The Great Musicians: Rossini and His School

by H. Sutherland Edwards

Lucrezia Borgia contains less recitative than belongs to the operas of Rossini, who himself dispensed with the endless monologues and recitatives cultivated by his predecessors. Indeed, the amount of measured talk in Lucrezia Borgia scarcely exceeds that which is to be met with in the most popular of Verdi's works. The brilliancy of the introduction, the series of dramatic scenes—for which the composer had, above all, to thank his librettist, who, in his turn, was indebted to Victor Hugo—and an unusually large number of tuneful themes for four leading personages among whom the interest is judiciously distributed, could not fail to secure for Lucrezia Borgia the success it in fact obtained.

The graceful Elisir d'Amore, which, owing to the prevailing taste for spectacular opera, is now but rarely heard, was given for the first time at Milan in 1832. Donizetti was now composing operas at the rate of about three a year. Many of them made but little impression and scarcely a twelfth part of them are performed in the present day.

In 1835, however, Donizetti produced an opera which was received with enthusiasm, which soon became popular throughout Europe, and which seems to possess as much vitality now as when it was first brought out. Lucia di Lammermoor, the work in question, contains some of the most beautiful melodies, in the sentimental style, that Donizetti has composed; and it is especially admired by musicians for the broadly conceived, well-constructed and highly dramatic finale which brings the second act to so effective a conclusion. The sudden appearance of Edgar of Ravenswood just as his devoted but despairing Lucy has been forced to sign the contract which gives her to another, is but the first of a series of situations, skilfully varied and contrasted, which the librettist has ably planned, and which have been admirably treated by the composer. The part of Lucia, beloved by every "light soprano" of the present day, was written for Persiani; that of Edgardo, which, in the days of the great tenors, was even more popular than the prima donna's part, for Duprez. Of the last act of Lucia, which, until the reign of the light sopranos set in, used to be considered the crowning glory of the opera, Donizetti wrote both words and music. It has already been mentioned that he once transformed a French vaudeville into an Italian opera or operetta; and it may be added that the libretti of Betly and of La Figlia del Reggimento are both from his pen. La Figlia del Reggimento, however, was only La Fille du Régiment translated into Italian; and the libretto of Betly is based, scene by scene, on Adolphe Adam's little opera of Le Chalet—known in English as the Swiss Cottage. In the case of the last act of Lucia, Donizetti not only wrote the words; he designed the scenes. In the novel Edgar loses himself on the seashore, and is drowned. In the opera, however, when so far as Lucia is concerned the story is at an end, he reappears in an appropriate cemetery to celebrate, in a lyrical lament, the virtues of his demented love; to be informed by a chorus of retainers that she has not only lost her reason, but has departed altogether from this world; and finally to stab himself while still singing the praises of his "bell' alma adorata." When the Lucia of the evening is Patti, Nilsson, or Albani, and the Edgardo is no one in particular, the final scene of course falls flat; no one, indeed, stops to hear it. But the case was quite different when the part of Edgardo was filled by a great dramatic vocalist, like Duprez, or in later days by Mario.

In 1835 Donizetti visited Paris, and there brought out his Marino Faliero, remembered for a time by several pretty pieces, including, in particular, the opening chorus for the workmen in the arsenal, and a chorus of gondoliers at the beginning of the second act. He was more successful when revisiting the French capital, in 1840, he produced there his opera of I Martiri, founded on the subject of Polyeucte which, composed for Naples with a view to Nourrit in the principal part, had been objected to by the Neapolitan censorship; La Fille du Régiment, written for and performed at the Opéra Comique; and La Favorite composed in the first instance for a house of the second rank, the Théâtre de la Renaissance, but afterwards transferred to the Académie. La Favorite—or La Favorita, as it became after passing from the French to the Italian stage—has, like Lucrezia Borgia, the advantage of being founded on a highly dramatic story. It is based on a French drama known, until the opera caused it to be forgotten, as Le Comte de Comminges; and it seems to owe its origin to a Spanish work. In La Favorita, as in most Spanish plays, there is no unfolding of the plot through introductory narrative. The action, from the beginning, takes place beneath the eyes of the spectator. A young man, already tired of the world, is seeking repose in the seclusion of a monastery. But he has been troubled by a vision. The vision still haunts him, and the prior vainly exhorts him in a duet to abandon all thought of the external, and to concentrate his attention on the inward and spiritual. Fernando's adventures with the beautiful lady who turns out to be the "favourite" of the king, the recompense bestowed upon him in the shape of this lady's hand for the valour he has shown in the king's service, and his ultimate return to the monastery when he finds how bitterly he has been deceived, need not here be recounted. It is worth observing, however, that the success of the opera has been in a great measure due to the excellence of the libretto; and that in all really good libretti, as in that of La Favorita, the action of the piece, instead of being related, is presented continuously on the stage. The duet of the first act for Fernando and the chief of the monastery is sufficiently interesting. The choruses of women and the ballet music (of which these choruses form part), in the second act, are graceful and melodious; and the king's air in the third act, Pour tant d'amour, has been always liked both by the popular baritones who sing it and by the public. Leonora's scena, too, "O mon Fernand," possesses, at least in the slow movement (the quick one being quite unworthy of it), a certain amount of beauty. But the fourth act of La Favorita is worth all the rest of the opera, and it may well be regarded as the finest act Donizetti has composed. The calmness and purity of the tenor's air, "Ange si pur," and the passionate impulsiveness of the final duet for the despondent lovers, are eminently dramatic: the character of each piece being perfectly in accord with the situation. The choruses are highly impressive, and the whole scene becomes filled with earnest animation as it moves towards the final climax. Donizetti is said to have sketched and in the main to have completed this act at a single sitting, and in the space of some three or four hours. The andante, however, of the duet was added at the rehearsals; and the cavatina, "Ange si pur" was borrowed from the score of a work never brought out—Le Duc d'Albe. If there could be any doubt about the fact, it would be difficult to believe that Fernando's air had not been inspired by the situation in which it occurs. So, after all, in a measure it was; since the composer took it from elsewhere to introduce it where he knew it would be in place.

La Favorita was by no means Donizetti's last work. He had yet to write Linda di Chamouni, in which there is more of what is called "local colour" than in any other of his operas; and Don Pasquale, which, apart from the brightness and gaiety of its never-ending series of melodies, would be remembered if only from the circumstance of its having been written for that incomparable quartet, Grisi, Mario, Tamburini, and Lablache. The very year (1843) that Donizetti produced Don Pasquale at Paris he brought out Maria di Rohan at Vienna. The music of Maria di Rohan is in some respects the most dramatic that Donizetti has written. The libretto, like almost every good libretto, is based on a French play—Un Duel sous Richelieu; and it contains a very strong part for the baritone, in which, at our Royal Italian Opera, Ronconi has often shown the highest histrionic genius, together with a certain inability to sing in tune. Maria di Rohan, however, is not to be called dramatic simply because it contains one great dramatic part. What is more important is the fact that the music of the work is appropriate to the various personages and to the great situations of the piece. In portraying the original of the jealous husband, Donizetti exhibits all the earnestness and vigour of Verdi, whom, as before observed, he resembles more in Maria di Rohan than in any of his earlier works.

Donizetti's last opera was Catarina Cornaro, brought out at Naples in 1844. This was his sixty-third dramatic work, without counting a certain number—variously estimated, but not likely to be great—which have not been represented. At least two-thirds of Donizetti's operas have never been heard in England. Soon after the production of Catarina Cornaro Donizetti fell into a melancholy condition. Symptoms of dementia manifested themselves while he was on a visit to Paris. The doctors thought the air of his native town might have some salutary effect, and the patient was accordingly ordered to Bergamo; but the case was already a hopeless one. He was taken to Bergamo, but was attacked with paralysis on the journey; and soon after his arrival, having experienced a second attack, he succumbed.

Donizetti, as has already been said, worked for some time before and for many years after Bellini, whom he preceded and survived. Bellini was born in 1806, nine years after Donizetti, and died in 1837, thirteen years before him. He was a native of Sicily, and his father, with whom he took his first lessons in music, was an organist at Catania. The organist was persuaded to send his son to Naples by a Sicilian nobleman, who promised to pay his expenses as a student at the famous Conservatorio, which he in due time entered, and where he had for fellow-pupil Mercadante—more or less known whereever Italian opera has been cultivated by his Giuramento, the only one of his numerous works which ever met with anything like an enduring success. Mercadante was a better musician than Bellini. But he possessed far less creative power; and his creations or inspirations in the shape of melodies are seldom comparable in beauty to those of which the scores of La Sonnambula, Norma, and I Puritani are so full. The tenor's love-song in Il Giuramento, and the highly dramatic duet which brings that opera to a conclusion, will be remembered by all who have once heard this masterpiece of a composer who did not produce masterpieces. Opera-goers of the last thirty years cannot altogether forget him; and it may in particular be observed that he made a far more effective use of the orchestra than his more divinely endowed fellow-student, who thought and felt in melody as Ovid, and afterwards Pope, "lisped in numbers:" every sequence of notes that occurred to him being melodious.

Bellini composed his first work while he was studying at the Conservatorio, where it was afterwards performed. His next production was intended for the outside public. It was entitled Adelson e Salvino, and had the honour, or at least the advantage, of being represented in the presence of the illustrious Barbaja, who, without being a musician, was, as we have already seen, a keen appreciator of musical excellence. It would have been necessary, perhaps, to have been a little blind not to perceive the merit of three such masters as Rossini, Donizetti, and Bellini. Such blindness however, was as a matter of fact exhibited by a good many, whereas the ex-waiter of the San Carlo gambling saloon showed himself clear-sighted in the matter. Rossini and Donizetti had both been under engagements to Barbaja, and he was not going to allow Bellini to escape him. The famous impresario was at this time director of the San Carlo at Naples, of the Scala at Milan, of some smaller operatic establishments in Italy, and of the Italian Opera at Vienna. He commissioned Bellini in the first place to write an opera for Naples, where, in 1826, he brought out his Bianca e Fernando. This work obtained no very great amount of success. But it pleased a considerable portion of the public; and it so far satisfied Barbaja that the sagacious manager entrusted the young composer, now twenty years of age, with the libretto of Il Pirata, in which the principal part was to be written specially for Rubini. This time Bellini's opera was to be produced at La Scala. In the simple touching melodies of Il Pirata—of which the principal one for the tenor, quickly laid hold of by composers for the pianoforte and the violin, was still remembered long after the opera, as a whole, had been forgotten—Bellini at once revealed the character of his genius; and the composer of twenty was destined to express the reaction he felt within himself, and which the public was prepared to feel, against the florid style of Rossini. While composing Il Pirata, Bellini retired into the country with the singer on whose execution the success of the work would so much depend. Rubini sang the melodies of his part as Bellini wrote them; and Bellini is said not to have succeeded all at once in inducing him to abandon his taste for ornamentation, and in prevailing upon him to deliver the simple phrases of his principal airs, not only from the chest, but also from the heart. Rubini and his composer, Bellini and his singer, soon understood one another; and in his great scene the admired tenor excited the utmost enthusiasm. Now were fulfilled the words of the prophet Stendhal (or perhaps it was the seer Carpani beneath whose mantle Stendhal, we know, was in the habit of concealing himself), who, writing only some two or three years before, had foretold that Rossini would be followed by a composer remarkable for the simplicity of his style.

After producing in succession La Straniera (Milan, 1828), Zaira (Parma, 1829), Bellini brought out at Venice his operatic version of Romeo and Juliet, under the title of I Capuletti ed i Montecchi which owed such success as it obtained to the singing of Mdle. Pasta, as Il Pirata had been indebted for the favour with which it was received to the singing of Rubini. The years 1829, 1830, 1831, and 1832 are especially memorable in the history of Italian opera; for in the first of these Rossini's William Tell, in the second Donizetti's Anna Bolena, in the third Bellini's Sonnambula, and in the fourth Bellini's Norma, was produced. The Italian school of operatic music was certainly at that time supreme in Europe; and Rossini, Donizetti, and Bellini continued for many years to hold sway at theatres where they have now to share their dominion with the composers of France and Germany—with Gounod, Ambroise Thomas, and Bizet, with Meyerbeer and with Wagner.

La Sonnambula, as the work of a new composer, was a good deal sneered at on the occasion of its first production in London. But its endless flow of melodies—many of which, being full of true emotion, are so far thoroughly dramatic—could not fail to ensure its success, with the public at large; and this success, now of half a century's duration, has scarcely diminished since the part of Amina was first undertaken by Pasta, and that of Elvino by Rubini. Our old friend, Lord Mount-Edgcumbe, true type of the praiser of times gone by, having been scared by Rossini, was not likely to be calmed down by Bellini. Of Norma he tells us that the scene of the opera was laid "in Wales," and that it "was not liked." It is difficult to understand the mood of one, having ears to hear, who, whatever he might think of Norma as a specimen of the highest kind of tragic opera, could fail to "like it." Rossini, together with a mass of opera-goers in all countries, was of those who not only "liked" but greatly admired Norma; and he gave the composer the benefit of his counsels when the still young Bellini (he was even now only thirty years of age) undertook to write an opera for the Italian Theatre of Paris, with Grisi, Rubini, Tamburini, and Lablache in the principal parts. The effect of Rossini's advice may be seen in the greater degree of attention paid by Bellini to the orchestration of I Puritani and to the concerted music. It would have been well if some one had recommended Bellini not to set to work upon so poor a libretto as that of I Puritani derived from Ancelot's poor novel, Les Puritains d'Ecosse. Rubini's air, "Ah te, o cara," the polacca for Grisi, the duet in three movements for Tamburini and Lablache,—as to which Rossini, writing an account of the opera to a friend at Milan, remarked that some echo of the final outburst for the two voices, with its brazen accompaniments, must surely have reached him,—and the beautiful tenor solo of the closing concerted piece: these in themselves must have been enough to secure the success of the opera. The last-named melody for the tenor voice, so thoroughly religious in character, was sung at Bellini's funeral to the words of the Lacrymosa; and it was in the midst of the enthusiasm created by his last work that Bellini, at the age of thirty-eight, died.