Verdi: Man and Musician / His Biography with Especial Reference to His English Experiences

by Frederick James Crowest

The instant Aïda appeared, critics discovered much that was novel in its style. It was a combination of old and new—the accepted Italian opera mixed up with the best and latest in French and German Grand opera. No one expected it of Verdi, yet here it was before the world's eyes. On its production, doubts were freely expressed concerning its permanent qualities. "It is easy to see that the work will never achieve the lasting success of Rigoletto, the Trovatore, and the Traviata," wrote one critic. Another said, "Except as a spectacle, that it will be preferred by Verdi's old admirers to some of his earlier and less pretentious works, or that it will gain for him new disciples, we cannot think is in any high degree probable." Unhappily for these predictions, the work saw something like a hundred representations in Paris within the next three or four years!

A score of years and more have now passed, and yet Aïda draws crowded Royal Italian opera audiences, from which we conclude that the work has always possessed real musical merit—merit which the critics, as a body, first failed to recognise and acknowledge. The splendid opera also, has proved one of a triad which have raised Verdi considerably in the estimation of every right-minded musician. Before Aïda, Otello, and Falstaff, he was dubbed by critics the "sanguinary Italian melodist," the "morbid imitator of Meyerbeer," the "sensational, commonplace composer," with other similarly inelegant, inaccurate, and offensive epithets. Those who have lived long enough, however, have discovered something more than the musical blackleg in Verdi.

The opera of modern times must possess merit as a drama; it does not suffice for it to be but a peg, hanging upon which is a series of pretty tunes. The old-fashioned plan of chopping up each act into a series of recitatives, airs, duets, etc., is now discarded in favour of more musical declamation. In the new opera there are less frequent repetitions of the words, and consequently the dramatic action gains in continuity. The orchestra too plays a more exalted part, being resorted to not only to accompany and illustrate the text, but to provide a general local colour throughout. All this Verdi supplied in Aïda, and the cry at once raised was that he had been Wagner-hunting. Critics in the musical profession and out of it—critics who know a little about music, and a considerably larger number who knew nothing of the art—declared that Italy had at last gone over to the German musical method. But thirty years previously we were told that "Signor Verdi's forte is declamatory music of the highest passion"; also that "the composer's music becomes almost intolerable, owing to his immoderate employment of brass instruments." Undoubtedly in Aïda the master adopts a deeper and more dramatic character than had been usually shown by Italian masters; but he could have as easily done this had Wagner never lived. The ambition of a master-mind like Verdi's would be to raise his country's art to the level of other countries; and the crowning life-work of Verdi has been to place Italian opera on a higher plane, and to furnish an example of Italian national opera that would compare with that of France and Germany. To accomplish this the Bellini-Donizetti type of opera needed to be newly planned, orchestrated, and shaped into a far more comprehensive homogeneous whole. It was all this that Aïda pretended to meet; and it, Otello, and Falstaff have left their composer's mind thoroughly at ease probably concerning the place of Italy in dramatic music for the future. Certainly they should have done.

In composing Aïda Verdi had something more in view than pleasing the ears of the Khedive and his Egyptians. He had before him the operatic universe; and it was to arouse this that he sat him down to write when almost a septuagenarian. To cut himself adrift from the conventionalities of Italian opera, and place before the public a grand and beautiful dramatic lyric work, comparable with any opera that had preceded it, was indeed a great proceeding. With its modern characteristics the first alarm raised by musical public and critics alike was Wagner; but after many years' experience and trial of the work it is discovered that there is very little, if any, Wagner device or manner in it!

In the nineteen numbers of which the opera consists there is much that is musically novel and beautiful. The descriptive music, especially when removed from the tragic parts of the work, shows the composer in his happiest mood. The emotional (even sensational) nature of the music too is very marked, and this is where the master, retaining his country's manner, rises triumphantly over French and German dramatic music. The vocal music is thoroughly characteristic of Verdi. There are few solos, yet the charm of such pieces as "Celeste Aïda," "L'insana parola," and Aïda's romance, "O cieli azzurri," wherein she recalls the beauty of her own country, makes ample amends in quality for the absence of quantity. The duets, of which there are six, are not unusually striking, but the finales are exceedingly fine, and the effect of the ensemble is most imposing. The vocal and instrumental combinations are undoubtedly happy and effective.

It was the orchestration of Aïda mainly which led public and critics away concerning Verdi's supposed conversion to the Wagner or some other "ism." No sooner were heard the grand choral and orchestral combinations in the finales of the work,—movements remarkable alike for their breadth, grandeur, and dramatic reality,—than it was bellowed forth that Verdi had been imitating Berlioz, and the host of modern manipulators of the orchestra. The ponderous instrumentation, some say too much so, carried all minds at once to Wagner, when, really, Verdi could still be Verdi if, exercising his privilege, he elected to blow his theatre down with brass. "The work," wrote a critic, "is very heavily scored, over-instrumented in the brass particularly, and it would exact double the number and twice the tone of the strings at Covent Garden to counterbalance the blatant effects,"[75]— from which we are to believe, we suppose, that in this opera the talented, experienced composer had taken leave of his senses! Quite an unlucky hit, coming as it did at a time when the musical world was only too ready to see in such criticism a hidden suggestion of Wagnerian influence. It was unfortunate, too, inasmuch as the charges of "over-instrumenting" and "undue declamation" were arraigned against Verdi as far back as 1846, when Nabucco was produced—long before Wagner was heard of. "As we have had occasion to remark more than once,"[76] wrote the Athenæum critic, speaking of Nino, i.e. Nabucco, "its composer's music becomes almost intolerable, owing to his immoderate employment of brass instruments." Again, "Signor Verdi's forte is declamatory music of the highest passion."

Yet, thirty years afterwards, these very characteristics are traced to some recent French or German influence! Some few think otherwise. The Aïda subject, in its Eastern origin and character, calls for an excess of broad, semi-barbaric effects, as any one acquainted with oriental manners, life, and literature knows. Brass instruments convey this admirably, better than all the "string" and "wood" in the world. It is from this profuse employment of brass instruments, particularly the six genuine Egyptian trumpets used in the triumphal march of Radamès and his army, that the charge of imitating Wagner, or of becoming "Germanised," has probably arisen. But if the truth be told, this Verdi development has as much to do with Wagner as with Adam, the departures being a consequence of the master's desire to write a thoroughly up-to-date national opera, which his talent and learning fully warranted him in doing. Both vocal and instrumental music aimed at that illustrative local colour which the book and situation needed; hence the lavish use of oriental scales, Persian songs, the dance of black boys, with all the resplendent paraphernalia of Eastern temple, pagoda, and palace.

With all its "new style," the effort to get away from old methods by the employment of theoretical devices, novel and extreme harmonies, abundant recitative, curtailed melody, magnificent finales, and unlimited stage resources, Aïda is still distinctly Verdinian. The solos are peculiarly in Verdi's vein, and frequently suggestions of Trovatore and other works crop up, while the entire opera abounds in dramatic, passionate expression peculiar to Verdi. All this is as it should be from the Verdinian point of view; but if the result of this laudable attempt to formulate a modern Italian opera must be to brand it with some guiding influence or subject-model, then, instead of making Wagner that power, it should be Meyerbeer. If Verdi has followed any model at all, which we do not admit, it is the sumptuous richness and picturesque variety of the composer of Les Huguenots, Le Prophète, and L'Africaine. But Verdi wanted no model. At a distance of twenty years we can look back and discover that Verdi had something more in his mind when composing Aïda than the slavish imitation of this or that composer. He was about to crown his career with an opera, or more, of a style which many circumstances debarred him from attempting earlier.