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

by Frederick James Crowest

Gluck (1714-1787) came with a regenerating mission. A century and a half's growth of opera in Italy had reduced it to a mere exhibition of singing, and to restore it to something of an embodiment of all the arts—architecture, painting, poetry, music, and dancing—was Gluck's mission. His reformed style, as given in Orfeo (1762), and later in Alceste (1767), certainly justified his demand for reform, and will always entitle him to be called "the saviour of opera." His influence bore more upon the French opera than the Italian, however, and it was left to his great contemporary Piccini (1728-1800) to bring the old Italian model up to the date of Gluck's new style. To this end he effected improvements in the arias, duets, and vocal pieces, curtailed the repeats, employed several themes instead of one for his finali, all of which tended to put a new complexion on Italian opera. Then arose Spontini (1784-1851), who advanced the dramatic side of opera; Rossini (1792-1868), insisting upon larger choruses and the strengthening of the wind and brass department of the orchestra; with, finally, Donizetti (1797-1848), and Bellini (1802-1835), whose melodic exuberance simply embarrassed and vitiated Italian opera.

Such, briefly, is the story of the rise and development of Italian opera, which, thanks to the labours of his great predecessors, was a reasonably complete art-form long before Verdi scored his first operatic success with Nabucco, albeit it had not many characteristics which it now has. The First period Verdi had no great need to improve, or add to, the structure of opera; what was before him chiefly was the work of embellishing and highly colouring the edifice of dramatic musical art (though we know he did immeasurably more)—a labour for which his rare sense of colour and combination peculiarly fitted him.

Verdi's starting point was where Rossini, Mercadante, Donizetti, and Bellini had left Italian opera; and, but for circumstances quite outside himself, he might have gone on writing operas of the Ernani, I Lombardi, and Il Trovatore type, leaving his later grander efforts, his chefs d'œuvre, unwritten. But a great object appeared suddenly in the musical firmament. Wagner (1813-1883), with his train of fads and fancies, swept across the horizon, leaving unmistakable traces of his passage. At first, content with the old traditional opera—with which he might have done wonders—this vast genius set about advancing and propagating unusual ideas concerning operatic usage and creation. The established forms and systems were chiefly attacked.

In Italian opera, music and melody were the prime considerations. Under the Wagnerian teaching, the full and right dramatic exposition became the chief aim. This unquestionably involved a subserviency of the beautiful in music. With Wagner the dramatic language is the most essential part of the work. In the music of the Meistersinger, for instance, he "fitted music to the thought expressed in language so imperceptibly that the latter is the dominant element." In Tristan und Isolde is the clear divorce from traditional form. Declamation, supported by music expressing the meaning of the words, displaces all the old-time operatic methods—dramatic ensembles, recitative alternated with song, closed and half closed forms, etc. This was a return to the long deceased monody of Peri and Monteverde, and in absolute contradistinction to all that the great Italian, German, and French music masters had done. Other and minor notions, such as the leit motif (the kiss theme), the ever-recurring phrases that were constructed in order to be identified with this or that character, distinguished the Wagnerian style—a style which it is necessary for the student of Verdi to be able to recognise, because, as we have seen, Verdi is alleged to have been largely influenced by Wagner, although most certainly he was not.

Verdi has written in all some thirty operas, which throughout are largely imbued with characteristics of his country's opera music. This is particularly a feature in such First period works as Nabucco, I Lombardi, Ernani, I Due Foscari, and Luisa Miller. In the Second period operas, Rigoletto, La Traviata, Il Trovatore, and Un Ballo in Maschera, are traces of outside influence, Meyerbeer, Auber, and Halévy being descernible despite the composer's natural abundance of graceful melody and charming naïveté; an unmistakable art-struggle suggestive of a transition process was, as we have seen, revealed in Simon Boccanegra. Verdi could not but have been aware that Weber and Spohr were investing German national opera with that romanticism which must always be its distinguishing feature. He felt impelled to give more character to, and to get more place for, his own country's opera; he set about imbuing it, therefore, with a stronger emotional element—an excess of that desperate passion characteristic of the southern temperament. Verdi's immediate predecessors, Rossini and others, had never left the accepted path of song after song of luxuriant warmth, suited to the whims and vocal abilities of this or that singer; but Verdi was to revolutionise all this. The chorus—concerted music generally—and grand finales were no longer to suffer in order to obtain a preponderance of songs to appease the vanity of the singers who sang them. His first attempt to do so was an utter failure!

It was not until Les Vêpres Siciliennes and Don Carlos that we see a determined détour from the accepted Italian lyric-drama lines. Don Carlos was modelled after the style of French Grand opera as formed by Rossini and Donizetti, and became Verdi-cum-Meyerbeer. The result was a failure and a sorry mixture—something of a musical salad, the ingredients of which formed "a poor concoction calculated to derange the strongest musical digestion." The unadulterated Verdi, with the old familiar bel canto, was far better than the adulterated one. Those scenes where the established art-forms had been deserted in order to give vent to orchestral painting or new combinations were unanimously declared to be the failings of the operas.

With the important operas which have adorned the later years of Verdi's life—his Third period works—the master has undoubtedly presented his grandest aspect. Aïda, Otello, and Falstaff are a tremendous art advance upon anything that Verdi had accomplished before. These are operas which will keep Italian opera alive, if that effete institution can be preserved by mortal means. In these compositions Verdi reasserts himself, and awakes to an altogether new and vaster sense of what his country's opera should be, as well as what he himself could make it. Familiarised as the public had been with Tannhäuser and Lohengrin, it expected, in fresh works for the stage, a more logical and dramatic consistency. Any new Italian opera required merit as a drama, and needed to be something more than a series of pretty tunes. Aïda was the full enunciation of Verdi's new principles. In this work were discarded such orthodox processes as the splitting up of the acts into recitatives, which meant a gain in dramatic action and continuity in the play. The old-fashioned forms, the aria d'entratà, the cabaletta, and canzonetta, were discontinued for less continued melody, piecemeal tunes, lending quite a different aspect to the complete work. The interest in the declamatory music considerably increased, and all was so welded together that a much more satisfactory and entertaining whole was the result. The orchestration was decidedly new for Verdi, partaking, as it did, of the gorgeous Meyerbeer rather than the Wagner character. There was much picture-painting both in the abstract and the concrete. The evident intent was to paint or colour instrumentally; to illustrate the text orchestrally, and to impart not only geographical, but local, personal colour. This was essentially what the world was pleased to call "Wagnerian"—hence the outcry and the allegation that Verdi had turned "Wagnerite." The fact was, that since writing Don Carlos, Les Vêpres Siciliennes, and La Forza del Destino, Verdi had become more "Germanised," although the term must not be taken to imply that he was less the Italian, or any the more a copyist or impressionist. His state was owing not to Wagner's nor to Meyerbeer's influence and model any more than to Weber's, but to the ambition of the master himself. If Meyerbeer could employ the orchestra slavishly and make it so important and successful a feature in the Franco-German operatic ensemble, why should not he, Verdi, do as much for Italian art?

Otello was yet a further emphasis. When first heard in London, musical minds immediately perceived not only a remarkable work for a composer full of years, but also an opera which fully confirmed the tactics advanced in Aïda. Another opera had brought forth another demonstration of the composer's remarkable dramatic powers, ever developing in each successive opera. Otello was, unquestionably, worthy to rank with Aïda; and performance after performance has proved this.

As a second example of Verdi's new conceptions respecting Italian national opera it contained much declamation, and consequently less of that purposely lavish and luxuriant melody, for which Verdi amongst all his contemporaries is most famous. Of so-called Wagnerian influence there was little or none. The leit motif and other fads credited to the Bayreuth master, though not wholly his, are conspicuous by their absence. Otello stood simply a thoroughly "up-to-date" Italian opera, a species of modern lyric drama by a great master who had seen musical changes going on about him, and had not disregarded them. It was natural that the Wagner cry should reach Verdi's ears; it was natural that the Italian master should give the world a taste of how far the new "gospel" had impressed him. Ever abreast of the times, Verdi saw a deeper and broadening meaning overtaking the lyric drama; and, reserving to himself the right to speak as he perceived, he published Aïda. This language he again laid down in Otello, a splendid outcome of latter-day genius. The same may be said of Falstaff. It completes a triad of masterpieces which ought to breathe new life into the Anglo-Italian lyric drama, if so be the decrees of fashion, and not a dearth of operatic talent and novelty, have not already administered the death-blow to that relic of the good old times.