Melody, free and beautiful melody, soaring above a 262 comparatively simple accompaniment, was the characteristic of Italian opera from Scarlatti’s first opera, “L’Onesta nell’ Amore,” produced in Rome in 1680, to Verdi’s “Trovatore,” produced in the same city in 1853. The names, besides Verdi’s, associated with its most brilliant successes, are: Rossini (“Il Barbiere di Siviglia,” “Guillaume Tell”), Bellini (“Norma,” “La Sonnambula,” “I Puritani”), and Donizetti (“Lucia,” “L’Elisir d’Amore,” “La Fille du Regiment”). These composers possessed dramatic verve to a great degree, aimed straight for the mark, and when at their best always hit the operatic target in the bull’s-eye.
Reforms by Gluck.
The charge most frequently laid against Italian opera is that its composers have been too subservient to the singers, and have sacrificed dramatic truth and depth of expression, as well as the musicianship which is required of a well-written and well-balanced score, as between the vocal and instrumental portions, to the vanity of those upon the stage—in brief, that Italian opera consists too much of show-pieces for its interpreters. Among the first to protest practically against this abuse was Gluck, a German, who, from copying the Italian style of operatic composition early in his career, changed his entire method as late as 1762, when he was nearly fifty years old. “Orfeo et Euridice,” the oldest opera that to-day still holds a place in the operatic repertoire, and containing the favorite air, “Che faro senza Euridice” (I have lost my Eurydice), was produced by Gluck, in Vienna, in the year mentioned. 263 There Gluck followed it up with “Alceste,” then went to Paris, and scored a triumph with “Iphigenie en Aulite.” But on the arrival, in Paris, of the Italian composer, Piccini, the Italian party there seized upon him as a champion to pit against Gluck, and there then ensued in the French capital a rivalry so fierce that it became a veritable musical War of the Roses until Gluck completely triumphed over Piccini with “Iphigenie en Tauride.”
Gluck’s reform of opera lay in his abandoning all effort at claptrap effect—effect merely for its own sake—and in making his choruses as well as his soloists participants, musically and actively, in the unfolding of the dramatic story. But while he avoided senseless vocal embellishments and ceased to make a display of singers’ talents the end and purpose of opera, he never hesitated to introduce beautiful melody for the voice when the action justified it. In fact, what he aimed at was dramatic truth in his music, and with this end in view he also gave greater importance to the instrumental portion of his score.
Comparative Popularity of Certain Operas.
These characteristics remained for many years to come the distinguishing marks of German opera. They will be discovered in Mozart’s “Nozze di Figaro,” “Don Giovanni” and “Zauberflöte,” which differ from Gluck’s operas in not being based on heroic or classical subjects, and in exhibiting the general advance made in freer musical expression, as well as Mozart’s greater spontaneity of melodic invention, his keen sense of the 264 dramatic element and his superior skill in orchestration. They also will be discovered in Beethoven’s “Fidelio,” which again differs from Mozart’s operas in the same degree in which the individuality of one great composer differs from that of another. With Weber’s “Freischütz,” “Euryanthe” and “Oberon,” German opera enters upon the romantic period, from which it is but a step to the “Flying Dutchman,” “Tannhäuser,” “Lohengrin” and the music-dramas of Richard Wagner.
Meanwhile, the French had developed a style of opera of their own, which is represented by Meyerbeer’s “Les Huguenots,” Gounod’s “Faust,” apparently destined to live as long as any opera that now graces the stage, and by Bizet’s absolutely unique “Carmen.” In French opera the instrumental support of the voices is far richer and more delicately discriminating than in Italian opera, and the whole form is more serious. It is better thought out, shows greater intellectual effort and not such a complete abandon to absolute musical inspiration. It is true, there is much claptrap in Meyerbeer, but “Les Huguenots” still lives—and vitality is, after all, the final test of an art-work.
Unquestionably, Italian operas like “Il Barbiere di Siviglia,” “La Sonnambula,” “Lucia,” and “Trovatore” are more popular in this country than Mozart’s or Weber’s operatic works. In assigning reasons for this it seems generally to be forgotten that these Italian operas are far more modern. “Don Giovanni” was produced in 1787, whereas “Il Barbiere” was brought out in 1816, “La Sonnambula” in 1831, “Lucia” in 1835, “Trovatore” in 1853 and Verdi’s last work in 265 operatic style, “Aida,” in 1871. “Don Giovanni” still employs the dry recitative (recitatives accompanied by simple chords on the violoncello), which is exceedingly tedious and makes the work drag at many points. In “Il Barbiere,” although the recitatives are musically as uninteresting, they are humorous, and, with Italian buffos, trip lightly and vivaciously from the tongue. As regards “Fidelio” and “Der Freischütz,” the amount of spoken dialogue in them is enough to keep these works off the American stage, or at least to prevent them from becoming popular here.
Wagner has had far-reaching effect upon music in general, and even Italian opera, which, of all art-forms, was least like his music-dramas, has felt his influence. Boito’s “Mefistofele,” Ponchielli’s “La Gioconda,” Verdi’s “Otello” and “Falstaff,” are examples of the far-reaching results of Wagner’s theories. Even in “Aida,” Verdi’s more discriminating treatment of the orchestral score and his successful effort to give genuine Oriental color to at least some portions of it, show that even then he was beginning to weary of the cheaper successes he had won with operas like “Il Trovatore,” “La Traviata” and “Rigoletto,” and, while by no means inclined to menace his own originality by copying Wagner or by adopting his system, was willing to profit by the more serious attitude of Wagner toward his art. Puccini, in “La Tosca,” has written a first-act finale which is palpably constructed on Wagnerian lines. In his “La Bohême,” in Leoncavallo’s “I Pagliacci” and in Mascagni’s “Cavalleria Rusticana,” the distinct efforts made to have the score reflect the characteristics of the text show Wagner’s influence potent 266 in the most modern phases of Italian opera. Humperdinck’s “Hänsel und Gretel” and Richard Strauss’s “Feuersnot” and “Salome” represent the further working out of Wagner’s art-form in Germany.