CHAPTER V.
OPERATIC CUSTOMS IN ROSSINI'S TIME
THE year after the production of Tancredi, Rossini, in 1814, brought out Aureliano, which was not successful. It contained, however, at least one piece of music which the composer, with due regard to economy, was determined not to waste. This was the introduction itself, borrowed from Ciro in Babilonia, which, when Rossini afterwards adapted its melody to words written for Count Almaviva in the Barber of Seville, obtained lasting success in the form of the charming cavatina "Ecco ridente il cielo."
The overture, moreover, to Aureliano in Palmira, after serving as instrumental introduction to Elisabetta, produced a year later at Naples, found ultimately a permanent position as musical preface to the Barber of Seville. The failure of Aureliano in Palmira, which Rossini attributed in a great measure to the liberties taken with the music by at least one of the performers, caused him to adopt the practice of writing for the singers the very notes he intended them to sing. Strange innovation! But, until Rossini's time, the vocalists were really the composer's masters, and regarded his airs merely as so much canvas for embroidery.
To Rossini belongs the honour of having helped greatly to expel the sopranists from the operatic stage. The Church, with a view to soprano voices in choirs, from which women were excluded, had introduced them; and ultimately the Church pronounced against them. But nothing could have had a greater effect in putting them down than Rossini's absolute refusal to write for them, or to allow them to sing in those of his operas performed under his direct superintendence.
The circumstances under which Rossini broke with the most celebrated sopranist of his time – that Velluti, whom a wit described as "non vir sed veluti" – are worth relating. Rossini had written for this personage a part in his Aureliano in Palmira (1814), the most celebrated of his very few failures; and the composer soon found that the singer had no respect for his music, which he treated as so much substance for elaboration and pretended adornment; while the singer discovered that the composer was so narrow-minded as to require his melodies to be sung as he had thought fit to write them. In those days dramatic propriety and music itself were sacrificed to the vocalists, who, far from studying parts, do not seem, in any true spirit, to have mastered airs. We read of singers having been kept to scales and passages for years at a time; and every one who takes an interest in musical history must remember the burlesque exclamation of Porpora, who, when Caffarelli had practised nothing but exercises with him for no less than five years, cried out: "You have nothing more to learn! Caffarelli is the first singer in the world!"
Aureliano was not played after the first night: and Rossini had the satisfaction of hearing that though his opera had failed, Velluti had made a brilliant success in the principal part. Velluti had, in fact, astonished and delighted the public by his vocal gymnastics. But it was not Rossini's music, it was really his own music, suggested by Rossini's, that he had sung.
Unable – perhaps even unwilling – to run altogether counter to the prevailing taste, Rossini continued to write highly florid music. But he supplied his own decorations, and made them so elaborate that the most skilful adorner would have found it difficult to add to them.
Writing for a French public Rossini showed, in William Tell, that he was as much a master of the simple dramatic style in which the singer has not to display vocal agility, but to express human emotion, as he was already known to be of the highly decorative style admired by the Italians. "Rossini," says Stendhal, in his interesting account of the first representation of Aureliano in Palmira, which he claims to have witnessed, "followed in his first works the style of his predecessors. He respected the voices, and only thought of bringing about the triumph of singing. Such is the system in which he composed Demetrio e Polibio, L'Inganno felice, La Pietra del Paragone, Tancredi, &c. Rossini had found La Marcolini, La Malanotte, La Manfredini, the Mombelli family, why should he not endeavour to give prominence to the singing – he who is such a good singer, and who when he sits down to the piano to sing one of his own airs, seems to transform the genius we know him to possess as a composer into that of a singer? The fact is, a little event took place which at once changed the composer's views… Rossini arrived at Milan in 1814, to write Aureliano in Palmira. There he met with Velluti, who was to sing in his opera; Velluti, then in the flower of his youth and talent, one of the best-looking men of his time, and much given to abuse his prodigious resources. Rossini had never heard this singer. He wrote a cavatina for him. At the first rehearsal, with full orchestra, he heard Velluti sing it, and was struck with admiration. At the second rehearsal Velluti began to embroider (fiorire). Rossini found some of his effects admirable, and still approved; but at the third rehearsal, the richness of the embroidery was such that it quite concealed the body of the air. At last the grand day of the first representation arrived. The cavatina, and all Velluti's part, was enthusiastically applauded; but Rossini could scarcely recognise what Velluti was singing; he did not know his own music. However, Velluti's singing was very beautiful and wonderfully successful with the public, which, after all, does no wrong in applauding what gives it so much pleasure. The pride of the young composer was deeply wounded; the opera failed, and the sopranist alone succeeded. Rossini's lively perception saw at once all that such an event could suggest. 'It is by a fortunate accident,' he said to himself, 'that Velluti happens to be a singer of taste, but how am I to know that at the next theatre I write for I shall not find another singer, who, with a flexible throat and an equal mania for fioriture, will not spoil my music so as to render it not only unrecognisable to me, but also wearisome to the public, or at least remarkable only for some details of execution? The danger to my unfortunate music is the more imminent, insomuch as there are no more singing schools in Italy. The theatres are full of artists who have picked up music from singing-masters about the country. This style of singing violin concertos, endless variations, will not only destroy all talent for singing, but will also vitiate the public taste. All the singers will be imitating Velluti, each according to his means. We shall have no more cantilenas; they would be thought poor and cold. Everything will undergo a change, even to the nature of the voices, which, once accustomed to embroider and overlay a cantilena with elaborate ornaments, will soon lose the habit of singing sustained legato passages, and be unable to execute them. I must change my system then. I know how to sing; every one acknowledges that I possess that talent; my fioriture will be in good taste; moreover, I shall discover at once the strong and weak points of my singers, and shall only write for them what they will be able to execute. I will not leave them a place for adding the least apoggiatura. The fioriture, the ornaments, must form an integral part of the air, and be all written in the score.'"
The sopranists might, at an earlier period, have been sent with advantage to Berlin, where, as Dr. Burney tells us, Frederick the Great, taking up his position in the pit of his opera-house immediately behind the conductor of the orchestra, on whose score he kept his eye, would never allow a singer to alter a single passage in his part. The conductor's authority does not seem to have been sufficient, for, according to Burney, it was the king who, when the vocalist took liberties with the score, called upon him to keep to the notes as written by the composer. "The sopranists," says M. Castil-Blaze,2 "were at all times extremely insolent. They forced the greatest masters to conform to their caprices. They changed, transformed everything to suit their own vanity. They would insist on having an air or a duet placed in such a scene, written in such a style, with such an accompaniment. They were the kings, the tyrants of theatres, managers, and composers; that is why, in the most serious works of the greatest masters of the last century, there occur long cold passages of vocalisation which had been exacted by the sopranists for the sake of exhibiting, in a striking manner, the agility and power of their throats. 'You will be kind enough to sing my music and not yours,' said the venerable and formidable Guglielmi, to a certain virtuoso, threatening him at the same time with his sword. In fact the vocal music, and the whole Italian lyrical system of the eighteenth century, was much more the work of the singers than of the composers."
After the production of Aureliano in Palmira, Rossini for about eighteen months was comparatively idle; for during this period he only produced two operas, Il Turco in Italia, and Sigismondo, of which the former has long ceased to-be played, while the latter was never at any time much performed. Il Turco in Italia was a pendant to L'Italiana in Algeri, but it obtained no greater amount of public favour than continuations usually meet with. The hero of the work was supposed to have been wrecked on the Italian coast, and a like fate awaited the work itself. Rossini, according to his custom, saved what he could from the wreck, and the overture to the Turk in Italy was, some years later, when Otello was brought out, made to do duty as introduction to the story of the Moor of Venice.
As for Sigismondo, the story of its failure was graphically recorded by Rossini himself; who, writing to his mother the same night, enclosed her the outline of a small bottle or fiasco.
Rossini's increasing fame had, among other effects, that of making him visit all the principal cities in Italy. As in his youth he had moved about in his character of conductor from one little town in the Romagna to another, so now, when he had attained his full powers, he was called upon to travel from Bologna to Venice, from Venice to Milan, from Milan to Naples, from Naples to Rome. The two leading theatres of the Peninsula were then, as now, the San Carlo of Naples, and the Scala of Milan. The former received a subvention of 12,000l. from the King of Naples, the latter one of 8,000l. from the Emperor of Austria. These opera-houses, at that time the first in the world, received additional support from public gambling saloons adjoining them; and it was as a waiter at one of these auxiliary establishments that Barbaja, the most illustrious impresario of his own or of any other time – Barbaja, who is mentioned in one of Balzac's novels, and introduced by Scribe in his libretto of La Sirène– commenced his career. Besides the cities already named, Turin, Florence, Bergamo, Genoa, Leghorn, Sienna, Ferrara, had all their opera-houses; some of which were supported by state grants, others by grants from the municipality. Occasionally, too, the necessary operatic subvention was furnished by some local magnate, who either made a liberal donation or constituted himself director of the theatre. The chief towns maintained several opera-houses. There were three at Venice – the Fenice, the San Benedetto, and the San Mosè; and five at Rome – the Argentina, the Valle, the Apollo, the Alberto, and the Tordinona. Next to San Carlo and La Scala ranked the Fenice, and next to the Fenice the Court Theatre of Turin where, inasmuch as it formed part of the king's palace, it was considered 'disrespectful to appear in a cloak, disrespectful to laugh, and disrespectful to applaud till the queen had applauded.'
From 1815 to 1823 Rossini wrote principally for Naples. But we have seen that he also worked for Bologna, Venice, and Milan; and he composed for the opera-houses of Rome, Il Barbiere, brought out at the Argentina Theatre, La Cenerentola, produced at the Valle Theatre, and Matilda di Sabran, performed for the first time at the Apollo Theatre. At the Fenice of Venice, Rossini's first opera in the serious style, Tancredi (1813), and also his last in that style, Semiramide (1823), were produced. For the Court Theatre of Turin Rossini wrote nothing.
Each of the great Italian opera-houses made a point of bringing out at least two new operas every year; and as the minor theatres were also frequently supplied with new works there was no lack of opportunity for composers anxious to place themselves before the public. The composers were not liberally paid by managers – 40l. was considered a fair price for an opera; while from the publishers they received absolutely nothing for the right of engraving. It has already been mentioned that Rossini never troubled himself about the publication of his works, and that he profited by the fact of their not having been engraved to borrow from his failures pieces which, had the scores been before the public, he must have hesitated to re-adopt.
The operas of that day were in two acts; a division which, when the subject was an important one, scarcely conduced to the maintenance of dramatic interest. It was the custom of the time, however, to separate these two acts by a ballet; and thus kept apart they were not found so long, so interminable, as, performed one after the other without a break, our modern audiences would find them.
CHAPTER VI.
ROSSINI AT NAPLES
BARBAJA, the ex-waiter at the Ridotto of the San Carlo Theatre, was director of the San Carlo itself, and almost at the height of his glory, which Rossini was so much to increase, when Tancredi was brought out at Venice and L'Italiana in Algeri at Milan.
The year following was not for Rossini a very brilliant one; and neither Aureliano in Palmira, nor a cantata called Egle e Irene, written for the Princess Belgiojoso, nor Il Turco in Italia– all of the year 1814 – did much to increase his reputation. But the success of Tancredi and of L'Italiana in Algeri was enough for Barbaja, who accordingly invited Rossini in 1814 to come to Naples and compose something for the San Carlo. On his arrival Rossini signed a contract with Barbaja for several years; binding himself to write two new operas annually, and to re-arrange the music of any old works the manager might wish to produce, either at his principal theatre or at the second Neapolitan opera-house, the Teatro del Fondo, of which also Barbaja was lessee. Rossini's emoluments were to be 40l. (200 ducats) a month with a share in the profits of the gambling saloon. Such an engagement would not seem very magnificent to a second or third rate composer of our own time. But it was better than 40l. an opera, at which rate Rossini had hitherto been paid. Provided, moreover, that he supplied Barbaja with his two new operas every year he was at liberty to write for other managers.
In the present day it is not uncommon to find an operatic manager of enterprise directing two lyrical theatres in two different countries. Mr. Lumley was manager at the same time of Her Majesty's Theatre in London and of the Théâtre des Italiens in Paris. The late Mr. Gye entered into an arrangement (which however was not carried out) for directing the Imperial Opera House of St. Petersburg, while he was at the same time managing the Royal Italian Opera of London. Mr. Mapleson directs simultaneously Her Majesty's Theatre in London, and the Italian Opera which he has recently established at the so-called Academy of Music in New York. But these feats are nothing compared with the performances of Barbaja in the managerial line. It is much easier at the present time to get from London to New York or from London to St. Petersburg, than it was in the days of Barbaja to move from Naples or even from Milan to Vienna; and a manager must have possessed great administrative ability who could direct three operatic enterprises in three different capitals at the same time.
Barbaja had in his employment all the great composers and all the best singers of his native Italy. So numerous was his company that he scarcely knew who did and who did not belong to it; and a story is told of his meeting one day a singer of some celebrity, and offering him an engagement – when, to his consternation and horror, the vocalist informed him that he had been drawing a regular salary from the theatre for the last three months. "Go to Donizetti," cried Barbaja, "and tell him to give you a part without a moment's delay."
On one occasion Donizetti, engaged at that time as accompanist at the Scala Theatre, had been requested to try the voice of a lady who had come to Barbaja with a letter of recommendation. Donizetti asked her to go through a few exercises in solfeggio; on which Barbaja, mistaking do, re, mi, &c., for the words of some outlandish tongue, exclaimed that it would be useless to sing in a foreign language, and that the postulant for an engagement had better carry her talents elsewhere. Another time, when a favourite vocalist complained that the piano, to whose accompaniment she had been rehearsing her part, was too high, Barbaja at once promised that before the next rehearsal he would have it lowered. The following morning the instrument was, as before, half a note above the requisite pitch. It was pointed out to Barbaja that the piano still wanted lowering; upon which he flew into a violent passion and, summoning one of the stage carpenters, asked him why, when he had been told that the piano was too high, he had not shortened it by two or three inches instead of doing so only by one.
When his singers were genuinely successful he would take their part under all circumstances, and defend them against every attack. A popular prima donna told him one day, on arriving at the San Carlo Theatre, whither she had been borne in a sedan-chair, that one of the carriers had been very negligent in his duty, and had allowed her several times to be bumped on the ground. Barbaja called the porters to his room and, giving each a box on the ears, exclaimed, "Which of you two brutes was in fault?"
For the sake of teasing Barbaja, a few of the subscribers to the Scala Theatre agreed one night to hiss Rubini in one of his best parts. Barbaja, perfectly aghast, looked from his box, shook his fist at the seeming malcontents, and, alike indignant and enthusiastic, called out to the universally-admired tenor: "Bravo, Rubini, never mind those pigs! It is I who pay you, and I am delighted with your singing."
In spite of his long-continued success, Barbaja ended, like so many managers, by failing; and but that he stood well with the Austrian Government, who gave him a contract for building barracks at Milan, he might have died in poverty. There is nothing, however, to show that his collapse was due to ignorance of music. It would be probably nearer the truth to attribute it to that loss of energy and tact by which advancing years are generally accompanied.
Among the prime donne of the San Carlo Theatre Barbaja's favourite, in the fullest sense of the word, was Mademoiselle Colbran, who, after studying under Crescentini and Marinelli, made her first appearance with brilliant success at Paris in 1801. She was then but sixteen years of age, having been born at Madrid in 1785. When Rossini, then, first met her at Naples in 1815, she was already thirty. Her voice began to deteriorate soon afterwards, if we are to believe Stendhal – who, much as he had in common with the Abbé Carpani (including nearly the whole of the materials for his Life of Rossini), did not share that writer's admiration for a singer whom it was the fashion for royalists to laud, for republicans to decry. Stendhal, though he feared that opera, accustomed to subventions and to patronage of all kinds, could not flourish under republican institutions, was nevertheless inclined towards republicanism.
Mademoiselle Colbran has been described as a great beauty in the queenly style – dark hair, brilliant eyes, imposing demeanour; and though Stendhal is under the impression that her voice began to fall off soon after Rossini's arrival at Naples, it seems certain that she must have preserved it in all its beauty until long afterwards. Rossini in any case wrote for her many of his best parts which, had they not been perfectly sung, could scarcely have met with the success they actually obtained. Among these parts may be mentioned in particular those of Desdemona, Elcia in Mosè in Egitto, Elena in La Donna del Lago, Zelmira in the opera of that name, and Semiramide. The artistic merits of Mademoiselle Colbran were, however, as has already been mentioned, discussed habitually from a political point of view. Revolutionists hissed her because the king admired her, while royalists were ready under all circumstances to applaud her. The first part which Rossini composed for Mademoiselle Colbran, his future wife, was that of Elisabetta in the opera of the same name; a work founded on Scott's novel of Kenilworth, and written appropriately enough by a certain Signor Smith. Smith's knowledge of the English language seems, in spite of his name, to have been imperfect; for, instead of taking his story direct from the original, he borrowed it in an adapted shape from a French melodrama.
The Neapolitans, up to this time, had not heard a note of Rossini's music. He had conquered the hearts of the Venetians and the Milanese. But he was unknown at Naples; and not to have earned the applause of the Neapolitan public was not to have achieved an Italian reputation. The connoisseurs of Naples were by no means disposed to accept Rossini on the strength of the success he had achieved at Milan and Venice; while the professors of the famous Conservatorio, whose classes he had not followed, were incredulous as to his being a composer of any sound musical learning, and were quite prepared to find him a much overrated man.
Rossini began by playing a trick on the Neapolitan audience; for in lieu of an original composition, he prefaced Elisabetta with an overture which he had written the year before at Milan for Aureliano in Palmira– and which he was to offer to the Romans a year afterwards as overture to Il Barbiere. The Neapolitans were delighted with the overture; but it has been surmised that had they known it to have been originally composed for an opera which had failed at Milan, they would not, perhaps, have applauded it so much. The first piece in the opera was, as Stendhal tells us, a duet for Leicester and his young wife, in the minor, which, says Stendhal, was "very original." The finale to the first act, in which the leading motives of the overture were introduced, called forth enthusiastic applause. "All the emotions of serious opera with no tedious intervals between: " such, Stendhal (or Carpani) informs us, was the phrase in which the general verdict of the Neapolitan public was expressed. Mademoiselle Colbran's greatest success, however, was not achieved until the second act where, on the rising of the curtain, Elisabetta, attired in an historical costume – warranted authentic and ordered expressly from London by a fanatical English admirer – had a grand scena. The concerted finale to this act was another triumph both for the composer and for the singers.
Elisabetta made but little mark beyond the frontiers of Italy. It contains much beautiful music; but the distribution of characters is not all that could be desired. Thus the parts of Norfolk, and of Leicester, are both given to tenors; though Norfolk as a wicked personage should have been represented by a baritone or bass. The bass singer, however, was still kept in the background; and at the San Carlo, though there were three admirable tenors – Davide, Nozzari, and Garcia, – there was no bass singer capable of taking a leading part. But for Rossini the bass singer might have remained indefinitely in obscurity. Gradually, however, he was brought to the front, not only in comic operas, where the Italians already tolerated him, but also in serious operas like Otello and Semiramide, and in half-character works such as Cenerentola and La Gazza Ladra. Elisabetta was the first Italian opera in which recitative was accompanied by the stringed quartet in place of the double bass and piano previously employed.
Rossini had plenty of work to do at Naples, for, besides composing two new operas every year he had to transpose parts and to correct and complete operatic scores. But in addition to all this he found time to write two works for Rome, which were produced in 1816, during the carnival. One of these, Torvaldo e Dorliska, was brought out at the Teatro Valle where it met with so little success that the composer informed his mother of the fact by sending her the drawing, not this time of a full-sized fiasco, but of a small fiasco or fiaschetto. Torvaldo e Dorliska, in which the principal parts were written for Remorini and Galli, the two best bass singers of their time, and for Donzelli, the celebrated tenor, must in spite of its failure have possessed some merit. It was performed at Paris in 1825 for the first appearance of Mademoiselle Garcia, the future Malibran; and Rossini borrowed from it the motive of the admirable letter duet in Otello.