Velluti, who is said to have been prepared with three elaborate cadenzas of his own composition for every air he sang, must have been highly disgusted to find that Rossini objected altogether to his departing from the written text. For the sopranists were very great personages. When Caffarelli heard that the accomplished Farinelli had been made prime minister to the King of Spain, he is reported to have said: “He is a magnificent singer, and fully deserves the honour.” The sopranist, Marchesi, stipulated, when he was at the height of his fame, that he should be allowed to make his entry and sing his cavatina on horseback or from the summit of a mountain, also that the plume in his helmet should be at least five feet high!
Rossini’s dislike to Velluti’s style of singing, being founded on principle, was permanent; and on his visiting Paris many years afterwards, Mr. Eben tells us (“Seven Years at the King’s Theatre”) that “Rossini being at this time engaged at Paris under his agreement to direct there, Velluti did not enter into his plans, and having made no engagement there, came over to England.”
Perhaps one of the best singing masters of the eighteenth century was Frederick the Great, who, as Dr. Burney tells us, was accustomed to take up his position in the pit of his opera-house, behind the conductor of the orchestra, so as to have a view of the score; when if a singer ventured to alter a single passage in his part, his Majesty severely reprimanded him, and ordered him to keep to the notes written by the composer. The Berlin opera would have been a good school for the sopranists, “who,” says M. Castil-Blaze,9 “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 and 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 long, cold passages of vocalisation occur, 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.”
Rossini then was not only a great composer, he was also a sort of Jack the Giant Killer. To be sure these giants of sopranists, with their vocal equestrianism, their shouting from the summits of mountains, and their plumes five feet high, were already approaching their last days. Still the great Velluti was in his vigour in 1814, and it was in that year that the young Rossini declared war against these Philistines, and succeeded in liberating vocal music from the tyranny of vocalists.
CHAPTER VIII
FROM MILAN TO NAPLES
ROSSINI would have been amused if any one had written a book about him and his music entitled “Rossini and his Three Styles.” He liked discussing the principles and also the practice of his art in good company – witness the “Conversations with Rossini,” recorded by Ferdinand Hiller. But he cared little for fine distinctions, and he is reported to have said that he knew nothing of French music, German music, or Italian music; that he only knew of two kinds of music – good and bad.
Nevertheless, all writers, painters, musicians, who have a style at all, have at least three styles – an imitative style, a tentative style, and finally, a style of their own. This division being admitted, Rossini entered upon his second style in writing “Tancredi,” and “L’Italiana in Algeri” (1813); and did not attain his third style until he wrote in the same year (1816) “Otello” for Naples, and “Il Barbiere” for Rome.
If it be thought absolutely necessary to place “Guillaume Tell” and Rossini’s French operas in a category by themselves, then we must say that Rossini had three styles (the consecrated number); and “Guillaume Tell” being manifestly in the third and last style, “Otello” must be put back to the second, and “Tancredi” to the first.
Theory apart, it is quite certain that Rossini, after his collision with Velluti, altered his system of writing for the voice – embellishing his airs, where he thought embellishments necessary, in such a manner that to embellish them further, at the will of the singer, was out of the question.
It is also certain that at Naples, from his arrival there in 1815, he passed under the artistic influence of Madame Colbran, his future wife, for whom he wrote no less than ten important parts, beginning with Elisabetta, and Desdemona, and ending with Zelmira and Semiramide.
In the meanwhile, between the historical “Aureliano,” which represents his breach with decorative vocalists, priding themselves on their individuality and their power of invention, on the one hand, and the equally historical “Elisabetta,” which represents his arrival at Naples, and the commencement of the period in which he cultivated serious opera alone, on the other, an interval of more than eighteen months must be supposed to elapse, during which Rossini wrote two operas, “Il Turco in Italia,” and “Sigismondo.”
The manager of La Scala wanted a pendent to “L’Italiana in Algeri.”
The basso Galli, who had for several years played with great success the part of the Bey in the “Italiana,” was now provided with the part of a young Turk who finds himself alone among Christians, as the “Italiana” had found herself alone among Mahomedans. Shipwrecked on the Italian coast, the youthful infidel reaches land and falls in love with the first pretty woman he meets. The pretty woman has, after the fashion of her native land, both a husband and a lover, and she torments them both by affecting a deep regard for the Turkish stranger. Galli was especially successful in his first air – a salutation to Italy, which was found very appropriate, inasmuch as the singer had just returned to Milan from Barcelona. The composer, however, was not so fortunate as the vocalist, the house resounded with cries of “Bravo Galli,” but “Bravo Maestro” was not once heard. The critics of the period found that there was a want of novelty in Rossini’s music, in fact that he had repeated himself. The truth is, continuations of successful works are seldom successful themselves. So much do first impressions count for, that the merit of a continuation must be superior to that of the original under pain of appearing inferior.
The shipwrecked Turk could not be permanently saved; but, true to his principles, Rossini rescued what he could from the general disaster. He had written an admirable overture for this “Turk in Italy,” which, when “Otello” was brought out, served with more or less appropriateness to introduce the Moor of Venice.
“Sigismondo” has left even fainter traces than “Il Turco in Italia.” It was produced at Venice (Fenice theatre) towards the close of 1814; and the night of its production Rossini, who always gave his mother the earliest news of the fate his works had met with, enclosed her a drawing of a bottle – or fiasco.
Rossini was not progressing. He had written nothing successful (though “Aureliano in Palmira” contained much that deserved to succeed) since the summer of 1813, when “L’Italiana in Algeri” was produced. This year of 1814 was the only one in which he ever received anything like a check; perhaps he was collecting himself for the great achievements of 1816, the year of “Otello” and “Il Barbiere.” In the meanwhile, even in 1814, he had done his year’s work. He had written two operas, besides a cantata, “Egle e Irene,” composed for the princess Belgiojoso.
At this time Rossini received only the miserable sum of about forty pounds for an opera. This money was paid to him by the impresario and represented the exclusive right of performing the work for two years. Few if any of his operas seem to have been engraved at the time of production, so that there was nothing to receive from music publishers, the sole refuge of dramatic composers in England (if dramatic composers in England still exist) to whom no payment is paid by managers for the right of representation.
Rossini at least derived one advantage from the non-publication of his works: he could borrow from them, or turn the old ones into new with greater facility. Rumours would be circulated when a new work of Rossini’s was brought out that this or that piece was only a reproduction from a previous opera, and the audiences were not always well pleased when they fancied they were being “imposed upon” in this manner. The manager at the theatre was usually one of the principal noblemen, or sometimes a rich banker of the place, and not only every capital, every important city, in Italy had its opera, but also every large and many very small towns.
Stendhal speaks of a town of ten thousand inhabitants where the grass grew in the street, which contrived to maintain its opera in good condition. The principal cities kept up several operas. We have seen that at Venice there were three: the Fenice, the San Benedetto, and the San Mosè. The two principal theatres in Italy were those of La Scala at Milan, and San Carlo at Naples; but Rome, thanks to the influence of the eminent dilettante, Cardinal Gonsalvi10 (who with infinite trouble succeeded in persuading Pope Pius VII. to remove the prohibition laid upon theatrical entertainments), had also its opera-houses, – the Argentina, the Valle, the Apollo, the Alberti, and the Tordinona.
The best of these theatres were well organised, and the performances at Rome during the carnival were particularly renowned. “Il Barbiere” was composed for Rome, and produced at the Argentina theatre during the carnival of 1816; “La Cenerentola” was also written for Rome, and brought out at the Valle theatre during the carnival of 1817. “Matilda di Sabran” was given for the first time at Rome at the Apollo theatre during the carnival of 1821. The Roman theatres were badly built, chiefly of wood; but the Argentina and the Valle theatres, where “Il Barbiere” and “Cenerentola” were produced, may be remembered in the history of art when many magnificent edifices in stone are forgotten. For the Argentina theatre not only Rossini’s masterpiece in the comic style, but also (as for the Alberti) many of the best works of Pergolese, Cimarosa, and Paisiello were composed.
The Fenice theatre, where Rossini produced his first important opera in the serious style, “Tancredi,” and also the last in that style which he wrote for Italy, “Semiramide,” ranked next to the theatres of La Scala and San Carlo, or rather, it should be said, immediately after La Scala – the Neapolitan Opera House holding the first place among all. “This singular town,” says Stendhal, “now the gayest in Europe, will thirty years hence [1823] be only an unhealthy village unless Italy wakes up and gives herself but one king, in which case I shall vote for Venice, an impregnable city, as capital.”
Stendhal possessed a certain amount of foresight. He had an idea that somewhere about the year 1853 a united Italy would be formed. He also prophesied, or rather pointed out, that in the natural course of things (1), Mozart would outlive Rossini; (2) that the composer who obtained the next great success after Rossini would compose simple expressive melodies (fulfilled in the case of Bellini); (3) that the Italian style of Rossini and the German style of Weber would be united in one composer, whose works would be produced at Paris (an evident prevision of Meyerbeer).
After the Fenice ranked the Court theatre of Turin, for which Rossini never composed a note, and which seems to have been a singularly formal and dull establishment in Rossini’s days. “Forming part of the king’s palace, it was considered disrespectful to appear there in a cloak, disrespectful to laugh, and disrespectful to applaud, till the queen had applauded.” This, the fourth theatre in Italy, gave its best representations during the carnival; it was also opened from time to time during Lent.
Florence, Bologna, Genoa, Sienna, Ferrara, had all their Operas, which were of repute at certain seasons of the year – sometimes during the carnival, sometimes in the autumn. At Bergámo the best performances took place during the local fair at Leghorn during the summer season. Most of the lyrical theatres in the capitals and large towns were protected by the sovereign. In the small towns the magnates of the place contributed to the maintenance of the opera either by absolute donations or by nobly risking their money.
The Emperor of Austria gave a subscription of about eight thousand pounds a year to La Scala, the King of Naples nearly twelve thousand to San Carlo. These magnificent opera houses, at one time the two finest in the world, now eclipsed in architectural splendour, if not in fame, were also supported by public gambling tables established in spacious saloons adjoining the theatre. The keeper of the bank did a sufficiently good business to be able to pay a large sum out of his profits to the “Impresario.” The Austrian Government suppressed the gambling in the saloons of La Scala in the year 1822, and King Ferdinand, finding that it had been forbidden at San Carlo during the revolution which brought him to the throne, did not authorise its re-introduction.
Opera is a costly entertainment, and has never flourished anywhere unless sustained by the munificence of sovereigns, or of a rich and cultivated aristocracy. We know what the theatres of La Scala and San Carlo did under the system of large subventions. They will never regain their ancient splendour under a parliamentary government involving discussion of the state budget and limitation of state expenditure.
The municipalities and small towns made grants to the local operas, as Ascot, Epsom, and a hundred towns in England give plates to be run for at the annual races. All these musical theatres, great and small, were bound at certain periods to bring out new works. The composers were not liberally paid, but a large number of operas had to be furnished every year, and the demand caused a supply.
Musical composition was maintained as a living art. The new works attracted new audiences, who again called out for new works. The production of opera was artificially encouraged and protected, like horse-racing in England. It was contrary to the principles of political economy, but it succeeded. The native breed of singers and composers was decidedly improved.
The order of performance at the Italian theatres was rather absurd. This has already been mentioned, but it is worth remembering in connection with Rossini’s operas. First one act of an opera was given, then a ballet, which frequently lasted upwards of an hour, then the second act of the opera, and finally a short ballet or divertissement. With the representation composed in this manner, the natural division of an opera, for no artistic reasons, but simply as a matter of convenience, was into two acts.
This division being accepted the concerted finale, the great test-piece of the work, was placed at the end of the first act. Here the dramatic knot was tied, the solution of which is celebrated in all Rossini’s comic operas by a joyous air for the prima donna at the end of Act II. If Rossini had been composing for theatres where, as in Germany, France, and England, it is the custom to perform an opera continuously from beginning to end, certainly neither he nor his librettist would have thought of reducing the five acts of Beaumarchais’s “Barbier de Séville,” of Voltaire’s “Sémiramis,” to only two. In the operatic system of Rossini’s time the three first acts of a five act drama went to form the first act of a two act opera. Naturally, then, these first acts are rather long. In the first act of “Semiramide” the finale alone lasts a good half-hour, considerably more than the entire first act in many of the operas of Signor Verdi, whose favourite division is into four acts.
I may once more mention, to explain the otherwise inexplicable patience of the Italian audiences beneath the interminable recitatives which are to be found, not only in the works of Rossini’s predecessors, but also (though at much more moderate length) in the earlier works of Rossini himself, that these recitatives were not listened to except at the first representation, when nothing was lost. At the succeeding performances conversation was carried on freely during the intervals between the principal pieces. The place for determined listeners who wished to hear everything, was supposed to be the pit.
A really successful opera was performed some thirty times. At the first three representations the execution was directed by the composer, who presided at the piano, until that instrument was expelled from the orchestra by Rossini. The position then of the maestro when the work was hissed was by no means an agreeable one. Rossini wrote thirty-four operas for Italy in fourteen years, or at the rate of about two and a half a year. In no other country could such a number of new operas have been produced on the stage in the same time; but each of the great Italian theatres made a point of bringing out at least two new operas every year, and we have seen that the minor theatres were also regularly supplied with new and original works.
The Italian managers, to be sure, had no idea, of wasting the time and money expended in France and England on the production of operas in which the spectacle and general mise en scène are thought quite as important, if not more so, than the music. The Italian theatres, nevertheless, had admirable scene painters; and new scenery, of high artistic excellence, was painted for every opera brought out.
Rossini, until he established his head-quarters at Naples, was constantly travelling about Italy. Each journey was a triumphal progress. The dilettanti of each town he arrived at welcomed him, fêted him, and overwhelmed him with attentions of all kinds. He seldom began to write until a few weeks, sometimes a very few weeks indeed, before the day fixed for the first representation. Occasionally these weeks dwindled into days. Then the impresario, from nervous became delirious; and stories are told of Rossini’s being locked up in the manager’s room, and egress absolutely denied to him until the work he was engaged upon was finished.
These periodical fits of despair were not without their effect, and Rossini used, many years afterwards, to say that to them and to the tearing of hair which accompanied them, might be attributed the premature baldness by which all the Italian managers of his time were afflicted.
PART II
ROSSINI AT NAPLES
CHAPTER I
ROSSINI, BARBAJA, AND MDLLE. COLBRAN
NAPLES and Dresden had long been the two great operatic centres of Europe. For the sake of harmony and regularity, it is usual to mention Sebastian Bach as the founder of the German school, in contrast to Alessandro Scarlatti, the founder of the Italian school of music. But as regards the opera, Germany inherited from Scarlatti almost as much as Italy herself. If Durante, the celebrated Neapolitan professor, was a pupil of Scarlatti, so also was Hasse, who raised the Dresden theatre to a pitch of excellence unequalled elsewhere out of Italy. Hasse directed the music at Dresden for more than a quarter of a century, and, thanks to the liberality of Augustus of Saxony, better connoisseur than king, was able to make its orchestra one of the finest, if not absolutely the finest, in Europe.
“The first orchestra in Europe,” says Rousseau,11 “in respect to the number and science of the symphonists, is that of Naples. But the orchestra of the Opera of the King of Poland at Dresden, directed by the illustrious Hasse, is better distributed, and forms a better ensemble.”
The magnificence of the Saxon kings declined with the power of Poland; and towards the close of the eighteenth century the musical glory of the Dresden opera may be said to have been “partitioned,” like Poland itself, between Joseph II., who presided at the production of Mozart’s “Nozze di Figaro,” Catherine II., who invited Paisiello and Cimarosa to her court, and Frederic, the great flute player and general director of the opera at Berlin. Seriously, the two great musical capitals of Germany were Vienna and Prague, and the dilettanti of Naples thought more than ever that the supremacy of their opera in all Europe was not to be questioned.
When Rossini’s fame, thanks to “Tancredi” and “L’Italiana in Algeri,” was spreading all over Italy, the impresario of the San Carlo at Naples, who had also undertaken the management of the Teatro del Fondo in the same city, was the celebrated Barbaja, a personage to whom an important place belongs in operatic history.
Barbaja was not one of those Italian grand seigneurs who from time to time, for the love of art and of a prima donna, ruined themselves in the management of an opera. Neither was he a rich banker in the general sense of the word – though he had kept the bank in the gambling saloon of La Scala at Milan. Previously he had fulfilled the less lucrative duties of waiter at the La Scala café; and he is also said to have taken part in the speculations of the French army contractors. One way and another he made a large fortune, and arriving at Naples obtained the directorship of the San Carlo theatre.
Barbaja knew nothing of music or he might have ruined himself – he might have insisted, for instance, on producing “le Nozze di Figaro,” “Don Giovanni,” or even “Fidelio.” But he could tell a successful from an unsuccessful composer, and he saw that the young Rossini of “Tancredi” and “L’Italiana in Algeri” celebrity was the man of the day.
Barbaja had previously speculated in Cimarosa, and he afterwards invested in Donizetti and Bellini. He deserves a biography to himself, and certainly no one could have furnished better materials for a biography of Rossini, with whom he had constant relations for nine years during the most active and brilliant period of Rossini’s career.
Literary honours have been paid to the great impresario by Scribe, who introduces him into one of his ingenious opera-books (“La Sirène,” is it not?); and he has even been casually mentioned by the immortal Balzac.
If he had lived long enough, if he had lived in the days of railways and the electric telegraph, he might have directed half the opera houses in Europe. As it was, he contented himself in the year 1824 with conducting two theatres at Naples and one at Vienna.
At the Vienna Opera House he collected the finest company ever known, including Davide, Nozzari, Donzelli, Rubini, Cicimarra, as tenors; Lablache, Bassi (Niccolo), Ambroggi, Tamburini, Botticelli, as basses; Mesdames Mainvielle-Fodor, Colbran, Féron, Mombelli (Esther), Dardanelli, Sontag, Unger, Grisi (Giuditta), Grimbaun, as sopranos; Mesdames Rubini, Cesar-Cantarelli, Eckerlin, as contraltos.
In the year 1814 Barbaja went to Bologna, called upon Rossini, and, with the liberality of an intelligent speculator dealing with an evidently rising artist, offered him a very much better engagement than had ever been within his reach before.
On his arrival at Naples Rossini signed a contract with Barbaja for several years, by which he agreed to write two new operas annually, and to arrange the music of all old works the manager might wish to produce, either at the San Carlo or at the Teatro del Fondo. For this the maestro was to receive two hundred ducats (nearly forty pounds) a month and a share in the profits of the bank in the San Carlo gambling saloon.
This was not much compared to what Rossini afterwards received as retaining salary, and in the shape of author’s fees, during his engagement at Paris; but it was magnificent considering the paltry sums he had earned at Venice and Milan. In point of fact, Rossini had now something more to do than compose operas; he had undertaken the musical direction of two opera houses, one of which was the most important in Europe. In addition to his own work as composer, he had to do a prodigious amount of transposition to suit the voices of new and old singers; he had to improve, to correct, to reset, to re-score, to fulfil, in short, all the arduous and laborious duties of a musical conductor.
For a “lazy” man it was severe; but Rossini did all that was expected of him to perfection, and ended by marrying the prima donna – which Barbaja had not bargained for at all.
Mademoiselle Colbran, the future Madame Rossini, was a great beauty, in the queenly style – dark hair, brilliant eyes, imposing demeanour. One would think she must already have seen her best days when Rossini first met her at Naples in 1815; for she was born at Madrid in 1785. But only women of the happiest organisation succeed as great dramatic singers; and Mademoiselle Colbran seems to have preserved youthfulness and beauty of voice, and doubtless, therefore, of person, until long afterwards.
Mademoiselle Colbran studied under Pareja, Marinelli, and Crescentini, and made her début with success at Paris in 1801, together with the celebrated violinist, Rode. Rossini wrote as many as ten parts for her, including those of Desdemona, Elcia (“Mosé in Egitto”), Elena (“Donna del Lago”), Zelmira, and Semiramide.
Fortunately and unfortunately for her, Mademoiselle Colbran’s name was constantly mixed up with political questions, and was at one time quite a party word among the royalists at Naples. Those who admired the king made a point of applauding his favourite singer. A gentleman from England asked a friend one night at the San Carlo theatre how he liked Mademoiselle Colbran.
“Like her? I am a Royalist,” was the reply.
Stendhal was not a Royalist, and, in opposition to Carpani, his ordinary unacknowledged authority on all matters connected with Rossini’s name, did not much admire Mademoiselle Colbran’s voice, which, he says, “began to deteriorate about the year 1816” – the year after Rossini’s arrival at Naples.
When the Revolutionists gained the upper hand, Mademoiselle Colbran used to get hissed; but the discomfiture of the popular party was always followed by renewed triumphs for the singer.
Then the anti-Royalists, afraid to express their disapprobation openly, would leave the theatre in a body, pretending that Mademoiselle Colbran sang out of tune.
One can guess what Rossini’s own politics must have been, from his temperament. Plots and stratagems were not to his taste. He had “music in his soul,” and a horror of discord.
Nevertheless, overtaken by a revolutionary movement just as he was about to leave Bologna to enter upon his new duties at Naples, he could not refuse to compose a hymn in honour of Italian liberty. Indeed, without having the least affection for brawlers and Red Republicans, Rossini may all the same have felt an antipathy for the Austrian domination in Italy. Without entering too far into this profound and really inscrutable question, it may be enough to mention that Rossini’s cantata, or hymn, of the year 1815, gained for its composer some reputation as an Italian patriot.
But this was nothing to the fame he derived from a little transaction he was reported to have had with the Austrian governor of Bologna, to whom he had to apply for permission to leave the town.
The patriotic hymn had been sung day and night at Bologna until the arrival of the Austrians, without its being generally known as the work of Rossini. The Austrian governor was a great dilettante, and rather piqued himself on his musical knowledge; so, on going to him for a passport, Rossini, with whose name the general was, of course, familiar, presented to him a piece of music set to verses full of enthusiasm on behalf of the Austrians.
The governor read the words, and approved. He looked at the music with the eye of a connoisseur, and approved more than ever. He called to one of his secretaries to make out Rossini’s passport forthwith, thanked the composer cordially for his attention, and in wishing him farewell, informed him that the music should be executed that very afternoon by the military band.
Rossini’s anthem in praise of Austria and paternal government was soon arranged for the regimental orchestra, and the same evening was played in the market-place before a large concourse of curious amateurs.
The townspeople knew that they were about to hear their patriotic hymn. Its performance was decidedly effective; but Rossini had started some hours before, and the musical governor had no opportunity of renewing to him the expression of his thanks.
If any one doubts the truth of this story, let him refer to the list of Rossini’s works, from which he will see that Rossini did really write a patriotic cantata in the year 1815.