Mademoiselle Colbran has been described as a great beauty in the queenly style—dark hair, brilliant eyes, imposing demeanour; and though Stendhal is under the impression that her voice began to fall off soon after Rossini's arrival at Naples, it seems certain that she must have preserved it in all its beauty until long afterwards. Rossini in any case wrote for her many of his best parts which, had they not been perfectly sung, could scarcely have met with the success they actually obtained. Among these parts may be mentioned in particular those of Desdemona, Elcia in Mosè in Egitto, Elena in La Donna del Lago, Zelmira in the opera of that name, and Semiramide. The artistic merits of Mademoiselle Colbran were, however, as has already been mentioned, discussed habitually from a political point of view. Revolutionists hissed her because the king admired her, while royalists were ready under all circumstances to applaud her. The first part which Rossini composed for Mademoiselle Colbran, his future wife, was that of Elisabetta in the opera of the same name; a work founded on Scott's novel of Kenilworth, and written appropriately enough by a certain Signor Smith. Smith's knowledge of the English language seems, in spite of his name, to have been imperfect; for, instead of taking his story direct from the original, he borrowed it in an adapted shape from a French melodrama.
The Neapolitans, up to this time, had not heard a note of Rossini's music. He had conquered the hearts of the Venetians and the Milanese. But he was unknown at Naples; and not to have earned the applause of the Neapolitan public was not to have achieved an Italian reputation. The connoisseurs of Naples were by no means disposed to accept Rossini on the strength of the success he had achieved at Milan and Venice; while the professors of the famous Conservatorio, whose classes he had not followed, were incredulous as to his being a composer of any sound musical learning, and were quite prepared to find him a much overrated man.
Rossini began by playing a trick on the Neapolitan audience; for in lieu of an original composition, he prefaced Elisabetta with an overture which he had written the year before at Milan for Aureliano in Palmira—and which he was to offer to the Romans a year afterwards as overture to Il Barbiere. The Neapolitans were delighted with the overture; but it has been surmised that had they known it to have been originally composed for an opera which had failed at Milan, they would not, perhaps, have applauded it so much. The first piece in the opera was, as Stendhal tells us, a duet for Leicester and his young wife, in the minor, which, says Stendhal, was "very original." The finale to the first act, in which the leading motives of the overture were introduced, called forth enthusiastic applause. "All the emotions of serious opera with no tedious intervals between:" such, Stendhal (or Carpani) informs us, was the phrase in which the general verdict of the Neapolitan public was expressed. Mademoiselle Colbran's greatest success, however, was not achieved until the second act where, on the rising of the curtain, Elisabetta, attired in an historical costume—warranted authentic and ordered expressly from London by a fanatical English admirer—had a grand scena. The concerted finale to this act was another triumph both for the composer and for the singers.
Elisabetta made but little mark beyond the frontiers of Italy. It contains much beautiful music; but the distribution of characters is not all that could be desired. Thus the parts of Norfolk, and of Leicester, are both given to tenors; though Norfolk as a wicked personage should have been represented by a baritone or bass. The bass singer, however, was still kept in the background; and at the San Carlo, though there were three admirable tenors—Davide, Nozzari, and Garcia,—there was no bass singer capable of taking a leading part. But for Rossini the bass singer might have remained indefinitely in obscurity. Gradually, however, he was brought to the front, not only in comic operas, where the Italians already tolerated him, but also in serious operas like Otello and Semiramide, and in half-character works such as Cenerentola and La Gazza Ladra. Elisabetta was the first Italian opera in which recitative was accompanied by the stringed quartet in place of the double bass and piano previously employed.
Rossini had plenty of work to do at Naples, for, besides composing two new operas every year he had to transpose parts and to correct and complete operatic scores. But in addition to all this he found time to write two works for Rome, which were produced in 1816, during the carnival. One of these, Torvaldo e Dorliska, was brought out at the Teatro Valle where it met with so little success that the composer informed his mother of the fact by sending her the drawing, not this time of a full-sized fiasco, but of a small fiasco or fiaschetto. Torvaldo e Dorliska, in which the principal parts were written for Remorini and Galli, the two best bass singers of their time, and for Donzelli, the celebrated tenor, must in spite of its failure have possessed some merit. It was performed at Paris in 1825 for the first appearance of Mademoiselle Garcia, the future Malibran; and Rossini borrowed from it the motive of the admirable letter duet in Otello.
CHAPTER VII.
PREPARATIONS FOR THE BARBER.
Torvaldo e Dorliska was followed, after but a short interval, by Il Barbiere, for which a contract was signed the very day, Dec. 26, on which Torvaldo was brought out. The contract was in the following terms:—
"Nobil Teatro di Torre Argentina, Dec. 26th, 1815.
"By the present act, drawn up privately between the parties, the value of which is not thereby diminished, and according to the conditions consented to by them, it has been stipulated as follows:—
"Signor Puca Sforza Cesarini, manager of the above-named theatre, engages Signor Maestro Gioachino Rossini for the next carnival season of the year 1816; and the said Rossini promises and binds himself to compose and produce on the stage, the second comic drama to be represented in the said season at the theatre indicated, and to the libretto which shall be given to him by the said manager, whether this libretto be old or new. The Maestro Rossini engages himself to deliver his score in the middle of the month of January, and to adapt it to the voices of the singers; obliging himself, moreover, to make, if necessary, all the changes which may be required, as much for the good execution of the music as to suit the capabilities or exigencies of the singers.