<h2><SPAN name="VII" id="VII"></SPAN>VII</h2>
<h2><i>At the Opera</i></h2>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Instability of taste.<br/>
The age of operas.</i></div>
<p><span class="dropcap">P</span><span class="smcap">opular</span> taste in respect of the opera is curiously unstable. It is
surprising that the canons of judgment touching it have such feeble
and fleeting authority in view of the popularity of the art-form and
the despotic hold which it has had on fashion for two centuries. No
form of popular entertainment is acclaimed so enthusiastically as a
new opera by an admired composer; none forgotten so quickly. For the
spoken drama we go back to Shakespeare in the vernacular, and, on
occasions, we revive the masterpieces of the Attic poets who
flourished more than two millenniums ago; but for opera we are bounded
by less than a century, unless occasional performances of Gluck's
"Orfeo" and Mozart's "Figaro," "Don Giovanni,"<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_203" id="Page_203"></SPAN></span> and "Magic Flute" be
counted as submissions to popular demand, which, unhappily, we know
they are not. There is no one who has attended the opera for
twenty-five years who might not bewail the loss of operas from the
current list which appealed to his younger fancy as works of real
loveliness. In the season of 1895-96 the audiences at the Metropolitan
Opera House in New York heard twenty-six different operas. The oldest
were Gluck's "Orfeo" and Beethoven's "Fidelio," which had a single
experimental representation each. After them in seniority came
Donizetti's "Lucia di Lammermoor," which is sixty-one years old, and
has overpassed the average age of "immortal" operas by from ten to
twenty years, assuming Dr. Hanslick's calculation to be correct.</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Decimation of the operatic list.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Dependence on singers.</i></div>
<p>The composers who wrote operas for the generation that witnessed
Adelina Patti's <i>début</i> at the Academy of Music, in New York, were
Bellini, Donizetti, Verdi, and Meyerbeer. Thanks to his progressive
genius, Verdi is still alive on the stage, though nine-tenths of the
operas which made his fame and fortune<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_204" id="Page_204"></SPAN></span> have already sunk into
oblivion; Meyerbeer, too, is still a more or less potent factor with
his "Huguenots," which, like "Lucia," has endured from ten to twenty
years longer than the average "immortal;" but the continued existence
of Bellini and Donizetti seems to be as closely bound up with that of
two or three singers as was Meleager's life with the burning billet
which his mother snatched from the flames. So far as the people of
London and New York are concerned whether or not they shall hear
Donizetti more, rests with Mesdames Patti and Melba, for Donizetti
spells "Lucia;" Bellini pleads piteously in "Sonnambula," but only
Madame Nevada will play the mediator between him and our stiff-necked
generation.</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>An unstable art-form.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Carelessness of the public.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Addison's criticism.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Indifference to the words.</i></div>
<p>Opera is a mixed art-form and has ever been, and perhaps must ever be,
in a state of flux, subject to the changes of taste in music, the
drama, singing, acting, and even politics and morals; but in one
particular the public has shown no change for a century and a half,
and it is not quite clear why this has not given greater fixity to
popular appre<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_205" id="Page_205"></SPAN></span>ciation. The people of to-day are as blithely
indifferent to the fact that their operas are all presented in a
foreign tongue as they were two centuries ago in England. The
influence of Wagner has done much to stimulate a serious attitude
toward the lyric drama, but this is seldom found outside of the
audiences in attendance on German representations. The devotees of the
Latin exotic, whether it blend French or Italian (or both, as is the
rule in New York and London) with its melodic perfume, enjoy the music
and ignore the words with the same nonchalance that Addison made merry
over. Addison proves to have been a poor prophet. The
great-grandchildren of his contemporaries are not at all curious to
know "why their forefathers used to sit together like an audience of
foreigners in their own country, and to hear whole plays acted before
them in a tongue which they did not understand." What their
great-grandparents did was also done by their grandparents and their
parents, and may be done by their children, grandchildren, and
great-grandchildren after<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_206" id="Page_206"></SPAN></span> them, unless Englishmen and Americans shall
take to heart the lessons which Wagner essayed to teach his own
people. For the present, though we have abolished many absurdities
which grew out of a conception of opera that was based upon the
simple, sensuous delight which singing gave, the charm of music is
still supreme, and we can sit out an opera without giving a thought to
the words uttered by the singers. The popular attitude is fairly
represented by that of Boileau, when he went to hear "Atys" and
requested the box-keeper to put him in a place where he could hear
Lully's music, which he loved, but not Quinault's words, which he
despised.</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Past and present.</i></div>
<p>It is interesting to note that in this respect the condition of
affairs in London in the early part of the eighteenth century, which
seemed so monstrously diverting to Addison, was like that in Hamburg
in the latter part of the seventeenth, and in New York at the end of
the nineteenth. There were three years in London when Italian and
English were mixed in the operatic representations.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_207" id="Page_207"></SPAN></span></p>
<div class="blockquot"><p>"The king or hero of the play 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."</p>
</div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Polyglot opera.</i></div>
<p>At length, says Addison, the audience got tired of understanding half
the opera, "and to ease themselves entirely of the fatigue of
thinking, so ordered it that the whole opera was performed in an
unknown tongue."</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Perversions of texts.</i></div>
<p>There is this difference, however, between New York and London and
Hamburg at the period referred to: while the operatic ragout was
compounded of Italian and English in London, Italian and German in
Hamburg, the ingredients here are Italian, French, and German, with no
admixture of the vernacular. Strictly speaking, our case is more
desperate than that of our foreign predecessors, for the development
of the lyric drama has lifted its verbal and dramatic elements into a
position not dreamed of two hundred years ago. We might endure with
equanimity to hear the chorus sing</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>"Robert le Diable."</i></div>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"<i>La soupe aux choux se fait dans la marmite,</i><br/></span>
<span class="i0"><i>Dans la marmite on fait la soupe aux choux</i>"<br/></span>
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_208" id="Page_208"></SPAN></span></div>
</div>
<p>at the beginning of "Robert le Diable," as tradition says used to be
done in Paris, but we surely ought to rise in rebellion when the
chorus of guards change their muttered comments on Pizarro's furious
aria in "Fidelio" from</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>"Fidelio."</i></div>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0"><i>"Er spricht von Tod und Wunde!"</i><br/></span></div>
</div>
<p>to</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0"><i>"Er spricht vom todten Hunde!"</i><br/></span></div>
</div>
<p>as is a prevalent custom among the irreverent choristers of Germany.</p>
<p>Addison confesses that he was often afraid when seeing the Italian
performers "chattering in the vehemence of action," that they were
calling the audience names and abusing them among themselves. I do not
know how to measure the morals and manners of our Italian singers
against those of Addison's time, but I do know that many of the things
which they say before our very faces for their own diversion are not
complimentary to our intelligence. I hope I have a proper respect for
Mr. Gilbert's "bashful young potato," but I do not think it right
while we are sympathizing with the gentle passion of<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_209" id="Page_209"></SPAN></span> <i>Siebel</i> to have
his representative bring an offering of flowers and, looking us full
in the face, sing:</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0"><i>"Le patate d'amor,<br/></i></span><i>
<span class="i0">O cari fior!"</span></i></div>
</div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>"Faust."</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Porpora's "Credo."</i></div>
<p>It isn't respectful, and it enables the cynics of to-day to say, with
the poetasters and fiddlers of Addison's day, that nothing is capable
of being well set to music that is not nonsense. Operatic words were
once merely stalking-horses for tunes, but that day is past. We used
to smile at Brignoli's "<i>Ah si! ah si! ah si!</i>" which did service for
any text in high passages; but if a composer should, for the
accommodation of his music, change the wording of the creed into
"<i>Credo, non credo, non credo in unum Deum</i>," as Porpora once did, we
should all cry out for his excommunication.</p>
<p>As an art-form the opera has frequently been criticised as an
absurdity, and it is doubtless owing to such a conviction that many
people are equally indifferent to the language employed and the
sentiments embodied in the words. Even so serious a writer as George<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_210" id="Page_210"></SPAN></span>
Hogarth does not hesitate in his "Memoirs of the Opera" to defend this
careless attitude.</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Are words unessential?</i></div>
<div class="blockquot"><p>"The words of an air are of small importance to the
comprehension of the business of the piece," he says; "they
merely express a sentiment, a reflection, a feeling; it is
quite enough if their general import is known, and this may
most frequently be gathered from the situation, aided by the
character and expression of the music."</p>
</div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>"Il Trovatore."</i></div>
<p>I, myself, have known an ardent lover of music who resolutely refused
to look into a libretto because, being of a lively and imaginative
temperament, she preferred to construct her own plots and put her own
words in the mouths of the singers. Though a constant attendant on the
opera, she never knew what "Il Trovatore" was about, which, perhaps,
is not so surprising after all. Doubtless the play which she had
fashioned in her own mind was more comprehensible than Verdi's medley
of burnt children and asthmatic dance rhythms. Madame de Staël went so
far as to condemn the German composers because they "follow too
closely the sense of the words," whereas the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_211" id="Page_211"></SPAN></span> Italians, "who are truly
the musicians of nature, make the air and the words conform to each
other only in a general way."</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>The opera defended as an art-form.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>The classic tragedy.</i></div>
<p>Now the present generation has witnessed a revolution in operatic
ideas which has lifted the poetical elements upon a plane not dreamed
of when opera was merely a concert in costume, and it is no longer
tolerable that it be set down as an absurdity. On the contrary, I
believe that, looked at in the light thrown upon it by the history of
the drama and the origin of music, the opera is completely justified
as an art-form, and, in its best estate, is an entirely reasonable and
highly effective entertainment. No mean place, surely, should be given
in the estimation of the judicious to an art-form which aims in an
equal degree to charm the senses, stimulate the emotions, and persuade
the reason. This, the opera, or, perhaps I would better say the lyric
drama, can be made to do as efficiently as the Greek tragedy did it,
so far as the differences between the civilizations of ancient Hellas
and the nine<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_212" id="Page_212"></SPAN></span>teenth century will permit. The Greek tragedy was the
original opera, a fact which literary study would alone have made
plain even if it were not clearly of record that it was an effort to
restore the ancient plays in their integrity that gave rise to the
Italian opera three centuries ago.</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Genesis of the Greek plays.</i></div>
<p>Every school-boy knows now that the Hellenic plays were simply the
final evolution of the dances with which the people of Hellas
celebrated their religious festivals. At the rustic Bacchic feasts of
the early Greeks they sang hymns in honor of the wine-god, and danced
on goat-skins filled with wine. He who held his footing best on the
treacherous surface carried home the wine as a reward. They contended
in athletic games and songs for a goat, and from this circumstance
scholars have surmised we have the word tragedy, which means
"goat-song." The choric songs and dances grew in variety and beauty.
Finally, somebody (tradition preserves the name of Thespis as the man)
conceived the idea of introducing a simple dialogue between the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_213" id="Page_213"></SPAN></span>
strophes of the choric song. Generally this dialogue took the form of
a recital of some story concerning the god whose festival was
celebrating. Then when the dithyrambic song returned, it would either
continue the narrative or comment on its ethical features.</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Mimicry and dress.</i></div>
<p>The merry-makers, or worshippers, as one chooses to look upon them,
manifested their enthusiasm by imitating the appearance as well as the
actions of the god and his votaries. They smeared themselves with
wine-lees, colored their bodies black and red, put on masks, covered
themselves with the skins of beasts, enacted the parts of nymphs,
fauns, and satyrs, those creatures of primitive fancy, half men and
half goats, who were the representatives of natural sensuality
untrammelled by conventionality.</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Melodrama.</i></div>
<p>Next, somebody (Archilocus) sought to heighten the effect of the story
or the dialogue by consorting it with instrumental music; and thus we
find the germ of what musicians—not newspaper writers—call
melodrama, in the very early stages of the drama's de<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_214" id="Page_214"></SPAN></span>velopment.
Gradually these simple rustic entertainments were taken in hand by the
poets who drew on the legendary stores of the people for subjects,
branching out from the doings of gods to the doings of god-like men,
the popular heroes, and developed out of them the masterpieces of
dramatic poetry which are still studied with amazement, admiration,
and love.</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Factors in ancient tragedy.</i></div>
<p>The dramatic factors which have been mustered in this outline are
these:</p>
<p>1. The choric dance and song with a religious purpose.</p>
<p>2. Recitation and dialogue.</p>
<p>3. Characterization by means of imitative gestures—pantomime, that
is—and dress.</p>
<p>4. Instrumental music to accompany the song and also the action.</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Operatic elements.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Words and music united.</i></div>
<p>All these have been retained in the modern opera, which may be said to
differ chiefly from its ancient model in the more important and more
independent part which music plays in it. It will appear later in our
study that the importance and independence achieved by one of the
ele<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_215" id="Page_215"></SPAN></span>ments consorted in a work by nature composite, led the way to a
revolution having for its object a restoration of something like the
ancient drama. In this ancient drama and its precursor, the
dithyrambic song and dance, is found a union of words and music which
scientific investigation proves to be not only entirely natural but
inevitable. In a general way most people are in the habit of speaking
of music as the language of the emotions. The elements which enter
into vocal music (of necessity the earliest form of music) are
unvolitional products which we must conceive as co-existent with the
beginnings of human life. Do they then antedate articulate speech? Did
man sing before he spoke? I shall not quarrel with anybody who chooses
so to put it.</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Physiology of singing.</i></div>
<p>Think a moment about the mechanism of vocal music. Something occurs to
stir up your emotional nature—a great joy, a great sorrow, a great
fear; instantly, involuntarily, in spite of your efforts to prevent
it, maybe, muscular actions set in which proclaim the emo<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_216" id="Page_216"></SPAN></span>tion which
fills you. The muscles and organs of the chest, throat, and mouth
contract or relax in obedience to the emotion. You utter a cry, and
according to the state of feeling which you are in, that cry has
pitch, quality (<i>timbre</i> the singing teachers call it), and dynamic
intensity. You attempt to speak, and no matter what the words you
utter, the emotional drama playing on the stage of your heart is
divulged.</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Herbert Spencer's laws.</i></div>
<p>The man of science observes the phenomenon and formulates its laws,
saying, for instance, as Herbert Spencer has said: "All feelings are
muscular stimuli;" and, "Variations of voice are the physiological
results of variations of feeling." It was the recognition of this
extraordinary intimacy between the voice and the emotions which
brought music all the world over into the service of religion, and
provided the phenomenon, which we may still observe if we be but
minded to do so, that mere tones have sometimes the sanctity of words,
and must as little be changed as ancient hymns and prayers.</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Invention of Italian opera.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Musical declamation.</i></div>
<p>The end of the sixteenth century saw<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_217" id="Page_217"></SPAN></span> a coterie of scholars,
art-lovers, and amateur musicians in Florence who desired to
re-establish the relationship which they knew had once existed between
music and the drama. The revival of learning had made the classic
tragedy dear to their hearts. They knew that in the olden time
tragedy, of which the words only have come down to us, had been
musical throughout. In their efforts to bring about an intimacy
between dramatic poetry and music they found that nothing could be
done with the polite music of their time. It was the period of highest
development in ecclesiastical music, and the climax of artificiality.
The professional musicians to whom they turned scorned their theories
and would not help them; so they fell back on their own resources.
They cut the Gordian knot and invented a new style of music, which
they fancied was like that used by the ancients in their stage-plays.
They abolished polyphony, or contrapuntal music, in everything except
their choruses, and created a sort of musical declamation, using
variations of<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_218" id="Page_218"></SPAN></span> pitch and harmonies built up on a simple bass to give
emotional life to their words. In choosing their tones they were
guided by observation of the vocal inflections produced in speech
under stress of feeling, showing thus a recognition of the law which
Herbert Spencer formulated two hundred and fifty years later.</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>The music of the Florentine reformers.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>The solo style, harmony, and declamation.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Fluent recitatives.</i></div>
<p>The music which these men produced and admired sounds to us monotonous
in the extreme, for what little melody there is in it is in the
choruses, which they failed to emancipate from the ecclesiastical art,
and which for that reason were as stiff and inelastic as the music
which in their controversies with the musicians they condemned with
vigor. Yet within their invention there lay an entirely new world of
music. Out of it came the solo style, a song with instrumental
accompaniment of a kind unknown to the church composers. Out of it,
too, came harmony as an independent factor in music instead of an
accident of the simultaneous flow of melodies; and out of it came
declamation, which drew its life from the text.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_219" id="Page_219"></SPAN></span> The recitatives which
they wrote had the fluency of spoken words and were not retarded by
melodic forms. The new style did not accomplish what its creators
hoped for, but it gave birth to Italian opera and emancipated music in
a large measure from the formalism that dominated it so long as it
belonged exclusively to the composers for the church.</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Predecessors of Wagner.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Old operatic distinctions.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Opera buffa.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Opera seria.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Recitative.</i></div>
<p>Detailed study of the progress of opera from the first efforts of the
Florentines to Wagner's dramas would carry us too far afield to serve
the purposes of this book. My aim is to fix the attitude proper, or at
least useful, to the opera audience of to-day. The excursion into
history which I have made has but the purpose to give the art-form a
reputable standing in court, and to explain the motives which prompted
the revolution accomplished by Wagner. As to the elements which
compose an opera, only those need particular attention which are
illustrated in the current repertory. Unlike the opera audiences of
two centuries ago, we are not required to distinguish carefully
between the vari<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_220" id="Page_220"></SPAN></span>ous styles of opera in order to understand why the
composer adopted a particular manner, and certain fixed forms in each.
The old distinctions between <i>Opera seria</i>, <i>Opera buffa</i>, and <i>Opera
semiseria</i> perplex us no more. Only because of the perversion of the
time-honored Italian epithet <i>buffa</i> by the French mongrel <i>Opéra
bouffe</i> is it necessary to explain that the classic <i>Opera buffa</i> was
a polite comedy, whose musical integument did not of necessity differ
from that of <i>Opera seria</i> except in this—that the dialogue was
carried on in "dry" recitative (<i>recitativo secco</i>, or <i>parlante</i>) in
the former, and a more measured declamation with orchestral
accompaniment (<i>recitativo stromentato</i>) in the latter. So far as
subject-matter was concerned the classic distinction between tragedy
and comedy served. The dry recitative was supported by chords played
by a double-bass and harpsichord or pianoforte. In London, at a later
period, for reasons of doubtful validity, these chords came to be
played on a double-bass and violoncello, as we occasionally hear them
to-day.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_221" id="Page_221"></SPAN></span></p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Opera semiseria.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>"Don Giovanni."</i></div>
<p>Shakespeare has taught us to accept an infusion of the comic element
in plays of a serious cast, but Shakespeare was an innovator, a
Romanticist, and, measured by old standards, his dramas are irregular.
The Italians, who followed classic models, for a reason amply
explained by the genesis of the art-form, rigorously excluded comedy
from serious operas, except as <i>intermezzi</i>, until they hit upon a
third classification, which they called <i>Opera semiseria</i>, in which a
serious subject was enlivened with comic episodes. Our dramatic tastes
being grounded in Shakespeare, we should be inclined to put down "Don
Giovanni" as a musical tragedy; or, haunted by the Italian
terminology, as <i>Opera semiseria</i>; but Mozart calls it <i>Opera buffa</i>,
more in deference to the librettist's work, I fancy, than his own,
for, as I have suggested elsewhere,<SPAN name="FNanchor_E_5" id="FNanchor_E_5"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_E_5" class="fnanchor">[E]</SPAN> the musician's <span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_222" id="Page_222"></SPAN></span>imagination in
the fire of composition went far beyond the conventional fancy of the
librettist in the finale of that most wonderful work.</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>An Opera buffa.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>French Grand Opéra.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Opéra comique.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>"Mignon."</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>"Faust."</i></div>
<p>It is well to remember that "Don Giovanni" is an <i>Opera buffa</i> when
watching the buffooneries of <i>Leporello</i>,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_223" id="Page_223"></SPAN></span> for that alone justifies
them. The French have <i>Grand Opéra</i>, in which everything is sung to
orchestra accompaniment, there being neither spoken dialogue nor dry
recitative, and <i>Opéra comique</i>, in which the dialogue is spoken. The
latter corresponds with the honorable German term <i>Singspiel</i>, and one
will not go far astray if he associate both terms with the English
operas of Wallace and Balfe, save that the French and Germans have
generally been more deft in bridging over the chasm between speech and
song than their British rivals. <i>Opéra comique</i> has another
characteristic, its <i>dénouement</i> must be happy. Formerly the <i>Théatre
national de l'Opéra-Comique</i> in Paris was devoted exclusively to
<i>Opéra comique</i> as thus defined (it has since abolished the
distinction and <i>Grand Opéra</i> may be heard there now), and, therefore,
when Ambroise Thomas brought forward his "Mignon," Goethe's story was
found to be changed so that <i>Mignon</i> recovered and was married to
<i>Wilhelm Meister</i> at the end. The Germans are seldom pleased with the
transformations which their<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_224" id="Page_224"></SPAN></span> literary masterpieces are forced to
undergo at the hands of French librettists. They still refuse to call
Gounod's "Faust" by that name; if you wish to hear it in Germany you
must go to the theatre when "Margarethe" is performed. Naturally they
fell indignantly afoul of "Mignon," and to placate them we have a
second finale, a <i>dénouement allemand</i>, provided by the authors, in
which <i>Mignon</i> dies as she ought.</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Grosse Oper.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Comic opera and operetta.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Opéra bouffe.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Romantic operas.</i></div>
<p>Of course the <i>Grosse Oper</i> of the Germans is the French <i>Grand Opéra</i>
and the English grand opera—but all the English terms are ambiguous,
and everything that is done in Covent Garden in London or the
Metropolitan Opera House in New York is set down as "grand opera,"
just as the vilest imitations of the French <i>vaudevilles</i> or English
farces with music are called "comic operas." In its best estate, say
in the delightful works of Gilbert and Sullivan, what is designated as
comic opera ought to be called operetta, which is a piece in which the
forms of grand opera are imitated, or travestied, the dialogue is<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_225" id="Page_225"></SPAN></span>
spoken, and the purpose of the play is to satirize a popular folly.
Only in method, agencies, and scope does such an operetta (the
examples of Gilbert and Sullivan are in mind) differ from comedy in
its best conception, as a dramatic composition which aims to "chastise
manners with a smile" ("<i>Ridendo castigat mores</i>"). Its present
degeneracy, as illustrated in the <i>Opéra bouffe</i> of the French and the
concoctions of the would-be imitators of Gilbert and Sullivan,
exemplifies little else than a pursuit far into the depths of the
method suggested by a friend to one of Lully's imitators who had
expressed a fear that a ballet written, but not yet performed, would
fail. "You must lengthen the dances and shorten the ladies' skirts,"
he said. The Germans make another distinction based on the subject
chosen for the story. Spohr's "Jessonda," Weber's "Freischütz,"
"Oberon," and "Euryanthe," Marschner's "Vampyr," "Templer und Jüdin,"
and "Hans Heiling" are "Romantic" operas. The significance of this
classification in operatic literature may be learned from an effort
which I<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_226" id="Page_226"></SPAN></span> have made in
<SPAN href="#III">another chapter</SPAN> to discuss the terms Classic and
Romantic as applied to music. Briefly stated, the operas mentioned are
put in a class by themselves (and their imitations with them) because
their plots were drawn from the romantic legends of the Middle Ages,
in which the institutions of chivalry, fairy lore, and supernaturalism
play a large part.</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Modern designations.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>German opera and Wagner.</i></div>
<p>These distinctions we meet in reading about music. As I have
intimated, we do not concern ourselves much with them now. In New York
and London the people speak of Italian, English, and German opera,
referring generally to the language employed in the performance. But
there is also in the use of the terms an underlying recognition of
differences in ideals of performance. As all operas sung in the
regular seasons at Covent Garden and the Metropolitan Opera House are
popularly spoken of as Italian operas, so German opera popularly means
Wagner's lyric dramas, in the first instance, and a style of
performance which grew out of Wagner's influence in the second. As
compared<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_227" id="Page_227"></SPAN></span> with Italian opera, in which the principal singers are all
and the <i>ensemble</i> nothing, it means, mayhap, inferior vocalists but
better actors in the principal parts, a superior orchestra and chorus,
and a more conscientious effort on the part of conductor, stage
manager, and artists, from first to last, to lift the general effect
above the conventional level which has prevailed for centuries in the
Italian opera houses.</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Wagner's "Musikdrama."</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Modern Italian terminology.</i></div>
<p>In terminology, as well as in artistic aim, Wagner's lyric dramas
round out a cycle that began with the works of the Florentine
reformers of the sixteenth century. Wagner called his later operas
<i>Musikdramen</i>, wherefore he was soundly abused and ridiculed by his
critics. When the Italian opera first appeared it was called <i>Dramma
per musica</i>, or <i>Melodramma</i>, or <i>Tragedia per musica</i>, all of which
terms stand in Italian for the conception that <i>Musikdrama</i> stands for
in German. The new thing had been in existence for half a century, and
was already on the road to the degraded level on which we shall find
it when we come to the subject of operatic singing,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_228" id="Page_228"></SPAN></span> before it came to
be called <i>Opera in musica</i>, of which "opera" is an abbreviation. Now
it is to be observed that the composers of all countries, having been
taught to believe that the dramatic contents of an opera have some
significance, are abandoning the vague term "opera" and following
Wagner in his adoption of the principles underlying the original
terminology. Verdi called his "Aïda" an <i>Opera in quattro atti</i>, but
his "Otello" he designated a lyric drama (<i>Dramma lirico</i>), his
"Falstaff" a lyric comedy (<i>Commedia lirica</i>), and his example is
followed by the younger Italian composers, such as Mascagni,
Leoncavallo, and Puccini.</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Recitative.</i></div>
<p>In the majority of the operas of the current list the vocal element
illustrates an amalgamation of the archaic recitative and aria. The
dry form of recitative is met with now only in a few of the operas
which date back to the last century or the early years of the present.
"Le Nozze di Figaro," "Don Giovanni," and "Il Barbiere di Siviglia"
are the most familiar works in which it<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_229" id="Page_229"></SPAN></span> is employed, and in the
second of these it is used only by the bearers of the comedy element.
The dissolute <i>Don</i> chatters glibly in it with <i>Zerlina</i>, but when
<i>Donna Anna</i> and <i>Don Ottavio</i> converse, it is in the <i>recitativo
stromentato</i>.</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>The object of recitative.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Defects of the recitative.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>What it can do.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>An example from Mozart.</i></div>
<p>In both forms recitative is the vehicle for promoting the action of
the play, preparing its incidents, and paving the way for the
situations and emotional states which are exploited, promulgated, and
dwelt upon in the set music pieces. Its purpose is to maintain the
play in an artificial atmosphere, so that the transition from dialogue
to song may not be so abrupt as to disturb the mood of the listener.
Of all the factors in an opera, the dry recitative is the most
monotonous. It is not music, but speech about to break into music.
Unless one is familiar with Italian and desirous of following the
conversation, which we have been often told is not necessary to the
enjoyment of an opera, its everlasting use of stereotyped falls and
intervallic turns, coupled with the strumming of arpeggioed cadences
on<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_230" id="Page_230"></SPAN></span> the pianoforte (or worse, double-bass and violoncello), makes it
insufferably wearisome to the listener. Its expression is
fleeting—only for the moment. It lacks the sustained tones and
structural symmetry essential to melody, and therefore it cannot
sustain a mood. It makes efficient use of only one of the fundamental
factors of vocal music—variety of pitch—and that in a rudimentary
way. It is specifically a product of the Italian language, and best
adapted to comedy in that language. Spoken with the vivacity native to
it in the drama, dry recitative is an impossibility in English. It is
only in the more measured and sober gait proper to oratorio that we
can listen to it in the vernacular without thought of incongruity. Yet
it may be made most admirably to preserve the characteristics of
conversation, and even illustrate Spencer's theory of the origin of
music. Witness the following brief example from "Don Giovanni," in
which the vivacity of the master is admirably contrasted with the
lumpishness of his servant:<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_231" id="Page_231"></SPAN></span></p>
<p style="text-align: center">
<ANTIMG src="images/music42.png" alt="Don Giovanni recitativo" width-obs="742" height-obs="375" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center"><SPAN href="music/music42.midi">Listen</SPAN>
<SPAN href="music/music42.ly">View Lilypond</SPAN></p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Its characteristics.</i></div>
<p>Of course it is left to the intelligence and taste of the singers to
bring out the effects in a recitative, but in this specimen it ought
to be noted how sluggishly the disgruntled <i>Leporello</i> replies to the
brisk question of <i>Don Giovanni</i>, how correct is the rhetorical pause
in "you, or the old one?" and the greater sobriety which comes over
the manner of the <i>Don</i> as he thinks of the murder just committed, and
replies, "the old one."</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Recitative of some sort necessary.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>The speaking voice in opera.</i></div>
<p>I am strongly inclined to the belief<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_232" id="Page_232"></SPAN></span> that in one form or the other,
preferably the accompanied, recitative is a necessary integer in the
operatic sum. That it is possible to accustom one's self to the change
alternately from speech to song we know from the experiences made with
German, French, and English operas, but these were not true lyric
dramas, but dramas with incidental music. To be a real lyric drama an
opera ought to be musical throughout, the voice being maintained from
beginning to end on an exalted plane. The tendency to drop into the
speaking voice for the sake of dramatic effect shown by some tragic
singers does not seem to me commendable. Wagner relates with
enthusiasm how Madame Schroeder-Devrient in "Fidelio" was wont to give
supreme emphasis to the phrase immediately preceding the trumpet
signal in the dungeon scene ("Another step, and you are <i>dead</i>!") by
speaking the last word "with an awful accent of despair." He then
comments:</p>
<div class="blockquot"><p>"The indescribable effect of this manifested itself to all
like an agonizing plunge from one sphere into<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_233" id="Page_233"></SPAN></span> another, and
its sublimity consisted in this, that with lightning
quickness a glimpse was given to us of the nature of both
spheres, of which one was the ideal, the other the real."</p>
</div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Wagner and Schroeder-Devrient.</i></div>
<p>I have heard a similar effect produced by Herr Niemann and Madame
Lehmann, but could not convince myself that it was not an extremely
venturesome experiment. Madame Schroeder-Devrient saw the beginning of
the modern methods of dramatic expression, and it is easy to believe
that a sudden change like that so well defined by Wagner, made with
her sweeping voice and accompanied by her plastic and powerful acting,
was really thrilling; but, I fancy, nevertheless, that only Beethoven
and the intensity of feeling which pervades the scene saved the
audience from a disturbing sense of the incongruity of the
performance.</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Early forms.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>The dialogue of the Florentines.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>An example from Peri.</i></div>
<p>The development which has taken place in the recitative has not only
assisted in elevating opera to the dignity of a lyric drama by saving
us from alternate contemplation of the two spheres of ideality and
reality, but has also made the factor itself an eloquent vehi<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_234" id="Page_234"></SPAN></span>cle of
dramatic expression. Save that it had to forego the help of the
instruments beyond a mere harmonic support, the <i>stilo
rappresentativo</i>, or <i>musica parlante</i>, as the Florentines called
their musical dialogue, approached the sustained recitative which we
hear in the oratorio and grand opera more closely than it did the
<i>recitative secco</i>. Ever and anon, already in the earliest works (the
"Eurydice" of Rinuccini as composed by both Peri and Caccini) there
are passages which sound like rudimentary melodies, but are charged
with vital dramatic expression. Note the following phrase from
<i>Orpheus's</i> monologue on being left in the infernal regions by
<i>Venus</i>, from Peri's opera, performed A.D. 1600, in honor of the
marriage of Maria de' Medici to Henry IV. of France:</p>
<p style="text-align: center">
<ANTIMG src="images/music43.png" alt="Orpheus" width-obs="742" height-obs="185" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center"><SPAN href="music/music43.midi">Listen</SPAN>
<SPAN href="music/music43.ly">View Lilypond</SPAN></p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_235" id="Page_235"></SPAN></span></p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Development of the arioso.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>The aria supplanted.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Music and action.</i></div>
<p>Out of this style there grew within a decade something very near the
arioso, and for all the purposes of our argument we may accept the
melodic devices by which Wagner carries on the dialogue of his operas
as an uncircumscribed arioso superimposed upon a foundation of
orchestral harmony; for example, <i>Lohengrin's</i> address to the swan,
<i>Elsa's</i> account of her dream. The greater melodiousness of the
<i>recitativo stromentato</i>, and the aid of the orchestra when it began
to assert itself as a factor of independent value, soon enabled this
form of musical conversation to become a reflector of the changing
moods and passions of the play, and thus the value of the aria,
whether considered as a solo, or in its composite form as duet, trio,
quartet, or <i>ensemble</i>, was lessened. The growth of the accompanied
recitative naturally brought with it emancipation from the tyranny of
the classical aria. Wagner's reform had nothing to do with that
emancipation, which had been accomplished before him, but went, as we
shall see presently, to a liberation of the composers from all<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_236" id="Page_236"></SPAN></span> the
formal dams which had clogged the united flow of action and music. We
should, however, even while admiring the achievements of modern
composers in blending these elements (and I know of no more striking
illustration than the scene of the fat knight's discomfiture in
<i>Ford's</i> house in Verdi's "Falstaff") bear in mind that while we may
dream of perfect union between words and music, it is not always
possible that action and music shall go hand in hand. Let me repeat
what once I wrote in a review of Cornelius's opera, "Der Barbier von
Bagdad:"<SPAN name="FNanchor_F_6" id="FNanchor_F_6"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_F_6" class="fnanchor">[F]</SPAN></p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>How music can replace incident.</i></div>
<div class="blockquot"><p>"After all, of the constituents of an opera, action, at
least that form of it usually called incident, is most
easily spared. Progress in feeling, development of the
emotional element, is indeed essential to variety of musical
utterance, but nevertheless all great operas have
demonstrated that music is more potent and eloquent when
proclaiming an emotional state than while seeking to depict
progress toward such a state. Even in the dramas of Wagner
the culminating musical moments are predominantly lyrical,
as witness the love-duet in 'Tristan,' the close of 'Das
Rheingold,' <i>Sieg<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_237" id="Page_237"></SPAN></span>mund's</i> song, the love-duet, and <i>Wotan's</i>
farewell in 'Die Walküre,' the forest scene and final duet
in 'Siegfried,' and the death of <i>Siegfried</i> in 'Die
Götterdämmerung.' It is in the nature of music that this
should be so. For the drama which plays on the stage of the
heart, music is a more truthful language than speech; but it
can stimulate movement and prepare the mind for an incident
better than it can accompany movement and incident. Yet
music that has a high degree of emotional expressiveness, by
diverting attention from externals to the play of passion
within the breasts of the persons can sometimes make us
forget the paucity of incident in a play. 'Tristan und
Isolde' is a case in point. Practically, its outward action
is summed up in each of its three acts by the same words:
Preparation for a meeting of the ill-starred lovers; the
meeting. What is outside of this is mere detail; yet the
effect of the tragedy upon a listener is that of a play
surcharged with pregnant occurrence. It is the subtle
alchemy of music that transmutes the psychological action of
the tragedy into dramatic incident."</p>
</div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Set forms not to be condemned.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Wagner's influence.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>His orchestra.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Vocal feats.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>La Bastardella's flourish.</i></div>
<p>For those who hold such a view with me it will be impossible to
condemn pieces of set forms in the lyric drama. Wagner still
represents his art-work alone, but in the influence which he exerted
upon contemporaneous composers in Italy and France, as well as<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_238" id="Page_238"></SPAN></span>
Germany, he is quite as significant a figure as he is as the creator
of the <i>Musikdrama</i>. The operas which are most popular in our Italian
and French repertories are those which benefited by the liberation
from formalism and the exaltation of the dramatic idea which he
preached and exemplified—such works as Gounod's "Faust," Verdi's
"Aïda" and "Otello," and Bizet's "Carmen." With that emancipation
there came, as was inevitable, new conceptions of the province of
dramatic singing as well as new convictions touching the mission of
the orchestra. The instruments in Wagner's latter-day works are quite
as much as the singing actors the expositors of the dramatic idea, and
in the works of the other men whom I have mentioned they speak a
language which a century ago was known only to the orchestras of Gluck
and Mozart with their comparatively limited, yet eloquent, vocabulary.
Coupled with praise for the wonderful art of Mesdames Patti and Melba
(and I am glad to have lived in their generation, though they do not
represent my ideal<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_239" id="Page_239"></SPAN></span> in dramatic singing), we are accustomed to hear
lamentations over the decay of singing. I have intoned such jeremiads
myself, and I do not believe that music is suffering from a greater
want to-day than that of a more thorough training for singers. I
marvel when I read that Senesino sang cadences of fifty seconds'
duration; that Ferri with a single breath could trill upon each note
of two octaves, ascending and descending, and that La Bastardella's
art was equal to a perfect performance (perfect in the conception of
her day) of a flourish like this:</p>
<p style="text-align: center">
<ANTIMG src="images/music44.png" width-obs="739" height-obs="375" alt="La Bastardella's flourish" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center"><SPAN href="music/music44.midi">Listen</SPAN>
<SPAN href="music/music44.ly">View Lilypond</SPAN></p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_240" id="Page_240"></SPAN></span></p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Character of the opera a century and a half ago.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Music and dramatic expression.</i></div>
<p>I marvel, I say, at the skill, the gifts, and the training which could
accomplish such feats, but I would not have them back again if they
were to be employed in the old service. When Senesino, Farinelli,
Sassarelli, Ferri, and their tribe dominated the stage, it strutted
with sexless Agamemnons and Cæsars. Telemachus, Darius, Nero, Cato,
Alexander, Scipio, and Hannibal ran around on the boards as
languishing lovers, clad in humiliating disguises, singing woful arias
to their mistress's eyebrows—arias full of trills and scales and
florid ornaments, but void of feeling as a problem in Euclid. Thanks
very largely to German influences, the opera<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_241" id="Page_241"></SPAN></span> is returning to its
original purposes. Music is again become a means of dramatic
expression, and the singers who appeal to us most powerfully are those
who are best able to make song subserve that purpose, and who to that
end give to dramatic truthfulness, to effective elocution, and to
action the attention which mere voice and beautiful utterance received
in the period which is called the Golden Age of singing, but which was
the Leaden Age of the lyric drama.</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Singers heard in New York.</i></div>
<p>For seventy years the people of New York, scarcely less favored than
those of London, have heard nearly all the great singers of Europe.
Let me talk about some of them, for I am trying to establish some
ground on which my readers may stand when they try to form an estimate
of the singing which they are privileged to hear in the opera houses
of to-day. Madame Malibran was a member of the first Italian company
that ever sang here. Madame Cinti-Damoreau came in 1844, Bosio in
1849, Jenny Lind in 1850, Sontag in 1853, Grisi in 1854, La Grange in
1855,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_242" id="Page_242"></SPAN></span> Frezzolini in 1857, Piccolomini in 1858, Nilsson in 1870, Lucca
in 1872, Titiens in 1876, Gerster in 1878, and Sembrich in 1883. I
omit the singers of the German opera as belonging to a different
category. Adelina Patti was always with us until she made her European
début in 1861, and remained abroad twenty years. Of the men who were
the artistic associates of these <i>prime donne</i>, mention may be made of
Mario, Benedetti, Corsi, Salvi, Ronconi, Formes, Brignoli, Amadeo,
Coletti, and Campanini, none of whom, excepting Mario, was of
first-class importance compared with the women singers.</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Grisi.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Jenny Lind.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Lilli Lehmann.</i></div>
<p>Nearly all of these singers, even those still living and remembered by
the younger generation of to-day, exploited their gifts in the operas
of Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, the early Verdi, and Meyerbeer. Grisi
was acclaimed a great dramatic singer, and it is told of her that once
in "Norma" she frightened the tenor who sang the part of <i>Pollio</i> by
the fury of her acting. But measured by the standards of to-day, say
that set by Calvé's <i>Carmen</i>, it must have been a<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_243" id="Page_243"></SPAN></span> simple age that
could be impressed by the tragic power of anyone acting the part of
Bellini's Druidical priestess. The surmise is strengthened by the
circumstance that Madame Grisi created a sensation in "Il Trovatore"
by showing signs of agitation in the tower scene, walking about the
stage during <i>Manrico's</i> "<i>Ah! che la morte ognora</i>," as if she would
fain discover the part of the castle where her lover was imprisoned.
The chief charm of Jenny Lind in the memory of the older generation is
the pathos with which she sang simple songs. Mendelssohn esteemed her
greatly as a woman and artist, but he is quoted as once remarking to
Chorley: "I cannot think why she always prefers to be in a bad
theatre." Moscheles, recording his impressions of her in Meyerbeer's
"Camp of Silesia" (now "L'Étoile du Nord"), reached the climax of his
praise in the words: "Her song with the two concertante flutes is
perhaps the most incredible feat in the way of bravura singing that
can possibly be heard." She was credited, too, with fine powers as an
actress; and that she possessed<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_244" id="Page_244"></SPAN></span> them can easily be believed, for few
of the singers whom I have mentioned had so early and intimate an
association with the theatre as she. Her repugnance to it in later
life she attributed to a prejudice inherited from her mother. A vastly
different heritage is disclosed by Madame Lehmann's devotion to the
drama, a devotion almost akin to religion. I have known her to go into
the scene-room of the Metropolitan Opera House in New York and search
for mimic stumps and rocks with which to fit out a scene in
"Siegfried," in which she was not even to appear. That, like her
super-human work at rehearsals, was "for the good of the cause," as
she expressed it.</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Sontag.</i></div>
<p>Most amiable are the memories that cluster around the name of Sontag,
whose career came to a grievous close by her sudden death in Mexico in
1854. She was a German, and the early part of her artistic life was
influenced by German ideals, but it is said that only in the music of
Mozart and Weber, which aroused in her strong national emotion, did
she sing dramatically. For the rest she used her light voice,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_245" id="Page_245"></SPAN></span> which
had an extraordinary range, brilliancy, and flexibility, very much as
Patti and Melba use their voices to-day—in mere unfeeling vocal
display.</p>
<div class="blockquot"><p>"She had an extensive soprano voice," says Hogarth; "not
remarkable for power, but clear, brilliant, and singularly
flexible; a quality which seems to have led her (unlike most
German singers in general) to cultivate the most florid
style, and even to follow the bad example set by Catalani,
of seeking to convert her voice into an instrument, and to
astonish the public by executing the violin variations on
Rode's air and other things of that stamp."</p>
</div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>La Grange.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Piccolomini.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Adelina Patti.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Gerster.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Lucca and Nilsson.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Sembrich.</i></div>
<p>Madame La Grange had a voice of wide compass, which enabled her to
sing contralto rôles as well as soprano, but I have never heard her
dramatic powers praised. As for Piccolomini, read of her where you
will, you shall find that she was "charming." She was lovely to look
upon, and her acting in soubrette parts was fascinating. Until Melba
came Patti was for thirty years peerless as a mere vocalist. She
belongs, as did Piccolomini and Sontag, to the comic <i>genre</i>; so did
Sembrich and Gerster, the latter of whom never knew it. I well
remember how indignant she<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_246" id="Page_246"></SPAN></span> became on one occasion, in her first
American season, at a criticism which I wrote of her <i>Amina</i> in "La
Sonnambula," a performance which remains among my loveliest and most
fragrant recollections. I had made use of Catalani's remark concerning
Sontag: "<i>Son genre est petit, mais elle est unique dans son genre</i>,"
and applied it to her style. She almost flew into a passion. "<i>Mon
genre est grand!</i>" said she, over and over again, while Dr. Gardini,
her husband, tried to pacify her. "Come to see my <i>Marguerite</i> next
season." Now, Gounod's <i>Marguerite</i> does not quite belong to the
heroic rôles, though we can all remember how Lucca thrilled us by her
intensity of action as well as of song, and how Madame Nilsson sent
the blood out of our cheeks, though she did stride through the opera
like a combination of the <i>grande dame</i> and Ary Scheffer's spirituelle
pictures; but such as it is, Madame Gerster achieved a success of
interest only, and that because of her strivings for originality.
Sembrich and Gerster, when they were first heard in New York, had as
much<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_247" id="Page_247"></SPAN></span> execution as Melba or Nilsson; but their voices had less
emotional power than that of the latter, and less beauty than that of
the former—beauty of the kind that might be called classic, since it
is in no way dependent on feeling.</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Melba and Eames.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Calvé.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Dramatic singers.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Jean de Reszke.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Edouard de Reszke and Plançon.</i></div>
<p>Patti, Lucca, Nilsson, and Gerster sang in the operas in which Melba
and Eames sing to-day, and though the standard of judgment has been
changed in the last twenty-five years by the growth of German ideals,
I can find no growth of potency in the performances of the
representative women of Italian and French opera, except in the case
of Madame Calvé. For the development of dramatic ideals we must look
to the singers of German affiliations or antecedents, Mesdames
Materna, Lehmann, Sucher, and Nordica. As for the men of yesterday and
to-day, no lover, I am sure, of the real lyric drama would give the
declamatory warmth and gracefulness of pose and action which mark the
performances of M. Jean de Reszke for a hundred of the high notes of
Mario (for one of which, we are told, he was wont to reserve his
powers<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_248" id="Page_248"></SPAN></span> all evening), were they never so lovely. Neither does the
fine, resonant, equable voice of Edouard de Reszke or the finished
style of Plançon leave us with curious longings touching the voices
and manners of Lablache and Formes. Other times, other manners, in
music as in everything else. The great singers of to-day are those who
appeal to the taste of to-day, and that taste differs, as the clothes
which we wear differ, from the style in vogue in the days of our
ancestors.</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Wagner's operas.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Wagner's lyric dramas.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>His theories.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>The mission of music.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Distinctions abolished.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>The typical phrases.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Characteristics of some motives.</i></div>
<p>A great deal of confusion has crept into the public mind concerning
Wagner and his works by the failure to differentiate between his
earlier and later creations. No injustice is done the composer by
looking upon his "Flying Dutchman," "Tannhäuser," and "Lohengrin" as
operas. We find the dramatic element lifted into noble prominence in
"Tannhäuser," and admirable freedom in the handling of the musical
factors in "Lohengrin," but they must, nevertheless, be listened to as
one would listen to the operas of Weber, Marschner, or Meyerbeer.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_249" id="Page_249"></SPAN></span>
They are, in fact, much nearer to the conventional operatic type than
to the works which came after them, and were called <i>Musikdramen</i>.
"Music drama" is an awkward phrase, and I have taken the liberty of
substituting "lyric drama" for it, and as such I shall designate
"Tristan und Isolde," "Die Meistersinger," "Der Ring des Nibelungen,"
and "Parsifal." In these works Wagner exemplified his reformatory
ideas and accomplished a regeneration of the lyric drama, as we found
it embodied in principle in the Greek tragedy and the <i>Dramma per
musica</i> of the Florentine scholars. Wagner's starting-point is, that
in the opera music had usurped a place which did not belong to it.<SPAN name="FNanchor_G_7" id="FNanchor_G_7"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_G_7" class="fnanchor">[G]</SPAN>
It was designed to be a means and had become an end. In the drama he
found a combination of poetry, music, pantomime, and scenery, and he
held that these factors ought to co-operate on a basis of mutual
dependence, the inspiration of all being dramatic expres<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_250" id="Page_250"></SPAN></span>sion. Music,
therefore, ought to be subordinate to the text in which the dramatic
idea is expressed, and simply serve to raise it to a higher power by
giving it greater emotional life. So, also, it ought to vivify
pantomime and accompany the stage pictures. In order that it might do
all this, it had to be relieved of the shackles of formalism; only
thus could it move with the same freedom as the other elements
consorted with it in the drama. Therefore, the distinctions between
recitative and aria were abolished, and an "endless melody" took the
place of both. An exalted form of speech is borne along on a flood of
orchestral music, which, quite as much as song, action, and scenery
concerns itself with the exposition of the drama. That it may do this
the agencies, spiritual as well as material, which are instrumental in
the development of the play, are identified with certain melodic
phrases, out of which the musical fabric is woven. These phrases are
the much mooted, much misunderstood "leading motives"—typical phrases
I call them. Wagner<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_251" id="Page_251"></SPAN></span> has tried to make them reflect the character or
nature of the agencies with which he has associated them, and
therefore we find the giants in the Niblung tetralogy symbolized in
heavy, slowly moving, cumbersome phrases; the dwarfs have two phrases,
one suggesting their occupation as smiths, by its hammering rhythm,
and the other their intellectual habits, by its suggestion of brooding
contemplativeness. I cannot go through the catalogue of the typical
phrases which enter into the musical structure of the works which I
have called lyric dramas as contra-distinguished from operas. They
should, of course, be known to the student of Wagner, for thereby will
he be helped to understand the poet-composer's purposes, but I would
fain repeat the warning which I uttered twice in my "Studies in the
Wagnerian Drama:"</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>The phrases should be studied.</i></div>
<div class="blockquot"><p>"It cannot be too forcibly urged that if we confine our
study of Wagner to the forms and names of the phrases out of
which he constructs his musical fabric, we shall, at the
last, have enriched our minds with a thematic catalogue
and—nothing else. We shall remain guiltless of knowledge
un<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_252" id="Page_252"></SPAN></span>less we learn something of the nature of those phrases by
noting the attributes which lend them propriety and fitness,
and can recognize, measurably at least, the reasons for
their introduction and development. Those attributes give
character and mood to the music constructed out of the
phrases. If we are able to feel the mood, we need not care
how the phrases which produce it have been labelled. If we
do not feel the mood, we may memorize the whole thematic
catalogue of Wolzogen and have our labor for our pains. It
would be better to know nothing about the phrases, and
content one's self with simple sensuous enjoyment than to
spend one's time answering the baldest of all the riddles of
Wagner's orchestra—'What am I playing now?'</p>
</div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>The question of effectiveness.</i></div>
<div class="blockquot"><p>"The ultimate question concerning the correctness or
effectiveness of Wagner's system of composition must, of
course, be answered along with the question: 'Does the
composition, as a whole, touch the emotions, quicken the
fancy, fire the imagination?' If it does these things, we
may, to a great extent, if we wish, get along without the
intellectual processes of reflection and comparison which
are conditioned upon a recognition of the themes and their
uses. But if we put aside this intellectual activity, we
shall deprive ourselves, among other things, of the
pleasures which it is the province of memory to give; and
the exercise of memory is called for by music much more
urgently than by any other art, because of its volatile
nature and the rôle which repetition plays in it."</p>
</div>
<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<p style="text-align: center">
<ANTIMG src="images/deco09.png" alt="Decoration" width-obs="300" height-obs="68" /></p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_253" id="Page_253"></SPAN></span></p>
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />
1 of 2
2 of 2
Previous
Next
Update Required
To play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your Flash plugin.