History of the Opera from its Origin in Italy to the present Time Part 1

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

by Henry Sutherland Edwards.

CHAPTER I.

PREFACE, PRELUDE, PROLOGUE, INTRODUCTION, OVERTURE, ETC.--THE ORIGIN OF THE OPERA IN ITALY, AND ITS INTRODUCTION INTO GERMANY.--ITS HISTORY IN EUROPE; DIVISION OF THE SUBJECT.

It has often been said, and notably, by J. J. Rousseau, and after him, with characteristic exaggeration, by R. Wagner, that "Opera" does not mean so much a musical work, as a musical, poetical, and spectacular work all at once; that "Opera" in fact, is "the work," _par excellence_, to the production of which all the arts are necessary.[1] The very t.i.tles of the earliest operas prove this notion to be incorrect. The earliest Italian plays of a mixed character, not being constructed according to the ancient rules of tragedy and comedy, were called by the general name of "Opera," the nature of the "work" being more particularly indicated by some such epithet or epithets as _regia_, _comica_, _tragica_, _scenica_, _sacra_, _esemplare_, _regia ed esemplare_, _&c._; and in the case of a lyrical drama, the words _per musica_, _scenica per musica_, _regia ed esemplare per musica_, were added, or the production was styled _opera musicale_ alone. In time the mixed plays (which were imitated from the Spanish) fell into disrepute in Italy, while the t.i.tle of "Opera" was still applied to lyrical dramas, but not without "musicale," or "in musica" after it. This was sufficiently vague, but people soon found it troublesome, or thought it useless, to say _opera musicale_, when opera by itself conveyed, if it did not express, their meaning, and thus dramatic works in music came to be called "Operas." Algarotte's work on the Opera (translated into French, and ent.i.tled _Essai sur l'Opera_) is called in the original _Saggio sopra l'Opera in musica_. "Opera in music" would in the present day sound like a pleonasm, but it is as well to consider the true meaning of words, when we find them not merely perverted, but in their perverted sense made the foundation of ridiculous theories.

[Sidenote: THE FIRST OPERA]

The Opera proceeds from the sacred musical plays of the 15th century as the modern drama proceeds from the mediaeval mysteries. Menestrier, however, the Jesuit father, a.s.signs to it a far greater antiquity, and considers the Song of Solomon to be the earliest Opera on record, founding his opinion on these words of St. Jerome, translated from Origen:--_Epithalamium, libellus, id est nuptiale carmen, in modum mihi videtur dramatis a Solomone conscriptus quem cecinit instar nubentis sponsae_.[2]

Others see the first specimens of opera in the Greek plays; but the earliest musical dramas of modern Italy, from which the Opera of the present day is descended directly, and in an unbroken line, are "mysteries" differing only from the dramatic mysteries in so far that the dialogue in them was sung instead of being spoken. "The Conversion of St. Paul" was played in music, at Rome, in 1440. The first profane subject treated operatically, was the descent of Orpheus into h.e.l.l; the music of this _Orfeo_, which was produced also at Rome, in 1480, was by Angelo Poliziano, the libretto by Cardinal Riario, nephew of Sixtus IV.

The popes kept up an excellent theatre, and Clement IX. was himself the author of seven _libretti_.

At this time the great attraction in operatic representations was the scenery--a sign of infancy then, as it is a sign of decadence now. At the very beginning of the sixteenth century, Balthazar Peruzzi, the decorator of the papal theatre, had carried his art to such perfection, that the greatest painters of the day were astonished at his performances. His representations of architecture and the illusions of height and distance which his knowledge of perspective enabled him to produce, were especially admired. Vasari has told us how t.i.tian, at the Palace of la Farnesina, was so struck by the appearance of solidity given by Peruzzi to his designs in profile, that he was not satisfied, until he had ascended a ladder and touched them, that they were not actually in relief. "One can scarcely conceive," says the historian of the painters, in speaking of Peruzzi's scenic decorations, "with what ability, in so limited a s.p.a.ce, he represented such a number of houses, palaces, porticoes, entablatures, profiles, and all with such an aspect of reality that the spectator fancied himself transported into the middle of a public square, to such a point was the illusion carried.

Moreover, Balthazar, the better to produce these results, understood, in an admirable manner the disposition of light as well as all the machinery connected with theatrical changes and effects."

[Sidenote: DAFNE.]

In 1574, Claudio Merulo, organist at St. Mark's, of Venice, composed the music of a drama by Cornelio Frangipani, which was performed in the Venetian Council Chamber in presence of Henry III. of France. The music of the operatic works of this period appears to have possessed but little if any dramatic character, and to have consisted almost exclusively of choruses in the madrigal style, which was so successfully cultivated about the same time in England. Emilio del Cavaliere, a celebrated musician of Rome, made an attempt to introduce appropriateness of expression into these choruses, and his reform, however incomplete, attracted the attention of Giovanni Bardi, Count of Vernio. This n.o.bleman used to a.s.semble in his palace all the most distinguished musicians of Florence, among whom were Mei, Caccini, and Vincent Galileo, the father of the astronomer. Vincent Galileo was himself a discoverer, and helped, at the Count of Vernio's musical meetings, to invent recitative--an invention of comparative insignificance, but which in the system of modern opera plays as important a part, perhaps, as the rotation of the earth does in that of the celestial spheres.

Two other Florentine n.o.blemen, Pietro Strozzi and Giacomo Corsi, encouraged by the example of Bardi, and determined to give the musical drama its fullest development in the new form that it had a.s.sumed, engaged Ottavio Rinuccini, one of the first poets of the period, with Peri and Caccini, two of the best musicians, to compose an opera which was ent.i.tled _Dafne_, and was performed for the first time in the Corsi Palace, at Florence, in 1597.

_Dafne_ appears to have been the first complete opera. It was considered a masterpiece both from the beauty of the music and from the interest of the drama; and on its model the same authors composed their opera of _Euridice_, which was represented publicly at Florence on the occasion of the marriage of Henry IV. of France, with Marie de Medicis, in 1600.

Each of the five acts of _Euridice_ concludes with a chorus, the dialogue is in recitative, and one of the characters, "Tircis," sings an air which is introduced by an instrumental prelude.

New music was composed to the libretto of _Dafne_ by Gagliano in 1608, when the opera thus rearranged was performed at Mantua; and in 1627 the same piece was translated by Opitz, "the father of the lyric stage in Germany," as he is called, set to music by Schutz, and represented at Dresden on the occasion of the marriage of the Landgrave of Hesse with the sister of John-George I., Elector of Saxony. It was not, however, until 1692 that Keiser appeared and perfected the forms of the German Opera. Keiser was scarcely nineteen years of age when he produced at the Court of Wolfenb.u.t.tel, _Ismene_ and _Basilius_, the former styled a Pastoral, the latter an opera. It is said reproachfully, and as if facetiously, of a common-place German musician in the present day, that he is "of the Wolfenb.u.t.tel school," just as it is considered comic in France to taunt a singer or player with having come from Carpentras. It is curious that Wolfenb.u.t.tel in Germany, and Carpentras in France (as I shall show in the next chapter), were the cradles of Opera in their respective countries.

[Sidenote: MONTEVERDE, AND HIS ORCHESTRA.]

To return to the Opera in Italy. The earliest musical drama, then, with choruses, recitatives, airs, and instrumental preludes was _Dafne_, by Rinuccini as librettist, and Caccini and Peri as composers; but the orchestra which accompanied this work consisted only of a harpsichord, a species of guitar called a chitarone, a lyre, and a lute. When Monteverde appeared, he introduced the modern scale, and changed the whole harmonic system of his predecessors. He at the same time gave far greater importance in his operas to the accompaniments, and increased to a remarkable extent the number of musicians in the orchestra, which under his arrangement included every kind of instrument known at the time. Many of Monteverde's instruments are now obsolete. This composer, the unacknowledged prototype of our modern cultivators of orchestral effects, made use of a separate combination of instruments to announce the entry and return of each personage in his operas; a dramatic means employed afterwards by Hoffmann in his _Undine_,[3] and in the present day with pretended novelty by Richard Wagner. This newest orchestral device is also the oldest. The score of Monteverde's _Orfeo_, produced in 1608, contains parts for two harpsichords, two lyres or violas with thirteen strings, ten violas, three ba.s.s violas, two double ba.s.ses, a double harp (with two rows of strings), two French violins, besides guitars, organs, a flute, clarions, and even trombones. The ba.s.s violas accompanied Orpheus, the violas Eurydice, the trombones Pluto, the small organ Apollo; Charon, strangely enough, sang to the music of the guitar.

Monteverde, having become chapel master at the church of St. Mark, produced at Venice _Arianna_, of which _Rinuccini_ had written the libretto. This was followed by other works of the same kind, which were produced with great magnificence, until the fame of the Venetian operas spread throughout Italy, and by the middle of the seventeenth century the new entertainment was established at Venice, Bologna, Rome, Turin, Naples, and Messina. Popes, cardinals and the most ill.u.s.trious n.o.bles took the Opera under their protection, and the dukes of Mantua and Modena distinguished themselves by the munificence of their patronage.

Among the most celebrated of the female singers of this period were Catarina Martinella of Rome, Archilei, Francesca Caccini (daughter of the composer of that name and herself the author of an operatic score), Adriana Baroni, of Mantua, and her daughter Leonora Baroni, whose praises have been sung by Milton in his three Latin poems "Ad Leonoram Romae canentem."

[Sidenote: THE ITALIAN OPERA ABROAD.]

The Italian opera, as we shall afterwards see, was introduced into France under the auspices of Cardinal Mazarin, who as the Abbe Mazarini, had visited all the princ.i.p.al theatres of Italy by the express command of Richelieu, and had studied their system with a view to the more perfect representation of the cardinal-minister's tragedies. The Italian Opera he introduced on his own account, and it was, on the whole, very inhospitably received. Indeed, from the establishment of the French Opera under Cambert and his successor Lulli, in the latter half of the seventeenth century, until the end of the eighteenth, the French were unable to understand or unwilling to acknowledge the immense superiority of the Italians in everything pertaining to music. In 1752 Pergolese's _Serva Padrona_ was the cause of the celebrated dispute between the partisans of French and Italian Opera, and the end of it was that _La Serva Padrona_ was hissed, and the two singers who appeared in it driven from Paris.

In England the Italian Opera was introduced in the first years of the eighteenth century, and under Handel, who arrived in London in 1710, attained the greatest perfection. Since the production of Handel's last dramatic work, in 1740, the Italian Opera has continued to be represented in London with scarcely noticeable intervals until the present day, and, on the whole, with remarkable excellence.

Of English Opera a far less satisfactory account can be given. Its traditions exist by no means in an unbroken line. Purcell wrote English operas, and was far in advance of all the composers of his time, except, no doubt, those of Italy, who, we must remember were his masters, though he did not slavishly copy them. Since then, we have had composers (for the stage, I mean) who have utterly failed; composers, like Dr. Arne, who have written Anglo-Italian operas; composers of "ballad operas,"

which are not operas at all; composers of imitation-operas of all kinds; and lastly, the composers of the present day, by whom the long wished-for English Opera will perhaps at last be established.

In Germany, which, since the time of Handel and Ha.s.se, has produced an abundance of great composers for the stage, the national opera until Gluck (including Gluck's earlier works), was imitated almost entirely from that of Italy; and the Italian method of singing being the true and only method has always prevailed.

Throughout the eighteenth century, we find the great Italian singers travelling to all parts of Europe and carrying with them the operas of the best Italian masters. In each of the countries where the opera has been cultivated, it has had a different history, but from the beginning until the end of the eighteenth century, the Italian Opera flourished in Italy, and also in Germany and in England; whereas France persisted in rejecting the musical teaching of a foreign land until the utter insufficiency of her own operatic system became too evident to be any longer denied. She remained separated from the rest of Europe in a musical sense until the time of the Revolution, as she has since and from very different reasons been separated from it politically.

[Sidenote: OPERA IN FRANCE.]

Nevertheless, the history of the Opera in France is of great interest, like the history of every other art in that country which has engaged the attention of its ingenious amateurs and critics. Only, for a considerable period it must be treated apart.

In the course of this narrative sketch, which does not claim to be a scientific history, I shall pursue, as far as possible, the chronological method; but it is one which the necessities of the subject will often cause me to depart from.

CHAPTER II.

INTRODUCTION OF THE OPERA INTO FRANCE AND ENGLAND.

French Opera not founded by Lulli.--Lulli's elevation from the kitchen to the orchestra.--Lulli, M. de Pourceaugnac, and Louis XIV.--Buffoonery rewarded.--A disreputable tenor.--Virtuous precaution of a _prima donna_.--Orthography of a stage Queen.--A cure for love.--Mademoiselle de Maupin.--A composer of sacred music.--Food for cattle.--Cambert in England.--The first English Opera.--Music under Cromwell.--Music under Charles II.--Grabut and Dryden.--Purcell.

[Sidenote: ORFEO AND DON GIOVANNI.]

In a general view of the history of the Opera, the central figures would be Gluck and Mozart. Before Gluck's time the operatic art was in its infancy, and since the death of Mozart, no operas have been produced equal to that composer's masterpieces. Mozart must have commenced his _Idomeneo_, the first of his celebrated works, the very year that Gluck retired to Vienna, after giving to the Parisians his _Iphigenie en Tauride_; but, though contemporaries in the strict sense of the word, Gluck and Mozart can scarcely be looked upon as belonging to the same musical epoch. The compositions of the former, however immortal, have at least an antique cast. Those of the latter have quite a modern air; and it must appear to the audiences of the present day that far more than twenty-three years separate _Orfeo_ from _Don Giovanni_, though that is the precise interval which elapsed between the production of the opera by which Gluck, and of the one by which Mozart, is best known in this country. Gluck, after a century and a half of opera, so far surpa.s.sed all his predecessors that no work by a composer anterior to him is ever performed. Lulli wrote an _Armide_, which was followed by Rameau's _Armide_, which was followed by Gluck's _Armide_; and Monteverde wrote an _Orfeo_ a hundred and fifty years before Gluck produced the _Orfeo_ which was played only the other night at the Royal Italian Opera. The _Orfeo_, then, of our existing operatic repertory takes us back through its subject to the earliest of regular Italian operas, and similarly Gluck, through his _Armide_ appears as the successor of Rameau, who was the successor of Lulli, who usually pa.s.ses for the founder of the Opera in France, a country where it is particularly interesting to trace the progress of that entertainment, inasmuch as it can be observed at one establishment, which has existed continuously for two hundred years, and which, under the t.i.tle of Academie Royale, Academie Nationale, and Academie Imperiale (it has now gone by each of those names twice), has witnessed the production of more operatic masterpieces than any other theatre in any city in the world. To convince the reader of the truth of this latter a.s.sertion I need only remind him of the works produced at the Academie Royale by Gluck and Piccinni immediately before the Revolution; and of the _Masaniello_ of Auber, the _William Tell_ of Rossini, and the _Robert the Devil_ of Meyerbeer,--all written for the said Academie within sixteen years of the termination of the Napoleonic wars. Neither Naples, nor Milan, nor Prague, nor Vienna, nor Munich, nor Dresden, nor Berlin, has individually seen the birth of so many great operatic works by different masters, though, of course, if judged by the number of great composers to whom they have given birth, both Germany and Italy must be ranked infinitely higher than France. Indeed, if we compare France with our own country, we find, it is true, that an opera in the national language was established there earlier than here, though in the first instance only as a private entertainment; but, on the other hand, the French, until Gluck's time, had never any composers, native or adopted, at all comparable to our Purcell, who produced his _King Arthur_ as far back as 1691.

Lulli is generally said to have introduced Opera into France, and, indeed, is represented in a picture, well known to Parisian opera-goers, receiving a privilege from the hands of Louis XIV. as a reward and encouragement for his services in that respect. This privilege, however, was neither deserved nor obtained in the manner supposed. Cardinal Mazarin introduced Italian Opera into Paris in 1645, when Lulli was only twelve years of age; and the first French Opera, ent.i.tled Akebar, Roi de Mogol, words and music by the Abbe Mailly, was brought out the year following in the Episcopal Palace of Carpentras, under the direction of Cardinal b.i.+.c.hi, Urban the Eighth's legate. Clement VII. had already appeared as a librettist, and it has been said that Urban VIII. himself recommended the importation of the Opera into France; so that the real father of the lyric stage in that country was certainly not a scullion, and may have been a Pope.

[Sidenote: THE ACADEMY OF MUSIC.]

The second French Opera was _La Pastorale en musique_, words by Perrin, music by Cambert, which was privately represented at Issy; and the third _Pomone_, also by Perrin and Cambert, which was publicly performed in Paris in 1671--the year in which was produced, at the same theatre, _Psyche_, a _tragedie-ballet_, by the two greatest dramatic poets France has ever produced, Moliere and Corneille. _Pomone_ was the first French Opera heard by the Parisian public, and it was to the Abbe Perrin, its author, and not to Lulli, that the patent of the Royal Academy of Music was granted. A privilege for establis.h.i.+ng an Academy of Music had been conceded a hundred years before by Charles IX. to Antoine de Baif,--the word "_Academie_" being used as an equivalent for "_Accademia_," the Italian for concert. Perrin's license appears to have been a renewal, as to form, of de Baif's, and thus originated the eminently absurd t.i.tle which the chief operatic theatre of Paris has retained ever since. The Academy of Music is of course an academy in the sense in which the Theatre Francais is a college of declamation, and the Palais Royal Theatre a school of morality; but no one need seek to justify its t.i.tle because it is known to owe its existence to a confusion of terms.

Six French operas had been performed before Lulli, supported by Madame de Montespan, succeeded in depriving Perrin of his "privilege," and securing it for himself--at the very moment when Perrin and Cambert were about to bring out their _Ariane_, of which the representation was stopped. The success of Lulli's intrigue drove Cambert to London, where he was received with much favour by Charles II., and appointed director of the Court music, an office which he retained until his death. Lulli's first opera, written in conjunction with Quinault, being the seventh produced on the French stage, was _Cadmus and Hermione_ (1673).

[Sidenote: LULLI'S DISGRACE.]

The life of the fortunate, unscrupulous, but really talented scullion, to whom is falsely attributed the honour of having founded the Opera in France, has often been narrated, and for the most part very inaccurately. Every one knows that he arrived from Italy to enter the service of Mademoiselle de Montpensier as page, and that he was degraded by that lady to the back kitchen: but it is not so generally known that he was only saved through the influence of Madame de Montespan from a shameful and horrible death on the Place de Greve, where his accomplice was actually burned and his ashes thrown to the winds. Mademoiselle de Montpensier, in one of her letters, speaks of Lulli asking for his conge; but it is quite certain that he was dismissed, though it would be as impossible to give a complete account of the causes of his dismissal as to publish the original of the needlessly elaborate reply attributed to a certain French general at Waterloo.[4] We may mention, however, that Lulli had composed a song which was a good deal sung at the court, and at which the Princess had every right to be offended. A French dramatist has made this affair of the song the subject of a very ingenious little piece, which was represented in English some years since at the Adelphi Theatre, but in which the exact nature of the objectionable composition is of course not indicated. Suffice it to say, that Lulli was discharged, and that Louis XIV., hearing the libellous air, and finding it to his taste, showed so little regard for Mademoiselle de Montpensier's feelings, as to take the young musician into his own service. There were no vacancies in the king's band, and it was, moreover, a point of etiquette that the court-fiddlers should buy their places; so to save trouble, and, perhaps, from a suspicion that his ordinary players were a set of impostors, his majesty commissioned Lulli to form a band of his own, to which the name of "_Les pet.i.ts violons du roi_" was given. The little fiddles soon became more expert musicians than the big ones, and Louis was so pleased with the little fiddle-in-chief, that he entrusted him with the superintendence of the music of his ballets. These ballets, which corresponded closely enough to our English masques, were entertainments not of dancing only, but also of vocal and instrumental music; the name was apparently derived from the Italian _ballata_, the parent of our own "ballad."

Lulli also composed music for the interludes and songs in Moliere's comedies, in which he sometimes appeared himself as a singer, and even as a burlesque actor. Once, when the musical arrangements were not quite ready for a ballet, in which the king was to play four parts--the House of France, Pluto, Mars and the Sun--he replied, on receiving a command to proceed with the piece--"_Le roi est le maitre; il peut attendre tant qu'il lui plaira._" His majesty did not, as I have seen it stated, laugh at the facetious impertinence of his musician. On the contrary, he was seriously offended; and great was Lulli's alarm when he found that neither the House of France, nor Pluto, nor Mars, nor the Sun, would smile at the pleasantries with which, as the performance went on, he endeavoured to atone for his unbecoming speech. The wrath of the Great Monarch was not to be appeased, and Lulli's enemies already began to rejoice at his threatened downfall.

[Sidenote: LULLI A BUFFOON.]

Fortunately, Moliere was at Versailles. Lulli asked him at the conclusion of the ballet to announce a performance of _M. de Pourceaugnac_, a piece which never failed to divert Louis; and it was arranged that just before the rise of the curtain Moliere should excuse himself, on the score of a sudden indisposition, from appearing in the princ.i.p.al character. When there seemed to be no chance of _M. de Pourceaugnac_ being played, Lulli, that the king might not be disappointed, n.o.bly volunteered to undertake the part of the hero, and exerted himself in an unprecedented manner to do it justice. But his majesty, who generally found the troubles of the Limousin gentleman so amusing, on this occasion did not even smile. The great scene was about to begin; the scene in which the apothecaries, armed with their terrible weapons, attack M. de Pourceaugnac and chase him round the stage. Louis looked graver than ever. Then the comedian, as a last hope, rushed from the back of the stage to the foot lights, sprang into the orchestra, alighted on the harpsichord, and smashed it into a thousand pieces. "By this fall he rose." Probably he hurt himself, but no matter; on looking round he saw the Great Monarch in convulsions of laughter. Encouraged by his success, he climbed back through the prompter's box on to the stage; the royal mirth increased, and Lulli was now once more reinstated in the good graces of his sovereign.

Moliere had a high opinion of Lulli's facetious powers. "_Fais nous rire, Baptiste_," he would say, and it cannot have been any sort of joke that would have excited the laughter of the greatest of comic writers.

Nevertheless, he fell out with Lulli when the latter attained the "privilege" of the Opera, and, profiting by the monopoly which it secured to him, forbade the author of _Tartuffe_ to introduce more than two singers in his interludes, or to employ more than six violins in his orchestra. Accordingly, Moliere entrusted the composition of the music for the _Malade Imaginaire_, to Charpentier. The songs and symphonies of all his other pieces, with the exception of _Melicerte_, were composed by Lulli.

The story of Lulli's obtaining letters of n.o.bility through the excellence of his buffoonery in the part of the Muphti, in the _Bourgeois Gentilhomme_ has often been told. This was in 1670, but once a n.o.ble, and director of the Royal Academy of Music, he showed but little disposition to contribute to the diversion of others, even by the exercise of his legitimate art. Not only did he refuse to play the violin, but he would not even have one in his house. To overcome Lulli's repugnance in this respect, Marshal de Gramont hit upon a very ingenious plan. He used to make one of his servants who possessed the gift of converting music into noise, play the violin in Lulli's presence. Upon this, the highly susceptible musician would s.n.a.t.c.h the instrument from the valet's hands, and restore the murdered melody to life and beauty; then, excited by the pleasure of producing music, he forgot all around him, and continued to play to the great delight of the marshal.

Many curious stories are told of Lafontaine's want of success as a librettist; Lulli refused three of his operas, one after the other, _Daphne_, _Astree_, and _Acis et Galathee_--the _Acis et Galathee_ set to music by Lulli being the work of Campistron. At the first representation of _Astree_, of which the music had been written by Cola.s.se (a composer who imitated and often plagiarised from Lulli), Lafontaine was present in a box behind some ladies who did not know him.

He kept exclaiming every moment, "Detestable! detestable!"