V
For the sake of continuity we are obliged at this point to resume the thread of our remarks concerning the opera buffa of Pergolesi. In 1752, about the time of Gluck’s official engagement at the Vienna opera, an Italian troupe of ‘buffonists’ introduced in Paris La serva padrona and Il maestro in musica (Pergolesi’s only other comic opera). Their success was sensational, and, having come at a psychological moment, far-reaching in results, for it gave the impulse to a new school, popular to this day—that of the French opéra comique, at first called opera bouffon.
The latter part of the eighteenth century had witnessed the birth of a new intellectual ideal in France, essentially different from those associated with the preceding movements of the Renaissance and the Reformation. Neither antiquity nor the Bible were in future to be the court of last instance, but judgment and decision over all things was referred to the individual. This theory, and others laid down by the encyclopedists—the philosophers of the time—reacted equally on all the arts. New theories concerning music were advanced by laymen. Batteaux had already insisted that poetry, music, and the dance were, by very nature, intended to unite; Diderot and Rousseau conceived the idea of the unified work of art. Jean Jaques Rousseau,[9] the intellectual dictator, who laid a rather exaggerated claim to musical knowledge, and the famous satirist, Baron Melchior Grimm, now began a literary tirade against the old musical tragedy of France, which, like the Italian opera, had become paralyzed into mere formulas. Rousseau, who had shortly before written a comic opera, Le devin du village (The Village Seer), in French, now denounced the French language, with delightful inconsistency, as unfit to sing; Grimm in his pamphlet, Le petit prophète de Boehmisch-Broda, threatened the French people with dire consequences if they did not abandon French opera for Italian opera buffa.[10] This precipitated the widespread controversy between Buffonists and anti-Buffonists, known as the Guerre des bouffons, which, in this age of pamphleteers, of theorists, and revolutionary agitators, soon assumed political significance. The conservatives hastened to uphold Rameau and the cause of native art; the revolutionists rallied to the support of the Italians. Marmontel, Favart, and others set themselves to write after the Italian model, ‘Duni brought from Parma his Ninette à la cour and followed it in 1757 with Le peintre amoureux; Monsigny[11] left his bureau and Philidor[12] his chess table to follow the footsteps of Pergolesi; lastly came Grétry from Rome and killed the old French operatic style with Le Tableau parlant and Zémire et Azor!’ The result was the production of a veritable flood of pleasing, delightful operettas dealing with petty love intrigues, mostly of pastoral character, in place of the stale, mythological subjects common to French and Italian opera alike. The new school quickly strengthened its hand and improved its output. Its permanent value lay, of course, in the infusion of new vitality into operatic composition in general, a rejuvenation of the poetic as well as musical technique, the unlocking of a whole treasure of subjects hitherto unused.
Gluck at Vienna, already acquainted with French opera, was quick to see the value of this new genre, and he produced, in alternation with his Italian operas, a number of these works, partly with interpolations of his own, partly rewritten by him in their entirety. Among the latter class must be named La fausse esclave (1758); L’île de Merlin (1758); L’arbre enchantée (1759); L’ivrogne corrigé (1760); Le cadi dupé (1761); and La recontre imprévue (1764). As Riemann suggests, it is not accidental that Gluck’s idea to reform the conventionalized opera dates from this period of intensive occupation with the French opéra bouffon. There is no question that the simpler, more natural art, and the genuineness and sincerity of the comic opera were largely instrumental in the fruition of his theories. His only extended effort during the period from 1756 to 1762 was a pantomimic ballet, Don Giovanni, but the melodramas and symphonies (or overtures) written for the private entertainment of the imperial family, as well as seven trio sonatas, varied in expression and at times quite modern in spirit, also date from this time. It is well to remember also that this was a period of great activity in instrumental composition; that the Mannheim school of symphonists was just then at the height of its accomplishment.
Gluck’s first reform opera, Orfeo ed Euridice, appeared in 1762. The young Italian poet and dramatist, Raniero da Calzabigi, supplied the text. Calzabigi, though at first a follower of Metastasio, had conceived a violent dislike for that librettist and his work. A hot-headed theorist, he undoubtedly influenced Gluck in the adoption of a new style, perhaps even gave the actual initiative to the change. The idea was not sudden. We have already pointed out how the later Neapolitans had contributed elements of reform and had paved the way in many particulars. They had not, however, like Gluck, attacked the root of the evil—the text. Metastasio’s texts were made to suit only the old manner; Calzabigi’s were designed to a different purpose: the unified, consistent expression of a definite dramatic scheme. In the prefaces which accompanied their next two essays in the new style, Alceste and Paride, Gluck reverted to almost the very wording of Peri and Caccini, but nevertheless no reaction to the representative style of 1600 was intended. Though he spoke of ‘forgetting his musicianship,’ he did not deny himself all sensuous melodic flow in favor of a parlando recitative. Too much water had flowed under the bridges since 1600 for that. Scarlatti and his school had not wrought wholly in vain. But the coloratura outrage, the concert-opera, saw the beginning of its end. The da capo aria was discarded altogether, the chorus was reintroduced, and the subordination of music to dramatic expression became the predominating principle. Artificial sopranos and autocratic prime donne could find no chance to rule in such a scheme; their doom was certain and it was near. In the war that ensued, which meant their eventual extinction, Gluck found a powerful ally in the person of the emperor, Francis I.
In that sovereign’s presence Orfeo was first given at the Hofburgtheater in Vienna. Its mythological subject—the same that Ariosti treated in his favolo of 1574, that Peri made the theme of his epoch-making drama of 1600, that Monteverdi chose for his Mantuan debut in 1607—was surely as appropriate for this new reformer’s first experiment as it was suited to the classic simplicity and grandeur of his music. The opera was studied with the greatest care, Gluck himself directing all the rehearsals, and the participating artists forgot that they were virtuosi in order better to grasp the spirit of the work. It was mounted with all the skill that the stagecraft of the day afforded. Although it did not entirely break with tradition and was not altogether free of the empty formulas from which the composer tried to escape, it was too new to conquer the sympathies of the Viennese public at once. Indeed, the innovations were radical enough to cause trepidations in Gluck’s own mind. His strong feelings that the novelty of Orfeo might prevent its success induced him to secure the neutrality of Metastasio before its first performance, and his promise not to take sides against it openly.
Gluck’s music is as fresh to-day as when it was written. Its beauty and truth seemed far too serious to many of his contemporaries. People at first said that it was tiresome; and Burney declared that ‘the subordination of music to poetry is a principle that holds good only for the countries whose singers are bad.’ But after five performances the triumph of Orfeo was assured and its fame spread even to Italy. Rousseau said of it: ‘I know of nothing so perfect in all that regards what is called fitness, as the ensemble in the Elysian fields. Everywhere the enjoyment of pure and calm happiness is evident, but so equable is its character that there is nothing either in the songs or in the dance airs that in the slightest degree exceeds its just measure.’ The first two acts of Orfeo are profoundly human, with their dual picture of tender sorrow and eternal joy. The grief of the poet and the lamentations of his shepherd companions, rising in mournful choral strains, insistent in their reiteration of the motive indicative of their sorrow, are as effective in their way as the musical language of Wagner, even though they lack the force of modern harmony and orchestral sonority. The principle is fundamentally the same. Nor is Gluck’s music entirely devoid of the dramatic force which has come to music with the growth of the modern orchestra. Much of the delineation of mood and emotion is left to the instruments. Later, in the preface to Alceste, Gluck declared that the overture should be in accord with the contents of the opera and should serve as a preparation for it—a simple, natural maxim to which composers had been almost wholly blind up to that time. In Gluck’s overtures we see, in fact, no Italian, but a German, influence. They partake strongly of the nature of the first movements of the Mannheim symphonies, showing a contrasting second theme and are clearly divided into three parts, like the sonata form. Thus the new instrumental style was early introduced into the opera through Gluck’s initiation, and thence was to be transferred to the overtures of Mozart, Sacchini, Cherubini, and others.
In 1764 Orfeo was given in Frankfort-on-the-Main for the coronation of the Archduke Joseph as Roman king. The imperial family seems to have been sympathetically appreciative of Gluck’s efforts with the new style; but nevertheless his next work, Telemacco, produced at the Burgtheater in January, 1765, though considered the best of his Italian operas, was a peculiar mixture of the stereotype and the new, as if for a time he lacked confidence. Quite different was the case of Alceste (Hofburgtheater, Dec. 16, 1767). In this, his second classic music drama, the composer carried out the reforms begun in Orfeo more boldly and more consistently. Calzabigi again wrote the text. The music was neither so full of color nor so poetic as that of its predecessor, yet was more sustained and equal in beauty. The orchestration is somewhat fuller; the recitatives have gained in expressiveness; there are effects of great dramatic intensity, and arias of severe grandeur. Berlioz called Alceste’s aria ‘Ye gods of endless night’ the perfect manifestation of Gluck’s genius. Like Orfeo, Alceste was admirably performed, and again opinions differed greatly regarding it. Sonnenfels[13] wrote after the performance: ‘I find myself in wonderland. A serious opera without castrati, music without solfeggios, or, I might rather say, without gurgling; an Italian poem without pathos or banality. With this threefold work of wonder the stage near the Hofburg has been reopened.’ On the other hand, there were heard in the parterre such comments as ‘It is meant to call forth tears—I may shed a few—of ennui’; ‘Nine days without a performance, and then a requiem mass’; or ‘A splendid two gulden’s worth of entertainment—a fool who dies for her husband.’ This last is quite in keeping with the sentiment of the eighteenth century in regard to conjugal affection. It took a long while for the public to accustom itself to the austerity and tragic grandeur of this ‘tragedy set to music,’ as its author called it. Yet Alceste in its dual form (for the French edition represents a complete reworking of its original) is Gluck’s masterpiece, and it still remains one of the greatest classical operas.
Three years after Alceste came Paride ed Elena (Nov. 30, 1770), a ‘drama for music.’ In the preface of the work, dedicated to the duke of Braganza, Gluck again emphasized his beliefs. Among other things he wrote: ‘The more we seek to attain truth and perfection the greater the need of positiveness and accuracy. The lines that distinguish the work of Raphael from that of the average painter are hardly noticeable, yet any change of an outline, though it may not destroy resemblance in a caricature, completely deforms a beautiful female head. Only a slight alteration in the mode of expression is needed to turn my aria Che faro senza Euridice into a dance for marionettes.’ Paride ed Elena, constructed on the principles of Orfeo and Alceste, is the least important of Gluck’s operas and the least known. The libretto lacks action, but the score is interesting because of its lyric and romantic character. Much of its style seems to anticipate the new influences which Mozart afterward brought to German music. It also offers the first instance of what might be called local color in its contrasting choruses of Greeks and Asiatics.
It is interesting to note that at the time of composing the lyrical ‘Alceste’ Gluck was also preparing for French opera with vocal romances, Lieder. His collection of songs set to Klopstock’s odes was written in 1770. They have not much artistic value, but they are among the earliest examples of the Lied as Mozart and Beethoven later conceived it, a simple song melody whose mission is frankly limited to a faithful emphasis of a lyrical mood. Conceived in the spirit of Rousseau, they are spontaneous and make an unaffected appeal to the ear. The style is nearer that of French opéra comique, at which Gluck had already tried his hand, thus obtaining an exact knowledge of the spirit of the French language and of its lyrical resources.