History of the Opera from its Origin in Italy to the present Time

PISARONI

Madame Pisaroni made her début in Italy in the year 1811, when she was eighteen years of age. She at first came out as a soprano, but two years afterwards, a severe illness having changed the nature of her voice, she appeared in all the most celebrated parts, written for the musicos or sopranists, who were now beginning to die out, and to be replaced by ladies with contralto voices. Madame Pisaroni was not only not beautiful, she was hideously ugly; I have seen her portrait, and am not exaggerating. Lord Mount Edgcumbe tells us, that another favourite contralto of the day Mariani (Rossini's original Arsace) was Pisaroni's rival "in voice, singing, and ugliness;" adding, that "in the two first qualities, she was certainly her inferior; though in the last it was difficult to know to which the preference should be given." But the anti-pathetic, revolting, almost insulting features of the great contralto, were forgotten as soon as she began to sing. As the hideous Wilkes boasted that he was "only a quarter of an hour behind the handsomest man in Europe," so Madame Pisaroni might have said, that she had only to deliver one phrase of music to place herself on a level with the most personally prepossessing vocalist of the day. This extraordinary singer on gaining a contralto, did not lose her original soprano voice. After her illness, she is said to have possessed three octaves (between four C's), but her best notes were now in the contralto register. In airs, in concerted pieces, in recitative, she was equally admirable. To sustain a high note, and then dazzle the audience with a rapid descending scale of two octaves, was for her an easy means of triumph. Altogether, her execution seems never to have been surpassed. After making her début in Paris as "Arsace," Madame Pisaroni resumed that part in 1829, under great difficulties. The frightfully ugly "Arsace" had to appear side by side with a charmingly pretty "Semiramide," – the soprano part of the opera being taken by Mademoiselle Sontag. But in the hour of danger the poor contralto was saved by her thoroughly beautiful singing, and Pisaroni and Sontag, who as a vocalist also left nothing to desire, were equally applauded. In London, Pisaroni appears to have confined herself intentionally to the representation of male characters, appearing as "Arsace," "Malcolm," in La Donna del Lago, and "Tancredi;" but in Paris she played the principal female part in L'Italiana in Algeri, and what is more, played it with wonderful success.

The great part of "Arsace" was also that in which Mademoiselle Brambilla made her début in England in the year 1827. Brambilla, who was a pupil of the conservatory of Milan, had never appeared on any stage; but though her acting is said to have been indifferent, her lovely voice, her already excellent style, her youth and her great beauty, ensured her success.

"She has the finest eyes, the sweetest voice, and the best disposition in the world," said a certain cardinal of the youthful Brambilla, "if she is discovered to possess any other merits, the safety of the Catholic Church will require her excommunication." After singing in London several years, and revisiting Italy, Brambilla was engaged in Paris, where she again chose the part of "Arsace," for her début.

Many of our readers will probably remember that "Arsace" was also the character in which Mademoiselle Alboni made her first appearance in England, and on this side of the Alps. Until the opening night of the Royal Italian Opera, 1847, the English public had never heard of Mademoiselle Alboni; but she had only to sing the first phrase of her part, to call forth unanimous applause, and before the evening was at an end, she had quite established herself in the position which she has ever since held.

SONTAG

Sontag and Malibran both made their first appearance in England as "Rosina," in the Barber of Seville. Several points of similarity might be pointed out between the romantic careers of these two wonderfully successful and wonderfully unfortunate vocalists. Mademoiselle Garcia first appeared on the stage at Naples, when she was eight years old. Mademoiselle Sontag was in her sixth year when she came out at Frankfort. Each spent her childhood and youth in singing and acting, and each, after obtaining a full measure of success, made an apparently brilliant marriage, and was thought to have quitted the stage. Both, however, re-appeared, one after a very short interval, the other, after a retirement of something like twenty years. The position of Mademoiselle Garcia's husband, M. Malibran, was as nothing, compared to that of Count Rossi, who married Mademoiselle Sontag; the former was a French merchant, established (not very firmly, as it afterwards appeared) at New York; the latter was the Sardinian Ambassador at the court of Vienna; but on the other hand, the Countess Rossi's end was far more tragic, or rather more miserable and horrible than that of Madame Malibran, itself sufficiently painful and heart-rending.

Though Rosina appears to have been one of Mademoiselle Sontag's best, if not absolutely her best part, she also appeared to great advantage during her brief career in London and Paris, in two other Rossinian characters, "Desdemona" and "Semiramide." In her own country she was known as one of the most admirable representatives of "Agatha," in Der Freischütz, and she sang "Agatha's" great scena frequently, and always with immense success, at concerts, in London. She also appeared as "Donna Anna," in Don Giovanni, (from the pleasing, graceful character of her talent, one would have fancied the part of "Zerlina" better suited to her), but in Italian opera all her triumphs were gained in the works of Rossini.

MALIBRAN

When Marietta Garcia made her début in London, in the Barber of Seville, she was, seriously, only just beginning her career, and was at that time but seventeen years of age. She appeared the same year in Paris, as the heroine in Torvaldo e Dorliska (Rossini's "fiaschetto," now quite forgotten) and was then taken by her father on that disastrous American tour which ended with her marriage. Having crossed the Atlantic, Garcia converted his family into a complete opera company, of which he himself was the tenor and the excellent musical director (if there had only been a little more to direct). The daughter was the prima donna, the mother had to content herself with secondary parts, the son officiated as baritone and bass. In America, under a good master, but with strange subordinates, and a wretched entourage, Mademoiselle Garcia accustomed herself to represent operatic characters of every kind. One evening, when an uncultivated American orchestra was massacring Mozart's master-piece, Garcia, the "Don Giovanni" of the evening, became so indignant that he rushed, sword in hand, to the foot lights, and compelled the musicians to re-commence the finale to the first act, which they executed the second time with care, if not with skill. This was a severe school in which poor Marietta was being formed; but without it we should probably never have heard of her appearing one night as "Desdemona" or as "Arsace," the next as "Otello," or as "Semiramide;" nor of her gaining fresh laurels with equal certainty in the Sonnambula and in Norma. But we have at present only to do with that period of operatic history, during which, Rossini's supremacy on the Italian stage was unquestioned. Towards 1830, we find two new composers appearing, who, if they, to some extent, displaced their great predecessor, at the same time followed in his steps. For some dozen years, Rossini had been the sole support, indeed, the very life of Italian opera. Naturally, his works were not without their fruit, and a great part of Donizetti's and Bellini's music may be said to belong to Rossini, inasmuch as Rossini was clearly Donizetti's and Bellini's progenitor.

CHAPTER XVII.
OPERA IN FRANCE UNDER THE CONSULATE, EMPIRE, AND RESTORATION

THE History of the Opera, under the Consulate and the Empire, is perhaps more remarkable in connexion with political than with musical events. Few persons at present know much of Spontini's operas, though la Vestale in its day was celebrated in Paris, London and especially in Berlin; nor of Cherubini's, though the overtures to Anacreon and les Abencerrages are still heard from time to time at "classical" concerts; but every one remembers the plot to assassinate the First Consul which was to have been put into execution at the Opera, and the plot to destroy the Emperor, the Empress and all their retinue, which was to take effect just outside its doors. Then there is the appearance of the Emperor at the Opera, after his hasty arrival in Paris from Moscow, on the very night before his return to meet the Russians with the allies who had now joined them, at Bautzen and Lutzen – the same night by the way on which les Abencerrages was produced, with no great success. Then again there is the evening of the 29th of March, 1814, when Iphigénie en Aulide was performed to an accompaniment of cannon which the Piccinnists, if they could only have heard it, would have declared very appropriate to Gluck's music; that of the 1st of April, when by desire, of the Russian emperor and the Prussian king, la Vestale was represented; and finally that of the 17th of May, 1814, when Œdipe à Colone was played before Louis XVIII., who had that morning made his triumphal entry into Paris.

AN OPERATIC PLOT

On the 10th of October, 1800, a band of republicans had sworn to assassinate the First Consul at the Opera. A new work was to be produced that evening composed by Porta to a libretto founded on Corneille's tragedy of les Horaces. The most striking scene in the piece, that in which the Horatii swear to conquer or perish, was to be the signal for action; all the lights were to be put out at the same moment, fireworks and grenades were to be thrown into the boxes, the pit and on to the stage; cries of "fire" and "murder" were to be raised from all parts of the house, and in the midst of the general confusion the First Consul was to be assassinated in his box. The leaders of the plot, to make certain of their cue, had contrived to be present at the rehearsal of the new opera, and everything was prepared for the next evening and the post of each conspirator duly assigned to him, when one of the number, conscience smitten and unable to sleep during the night of the 9th, went at daybreak the next morning to the Prefect of Police and informed him of all the details of the plot.

The conspiracy said Bonaparte, some twenty years afterwards at St. Helena, "was revealed by a captain in the line.⁸⁷ What limit is there," he added, "to the combinations of folly and stupidity! This officer had a horror of me as Consul but adored me as general. He was anxious that I should be torn from my post, but he would have been very sorry that my life should be taken. I ought to be made prisoner, he said, in no way injured, and sent to the army to continue to defeat the enemies of France. The other conspirators laughed in his face, and when he saw them distribute daggers, and that they were going beyond his intentions, he proceeded at once to denounce the whole affair."

Bonaparte, after the informer had been brought before him, suggested to the officers of his staff, the Prefect of Police and other functionaries whom he had assembled, that it would be as well not to let him appear at the Opera in the evening; but the general opinion was, that on the contrary, he should be forced to go, and ultimately it was decided that until the commencement of the performance everything should be allowed to take place as if the conspiracy had not been discovered.

AN OPERATIC PLOT

In the evening the First Consul went to the Opera, attended by a number of superior officers, all in plain clothes. The first act passed off quietly enough – in all probability, far too quietly to please the composer, for some two hundred persons among the audience, including the conspirators, the police and the officers attached to Bonaparte's person, were thinking of anything but the music of les Horaces. It was necessary, however, to pay very particular attention to the music of the second act in which the scene of the oath occurred.

The sentinels outside the Consul's box had received orders to let no one approach who had not the pass word, issued an hour before for the opera only; and as a certain number of conspirators had taken up their positions in the corridors, to extinguish the lights at the signal agreed upon, a certain number of Bonaparte's officers were sent also into the corridors to prevent the execution of this manœuvre. The scene of the oath was approaching, when a body of police went to the boxes in which the leaders of the plot were assembled, found them with fireworks and grenades in their hands, notified to them their arrest in the politest manner, cautioned them against creating the slightest disturbance, and led them so dexterously and quietly into captivity, that their disappearance from the theatre was not observed, or if so, was doubtless attributed to the badness of Porta's music. The officers in the corridors carried pistols, and at the proper moment seized the appointed lamp-extinguishers. Then the old Horatius came forward and exclaimed-

 
"Jurez donc devant moi, par le ciel qui m'écoute.
Que le dernier de vous sera mort ou vainqueur."
 

The orchestra "attacked" the introduction to the quartett. The fatal prelude must have sounded somewhat unmusical to the ear of the First Consul; but the conspirators were now all in custody and assembled in one of the vestibules on the ground floor.

LES MYSTERES D'ISIS

On the 24th of December, 1800, the day on which the "infernal machine" was directed against the First Consul on his way to the Opera, a French version of Haydn's Creation was to be executed. Indeed, the performance had already commenced, when, during the gentle adagio of the introduction, the dull report of an explosion, as if of a cannon, was heard, but without the audience being at all alarmed. Immediately afterwards the First Consul appeared in his box with Lannes, Lauriston, Berthier, and Duroc. Madame Bonaparte, as she was getting into her carriage, thought of some alteration to make in her dress, and returned to her apartments for a few minutes. But for this delay her carriage would have passed before the infernal machine at the moment of its explosion. Ten minutes afterwards she made her appearance at the Opera with her daughter, Mademoiselle Hortense Beauharnais, Madame Murat, and Colonel Rapp. The performance of the Creation continued as if nothing had happened; and the report, which had interfered so unexpectedly with the effect of the opening adagio, was explained in various ways; the account generally received in the pit being, that a grocer going into his cellar with a candle, had set light to a barrel of gunpowder. Two houses were said to have been blown up. This was at the beginning of the first part of the Creation; at the end of the second, the number had probably increased to half a dozen.

Under the consulate and the empire, the arts did not flourish greatly in France; not for want of direct encouragement on the part of the ruler, but rather because he at the same time encouraged far above everything else the art of war. Until the appearance of Spontini with la Vestale, the Académie, under Napoleon Bonaparte, whether known as Bonaparte or Napoleon, was chiefly supported by composers who composed without inventing, and who, with the exception of Cherubini, were either very feeble originators or mere plagiarists and spoliators. Even Mozart did not escape the French arrangers. His Marriage of Figaro had been brought out in 1798, with all the prose dialogue of Beaumarchais's comedy substituted for the recitative of the original opera. Les Mystères d'Isis, an adaptation, perversion, disarrangement of Die Zauberflötte, with several pieces suppressed, or replaced by fragments from the Nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Haydn's symphonies, was produced on the 23rd of August, 1801, under the auspices of Morel the librettist, and Lachnith the musician.

Les Misères d'Isis was the appropriate name given to this sad medley by the musicians of the orchestra. Lachnith was far from being ashamed of what he had done. On the contrary, he gloried in it, and seemed somehow or other to have persuaded himself that the pieces which he had stolen from Mozart and Haydn were his own compositions. One evening, when he was present at the representation of Les Mystères d'Isis, he was affected to tears, and exclaimed, "No, I will compose no more! I could never go beyond this!"

Don Giovanni, in the hands of Kalkbrenner, fared no better than the Zauberflötte in those of Lachnith. It even fared worse; for Kalkbrenner did not content himself with spoiling the general effect of the work, by means of pieces introduced from Mozart's other operas, and from Haydn's symphonies: he mutilated it so as completely to alter its form, and further debased it by mixing with its pure gold the dross of his own vile music.

KALKBRENNER'S DON GIOVANNI

In Kalkbrenner's Don Giovanni, the opera opened with a recitative, composed by Kalkbrenner himself. Next came Leporello's solo, followed by an interpolated romance, in the form of a serenade, which was sung by Don Juan, under Donna Anna's window. The struggle of Don Juan with Donna Anna, the entry of the commandant, his combat with Don Juan, the trio for the three men and all the rest of the introduction, was cut out. The duet of Donna Anna and Ottavio was placed at the end of the act, and as Don Juan had killed the commandant off the stage, it was of course deprived of its marvellous recitative, which, to be duly effective, must be declaimed by Donna Anna over the body of her father. The whole of the opera was treated in the same style. The first act was made to end as it had begun, with a few phrases of recitative of Kalkbrenner's own production. The greater part of the action of Da Ponte's libretto was related in dialogue, so that the most dramatic portion of the music lost all its significance. The whole opera, in short, was disfigured, cut to pieces, destroyed, and further defiled by the musical weeds which the infamous Kalkbrenner introduced among its still majestic ruins. At this period the supreme direction of the Opera was in the hands of a jury, composed of certain members of the Institute of France. It seems never to have occurred to this learned body that there was any impropriety in the trio of masques being executed by three men, and in the two soprano parts being given to tenors, – by which arrangement the part of Ottavio, Mozart's tenor, instead of being the lowest in the harmony, was made the highest. The said trio was sung by three archers, of course to entirely new words! Let us pass on to another opera, which, if not comparable to Don Giovanni, was at least a magnificent work for France in 1807, and which had the advantage of being admirably executed under the careful direction of its composer.

Spontini had already produced La Finta Filosofa, which, originally brought out at Naples, was afterwards performed at the Italian Theatre of Paris, without success; La Petite Maison, written for the Opéra Comique, and violently hissed; and Milton also composed for the Opéra Comique, and favourably received. When La Vestale was submitted to the jury of the Académie, it was refused unanimously on the ground of the extravagance of its style, and of the audacity of certain innovations in the score. Spontini appealed to the Empress Josephine, and it was owing to her influence, and through a direct order of the court that La Vestale was put upon the stage. The jury was inexorable, however, as regarded certain portions of the work, and the composer was obliged to submit it to the orchestral conductor, who injured it in several places, but without spoiling it. Spontini wished to give the part of the tenor to Nourrit; but Lainez protested, went to the superintendant of the imperial theatres, represented that he had been first tenor and first lover at the Opera for thirty years, and finally received full permission to make love to the Vestal of the Académie.

The Emperor Napoleon had the principal pieces in La Vestale executed by his private band, nearly a year before the opera was brought out at the Académie. He had sufficient taste to admire the music, and predicted to Spontini the success it afterwards met with. He is said, in particular, to have praised the finale, the first dramatic finale written for the French Opera.

SPONTINI

La Vestale was received by the public with enthusiasm. It is said to have been admirably executed, and we know that Spontini was difficult on this point, for we are told by Mr. Ebers that he objected to the performance of La Vestale, in London, on the ground "that the means of representation there were inadequate to do justice to his composition." This was twenty years after it was first brought out in Paris, when all Rossini's finest and most elaborately constructed operas (such as Semiramide, for instance), had been played in London, and in a manner which quite satisfied Rossini. Probably, however, it was in the spectacular department that Spontini expected the King's Theatre would break down. However that may have been, La Vestale was produced in London, and met with very little success. The part of "La Vestale" was given to a Madame Biagioli, who objected to it as not sufficiently good for her. From the accounts extant of this lady's powers, it is quite certain that Spontini, if he had heard her, would have considered her not nearly good enough for his music. It would, of course, have been far better for the composer, as for the manager and the public, if Spontini had consented to superintend the production of his work himself; but failing that, it was scandalous in defiance of his wishes to produce it at all. Unfortunately, this is a kind of scandal from which operatic managers in England have seldom shrunk.

Spontini's Fernand Cortez, produced at the Académie in 1809, met with less success than La Vestale. In both these works, the spectacular element played an important part, and in Fernand Cortez, it was found necessary to introduce a number of Franconi's horses. A journalist of the period proposed that the following inscription should be placed above the doors of the theatre: —Içi on joue l'opéra à pied et à cheval.

Spontini, as special composer for the Académie of grand operas with hippic and panoramic effects, was the predecessor of M. M. Meyerbeer, and Halévy; and Heine, in his "Lutèce"⁸⁸ has given us a very witty, and perhaps, in the main, truthful account of Spontini's animosity towards Meyerbeer, whom he is said to have always regarded as an intriguer and interloper. I may here, however, mention as a proof of the attractiveness of La Vestale from a purely musical point of view, that it was once represented with great success, not only without magnificent or appropriate scenery, but with the scenery belonging to another piece! This was on the 1st of April, 1814, the day after the entry of the Russian and Prussian troops into Paris. Le Triomphe de Trajan had been announced; the allied sovereigns, however, wished to hear La Vestale, and the performance was changed. But there was not time to prepare the scenery for Spontini's opera, and that of the said Triomphe was made to do duty for it.

A MURDER AT THE OPERA

Le Triomphe de Trajan was a work in which Napoleon's clemency to a treacherous or patriotic German prince was celebrated, and it has been said that the programme of the 1st of April was changed, because the allied sovereigns disliked the subject of the opera. But it was perfectly natural that they should wish to hear Spontini's master-piece, and that they should not particularly care to listen to a pièce d'occasion, set to music by a French composer of no name.

I have said that Cherubini's Abencerrages, of which all but the overture is now forgotten, was produced in 1813, and that the emperor attended its first representation the night before his departure from Paris, to rejoin his troops, and if possible, check the advance of the victorious allies. No other work of importance was produced at the French Académie until Rossini's Siège de Corinthe was brought out in 1825. This, the first work written by the great Italian master specially for the French Opera, was represented at the existing theatre in the Rue Lepelletier, the opera house in the Rue Richelieu having been pulled down in 1820.

A MURDER AT THE OPERA

In the year just mentioned, on the 13th of February, being the last Sunday of the Carnival, an unusually brilliant audience had assembled at the Académie Royale. Le Rossignol, an insipid, and fortunately, very brief production, was the opera; but the great attraction of the evening consisted in two ballets, La Carnaval de Venise, and Les Noces de Gamache. The Duke and Duchess de Berri were present, and when Le Carnaval de Venise, Le Rossignol, and the first act of Les Noces de Gamache, had been performed, the duchess rose to leave the theatre. Her husband accompanied her to the carriage, and was taking leave of her, intending to return to the theatre for the last act of the ballet, when a man crept up to him, placed his left arm on the duke's left side, pulled him violently towards him, and as he held him in his grasp, thrust a dagger through his body. The dagger entered the duke's right side, and the pressure of the assassin's arm, and the force with which the blow was given, were so great, that the weapon went through the lungs, and pierced the heart, a blade of six inches inflicting a wound nine inches long. The news of the duke's assassination spread through the streets of Paris as if by electricity; and M. Alexandre Dumas, in his interesting Memoirs, tells us almost the same thing that Balzac says about it in one of his novels; that it was known at the farther end of Paris, before a man on horseback, despatched at the moment the blow was struck, could possibly have reached the spot. On the other hand, M. Castil Blaze shows us very plainly that the terrible occurrence was not known within the Opera; or, at least, only to a few officials, until after the conclusion of the performance, which went on as if nothing had happened. The duke was carried into the director's room, where he was attended by Blancheton, the surgeon of the Opera, and at once bled in both arms. He, himself, drew the dagger from the wound, and observed at the same time that he felt it was mortal. The Count d'Artois, and the Duke and Duchess d'Angoulême arrived soon afterwards. There lay the unhappy prince, on a bed hastily arranged, and already inundated, soaked with blood, surrounded by his father, brother, sister, and wife, whose poignant anguish was from time to time alleviated by some faint ray of hope, destined, however, to be quickly dispelled.

Five of the most celebrated doctors in Paris, with Dupuytren among the number, had been sent for; and as the patient was now nearly suffocating from internal hæmorrhage, the orifice of the wound was widened. This afforded some relief, and for a moment it was thought just possible that a recovery might be effected. Another moment, and it was evident that there was no hope. The duke asked to see his daughter, and embraced her several times; he also expressed a desire to see the king. Now the sacrament was administered to him, but, on the express condition exacted by the Archbishop of Paris, that the Opera House should afterwards be destroyed. Two other unacknowledged daughters of his youth were brought to the dying man's bedside, and received his blessing. He had already recommended them to the duchess's care.

"Soon you will have no father," she said to them, "and I shall have three daughters."

In the meanwhile the Spanish ballet was being continued, amidst the mirth and applause of the audience, who testified by their demeanour that it was Carnival time, and that the jours gras had already commenced. The house was crowded, and the boleros and sequidillas with which the Spaniards of the Parisian ballet astonished and dazzled Don Quixote and his faithful knight, threw boxes, pit, and gallery, into ecstasies of delight.

Elsewhere, in the room next his victim, stood the assassin, interrogated by the ministers, Decazes and Pasquier, with the bloody dagger before them on the table. The murderer simply declared that he had no accomplices,⁸⁹ and that he took all the responsibility of the crime on himself.

At five in the morning, Louis XVIII. was by the side of his dying nephew. An attempt had been made, the making of which was little less than an insult to the king, to dissuade him from being present at the duke's last moments.

A MURDER AT THE OPERA

"The sight of death does not terrify me," replied His Majesty, "and I have a duty to perform." After begging that his murderer might be forgiven, and entreating the duchess not to give way to despair, the Duke de Berri breathed his last in the arms of the king, who closed his eyes at half-past six in the morning.

Opera was now to be heard no more in the Rue Richelieu. The holy sacrament had crossed the threshold of a profane building, and it was necessary that this profane building should be destroyed; indeed, a promise to that effect had been already given. All the theatres were closed for ten days, and the Opera, now homeless, did not re-commence its performances until upwards of two months afterwards, when it took possession for a time of the Théâtre Favart. In the August of the same year the erection of the theatre in the Rue Lepelletier was commenced. The present Théâtre de l'Opéra, (the absurd title of Académie having recently been abandoned), was intended when it was first built, to be but a temporary affair. Strangely enough it has lasted forty years, during which time it has seen solidly constructed opera-houses perish by fire in all parts of Europe. May the new opera-house about to be erected in Paris, under the auspices of Napoleon III., be equally fortunate.