History of the Opera from its Origin in Italy to the present Time Part 3

"FIRST GENTLEMAN.--'_Apres diner, que ferons nous?_'

"SECOND GENTLEMAN.--'_Allons voir la belle Clarisse._'

"The most ordinary things are sung in this manner, and in polite society people don't know what it means to speak otherwise than in music."

_Chrisard._--"Do people of quality sing when they are with ladies?"

_Chrisotine._--"Sing! sing! I should like to see a man of the world endeavour to entertain company with mere talk in the old style. He would be looked upon as one of a by-gone period. The servants would laugh at him."

_Chrisard._--"And in the town?"

_Chrisotine._--"All persons of any importance imitate the court. It is only in the Rue St. Denis and St. Honore and on the Bridge of Notre Dame that the old custom is still kept up. There people buy and sell without singing. But at Gauthier's, at the Orangery; at all the shops where the ladies of the court buy dresses, ornaments and jewels, all business is carried on in music, and if the dealers did not sing their goods would be confiscated. People say that a severe edict has been issued to that effect. They appoint no Provost of Trade now unless he is a musician, and until M. Lulli has examined him to see whether he is capable of understanding and enforcing the rules of harmony."

The above scene, be it observed, is not the work of an ignorant detractor of opera, of a brute insensible to the charms of music, but is the production of St. Evremond, one of the very first men, on our side of the Alps, who called attention to the beauties of the new musical drama, just established in Italy, and which, when he first wrote on the subject, had not yet been introduced into France. St. Evremond had too much sense to decry the Opera on account of such improbabilities as must inevitably belong to every form of the drama--which is the expression of life, but which need not for that reason be restricted exclusively to the language of speech, any more than tragedy need be confined to the diction of prose, or comedy to the inane plat.i.tudes of ordinary conversation. At all events, there is no novelty, and above all no wit, in repeating seriously the pleasantries of St. Evremond, which, we repeat, were those of a man who really loved the object of his good-natured and agreeable raillery.

[Sidenote: ADDISON ON THE OPERA.]

Indeed, most of the men who have written things against the Opera that are still remembered have liked the Opera, and have even been the authors of operas themselves. "_Aujourd'hui ce qui ne vaut pas la peine d'etre dit on le chante_," is said by the Figaro of Beaumarchais--of Beaumarchais, who gave lessons in singing and on the harpsichord to Louis XV.'s daughters, who was an enthusiastic admirer of Gluck's operas, and who wrote specially for that composer the libretto of _Tarare_, which, however, was not set to music by him, but by Salieri, Gluck's favourite pupil. Beaumarchais knew well enough--and _Tarare_ in a negative manner proves it--that not only "what is not worth the trouble of saying" cannot be sung, but that very often such trivialities as can with propriety be spoken in a drama would, set to music, produce a ludicrous effect. Witness the lines in St. Evremond's _Les Operas_--

"_Monsieur comment vous portez vous?_"

"_Je me porte a votre service_"--

which might form part of a comedy, but which in an opera would be absurd, and would therefore not be introduced into one, except by a foolish librettist, (who would for a certainty get hissed), or by a wit like St. Evremond, wis.h.i.+ng to amuse himself by exaggerating to a ridiculous point the latest fas.h.i.+onable mania of the day.

Addison's admirably humorous articles on Italian Opera in the _Spectator_ are often spoken of by musicians as ill-natured and unjust, and are ascribed--unjustly and even meanly, as it seems to me--to the author's annoyance at the failure of his _Rosamond_, which had been set to music by an incapable person named Clayton. Addison could afford to laugh at the ill-success of his _Rosamond_, as La Fontaine laughed at that of _Astree_; and to a.s.sert that his excellent pleasantries on the subject of Italian Opera, then newly established in London, had for their origin the base motives usually imputed to him by musicians, is to give any one the right to say of _them_ that this one abuses modern Italian music, which the public applaud, because his own English music has never been tolerated or that that one expresses the highest opinion of English composers because he himself composes and is an Englishman.

To impute such motives would be to a.s.sume, as is a.s.sumed in the case of Addison, that no one blames except in revenge for some personal loss, or praises except in the hope of some personal gain. And after all, what _has_ Addison said against the Opera, an entertainment which he certainly enjoyed, or he would not have attended it so often or have devoted so many excellent papers to it? Let us turn to the _Spectator_ and see.

[Sidenote: ADDISON ON THE OPERA.]

Italian Opera was introduced into England at the beginning of the 18th century, the first work performed entirely in the Italian language being _Almahide_, of which the music is attributed to Buononcini, and which was produced in 1710, with Valentini, Nicolini, Margarita de l'Epine, Ca.s.sani and "Signora Isabella," in the princ.i.p.al parts. Previously, for about three years, it had been the custom for Italian and English vocalists to sing each in their own language. "The king,[9] or hero of the play," says Addison, "generally spoke in Italian, and his slaves answered him in English; the lover frequently made his court, and gained the heart of his princess in a language which she did not understand.

One would have thought it very difficult to have carried on dialogues in this manner without an interpreter between the persons that conversed together; but this was the state of the English stage for about three years.

"At length, the audience got tired of understanding half the opera, and, therefore, to ease themselves entirely of the fatigue of thinking, have so ordered it at present, that the whole opera is performed in an unknown tongue. We no longer understand the language of our own stage, insomuch, that I have often been afraid, when I have seen our Italian performers chattering in the vehemence of action, that they have been calling us names and abusing us among themselves; but I hope, since we do put such entire confidence in them, they will not talk against us before our faces, though they may do it with the same safety as if it were behind our backs. In the meantime, I cannot forbear thinking how naturally an historian who writes two or three hundred years hence, and does not know the taste of his wise forefathers, will make the following reflection:--In the beginning of the 18th century, the Italian tongue was so well understood in England, that operas were acted on the public stage in that language.

"One scarce knows how to be serious in the confutation of an absurdity that shows itself at the first sight. It does not want any great measure of sense to see the ridicule of this monstrous practice; but what makes it the more astonis.h.i.+ng, it is not the taste of the rabble, but of persons of the greatest politeness, which has established it.

"If the Italians have a genius for music above the English, the English have a genius for other performances of a much higher nature, and capable of giving the mind a much n.o.bler entertainment. Would one think it was possible (at a time when an author lived that was able to write the _Phedra and Hippolitus_) for a people to be so stupidly fond of the Italian opera as scarce to give a third day's hearing to that admirable tragedy? Music is, certainly, a very agreeable entertainment; but if it would take entire possession of our ears, if it would make us incapable of hearing sense, if it would exclude arts that have much greater tendency to the refinement of human nature, I must confess I would allow it no better quarter than Plato has done, who banishes it out of his commonwealth.

[Sidenote: ADDISON ON THE OPERA.]

"At present, our notions of music are so very uncertain, that we do not know what it is we like; only, in general, we are transported with anything that is not English; so it be of foreign growth, let it be Italian, French, or High Dutch, it is the same thing. In short, our English music is quite rooted out, and nothing yet planted in its stead."

The _Spectator_ was written from day to day, and was certainly not intended for _our_ entertainment; yet, who can fail to be amused at the description of the stage king "who spoke in Italian and his slaves answered him in English;" and of the lover who "frequently made his court and gained the heart of his princess in a language which she did not understand?" What, too, in this style of humour, can be better than the notion of the audience getting tired of understanding half the opera, and, to ease themselves of the trouble of thinking, so ordering it that the whole opera is performed in an unknown tongue; or of the performers who, for all the audience knew to the contrary, might be calling them names and abusing them among themselves; or of the probable reflection of the future historian, that "in the beginning of the 18th century the Italian tongue was so well understood in England that operas were acted on the public stage in that language?" On the other hand, we have not, it is true, heard yet of any historian publis.h.i.+ng the remark suggested by Addison; probably, because those historians who go to the opera--and who does not?--are quite aware that to understand an Italian opera, it is not at all necessary to have a knowledge of the Italian language. The Italian singers might abuse us at their ease, especially in concerted pieces, and in grand finales; but they might in the same way, and equally, without fear of detection, abuse their own countrymen.

Our English vocalists, too, might indulge in the same gratification in England, and have I not mentioned that at the Grand Opera of Paris--

'_La soupe aux choux se fait dans la marmite._'

has been sung in place of Scribe's words in the opening chorus of _Robert le Diable_; and if _La soupe_, &c., why not anything else? But it is a great mistake to inquire too closely into the foundation on which a joke stands, when the joke itself is good; and I am almost ashamed, as it is, of having said so much on the subject of Addison's pleasantries, when the pleasantries spoke so well for themselves. One might almost as well write an essay to prove seriously that language was _not_ given to man "to conceal his thoughts."

[Sidenote: MUSIC AS AN ART.]

The only portion of the paper from which I have extracted the above observations that can be treated in perfect seriousness, is that which begins--"If the Italians have a genius for music, &c.," and ends--"I would allow it no better quarter than Plato has done," &c. Now the recent political condition of Italy sufficiently proves that music could not save a country from national degradation; but neither could painting nor an admirable poetic literature. It is also better, no doubt, that a man should learn his duty to G.o.d and to his neighbour, than that he should cultivate a taste for harmony, but why not do both; and above all, why compare like with unlike? The "performances of a much higher nature" than music undeniably exist, but they do not answer the same end. The more general science on which that of astronomy rests may be a n.o.bler study than music, but there is nothing consoling or _per se_ elevating in mathematics. Poetry, again, would by most persons be cla.s.sed higher than music, though the effect of half poetry, and of imaginative literature generally, is to place the reader in a state of reverie such as music induces more immediately and more perfectly. The enjoyment of art--by which we do not mean its production, or its critical examination, but the pure enjoyment of the artistic result--has nothing strictly intellectual in it; no man could grow wise by looking at Raphael or listening to Mozart. Nor does he derive any important intellectual ideas from many of our most beautiful poems, but simply emotion, of an elevated kind, such as is given by fine music. Music is evidently not didactic, and painting can only teach, in the ordinary sense of the word, what every one already knows; though, of course, a painter may depict certain aspects of nature and of the human face, previously un.o.bserved and unimagined, just as the composer, in giving a musical expression to certain sentiments and pa.s.sions, can rouse in us emotions previously dormant, or never experienced before with so much intensity. But the fine arts cannot communicate abstract truths--from which it chiefly follows that no right-minded artist ever uses them with such an aim; though there is no saying what some wild enthusiasts will not endeavour to express, and other enthusiasts equally wild pretend to see, in symphonies and in big symbolical pictures. If Addison meant to insinuate that _Phaedra and Hippolytus_ was a much higher performance than any possible opera, he was decidedly in error. But he had not heard _Don Juan_, _William Tell_, and _Der Freischutz_; to which no one in the present day, unless musically deaf, could prefer an English translation of _Phedre_. It would be unfair to lay too much stress on the fact that the music of Handel still lives, and with no declining life, whereas the tragedies of Racine, resuscitated by Mademoiselle Rachel, have not been heard of since the death of that admirable actress; Addison was only acquainted with the earliest of Handel's operas, and these _are_ forgotten, as indeed are most of his others, with the exception, here and there, of a few detached airs.

[Sidenote: OPERA AND DRAMA.]

In the sentence commencing "Music is certainly a very agreeable entertainment, but," &c., Addison says what every one, who would care to see one of Shakespeare's plays properly acted (not much cared for, however, in Addison's time), must feel now. Let us have perfect representations of Opera by all means; but it is a sad and a disgraceful thing, that in his own native country the works of the greatest dramatist who ever lived should be utterly neglected as far as their stage representation is concerned. It is absurd to pretend that the Opera is the sole cause of this. Operas, magnificently put upon the stage, are played in England, at least at one theatre, with remarkable _completeness_ of excellence, and, at more than one, with admirable singers in the princ.i.p.al and even in the minor parts. Shakespeare's dramas, when they are played at all, are thrown on to the stage anyhow.

This would not matter so much, but our players, even in _Hamlet_, where they are especially cautioned against it, have neither the sense nor the good taste to avoid exaggeration and rant, to which, they maintain, the public are now so accustomed, that a tragedian acting naturally would make no impression. Their conventionality, moreover, makes them keep to certain stage "traditions," which are frequently absurd, while their vanity is so egregious that one who imagines himself a first-rate actor (in a day when there are no first-rate actors) will not take what he is pleased to consider a second-rate part. Our stage has no tragedian who could embody the jealousy of "Otello," as Ronconi embodies that of "Chevreuse" in _Maria di Rohan_, nor could half a dozen actors of equal reputation be persuaded in any piece to appear in half a dozen parts of various degrees of prominence, though this is what constantly takes place at the Opera.

In Addison's time, Nicolini was a far greater actor than any who was in the habit of appearing on the English stage; indeed, this alone can account for the success of the ridiculous opera of _Hydaspes_, in which Nicolini played the princ.i.p.al part, and of which I shall give some account in the proper place. Doubtless also, it had much to do with the success of Italian Opera generally, which, when Addison commenced writing about it in the _Spectator_, was supported by no great composer, and was constructed on such frameworks as one would imagine could only have been imagined by a lunatic or by a pantomime writer struck serious.

If Addison had not been fond of music, and moreover a very just critic, he would have dismissed the Italian Opera, such as it existed during the first days of the _Spectator_, as a hopeless ma.s.s of absurdity.

[Sidenote: STAGE DECORATION.]

Every one must in particular admit the justness of Addison's views respecting the incongruity of operatic scenery; indeed, his observations on that subject might with advantage be republished now and then in the present day. "What a field of raillery," he says, "would they [the wits of King Charles's time] have been let into had they been entertained with painted dragons spitting wildfire, enchanted chariots drawn by Flanders mares, and real cascades in artificial landscapes! A little skill in criticism would inform us, that shadows and realities ought not to be mixed together in the same piece; and that the scenes which are designed as the representations of nature should be filled with resemblances, and not with the things themselves. If one would represent a wide champaign country, filled with herds and flocks, it would be ridiculous to draw the country only upon the scenes, and to crowd several parts of the stage with sheep and oxen. This is joining together inconsistencies, and making the decoration partly real and partly imaginary. I would recommend what I have here said to the directors as well as the admirers, of our modern opera."

In the matter of stage decoration we have "learned nothing and forgotten nothing" since the beginning of the 18th century. Servandoni, at the theatre of the Tuileries, which contained some seven thousand persons, introduced as elaborate and successful mechanical devices as any that have been known since his time; but then as now the real and artificial were mixed together, by which the general picture is necessarily rendered absurd, or rather no general picture is produced. Independently of the fact that the reality of the natural objects makes the artificiality of the manufactured ones unnecessarily evident as when the branches of real trees are agitated by a gust of wind, while those of pasteboard trees remain fixed--it is difficult in making use of natural objects on the stage to observe with any accuracy the laws of proportion and perspective, so that to the eye the realities of which the manager is so proud, are, after all, strikingly unreal. The peculiar conditions too, under which theatrical scenery is viewed, should always be taken into account. Thus, "real water," which used at one time to be announced as such a great attraction at some of our minor playhouses, does not look like water on the stage, but has a dull, black, inky, appearance, quite sufficient to render it improbable that any despondent heroine, whatever her misfortune, would consent to drown herself in it.

The most contemptuous thing ever written against the Opera, or rather against music in general, is Swift's celebrated epigram on the Handel and Buononcini disputes:--

"Some say that Signor Buononcini Compared to Handel is a ninny; While others say that to him, Handel Is hardly fit to hold a candle.

Strange that such difference should be, 'Twixt Tweedledum and Tweedledee."

Capital, telling lines, no doubt, though is it not equally strange that there should be such a difference between one piece of painted canvas and another, or between a statue by Michael Angelo and the figure of a Scotchman outside a tobacconist's shop? These differences exist, and it proves nothing against art that savages and certain exceptional natures among civilized men are unable to perceive them. We wonder how the Dean of St. Patrick's would have got on with the Abbe Arnauld, who was so impressed with the sublimity of one of the pieces in Gluck's _Iphigenie_, that he exclaimed, "With that air one might found a new religion!"

[Sidenote: BERANGER ON THE DECLINE OF THE DRAMA.]

One of the wittiest poems written against our modern love of music (cultivated, it must be admitted, to a painful extent by many incapable amateurs) is the lament by Beranger, in which the poet, after complaining that the convivial song is despised as not sufficiently artistic, and that in the presence of the opera the drama itself is fast disappearing, exclaims:

Si nous t'enterrons Bel art dramatique, Pour toi nous dirons La messe en musique.

Without falling into the same error as those who have accused Addison of a selfish and interested animosity towards the Opera, I may remark that song-writers have often very little sympathy for any kind of music except that which can be easily subjected to words, as in narrative ballads, and to a certain extent ballads of all kinds. When a man says "I don't care much for music, but I like a good song," we may generally infer that he does not care for music at all. So play-wrights have a liking for music when it can be introduced as an ornament into their pieces, but not when it is made the most important element in the drama--indeed, the drama itself.

Favart, the author of numerous opera-books, has left a good satirical description in verse of French opera. It ends as follows:--

Quiconque voudra Faire un opera, Emprunte a Pluton, Son peuple demon; Qu'il tire des cieux Un couple de dieux, Qu'il y joigne un heros Tendre jusqu' aux os.

Lardez votre sujet, D'un eternel ballet.

Amenez au milieu d'une fete La tempete, Une bete, Que quelqu'un tra Des qu'il la verra.

Quiconque voudra faire un opera Fuira de la raison Le triste poison.

Il fera chanter Concerter et sauter Et puis le reste ira, Tout comme il pourra.

[Sidenote: PANARD ON THE OPERA.]

This, from a man whose operas did not fail, but on the contrary, were highly successful, is rather too bad. But the author of the ill-fated "Rosamond" himself visited the French Opera, and has left an account of it, which corresponds closely enough to Favart's poetical description.

"I have seen a couple of rivers," he says, (No. 29 of the _Spectator_) "appear in red stockings, and Alpheus, instead of having his head covered with sedge and bulrushes, making love in a fair, full-bottomed, periwig, and a plume of feathers, but with a voice so full of shakes and quavers that I should have thought the murmurs of a country brook the much more agreeable music. I remember the last opera I saw in that merry nation was the "Rape of Proserpine," where Pluto, to make the more tempting figure, puts himself in a French equipage, and brings Ascalaphus along with him as his _valet de chambre_." This is what we call folly and impertinence, but what the French look upon as gay and polite."

Addison's account agrees with Favart's song and also with one by Panard, which contains this stanza:--