“Now go, Caffarelli; you have no more to learn! You are the first singer in the world.”
Yet, with all respect to Porpora, what, after such meagre, mechanical instruction as this, would Caffarelli have been able to make of a great dramatic part? What would a vocalist, taught as Caffarelli had been taught, make in the present day of the part of Arnold in “Guillaume Tell,” or of Raoul in “Les Huguenots”?
Meyerbeer would certainly not have allowed such a singer to take the part of Vasco di Gama in “L’Africaine,” which he reserved (in Germany) for Wachtel—by no means a Caffarelli!
Rossini would have quarrelled with Caffarelli, as he did with Velluti, and would have told him not to overload his music with absurd embellishments.
Stendhal, who frequently takes the parts of the singers, sopranists and all, against Rossini, for whose music he nevertheless professes unbounded admiration, puts to himself this suggestive question,—
“If Rossini, in 1814, had found a greater number of good singers, could he have thought of the revolution he has brought about, would he have introduced the system of writing everything down?”
“His self-love,” he replies, “would perhaps have suggested it, but that of the singers would vigorously have opposed it. Look, in our own day, at Velluti, who refuses to sing his music.”
And, therefore, Stendhal adds, that if called upon to choose between the two systems, he should decide in favour of the ancient system somewhat modernised.
“I would not have all the ornaments written down, but I would have the liberty of the singer restrained. It is not right that Velluti should sing the cavatina of ‘Aureliano’ so that the author can scarcely recognise it himself. In that case it is Velluti who is really the author of the airs he sings, and it is better to keep two such different arts separate.”
These remarks occur in Stendhal’s “Vie de Rossini,” page 263 of the 1864 edition (chapter XXXI.—Rossini se répète-t-il plus qu’un autre?); but they belong to the Abbé Carpani, on whose “Rossiniane” (as already mentioned) Stendhal’s “Vie de Rossini” is founded. Beyle, calling himself Stendhal, took all his biographical facts, most of his critical opinions, from Carpani, and added a number of those ingenious remarks on love, Walter Scott’s novels, temperaments in the North and in the South of Europe, the points of difference between French, English, and Italian society, &c., which, together with the inevitable, and, at first, rather striking appeals to the reader to throw the book on one side if he does not feel quite capable of appreciating it, are common to all the works of Stendhal—a most original writer, in spite of his curious plagiarisms in connection with music. Beyle had previously borrowed the same Carpani’s “Haydine,” which he attributed to “Bombet.” In thus plundering Carpani to enrich Bombet and Stendhal, Beyle has caused much needless confusion, especially in those passages where he speaks in the first person. Thus “Stendhal” represents himself as well acquainted with Rossini,—who though he constantly met Carpani in 1822, at Vienna, knew nothing of “Stendhal.”