The Fenice theatre, where Rossini produced his first important opera in the serious style, “Tancredi,” and also the last in that style which he wrote for Italy, “Semiramide,” ranked next to the theatres of La Scala and San Carlo, or rather, it should be said, immediately after La Scala—the Neapolitan Opera House holding the first place among all. “This singular town,” says Stendhal, “now the gayest in Europe, will thirty years hence [1823] be only an unhealthy village unless Italy wakes up and gives herself but one king, in which case I shall vote for Venice, an impregnable city, as capital.”
Stendhal possessed a certain amount of foresight. He had an idea that somewhere about the year 1853 a united Italy would be formed. He also prophesied, or rather pointed out, that in the natural course of things (1), Mozart would outlive Rossini; (2) that the composer who obtained the next great success after Rossini would compose simple expressive melodies (fulfilled in the case of Bellini); (3) that the Italian style of Rossini and the German style of Weber would be united in one composer, whose works would be produced at Paris (an evident prevision of Meyerbeer).
After the Fenice ranked the Court theatre of Turin, for which Rossini never composed a note, and which seems to have been a singularly formal and dull establishment in Rossini’s days. “Forming part of the king’s palace, it was considered disrespectful to appear there in a cloak, disrespectful to laugh, and disrespectful to applaud, till the queen had applauded.” This, the fourth theatre in Italy, gave its best representations during the carnival; it was also opened from time to time during Lent.
Florence, Bologna, Genoa, Sienna, Ferrara, had all their Operas, which were of repute at certain seasons of the year—sometimes during the carnival, sometimes in the autumn. At Bergámo the best performances took place during the local fair at Leghorn during the summer season. Most of the lyrical theatres in the capitals and large towns were protected by the sovereign. In the small towns the magnates of the place contributed to the maintenance of the opera either by absolute donations or by nobly risking their money.
The Emperor of Austria gave a subscription of about eight thousand pounds a year to La Scala, the King of Naples nearly twelve thousand to San Carlo. These magnificent opera houses, at one time the two finest in the world, now eclipsed in architectural splendour, if not in fame, were also supported by public gambling tables established in spacious saloons adjoining the theatre. The keeper of the bank did a sufficiently good business to be able to pay a large sum out of his profits to the “Impresario.” The Austrian Government suppressed the gambling in the saloons of La Scala in the year 1822, and King Ferdinand, finding that it had been forbidden at San Carlo during the revolution which brought him to the throne, did not authorise its re-introduction.
Opera is a costly entertainment, and has never flourished anywhere unless sustained by the munificence of sovereigns, or of a rich and cultivated aristocracy. We know what the theatres of La Scala and San Carlo did under the system of large subventions. They will never regain their ancient splendour under a parliamentary government involving discussion of the state budget and limitation of state expenditure.
The municipalities and small towns made grants to the local operas, as Ascot, Epsom, and a hundred towns in England give plates to be run for at the annual races. All these musical theatres, great and small, were bound at certain periods to bring out new works. The composers were not liberally paid, but a large number of operas had to be furnished every year, and the demand caused a supply.
Musical composition was maintained as a living art. The new works attracted new audiences, who again called out for new works. The production of opera was artificially encouraged and protected, like horse-racing in England. It was contrary to the principles of political economy, but it succeeded. The native breed of singers and composers was decidedly improved.
The order of performance at the Italian theatres was rather absurd. This has already been mentioned, but it is worth remembering in connection with Rossini’s operas. First one act of an opera was given, then a ballet, which frequently lasted upwards of an hour, then the second act of the opera, and finally a short ballet or divertissement. With the representation composed in this manner, the natural division of an opera, for no artistic reasons, but simply as a matter of convenience, was into two acts.
This division being accepted the concerted finale, the great test-piece of the work, was placed at the end of the first act. Here the dramatic knot was tied, the solution of which is celebrated in all Rossini’s comic operas by a joyous air for the prima donna at the end of Act II. If Rossini had been composing for theatres where, as in Germany, France, and England, it is the custom to perform an opera continuously from beginning to end, certainly neither he nor his librettist would have thought of reducing the five acts of Beaumarchais’s “Barbier de Séville,” of Voltaire’s “Sémiramis,” to only two. In the operatic system of Rossini’s time the three first acts of a five act drama went to form the first act of a two act opera. Naturally, then, these first acts are rather long. In the first act of “Semiramide” the finale alone lasts a good half-hour, considerably more than the entire first act in many of the operas of Signor Verdi, whose favourite division is into four acts.