; this was perhaps the part of his dream he had most at heart. That he, of all men, should have thought such a dream realizable seems strange ; for, of all men, he best knew how traditions are formed, and how they are (not) perpetuated. But the thing seemed to him so indispensable that he could not but believe it possible. If anything in this world is perishable, liable above all else to. deterioration and falsification, that thing is what is called a " tradition of per- formance." No true artist feels himself legiti- mately bound by it ; and, in this matter, true and sham artists unfortunately agree. A work 174 Wagner of art may be what we call " eternal," good for a very considerable time ; but a style of per- formance, no matter how authentic, is in its very nature transitory ; the world, sooner or later, outgrows its validity. A style of per- formance which is really admirable always reflects something of the spirit of its own time ; in this way only can it be fully intelligible, comprehensible. And it may truly be said that the surest test of a work of art's having some of the eternal essence in it is its power of adapting itself, in its voyage down the centu- ries, to successive, ever-changing styles of per- formance. If a work of art reflect, or embody, nothing more than the special spirit of its own time, then is its span of life measured ; for it is only by being ever fresh and new that it can hope to live. And, if it does so keep itself new, the new style will fit it as well as the old ; nay, better, for it will be the most faithful mirror of its newness. Not anchylosed tradi- tion, but keen, profound, vital understanding is the surest guide to the correct performance of such works as Wagner's music-dramas. And, if authentic traditions are no sure guide, what shall be said of unauthentic, or falsified ones? In so far as regards the establishment of authentic traditions, Bayreuth may well be said to have been a failure from the beginning. 175 The Opera Past and Present Only through Wagner's succeeding in com- pletely realizing his ideal could it have been in any degree a success. And, even in the per- formances given in his own lifetime at Bay- reuth, Wagner really fell considerably short of his ideal.* With a few distinguished excep- tions, he was absolutely unable to get the exe- cutive forces he needed; they did not exist! All he could do was the best he could. The result was that the Ring performances in 1876, and those of Parsifal in 1882, were by no means impeccable models; together with much that was admirable, there were many serious ble- mishes. And, as years went by, some of the worst blemishes were allowed to crystallize into " traditions," while much that was authen- tically good was more and more forgotten.f * Remember that sharply-criticised item in his speech at the congratulatory banquet : "So far have we brought it ; it now remains for you to complete the work, then we shall have a German Art ! " t Lapses even from the standard of 1876 and 1882 crept in almost immediately. As early as 1884 (under Scaria's stage- management, too!) the author saw with his own eyes Winkel- mann-Parsifal do a thing on the stage fit to make Wagner turn in his grave. After Gurnemanz's first rebuke for killing the swan, Mr. Winkelmann coolly nodded to someone behind the scenes, and then, without the faintest attempt at concealment, tossed his bow off the stage, to be caught in the wings. Der Ungliick- licke ! — as Mr. Carl Armbruster exclaimed, on hearing the story. 176 Wagner In a word, Bayreuth fell, little by little, into incompetent hands. The principle of starting where the original authority (the composer) left off, and then pro- ceeding thence in your own way, according to the dictates of your own artistic sense, is excel- lent in itself ; upon the whole, the only sound principle. But, as Captain Bunsby would say, the virtue of it lies in its application. When applied by highly cultivated, that is, compe- tent, professional musicians, it is one thing ; when applied by strenuous amateurs, no matter how sincere or gifted, it is quite another. And the trouble at Bayreuth has been that the man- agement of the performances there has fallen more and more into the hands of amateurs ; the thoroughly competent musicians, who knew what they were about, have been more and more compelled to quit the field in disgust — to save their own artistic dignity. The practical upshot of all of which is that the only reason of being to which Bayreuth can still lay just claim is that infinite pains-taking, which has never once been intermitted. If Bayreuth has gone wrong, it has gone carefully and most labori- ously wrong. But only in this one matter of pains-taking can it still stand before the world as a model. To take up but one instance of the formation 177 The Opera Past and Present and perpetuation of a bad tradition, it is worth noting that the very worst defects of German singing have been actually raised to the dignity of an authoritative " school " at Bayreuth. The world is told, and in no faltering voice, that a style of singing which Wagner abhorred, against which he protested, detail by detail, in his writings, with all the force of his indig- nant and scornful dialectics, and the direct op- posite of which he advocated — the world is told that this style is the authentic standard norm for Wagnerian singing.* Upon the whole, Bayreuth is no longer a trustworthy guide. If the world is henceforth to look anywhere for guidance in the matter of performing Wagner's music-dramas, it must look where it always has looked in similar cases: to competent, educated, and experienced professional musicians, even though they wear no " official " badge of authority ; the strenuous amateur can have no word to say. If the Bay- ' One strongly suspects the advocates of this abominable style of making a virtue flfc>-o (after Sardou; Milan, 1898). t This work consists of two main parts, Die Ilias and Die Odyssee. The former comprises the operas Achilles and Klytem- nestra ; the latter, the operas' Kirke, Nausikaa, Odysseus Heim- kehr, and Odysseus Tod. Die Odyssee was finished in 1896 ; Die Ilias is still unfinished. 204 The Present country, the serial idea is all that is in any way Wagnerian in the work.* The most successful men in Germany have gone over from Weber to Meyerbeer, rather than to Wagner ; in Grand Opera of a rather modernized Meyerbeer type some brilliant things have been done. In this vein at least two men have made their mark : Anton Rubin- stein (1830-1894) and Karl Goldmark (1830- still living). To be sure, Rubinstein's reputa- tion as an opera-writer has never been more than d'estime ; but his Der Thurm zu Babel (Konigsberg, 1870), Nero (Hamburg, 1879), ^"^ one or two others have made the round of Germany, or even crossed the frontier. Gold- mark's success has been decidedly more ge- * The serial opera mania broke out with some virulence in Ger- many shortly after the first Bayreuth year, 1876, but never came to much in the way of practical results. Mr. Arthur Nikisch used to tell hair-raising stories of MS. scores of tetralogies, pentalogies, and even a heptalogy, that were sent in for his approval when he was conductor at the Leipzig Stadt-Theater (before coming to Ameri- ca in 1889), ' ' with interlude-music on Leitmotiven all written out for brass instruments, h la Bayreuth." He said, too, that he was by no means the only conductor in Germany who had been sub- jected to this infliction. None of those wonderful scores seems, however, to have seen the light of the lamps. After all, the serial idea is not distinctively Wagnerian ; Berlioz wrote his Les Troyens — a serial work, consisting of two connected operas, La prise de Troie and Les Troyens i. Carthage — as early as 1856-63. 205 The Opera Past and Present nuine; his Die Konigin von Saba (Vienna, 1875) still outranks all but Wagner's operas in point of popularity and general esteem. His Mer- lin (1888) was not quite so well received. Still, Goldmark is unquestionably the most no- table opera-composer in Germany to-day. It would, however, be a bold man who should predict that either Nero or Die Konigin von Saba would ever work itself into so warm a place in the hearts of the German people, or have as long a life on the stage, as Marsch- ner's Templer und Judin or Hans Heiling- — both of which are pretty nearly dead by this time. If Verdi came to Wagner through Meyer- beer, this is doubly true of the present French composers. The progress of Opera in France, since Gounod, has been marked by a gradual stretching of the Meyerbeer formula in the Wagnerian direction. Until very recently it had not reached the snapping-point ; but it had, for years, been stretched and stretched until lit- tle of its original semblance was left. Exactly how far this or that French composer may have carried the process is hard to tell. No ade- quate idea of a modern opera can be formed from a pianoforte-score ; one must either hear the work itself, or study the full score. Ex- ceedingly few modern French operas have been 206 The Present given in this country ; and full scores are all but impossible to procure.* Even contemporary French accounts are confusing ; the term "Wagnerian" is used very loosely; it may mean this or that, according to the writer. Moreover, the French operatic movement of the last two decades has led to such very new developments that its true value, even its true character, can hardly be justly estimated to- day, even in France. This much may, however, be plausibly evolved : that the French have, as usual, been considerably theory-bound in their operatic do- ings for the last quarter of a century ; far more so than the Germans or Italians. Their racial infatuation for Logic, their profound respect for a scheme, or plan, have stood much in the way of their going to work naively and in- stinctively in their recent musical production. * Few persons, outside the musical profession, have any idea of the difficulty of procuring modern opera-scores, especially French and Italian ones. Publishers hang on to them like grim Death. Some notion of this difficulty may be formed from the fact that the full score of Bizet's V Arlisienne (the first orchestral suite) is not to be bought to-day for love or money, but only hired. A few years ago, a French publisher offered a collector — note, a collector; not a conductor or manager — twenty-five full scores of modern French operas for 12,500 francs ($2,500), and would not hear of letting anything less than the whole collection of twenty-five go ! Even opportunities like this are rare. 207 The Opera Past and Present Nearly everything they have done has been done with a fixed intent, and, especially of late years, have the Opera and Music in general been to them problems — to be solved intellec- tually. One is almost forced to the conclusion that no man of really commanding musical genius has appeared in French Music since Berlioz ; * no man who, by simply following his star, could find himself in a new path, without preconceived plan. No doubt the same may be said of Germany and Italy ; but neither of these countries has been so fruitful in brand-new developments in Opera as France has of late. Ever since the Wagner influence began to tell, France has evinced a burning thirst for progress in Music ; but it has tried to slake this thirst with pure inventiveness, by seek- ing to discover new paths with malice pre- pense, and, as it were, by precalculating ori- ginality. Since Gounod, French opera-composers may roughly be divided into two classes : those who try to be as Wagnerian as they can, and still remain French ; those who try to be as pro- gressive as they can, without being Wagnerian. * Cesar Franck alone is probably to be excepted here ; but he does not come within the pale of a history of Opera. Further- more, Franck was a Belgian ; having, to be sure, many affilia- tions with the French school, but of un-Gallic, Flemish blood. 208 The Present One might think these two aims very like two stools, between which a national Art was in some danger of coming to the ground. Wag- ner is, after all, at the heart of the matter ; to get at the Future by steering round him, or by working a passage through him and out on the other side — these are the problems that have occupied musical France for the last two de- cades, and longer. Since Gounod died, in 1893, the potentate of French Grand Opera, the " King of the Aca- demie de Musique," has been Jules Massenet (born at Montaud, Loire, in 1842).* Camille Saint-Saens (born in Paris in 1835) may be said to run him hard, but has never quite won his popularity and influence.! Among the more determined Wagnerians at the Academic de Musique may be mentioned Ernest Reyer (born in Marseilles in 1823), Gervais-Bernard Salvayre (born at Toulouse in 1847) and Em- manuel Chabrier (born at Ambert, Puy-de- D6me, in 1841 ; died in Paris in 1894).:!: * Massenet's grand operas have been : Le Roi de Lahore (Paris, 1877), H&odiade (Brussels, 1881), Le C»(/ (Paris, 1885), Le Mage (ibid., 1891), and Thais (ibid., 1894). t Saint-Saens has produced in Grand Opera : Samson et Dali- la (Weimar, 1877), Etienne Marcel (Lyons, 1879), Henry VIII (Paris, 1883), and .^j<:a««o (ibid., 1890). t Reyer's Sigurd was brought out at the Academic de Musique 209 The Opera Past and Present But more interesting than any recent devel- opments in Grand Opera is the course pursued by French op^ra-comique since this eminently "national" form received its first hard blow from Offenbach op^ra-bouffe in the 'fifties.* The first effect was to throw op^ra-comique into a more serious path, thus veiling all semblance of competition between it and its jaunty young rival. With Meyerbeer's Etoile du Nord (1854) and Le Pardon de Ploermel (1859), it had already begun to approach the form of Grand Opera — in extensive musical developments, in reducing the spoken dialogue to the smallest practica- ble proportions. This tendency was equally marked in Gounod's Mireille (1864), Ambroise Thomas's Mignon (1866), and Georges Bizet's matchless Carmen (iZj^.^ Indeed, Meyerbeer, Gounod, Thomas, and Bizet brought French op^ra-comique — as far as regards scheme, or plan in 1885 ; Salvayre's La Dame de Monsoreau, in 1888; Chabrier's Gwendoline, in 1893. The latter work was first given in Brussels in 1886, and has since been given in Carlsruhe (1889), Munich (1890), and Leipzig (1893, under Emil Paur). * Offenbach, his works, and imitators form no part of our pres- ent subject ; suffice it that opera-bouffe did deal op&a-comique a. severe blow, distracting public attention from the more "legiti- mate " form for a time, not only in Paris, but all over France. t Thomas was born at Metz in 181 1, and died in Paris in 1896; Alexandre-Cesar- Leopold {dii Georges) Bizet was born in Paris in 1838, and died at Bougival in 1875. The Present — up to the level of the larger forms of the German Spieloper, as treated by Beethoven, Spohr, and Weber. The spoken dialogue is the merest indispensable connecting thread be- tween the musical numbers, which latter occu- py the first place, and are often developed in a way, and to an extent, that would do no shame to Grand Opera. This direction has been pursued still farther by \Ao Delibes, in his Jean de Nivelle (1880) and Lakm^ {iH^) ; Victor Masse, in Une nuit de Cliopdtre (1885) ; Victorin de Joncidres, in Le Chevalier Jean (1885); Massenet, in Manon (1884), Esclarmonde (1889), Werther (1893), and Sapho (1897) ; Benjamin Godard, in Dante (1890) ; Saint -Saens, in Proserpine (1887) and Phryni (1893) ; and, above all, by Edouard Lalo, in his Le Roid'Ys (1888), which last work probably reaches the highest level of modern opira- comique* In some of these operas the spoken dialogue disappears entirely ; when we come to *Leo Delibes was born at Saiut-Germain-du-Val, Sarthe, in 1836, and died in Paris in 1891. Victor Masse was born at Lorient, Morbihan, in 1822, and died in Paris in 1884. Victorin de Jonciferes was bom in Paris in 1839. Benjamin Godard was born in Paris in 1849, and died at Cannes in 1895. Edouard Lalo was bom at Lille in 1823, and died in Paris in 1892. 211 The Opera Past and Present the extreme modern men (of whom more later), we find that this is the rule. The distinction between Grand Opera and opira-comique is no longer one of plan.* If the Wagner influence has been more or less fruitfully felt everywhere, one reaction against it — or rather against one phase of Wagner's example — is noteworthy. This is the reaction against what might be called "sea-serpent" operas.f The writing of exceedingly long ope- ras was not begun by Wagner; he only out- did most of4iis predecessors in that line. The original sinners were the composers for the Academie de Musique in Paris, Meyerbeer be- ing, if not the first, certainly the chief of them. Opera-goers in this country can hardly have a notion of the length of such works as Les Hugue- nots or L'Africaine, when given without cuts ; even when given as they are in Paris, with far fewer cuts than here. Wagner excused the in- * It should be said that the term opira-comique is not used on the title-pages of many of the more modern works ; the designa- tions drame-lyrique, or comddie-lyrique, are quite as common. But it has been thought best, for the sake of simplicity, to retain the older term here, as indicating an opera written for, and brought out at, the TheStre de I'Opera-Comique in Paris. It will be remembered that, for many years, this term has not necessarily implied anything of a comic character. t "Composers nowadays write veritable sea-serpent concertos, of enormous length ! " — Hans von Bulow. 212 The Present ordinate length of his Rienzi on the ground of its having been originally written for Paris, " for a public that did not take supper." * But the Meistersinger is fully as long as Les Hugue- nots (if not still longer), and has no Parisian excuse to show for it ! And, when we come to the four days of the Nibelungen, or Bungert's Odysseus, we have the " sea-serpent Opera " in its fullest bloom. The first reaction, or protest, came from Italy — where Wagner's Ring had become sufficiently known by that time — in 1890, in the shape of Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana. This short two-act opera, with an orchestral intermezzo that makes the two acts go at a single sitting, had what managers call a phenomenal success; it flew all over Italy and Germany in a jiffy, and the thitherto unknown Mascagni became suddenly a seven-days' wonder, the hero of the hour. The Cavalleria was followed, and its success capped, in 1892, by Leoncavallo's * When Wagner used to conduct this opera, as court Kapell- meister, in Dresden in the 'forties, the first two acts were given on one evening, and the third, fourth, and fifth on the next. The French mania for very long theatrical and musical enter- tainments is verily fit to make one stare ! What think you of this program of a Conservatoire concert? Mozart's G minor sym- phony, the whole of Saint-Saens's Deluge (an oratorio in three parts), and Beethoven's C minor symphony. The author sat through this, one Stmday afternoon in 1891. 213 The Opera Past and Present Pagliacci, another work of the same dimen- sions.* Cavalleria rusticana and Pagliacci soon made the round of the musical world. Of course the composers were hailed at first as epoch-making geniuses ; then (though not necessarily of course) they turned out to be mere flashes in the pan. Both men seem to have written them- selves out at the first dash ; for neither has been able to renew his maiden success.f What at first seemed genius was afterward found to be little, or nothing, more than that hap-hazard in- spiration under which very third-rate men have at times produced one supremely good thing of its kind, and then flickered out in their sockets.:]: There can be no doubt that the music of Caval- leria rusticana and Pagliacci is thoroughly genu- ine, if not particularly well-written, stuff ; then, both libretti are admirable in their straightfor- ward naturalism, though dripping with the rud- diest of gore. The success of these two works was so over- * Pietro Mascagni was born in Leghorn in 1863 ; Ruggiero Leoncavallo, in Naples in 1858. t The report that Mascagni wrote the Cavalleria hurriedly, on the spur of the Sonzogno prize, turned out to be a canard ; the opera may have been quickly put together, but was largely Sl pas- ticcio of music which Mascagni had been years in writing. t Rouget de Lisle's La Marseillaise and, in a less degree, Karl Wilhelm's Die Wacht am Rhein are instances of this, 214 The Present whelming, moreover, their shortness was so clearly an element of it, that Germany could not be long in following the Italian lead — Ger- many, a supper-eating country that could tell Italy the most pitiful tales of "sea-serpent operas" interfering with its favourite indul- gence! But the blood-curdling atrocities of Cavalleria and Pagliacci were not to be repeated by a nation possessed of a sense of humour ; if Germany was to chime in with Italy's reaction- ary protest against four- and five-hour operas, she must at least show the originality of herself reacting against the sensational blood-thirsti- ness of the Italian example. So, for carnal ex- uberance and murder, Germany would substi- tute the charm of her own Mdhrchen folk-lore ; a fertile field which Opera had, somehow, long forgotten to exploit. In December, 1893, — "^ot quite two years after Pagliacci, — Engelbert Humperdinck (born at Siegburg-on-the-Rhine, near Bonn, in 1858) came out triumphantly with his Hansel und Gretel ; which lead was followed two years later, in 1896, by Goldmark in Vienna with his Das Heimchen am Herd (the libretto adapted from Dickens's Cricket on the Hearth). These two little operas also made the rounds of musical Europe ; the opera-going world is awaiting more of the same sort. Two still newer departures in Opera, and of 215 The Opera Past and Present quite another character, are to be noted in France. The first of these was made almost simultaneously by Alfred Bruneau (born in Paris in 1857) ^"d Vincent d'Indy (born ibid, in 1851); it was nothing more nor less than writ- ing an opera to a prose libretto.* In 1897 Bruneau's Messidor, the prose text by fimile Zola, was brought out at the Acad^mie de Mu- sique; it was followed in 1898, at the Op6ra- Comique, by d'Indy 's Fervaal, the last word, so far, of French Wagnerianism, the text in "rhythmic prose." f In how far this example, which has certainly something to be said for it, * Native French composers had long felt the difficulty of fitting music, with its infinite variety of rhythms, to the regular iambic or trochaic metre of French verse — a matter which gave that Galli- cized German, Offenbach, no qualms, of conscience whatever. As far back as 1820, Castil-Blaze came out with a pamphlet arraign- ing composers for the liberties they took with French verse in their vocal writing ; Berlioz, on the other hand, sharply called the poets to account for writing verse that was unfit for good musical setting; no French poet, not even the finical Racine, making any bones of an ear-scorching hiatus between the last syllable of aline and the first of the next, which hiatus would become perfectly ap- parent in the midst of musical phrase. tThis "rhythmic prose" is something like what Jean Paul calls the Streckvers, or blank verse of indefinite length. John Bunyan falls into much the same vein in parts of his Pilgrim's Progress, as does also Dante in the Vita nuova. Probably the finest mo- dern examples of this sort of thing are to be found in Gustave Flaubert's SalammiS and La Tentation de Saint-Antoine. 216 The Present will be followed in future, remains to be seen. Bruneau has shown himself a come-outer in other ways, too ; it is to him that the world owes the conception of the op^ra naturaliste, as exemplified in his UAttaque du Moulin (Op6ra- Comique, 1893); a work in which the naturalis- tic idea does not, however, seem to be pushed essentially farther than in Mascagni's Caval- leria or Leoncavallo's Pagliacci. The other, and newest, departure has just been made by Gustave Charpentier (born at Dieuze, Lorraine, in i860) in his Louise (Op^ra- Comique, 1900); here the composer turns over an entirely original leaf. Unlike Wagner, who avowedly made his orchestra give a sort of running emotional commentary on the action and incidents of the drama (like the ancient Greek chorus), Charpentier confines his orches- tra to a suggestive painting of the milieu, or surroundings, in which the action takes place. As the action of Louise passes in the Mont- martre district of Paris, Bruneau has "put all Montmartre, all Paris into his orchestra " — hawkers' cries, the tunes played by itinerant venders on shrill-piping instruments, familiar street-noises, and what not else. Of what the dramatis persona themselves are doing, the or- chestra takes comparatively little heed. This may be regarded as the last-spoken word in 217 The Opera Past and Present modern Opera; what weight it may have, what echoes it may evoke in the future, heaven only knows.* * Concerning this Louise of Charpentier's, vide Miss Irene Davis, in The Musical Record for March, 1900, page no. FINIS. ziS APPENDIX PERI'S PREFACE TO EURIDICE To MY Readers: — Before offering you (kind Readers) this music of mine, I tliink proper to make known to you what led me to invent this new kind of vocal writing ; since reason must be the beginning and source of all human doings, and he who can not give his reason at once lays himself open to the suspicion of havmg worked at hap-hazard. Although our music was brought upon the stage by Sig. Emilio del Cavaliere, with marvellous originality, before anyone else I know of, it nevertheless pleased Signori lacopo Corsi and Ottavio Rinuccini (in the year 1594) to have me set to music the play of Dafne, written by Sig. Ottavio Rinuccini, treating it in another man- ner, to show by a simple experiment of what the song of our age is capable. Wherefore, seeing that I had to do with Dramatic Poetry, and must accord- ingly seek, in my music, to imitate one who speaks (and doubtless no one ever yet spoke in singing), it seemed to me that the ancient Greeks and Romans (who, in the opinion of many, sang the whole of their tragedies on the stage) must have made use of a sort of music which, while surpassing the sounds of ordinary speech, fell so far short of the melody of singing as to assume the shape of something inter- 221 Appendix mediate between the two. And this is why we find in their poems so large an use made of the Iambic Metre, which does not rise to the sublimity of the Hexameter, albeit it is said to overstep the bounds of ordinary speech. Therefore, abandoning every style of vocal writing known hitherto, I gave myself up wholly to contriving the sort of imitation [of speech] demanded by this poem. And, considering that the sort of vocal delivery applied by the an- cients to singing, and called by them vox diastematica (as if held in check and kept in suspense), could be somewhat accelerated, so as to hold a mean course between the slow and deliberate pace of singing and the nimble, rapid pace of speaking, and thus be made to serve my purpose (as they, too, adapted it to the reading of poems and heroic verse) by approaching the speaking voice, called by them vox continuata, as has also been done by our modern composers (if perhaps for another purpose) ; considering this, I also recognized that, in our speech, some sounds are intoned in such a way that harmony can be based upon them,* and that, in the course of conversation, we pass through many others which are not so intoned, until we return to one which is capable of forming a new consonance. And, having regard for the accents and modes of expression we use — in grief, rejoicing, etc I have made the bass move at * It will be seen that Peri here has in mind that sort of sing- song which is a prominent characteristic of ordinary Italian speech. 222 Peri's Preface to Euridice a rate appropriate to them, now faster, now slower, according to the emotions to be expressed, and have sustained it through both dissonances and conso- nances {ira le false, e tra le buone proporziont), until the speaker's voice, after passing through various de- grees of pitch, comes to those sounds which, being intoned in ordinary speech, facilitate the formation of a new consonance. And I have done this not only to the end that the vocal delivery shall neither wound the ear (as if stumbling in meeting with repeated chords or too frequent consonances) nor seem, as it were, to dance to the movement of the bass, especially in sad or grave passages which naturally call for others in a more lively and rapid movement, but also to the end that the employment of dissonances shall diminish, or conceal that ad- vantage* which is increased by having to intone every note — an advantage of which ancient music may perhaps have had less need. And finally (though I dare not assert that this was the sort of singing done in the Greek and Roman plays), I have deemed it the only sort that can be admissible in our music, by adapting itself to our speech. For this reason I communicated my opinion to those Gentlemen ; I showed them this new manner of singing, and it pleased them most highly — not only Sig. lacopo, who had already composed very beautiful airs for the same play, but Sig. Pietro Strozzi, Sig. Francesco Cini, and other gentlemen * I.e., the advantage of having a bass to sing to. 223 Appendix well up in the subject (for music flourishes amongst the nobility to-day), as well as that famous artist who may be called the Euterpe of our age, Signora Vettoria (sic) Archilei, one who has always made my music worthy of her singing by adorning it, not only with those turns and long vocal flourishes (di quel gruppi, e di quel lunghi girt di voce), both simple and double, which are at all times devised by the activity of her genius, — more in obedience to the fashion of our time than because she thinks they constitute the beauty and strength of our singing, — but also with those charms and graces which can not be written down, and, when written, are not to be learnt from the writing. It was heard and com- mended by Messer. Giovanbattista Jacomelli, who excels in every department of music, and has almost exchanged surnames with the Violin,* on which instrument he is admirable. And, for the three successive years that it was given in Carnival- time, it was heard with the greatest delight and received with universal applause by everyone pres- ent. But the present Euridice had even better for- tune ; not because it was heard by the Gentlemen, and other men of worth, whom I have named, and also by Sig. Conte Alfonso Fontanella and Sig. Orazio Vecchi, most noble witnesses to my idea, but because it was performed before so great a Queen and so many famous Princes of Italy and France, and was sung by the most excellent musicians of * He was known as Giovanbattista dal Violino. 224 Peri's Preface to Euridice our time ; of whom Sig. Francesco Rosi (sic), a nobleman of Arezzo, took the part of Aminta * ; Sig. Antonio Brandi, that of Arcetro ; and Sig. Melchior Palantrotti, that of Plutone ; and, behind the scenes, the music was played by gentlemen illustrious for nobility of blood or excellence in music : Sig. lacopo Corsi, whom I have so often mentioned, played a gravicembalo ; Sig. Don Grazia Montalvo, a chitar- rone ; Messer. Gio. Battista dal Violino, a lira grande ; Messer. Giov. Lupi, a liuto grosso. And, although I had then written it exactly in the shape in which it is now published, nevertheless Giulio Caccini (called Romano), whose supreme worth is known to the World, wrote the air of Euridice and some of those of the Pastore and the Ninfa del Coro, beside the choruses " Al canto, al ballo," " Sospirate," and "PoiM gli eterni imperi" ; and this because they were to be sung by persons dependent upon him. Which airs may be read in his score, com- posed, however, and printed after this of mine had been performed before Her Most Christian Majesty. Receive it, therefore, kindly, courteous readers, and, though I may not, this time, have reached the point I thought myself able to reach (regard for novelty having been a curb on my course), accept it graciously in every way. And perhaps it will come to * Francesco Rasi was a singer attached to Vincenzo Gonzaga in Mantua ; this, and his taking part in the performance of Eu- ridice, may account for the Florentine operatic lead being first followed at the Mantuan court. 225 Appendix pass on another occasion that I shall show you some- thing more perfect than this. Meanwhile, I shall think to have done enough if I have opened the path for the talent of others, for them to walk in my foot-steps to that glory to which it has not been given to me to attain. And I hope that my use of dissonances, played and sung discreetly, yet without timidity (having pleased so many and worthy men), will not trouble you ; especially in the sad and grave airs of Orfeo, Arcetro, and Dafne — which part was taken with much grace by lacopo Giusti, a young boy from Lucca. And may you live happy. Florence, February 6, 1600. 226 GLUCK'S PREFACE TO ALCESTE Your Royal Highness : — When I undertook to compose the music to Al- ceste, my intention was to rid it of all those abuses which, introduced either through the mistaken vanity of singers or the over-indulgence of composers, have so long disfigured Italian Opera, and turned the fin- est and most pompous spectacle into the most ridi- culous and tedious. I wished ^o reduce music to its true function, which is to second poetry in express- ing the emotions and situations of 'the play, with- out interrupting the Action nor chilling it with use- less and superfluous ornaments, and I believed that music ought to be to poetry what vividness of colour- ing and well-managed contrasts of light and shade are to a correct and well-composed drawing, serv- ing to animate the figures without marring the out- line. I accordingly have wished neither to stop an actor where the dialogue is at its warmest, in order to let the orchestra play a tedious ritornello, nor to hold him back on a favourable vowel in the middle of a word, that he may either show off the agility of his fine voice in a long roulade or wait for the orchestra to give him time to take breath for a cadenza. I have not thought proper to pass rapidly over the 227 Appendix second part of an air, even when it is the more important and passionate, so as to repeat the words of the first part the regulation four times, and end the air where the sense perhaps does not end, to give the singer an easy opportunity to show that he can capriciously vary a passage in as many differ- ent ways ; in fine, I have sought to banish all those abuses against which common sense and reason have so long protested in vain. I have deemed that the overture ought to apprize the spectator of the action to be represented, and, so to speak, constitute itself the argument ; that the cooperation of the instruments should be determined proportionately to the interest and passion [of a scene], and that no sharp contrasts between air and recitative should be left in the dialogue, so as not to stunt the period out of all reason, nor inappro- priately interrupt the vigour and warmth of the action. I have believed, furthermore, that my greatest efforts should be reduced to seeking for a beautiful simplicity, and have avoided making a display of difficulties, to the prejudice of clearness ; the dis- covery of a novelty has not seemed admirable in my eyes, except in so far as it was naturally suggested by the situation, or helpful to the expression ; and there is no rule of form which I have not thought best willingly to sacrifice to the effect. Such are my principles. Fortunately the libretto lent itself marvellously well to my purpose ; the 228 Gluck's Preface to Alceste celebrated author, having imagined a new scheme for the drama, had substituted the language of the heart, strong passions, interesting situations, and an ever-varied spectacle for flowery descriptions, super- fluous metaphors, and cold and sententious moral- izing.* Success has already vindicated my maxims, and the universal approbation of so enlightened a city has shown clearly that simplicity, truth, and naturalness are the prime principles of beauty in all productions of art. Still, notwithstanding repeated urging from most respectable persons, seeking to induce me to publish my work in print, I have felt all the risk one runs in combating such general and deeply - rooted prejudices, and have found myself under the necessity of being assured of Your Royal Highness's most powerful patronage, imploring the favour of engraving, at the head of my work, your August Name, which unites the suffrages of enlight- ened Europe with so much reason. The great Pro- tector of the fine-arts, reigning over a nation which has had the glory of raising them up from under universal oppression, and of producing in each of them the greatest models, in a city which has always been the first to cast off the yoke of vulgar preju- dice, to open for itself a way leading to perfection. He alone can undertake the reformation of that noble spectacle in which all the arts have so large a * Shades of the Camerata! and this is how Gluck treats youi sacrosanct Euripides ! — W. F. A. 229 Appendix share. If You succeed in this, the glory of having laid the first stone will remain to me, and also this public testimony to Your high Protection ; for which favour I have the honour to declare myself with the most humble respect, Y. R. H.'s Most humble, Most devoted. Most obliged Servant, Christophe Gluck.* * This preface is addressed to Leopold II., Grand-Duke of Tuscany. 230 INDEX Abt, F., 156 Academie Royale de Musique, Achibar^ rot du Mogol, 43 Adam und Eva, 39 Africaine, V, 129 Agnes von Hohenstauffen, 142 Aida, no, 197 Alboni, M. , 1S6 Alceste, 59, 227 Aleisandro Bala, 31 Alvary, Max, 190 Anacrian, 115 Andrea Chenier, 204 Anonyme deVaugirard, 1', 61 Arbre enchanU, L\ 64 Archilei, Vittoria, 19, 20, 224 Arianna, 25, 26 Ariosti, A., 52 Armidet 65 Arnaud, the AbbS, 61 Amould, Sophie, 67 Artaserse, 54, SS. 5^ Artusi, 62 Ascanio, 209 Ascanio in Alba, 77 Attaque du moulin, L\ 217 Auber, 118, 119, 120 Bach, J. S., 198, 199 C. P. E., 140 Balfe, M. W., 53 Ballet-music, 8, 9 Ballo in maschera, Un, 109 44 Baltazarini, see Beaujoyeulx Banchleri, Adriano, 8 Barbiere di Stviglia, II, 100, lOI Bardi, Giovanni, 14 Bastien und BasHenne, 83 Bayreuth scheme, the, 172 et seq. Beaujoyeulx, Balthasar de, 9 Beethoven, I34rf«y., 194 Beggars' Opera, The, S3 Bellini, V., 97, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106 Berlioz, H., 146, 147, 205, 208, 216 Bernacchi, A., 182 Berton, H.-M., 113 Berton, Pierre-M., 113 Bizet, G., 207, 210 Bohime, La, 203 Boieldieu, 118 Boito, A. , 202 Bonduca, 52 Bononcini, G. B., 52 Bosio, A. , 99 Brignoli, P., 18s Bruckner, A., 193 BruU, I., 152 Bruneau, A. , 216, 217 Bulow, H. von, 84, 212 Bungert, A., 204, 213 Caccini, Giulio, 14, 15, 20, 225 Caffarelli, 184 Caletti-Bruni, see Cavalli 231 Index Calzabigi, R. de', 57, S? Dante, 211 Cambert, R, , 44 Da Ponte, L., 87 Camerata, the, la, 15, 16, 18, as Davis, Irene, 218 Carestini, 184 Deidamia, 54 Carissimi, G., 32, 160 Delibes, L., 211 Carmen, 210 Dimophon, 115 Castil-Blaze, 123, 216 Der Teufel ist los, 152 Catherine de Medieis, 9 Despr^s, Josquin, 7 Cavaliere, Emilio del, 22, an Deux jourrties, Les, 119 Cavalleria rusticana, 213, 314, Diamants de la couronne. Let, 21S 119 Cavalli, Y.^zietseq. Dibdin, C, S3 Celler, Ludovio, 11 Dido and Aeneas, 52 Cesti, M. A., 32 etseq., 160 Dittersdorf, K. D. von, 153 Chabrier, E., 209 Doktor und Apotheker, 152 Charles d'Artois, 4 Don Carlos, no Charpentier, G., 217 Don Giovanni, 82, 87 et seq. , 164 Cherubini, L., 94, 114, 115, 119, et seq. lao, 141 Don Juan, 90 Chevalier Jean, Le, 211 Don Pasquale, 105 Cid, Le, 209 Donizetti, G., 97, 102, 103, 104 Cimarosa, D., 92 et seq. et seq. Circe, 40 Dorfbariier, Der, 152 Circi, Ballet de la Reine, 9 etseq. Doriclea, 30 Clemenza di Tito, La, 56 Dubarry, Mme. , 60 Corsi, Jacopo, 14, 19, 221 Dtu Foscari, I, 109 Cortex, Fernand, 116, 142 Durante, F., 56, 57 Costa, Sir M., 88 Croce, Giovanni, 8 Echo et Narcissb, 67 Crociato in Egitto, II, 125 Eichberg, J., 104 Cuzzoni, F., 184 EntfUkrung aus dem Serail, Die, Cythire assilgle, 64 152 Cxar und Zimmermann, 152 Ercole amante, 30, 43 Erismena, 30 Dafnb, 19, 25, 38, 221 Ernani, 109, in Dalayrao, 118 Esclarmonde, 211 D'Albert, E., 204 Etienne Marcel, 209 Dame Blanche, La, 118, 119 Etoile du Nerd, L' , 130, 210 Dame de Monsoreau, La, 210 Euridice, ao, 221 et seq. Danaides, Les, 68, 114 Euryanthe, 140, 148 23a Index Fanisica, 141 60 et seq. ; Iphiginie en Aulide, Farinelli, 184 61 ; controversy with Piccinni, Faust (Gounod), 133 61 et seq. ; return to Vienna, Faust (Spohr) , 139 64 ; back in Paris, 64 ; Armide, Fidora, 204 Iphiginie en Tauride, and Echo Fern, Die, 153 et Narcisse, 67 ; reforms in Fernand Cortex, 116, 143 opera, 68 et seq. ; the father of Fervaal, 216 modern opera, 70 ; character- Festa teatrale delta Finta Patza, istics of his operas, 70 et seq. ; La, 42 compared with Mozart, 73 ; Fidelia^ 134 et seq. compared with Meyerbeer, Finta semplice. La, 77 124 ; preface to Alceste, zzj Fliegende Hollander, Der, 154, Godard, B., 211 ■^ss Goldene Kreuz, Das, 152 Fortsch, J. P., 39, 41 Goldmark, Karl, 205, 206, 215 Forxa del destine, La^ no Gounod, C. , his place in Opera, Fra Diavolo, 119 132-133 ; Faust, 133 ; Rome'o et Franck, C, 208 Juliette, 133 Franck, J. W., 39 Greek Drama, 3, 18 Franz, R., 178 Gr^try, 118, 119 FreiscAUtz, Der, 140 et seq. , 149, Grimm, 61 ISO, 151 Grisi, G., 186 Guillaume Tell, loi, lai Gabrieli, G., 38 Gwendoline, 210 Gagliano, Marco da, 23 r Galilei, v., 14 Halbvy, J.-F., 131 Gay, John, S3 Halle, Adam de la, 4 German Comic Opera, 151-152 Handel, G. F.,35, 52,53 German Romantic Opera, 140 et Hans Heiling, 151, 206 seq. Hdnschen und Gretchen, 152 Giasone, 30 Hansel und Gretel, 215 Gioconda, La, 202 Hanslick, E. , 79 Gilbert and Sullivan operas, S3 Hasse, F.,184 Giordano, U., 203 Hasse, J. A., 77 Gizziello, 184 HSusliche KrUg, Der, 152 Gluck, C. W., birth and educa- Haydn, J., 152 tion, 54, 55 ; first opera, 55, 56 ; Heimchen am Herd, Das, 21$ travel and literary studies, 57 ; Henri III. , 9 et seq. production of Orfeo ed Euridice, Henry F///., 209 58 ; Alctste, 59 ; visit to Paris, Hirodiadt, 309 233 Index Herold, 119 Hiller, J. A., 152 Homerische Welt, 204 Horaces, Les, 114 Huguenots, Les, 129 Humperdinck, E. , 204, 215 Ilias, Die, 204 /ncoronatione di Poppea, V , 25 Individualism in Music, 17 et seq. Indy, V. d', 216 lone, ossia Vultimo ^orn-o di Pompeji, 201 Iphi^dnie en Aulide, 61 Ipkiginie en Tauride, 66 Irene^ 40 Italian Opera, 93 ei seq. JACOMBLLI, G., 224 yean de Nivelle, 211 yery und Bafhely, 152 yessonda, 139 Jommelli, N., 36 Joncieres, V. de, 211 yoseph, 118 yuive. La, 131 Kbiser, R., 40, 41 Konigin von Saba, Die, 206 Krauss, G. , 99 Kreutzer, K., 152 Kreuzfahrer, Die, 139 Kucken, F. W., 156 Lablachb, L., 186 Laguerre, 66 La Harpe, 61. 62 LaknU., 211 Lalo, E. , 211 Laniere, N., 50 Lehmann, Lilli, 99 Leitmotiv idea, 164 et seq. , 194 Leoncavallo, 203, 213, 214 Leopold II., 227-230 Leporello, 168 Lichtenstein^ 151 Liebesverbot, Das, 153 Und, Jenny, 186 Lindpaintner, P. von, 151 Logroscino, N., 37 Lohengrin^ 157 et seq. Lombardi alia prima crociata, /, 109 Lortzing, A., 132 Louise, 217 Lucia di Lammermoor., 104 Lucrezia Borgia, 104, 105 Lully, J.-B. , 45 et seq. Lustigen Weiber von Windsor, Die, 152 Madrigal plays, 7 Mage, Le, 209 Mala vita, 204 Malibran-Garcia, M. F., 186 Manon, 211 Maometto II, 121 Marcello, B., 36 Maria de' Medici, 20 Marie Antoinette, 60 Maretzek, Max, 88 Mario, G., 186 Marschner, H., 151, 206 Masaniello, 120 Mascagni, 203, 213, 214 Masse, V., 211 Massenet, Jules, 209 Matrimonio segreto, II, 92 Midie, 119 234 Index Mefistofele, iiai. Muette de Poriici, La, 114, I20, Mehul, 113, 118 121 et seq. Meisttrsinger von Nurnberg, Die, 170, 199, aoo Nabucco, 109 Mendelssohn, 194 Nachtlager in Granada, Das, 132 Mercadante, S., 97 Nero, 205 Merlin, 206 Neue krumme Teufel, Der, 152 Messidor, 216 Nicolai, Otto, 132 Metastasio, S7, S8 Nicolini, 184 Meyerbeer, G., Wagner's criti- Nikisch, A., 203 cism of, 123-124; influence upon Norma, 105 the opera, 124 ; compared with Nourrit, A., 128, 131 Gluck, 124 ; birth and early Noeze di Figaro, Le, 87, 88 career, 125 ; Robert le Diable, Nozze di Teti e Peleo, Le, 29, 30 126 et siq. ; later operas, 129 ; Nuitde CUopatre, Une, 211 operatic style, 129-130 Nurmahal, oder das Rosenfest xu Mignon, 210 Kaschmir, 142 Mireille, 210 Mciise en Bgypte, 121 Oberon, 140, 130 Monsigny, iiS Odyssee, Die, 204 Monteverdi, C, 16, 23 et teg.. Odysseus, 213 173 Offenbach, 210, 216 Mosd in Egitto, 98, 121 Olympie, 116 Mozart, Leopold, 76 Opera-comique, 117 et seq. Mozart, W. A., compared with Opira d'Issy, L', 43 Gluck, 73 et seq. ; influence on Opera scores, difficulty of ob- operatic development, 73, 76 i taining, 207 birth and childhood, 76, 77 ; Operatic singers, early school of. death and burial, 78 ; power of 182 et seq. ; later school, 186 et character - drawing, 79, 80 ; seq. ; present day difliculties of. ideality of, 79, 80 ; remarkable 189 et seq. memory of, 81-82 ; method of Opitz, M., 38 composing, 82 ; his various Oratorio style of Opera, 34 etseq.. operas, 82-83 '< his Itahan style, S3 83-S4 : development of the act- Orazj e Curiazj, Gli, 93 finale, 8s ; his musical formula. Orfeo, 23, 173 84-86 et seq. ; analysis of his Orfeo ed Buridice, 38, 39 Don Giovanni,^ et seq.; effect Orontea, 32 of his work on history of Opera, Orphee et Euridice, 63 91 Orsini, MafTeo, 105 235 Index Otello (Rossini), 99 Otello (Verdi), 199 Pacchiarotti, 184 Pacini, G. , 97, 102 Paer, F., 141 Pagliacci, 214, 215 Pardon dt Ploermel^ Le, 210 Parepa, E., 99 Paride ed Elena, S9 Pastorale en Musigue, La^ 43 Pepusch, Dr., 53 Pergolesi, 37 Peri, Jacopo, 14, 15, 19, 20, 221 et seq. Perrin, P., 43, 44, 45 Persiani, F., 186 Petrella, E. , 201 Philidor, 118 Philtre, Le, 118 Phryni, 2H Piccinni, 37, 64, 65 et seq., 67 Piccolomini, Maria, 99 Pistocchi, A., 182 Planch^, J. R. , 150 Polyphonic music in Opera, seq. Pompeo, 34 Ponchielli, A., 201 Prl aux clercs, Le, 119 Prise de Troie, La, 205 Prof kite, Le, 129 Proserpine, 211 Provenzale, F., 31 Puccini, G. , 202-203 Purcell, H., 51 et seq. QuiNAULT, P., 46 Ramiau, J. -P., 48 etseg. 22, S't Reichardt, J. F., 152 Renaissance in Italy, 12 et seq. Reyer, E. , 209 Rheingold, Das, 168 Rienzi, 153, 154 Rigoletto, 109, III Rrnuccini, Ottavio, 14, ig, 31, 25, 221 Robert le Diable, 126 et seq,, 165 Robin et Marion, 4, 7 Roeder, M., 199, 200 Roi de Lahore, Le, 209 Roi d'Ys, Le, 211 Roland, 6$, 66 RoUet, le bailli du, 59, 60 RonUo et yuliette, 133 Ronconi, G., 186 Rosamunde, 148 Rossi, L. , 43 Rossini, G., characteristics of his style, 97 et seq.; his Barbiere diSiviglia, loo-ioi; Guillaume Tell, 121 ; unproductiveness in later life, 122 Rouget de Lisle, 214 RUbezahl, 139 Rubini, G. B., 186 Rubinstein, A. , 205 Ruggiero, 77 Runciman, J. F., 32 Saffo, 102 Saint-Saens, C. , 209, 211 Salieri, A., 68, 114 Salvayre, G.-B., 209 Sammartini, G. B., sSi 77 Samson et Dalila, 209 San Cassiano Opera House, 36, 28 Saphe, 211 Z36 Index Sarti, G., 94 Scarlatti, A., 34 Schiavo di sua moglie^ II, 31 Schmid, Anton, 63 Schopenhauer, 105 Schubert, F., 152 Schutz, H. , 38 Schwtizerfamilie, Die, 152 SeeUwig, 38 Semiramide, 98 Senesino, 184 Serial opera mania, 205 Serse, 43 Serva padrona, La^ 37 Silge de Corinthe, Le, 121 Siegfried, 168, 169 Sigurd, 209 Sinfonia, 93-94 Singing as an art, 180 et seg. Singing in Opera, 183 et seg. Societi del Quartette, the, 93 Sonnamtula, La, 105 Spinelli, N., 203 Spitta, P., 178 Spohr, L., 139, 143, 144, 147 Spontini, G., 115, 116, 141, 142 Stabreim, the, 166 Steinerne Herz, Das, 152 Stellidaura vtndicata. La, 31 Strauss, Richard, 204 Sylvana, 140 Tamburini, a., 186 Tannhduser, 117, 155 et seg. Tar are, 114 Tate, N., 52 Tempter und die jfudin, Der, ■151, 206 Thais, 209 Theatre-Favart, 119 ThSatre-Feydeau, 119 Theile, J., 39 Thomas, A. , 210 Thurm zu Babel, Der, 205 Tietjens, T., 99 Tosca, La, 203 Traviata, La, 109 Tristan und Isolde, 170, 172, 199 Trmatore, II, 109, no, 198 Troyens a Carthage, Les, 205 Unterbrochmns Opferfmst, Das, 152 Valle, Pietro della, 19 Vampyr, Der, 151 Van Dyck, Ernest, 178 Vaudeville, 4 Vecchi, Orazio, 8 Verdi, G., -^ new force in opera, 107-108 ; power of artistic growth, 108-109 ; various periods of composition, 109- iio; Aida, 197; Italian reaction against, 196 et seg.; Otello, 199, 200 ; Falstaff, 200, 201 Vestale, La, 116, 142 Voto, II, 204 Waffenschmied zu Worms, Der, 152 Wagner, R. , remarkable mem- ory of, 82 ; compared with Mozart, 85, 86 ; earlier operas, IS3 ; opera of Rienzi, 153 ; Der fliegende Hollander, IS4-XSS '• Tannhduser, 155 et seg. ; Lohen- grin, 157; attitude toward operatic conventions, 157 ; un- dramatic act-finales in early operas, 158-159; exile and 237 Index theoretical works, 159 ; Oper und Drama, 161-162 ; reforms in operatic writing, 160 et seq. ; theory of the supernatural in the Drama, 163 ; theories of the music-drama, 163 et seq. ; the Leitmotiv idea, 164 et seq. ; fundamental principles of his third manner, 167 et seq. ; the Rin^ des Nitehingen dramas, 168 et seq. ; Tristan und Isolde, 170, 172; Die Meistersinger von Niirnberg, 170 ; militant character, 171-172 ; craving for sympathy, 171-172 ; the Bayreuth scheme, 172 et seq. ; failure of Bayreuth traditions, 174 et seq. ; imitators and fol- lowers, 193-194 ; spread of his ideas, 194-19S Wallace, V., 53 Water Carrier, The, 119 Weber, Aloysia, 77 Weber, Constanze, 77 Weber, K. M. von, birth and pe- digree, 139-140 ; early operas, 140 ; Der Freisckiitz, 140 ; his influence on German romantic opera, 140 e^ seq. , 147 et seq. ; services to the opera, 148-149 ; characteristics as a composer, 149 et seq. ; influence on Wag- ner, IS4 Weigl, J., 152 Werther, 211 Wildschiltz, Der, 152 Wilhelm, K., 214 Winkelmann, H., 176 Winter, Peter von, 152 Zampa, 119 ZauherJKie, Die, 83 Zauierschloss, Das, 152 Zweihampf mit der Geliebten, Der, 139 238 THE MUSIC LOVER'S LIBRARY In Feoe Volumes, each illxxstraied, l2mo, $1.25 net. CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, Pablishers A series of popular volumes— historical, biographical, anecdotal and descriptive — on the imporiant branches of the art of music, by turiters of recognized authority. JUST PUBLISHED The Opera, Past and Present An Historical Sketch By WILLIAM F. APTHORP Author of '^Musicians and Music Lovers," etc. With 8 portraits, i2mo, $1.25 net PARTIAL CONTENTS I. II. III. Beginnings The European Conquest Gluck IV. Mozart V. 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