The Great Musicians: Rossini and His School

In 1835 Donizetti visited Paris, and there brought out his Marino Faliero, remembered for a time by several pretty pieces, including, in particular, the opening chorus for the workmen in the arsenal, and a chorus of gondoliers at the beginning of the second act. He was more successful when revisiting the French capital, in 1840, he produced there his opera of I Martiri, founded on the subject of Polyeucte which, composed for Naples with a view to Nourrit in the principal part, had been objected to by the Neapolitan censorship; La Fille du Régiment, written for and performed at the Opéra Comique; and La Favorite composed in the first instance for a house of the second rank, the Théâtre de la Renaissance, but afterwards transferred to the Académie. La Favorite– or La Favorita, as it became after passing from the French to the Italian stage – has, like Lucrezia Borgia, the advantage of being founded on a highly dramatic story. It is based on a French drama known, until the opera caused it to be forgotten, as Le Comte de Comminges; and it seems to owe its origin to a Spanish work. In La Favorita, as in most Spanish plays, there is no unfolding of the plot through introductory narrative. The action, from the beginning, takes place beneath the eyes of the spectator. A young man, already tired of the world, is seeking repose in the seclusion of a monastery. But he has been troubled by a vision. The vision still haunts him, and the prior vainly exhorts him in a duet to abandon all thought of the external, and to concentrate his attention on the inward and spiritual. Fernando's adventures with the beautiful lady who turns out to be the "favourite" of the king, the recompense bestowed upon him in the shape of this lady's hand for the valour he has shown in the king's service, and his ultimate return to the monastery when he finds how bitterly he has been deceived, need not here be recounted. It is worth observing, however, that the success of the opera has been in a great measure due to the excellence of the libretto; and that in all really good libretti, as in that of La Favorita, the action of the piece, instead of being related, is presented continuously on the stage. The duet of the first act for Fernando and the chief of the monastery is sufficiently interesting. The choruses of women and the ballet music (of which these choruses form part), in the second act, are graceful and melodious; and the king's air in the third act, Pour tant d'amour, has been always liked both by the popular baritones who sing it and by the public. Leonora's scena, too, "O mon Fernand," possesses, at least in the slow movement (the quick one being quite unworthy of it), a certain amount of beauty. But the fourth act of La Favorita is worth all the rest of the opera, and it may well be regarded as the finest act Donizetti has composed. The calmness and purity of the tenor's air, "Ange si pur," and the passionate impulsiveness of the final duet for the despondent lovers, are eminently dramatic: the character of each piece being perfectly in accord with the situation. The choruses are highly impressive, and the whole scene becomes filled with earnest animation as it moves towards the final climax. Donizetti is said to have sketched and in the main to have completed this act at a single sitting, and in the space of some three or four hours. The andante, however, of the duet was added at the rehearsals; and the cavatina, "Ange si pur" was borrowed from the score of a work never brought out —Le Duc d'Albe. If there could be any doubt about the fact, it would be difficult to believe that Fernando's air had not been inspired by the situation in which it occurs. So, after all, in a measure it was; since the composer took it from elsewhere to introduce it where he knew it would be in place.

La Favorita was by no means Donizetti's last work. He had yet to write Linda di Chamouni, in which there is more of what is called "local colour" than in any other of his operas; and Don Pasquale, which, apart from the brightness and gaiety of its never-ending series of melodies, would be remembered if only from the circumstance of its having been written for that incomparable quartet, Grisi, Mario, Tamburini, and Lablache. The very year (1843) that Donizetti produced Don Pasquale at Paris he brought out Maria di Rohan at Vienna. The music of Maria di Rohan is in some respects the most dramatic that Donizetti has written. The libretto, like almost every good libretto, is based on a French play —Un Duel sous Richelieu; and it contains a very strong part for the baritone, in which, at our Royal Italian Opera, Ronconi has often shown the highest histrionic genius, together with a certain inability to sing in tune. Maria di Rohan, however, is not to be called dramatic simply because it contains one great dramatic part. What is more important is the fact that the music of the work is appropriate to the various personages and to the great situations of the piece. In portraying the original of the jealous husband, Donizetti exhibits all the earnestness and vigour of Verdi, whom, as before observed, he resembles more in Maria di Rohan than in any of his earlier works.

Donizetti's last opera was Catarina Cornaro, brought out at Naples in 1844. This was his sixty-third dramatic work, without counting a certain number – variously estimated, but not likely to be great – which have not been represented. At least two-thirds of Donizetti's operas have never been heard in England. Soon after the production of Catarina Cornaro Donizetti fell into a melancholy condition. Symptoms of dementia manifested themselves while he was on a visit to Paris. The doctors thought the air of his native town might have some salutary effect, and the patient was accordingly ordered to Bergamo; but the case was already a hopeless one. He was taken to Bergamo, but was attacked with paralysis on the journey; and soon after his arrival, having experienced a second attack, he succumbed.

Donizetti, as has already been said, worked for some time before and for many years after Bellini, whom he preceded and survived. Bellini was born in 1806, nine years after Donizetti, and died in 1837, thirteen years before him. He was a native of Sicily, and his father, with whom he took his first lessons in music, was an organist at Catania. The organist was persuaded to send his son to Naples by a Sicilian nobleman, who promised to pay his expenses as a student at the famous Conservatorio, which he in due time entered, and where he had for fellow-pupil Mercadante – more or less known whereever Italian opera has been cultivated by his Giuramento, the only one of his numerous works which ever met with anything like an enduring success. Mercadante was a better musician than Bellini. But he possessed far less creative power; and his creations or inspirations in the shape of melodies are seldom comparable in beauty to those of which the scores of La Sonnambula, Norma, and I Puritani are so full. The tenor's love-song in Il Giuramento, and the highly dramatic duet which brings that opera to a conclusion, will be remembered by all who have once heard this masterpiece of a composer who did not produce masterpieces. Opera-goers of the last thirty years cannot altogether forget him; and it may in particular be observed that he made a far more effective use of the orchestra than his more divinely endowed fellow-student, who thought and felt in melody as Ovid, and afterwards Pope, "lisped in numbers: " every sequence of notes that occurred to him being melodious.

Bellini composed his first work while he was studying at the Conservatorio, where it was afterwards performed. His next production was intended for the outside public. It was entitled Adelson e Salvino, and had the honour, or at least the advantage, of being represented in the presence of the illustrious Barbaja, who, without being a musician, was, as we have already seen, a keen appreciator of musical excellence. It would have been necessary, perhaps, to have been a little blind not to perceive the merit of three such masters as Rossini, Donizetti, and Bellini. Such blindness however, was as a matter of fact exhibited by a good many, whereas the ex-waiter of the San Carlo gambling saloon showed himself clear-sighted in the matter. Rossini and Donizetti had both been under engagements to Barbaja, and he was not going to allow Bellini to escape him. The famous impresario was at this time director of the San Carlo at Naples, of the Scala at Milan, of some smaller operatic establishments in Italy, and of the Italian Opera at Vienna. He commissioned Bellini in the first place to write an opera for Naples, where, in 1826, he brought out his Bianca e Fernando. This work obtained no very great amount of success. But it pleased a considerable portion of the public; and it so far satisfied Barbaja that the sagacious manager entrusted the young composer, now twenty years of age, with the libretto of Il Pirata, in which the principal part was to be written specially for Rubini. This time Bellini's opera was to be produced at La Scala. In the simple touching melodies of Il Pirata– of which the principal one for the tenor, quickly laid hold of by composers for the pianoforte and the violin, was still remembered long after the opera, as a whole, had been forgotten – Bellini at once revealed the character of his genius; and the composer of twenty was destined to express the reaction he felt within himself, and which the public was prepared to feel, against the florid style of Rossini. While composing Il Pirata, Bellini retired into the country with the singer on whose execution the success of the work would so much depend. Rubini sang the melodies of his part as Bellini wrote them; and Bellini is said not to have succeeded all at once in inducing him to abandon his taste for ornamentation, and in prevailing upon him to deliver the simple phrases of his principal airs, not only from the chest, but also from the heart. Rubini and his composer, Bellini and his singer, soon understood one another; and in his great scene the admired tenor excited the utmost enthusiasm. Now were fulfilled the words of the prophet Stendhal (or perhaps it was the seer Carpani beneath whose mantle Stendhal, we know, was in the habit of concealing himself), who, writing only some two or three years before, had foretold that Rossini would be followed by a composer remarkable for the simplicity of his style.

After producing in succession La Straniera (Milan, 1828), Zaira (Parma, 1829), Bellini brought out at Venice his operatic version of Romeo and Juliet, under the title of I Capuletti ed i Montecchi which owed such success as it obtained to the singing of Mdle. Pasta, as Il Pirata had been indebted for the favour with which it was received to the singing of Rubini. The years 1829, 1830, 1831, and 1832 are especially memorable in the history of Italian opera; for in the first of these Rossini's William Tell, in the second Donizetti's Anna Bolena, in the third Bellini's Sonnambula, and in the fourth Bellini's Norma, was produced. The Italian school of operatic music was certainly at that time supreme in Europe; and Rossini, Donizetti, and Bellini continued for many years to hold sway at theatres where they have now to share their dominion with the composers of France and Germany – with Gounod, Ambroise Thomas, and Bizet, with Meyerbeer and with Wagner.

La Sonnambula, as the work of a new composer, was a good deal sneered at on the occasion of its first production in London. But its endless flow of melodies – many of which, being full of true emotion, are so far thoroughly dramatic – could not fail to ensure its success, with the public at large; and this success, now of half a century's duration, has scarcely diminished since the part of Amina was first undertaken by Pasta, and that of Elvino by Rubini. Our old friend, Lord Mount-Edgcumbe, true type of the praiser of times gone by, having been scared by Rossini, was not likely to be calmed down by Bellini. Of Norma he tells us that the scene of the opera was laid "in Wales," and that it "was not liked." It is difficult to understand the mood of one, having ears to hear, who, whatever he might think of Norma as a specimen of the highest kind of tragic opera, could fail to "like it." Rossini, together with a mass of opera-goers in all countries, was of those who not only "liked" but greatly admired Norma; and he gave the composer the benefit of his counsels when the still young Bellini (he was even now only thirty years of age) undertook to write an opera for the Italian Theatre of Paris, with Grisi, Rubini, Tamburini, and Lablache in the principal parts. The effect of Rossini's advice may be seen in the greater degree of attention paid by Bellini to the orchestration of I Puritani and to the concerted music. It would have been well if some one had recommended Bellini not to set to work upon so poor a libretto as that of I Puritani derived from Ancelot's poor novel, Les Puritains d'Ecosse. Rubini's air, "Ah te, o cara," the polacca for Grisi, the duet in three movements for Tamburini and Lablache, – as to which Rossini, writing an account of the opera to a friend at Milan, remarked that some echo of the final outburst for the two voices, with its brazen accompaniments, must surely have reached him, – and the beautiful tenor solo of the closing concerted piece: these in themselves must have been enough to secure the success of the opera. The last-named melody for the tenor voice, so thoroughly religious in character, was sung at Bellini's funeral to the words of the Lacrymosa; and it was in the midst of the enthusiasm created by his last work that Bellini, at the age of thirty-eight, died.

CHAPTER XIII.

VERDI

GUISEPPE VERDI, the successor at once of Bellini and of Donizetti, but whose energetic style bears a far greater resemblance to that of Donizetti in his later works (Maria di Rohan, for instance) than to that of Bellini, was born near Parma, on the 9th of October, 1814. His father was an innkeeper in a humble way of business, and Verdi's first lessons in music were taken from the local organist. In 1833, thanks to the assistance of a rich patron of art, he went to Milan, where for three years he studied under Lavigna, musical conductor at the Scala Theatre. It was not until 1839 that he succeeded in getting his first opera, Oberto, Conte di San Bonifazio, produced. But the manager of the Scala, where it was performed was so satisfied with its success that he gave the young composer an order for three other works. Unfortunately at this juncture Verdi lost a wife whom he had recently married and to whom he was tenderly attached. He had just undertaken the uncongenial and now hateful task of composing an opera buffa entitled, Un Giorno di Regno; and, as might have been expected, this work was somewhat deficient in comedy. It failed; and so complete was the fiasco that the director of La Scala felt himself justified in declining to receive from Verdi the two other operas which he had agreed to take.

The unhappy composer had now to begin his career again; and as the first step he passed a year without writing a note. He then set to work once more and composed his well-known opera on the subject of Nebuchadnezzar, called familiarly Nabuco. Nabucodonosore, produced in London, where the biblical subject had been objected to by the censorship, under the title of Nino, was the first work by which Verdi became famous out of his own country; and the success of Nabuco became in due time European. Nabuco (1842) was followed by I Lombardi (1843), and Ernani (1844); and the three works by which Verdi established his reputation in Italy were all given without much delay at Her Majesty's Theatre. The first production, in fact, of Verdi's works dates from immediately before the secession which led to the establishment of the Royal Italian Opera. An opera on the subject of the Two Foscari was brought out at Rome in 1844, and some three or four years afterwards was given at the Royal Italian Opera, with Ronconi in the principal part. Ernani, however, at both our rival opera houses was for some time the most admired and the most often played of the new composer's works.

At this time Verdi's music met with but little appreciation from critics, who declared it to be noisy and commonplace, and who were particularly offended by so much brass being employed in the orchestration, and by so many of the choruses being written in unison. The new composer was accused, moreover, of passing too abruptly from one piece to another, of not sufficiently preparing his effects, and so on. We have seen how Rossini was attacked when his operas were first produced in England; and the Lord Mount-Edgcumbes of 1848, and indeed of many years later, were thoroughly dissatisfied with Verdi, whom it was the fashion to represent in the newspapers of the day as a sort of melodramatic mountebank. Even as late as 1856, when the richly melodious, and in many respects highly dramatic Trovatore was given at the Royal Italian Opera, the talent, or rather the genius of Verdi, was still systematically denied. The style in which Verdi's operas were habitually executed in London may have had something to do with the charges pressed so energetically against him. Those, however, who have heard Verdi conduct his own works are aware that though his scores may contain parts for a considerable number of brass instruments, yet the brassiness of the orchestra is kept down and a proper balance of sonority maintained. Fully informed as to why Verdi's works ought not to be admired, the public of London persisted in admiring them; and it may be here mentioned that for some years Verdi was not much better treated by the critical press of France than by that of England. M. Scudo, writing in the Revue des deux Mondes found in Verdi the same faults already mentioned as those of which he was habitually accused in England. Il Trovatore, however, did much towards converting M. Scudo; and the success of that work, if not the work itself, did much to shake the faith, or rather the unfaith, of those English critics and connoisseurs who had previously disbelieved in Verdi. The production of Rigoletto at the Royal Italian Opera a year or two later, with Madame Bosio (most charming of Gildas), Signor Mario, and Signor Ronconi in the principal parts, made those who were still sceptical as to Verdi's high merits appear somewhat ridiculous. La Traviata, with its questionable story derived from the younger Dumas's novel and play of La Dame aux Camélias, was a good deal blamed by reason of its libretto; and also on account of the alleged triviality of the music, which, however, thanks to the tone of genuine emotion in many of its strains, still lives, and is now, indeed, more popular than ever.

Verdi's success in England was confirmed, and more than confirmed, by the production at the Royal Italian Opera of Un Ballo in Maschera (founded on the same subject as Auber's Gustave III.), with an execution which was above all remarkable for the style in which the part of the Duke, vaguely described as "Il Duca," was played by Signor Mario, and that of Renato, whose wife the Duke betrays, by Signor Graziani; and for the last twelve or fifteen years it has been considered bad taste not to admire Verdi's music. Indeed, since Aïda, his latest, most serious, most studied, and, in the true sense of the word, most dramatic opera, it has become the fashion in some musical circles to place him above all other Italian composers, to contrast the significance of his melodies, the characterisation of his personages, and the forcible construction of his scenes, with the careless, haphazard stringing together of meaningless, if singable tunes, and of ingenious rather than dramatic concerted pieces which mark the style or want of style of so many Italian composers. It is only fair, however, to remember that Verdi has not yet surpassed William Tell, that he has produced nothing superior in the way of concerted finale to the celebrated one which closes the second act of Lucia, and that he scarcely could have treated the last act of La Favorita more dramatically, or with a greater abundance of melodic ideas than Donizetti – here by the way, writing at times very much in Verdi's own manner.

In pursuing the story of Verdi's constantly increasing success among the English we have departed from the general history of his career. It must be mentioned, however, that many of Verdi's operas which gained great favour in Italy have either never been given in England at all, or have been performed in this country without exciting much enthusiasm. Nor was any great impression made in England by the work which, under the title of Masnadieri, Verdi wrote expressly for Her Majesty's Theatre in the days of Jenny Lind, with Jenny Lind herself, Gardoni, and Lablache in the principal parts. No one seems to have suggested that Verdi's King Lear should be performed in England; but from time to time there has been some talk of producing his Macbeth, of which a French version was brought out, not unsuccessfully, at the Théâtre Lyrique of Paris, with some additional music, and especially some new ballet scenes by the composer.

It is scarcely worth while to recall Verdi's failures: but Luisa Miller and La Forza del Destino must in fairness be reckoned among the number. Luisa Miller is based on the theme of Schiller's pathetic but over-dolorous drama Cabale und Liebe. For the basis of La Forza Verdi did not have recourse to Schiller as in the case of Luisa Miller and I Massdieri, nor to Victor Hugo as in that of Ernani and of Rigoletto (Le Roi s'amuse). His librettist borrowed the subject from a most sanguinary melodrama by a Spanish author of some distinction, though with such bloodthirsty tendencies that he brings almost every character in his play to a violent end, while one of the leading personages, after apparently meeting his death, is restored to life to be killed again. In La Forza del Destino the composer has so neglected the concerted music that the work does not include one regularly constructed concerted piece. It contains, however, some beautiful melodies for the solo voice, including one in particular assigned to the prima donna, which Verdi, from having inscribed it beneath one of his best portraits, would seem to regard as characteristically his own. Of Verdi's Requiem, composed in memory of Manzoni, little need be said except that it is melodious, impressive, and often very dramatic – dramatic, however, in the style of Aïda not of the less thoroughly dramatic, but more stagey works of Verdi's youth.

Verdi, now (1880) in his sixty-seventh year, has by no means renounced musical composition; and he is understood to be actively engaged on a new Othello, of which Signor Boito, author and composer of Mefistofele, has furnished the libretto, and which is to be brought out as soon as completed under the title of Iago.

Unlike other composers, Verdi has played a certain political part, which, however, seems in a great measure to have been forced upon him. In the days before Italian unity it was discovered that the letters composing his name might, in due order, be regarded as signifying "Vittore Emanuele, Re d'Italia"; so that "Viva Verdi!" came to be accepted as an aspiration for a united Italian kingdom with Victor Emanuel on the throne. When Macbeth was brought out, all sorts of political allusions were discovered in the libretto; and nothing would satisfy the electors of Verdi's native town but to make him a member of the National Assembly of Parma. After the formation of the Italian kingdom Verdi became a member of the Italian parliament; and in 1874 the king made him a senator.

LIST OF ROSSINI'S WORKS WITH THE DATE OF THEIR PRODUCTION IN PUBLIC

1. Il Pianto d'Armonia. Cantata, 1808