Ferri was in the service of three kings of Poland and two emperors of Germany. At Venice he was decorated with the Order of St. Mark; at Vienna he was crowned King of Musicians; at London, while he was singing in a masque, he was presented by an unknown hand with a superb emerald; and the Florentines, when he was about to visit their city, went in thousands to meet him, at three leagues distance from the gates.
OPERA IN VIENNA.
The Italian Opera was established in Vienna under the Emperor Leopold I., with great magnificence, so much so indeed, that for many years afterwards it was far more celebrated as a spectacle than as a musical entertainment. Nevertheless, Leopold was a most devoted lover of music, and remained so until his death, as the history of his last moments sufficiently shows. We have seen a French maid of honour die to the fiddling of her page; the Emperor of Germany expired to the accompaniment of a full orchestra. Feeling that his end was approaching he sent for his musicians, and ordered them to commence a symphony, which they went on playing until he died.
Apostolo Zeno, whom Rousseau calls the Corneille, and Metastasio, whom he terms the Racine of the Opera, both resided for many years at Vienna, and wrote many of their best pieces for its theatre. Several of Zeno's, and a great number of Metastasio's works have been set to music over and over again, but when they were first brought out at Vienna, many of them appear to have obtained success more as grand dramatic spectacles than as operas. During the latter half of the eighteenth century, Vienna witnessed the production of some of the greatest master-pieces of the musical drama (for instance, the Orpheus, Alcestis, &c., of Gluck, and the Marriage of Figaro, of Mozart); but when Handel was in England directing the King's Theatre in the Haymarket, and when the Dresden Opera was in full musical glory (before as well as after the arrival of Hasse), the Court Theatre of Vienna was above all remarkable for its immense size, for the splendour of its decorations, and for the general costliness and magnificence of its spectacles. Lady Mary Wortley Montague visited the Opera, at Vienna, in 1716, and sent the following account of it to Pope.
"I have been last Sunday at the Opera, which was performed in the garden of the Favorita; and I was so much pleased with it, I have not yet repented my seeing it. Nothing of the kind was ever more magnificent, and I can easily believe what I am told, that the decorations and habits cost the Emperor thirty thousand pounds sterling. The stage was built over a very large canal, and at the beginning of the second act divided into two parts, discovering the water, on which there immediately came, from different parts, two fleets of little gilded vessels that gave the representation of a naval fight. It is not easy to imagine the beauty of this scene, which I took particular notice of. But all the rest were perfectly fine in their kind. The story of the Opera is the enchantment of Alcina, which gives opportunities for a great variety of machines, and changes of scenes which are performed with surprising swiftness. The theatre is so large that it is hard to carry the eye to the end of it, and the habits in the utmost magnificence to the number of one hundred and eight. No house could hold such large decorations; but the ladies all sitting in the open air exposes them to great inconveniences, for there is but one canopy for the Imperial Family, and the first night it was represented, a shower of rain happening, the opera was broken off, and the company crowded away in such confusion that I was almost squeezed to death."
SCENIC DECORATIONS.
One of these open air theatres, though doubtless on a much smaller scale than that of Vienna, stood in the garden of the Tuileries, at Paris, at the beginning of the eighteenth century. It was embowered in trees and covered with creeping plants, and the performances took place there in the day-time. These garden theatres were known to the Romans, witness the following lines of Ovid:—
"Illic quas tulerant nemorosa palatia, frondes
Simpliciter positæ; scena sine arte fuit."
De Arte Amandi, Liber I., v. 105.
I myself saw a little theatre of the kind, in 1856, at Flensburgh, in Denmark. There was a pleasure-ground in front, with benches and chairs for the audience. The stage door at the back opened into a cabbage garden. The performances, which consisted of a comedy and farce took place in the afternoon, and ended at dusk.
I have already spoken of the magnificence and perfection of the scenic pictures exhibited at the Italian theatres in the very first days of the Opera. In the early part of the seventeenth century immense theatres were constructed so as to admit of the most elaborate spectacular displays. The Farnesino Theatre, at Parma, built for dramas, tournaments, and spectacles of all kinds, and which is now a ruin, contained at least fifty thousand spectators.[28]