Indeed it was still a conventional rule that in opera seria leading personages should not be represented by the bass, who was kept systematically in the background. Rossini was the basso’s friend, not only in regard to opera seria, but also as to operas of mezzo carattere, such as “La Cenerentola,” “La Gazza Ladra,” and “Torvaldo e Dorliska.” It is entirely to Rossini and his music that Galli, Lablache, and so many distinguished baritones and basses, owe their reputation.
The company at the San Carlo, though without a leading basso, included at this time three admirable tenors—Davide, Nozzari, and Garcia; and the two latter appeared together in “Elisabetta.” This opera is the first in which Rossini accompanies recitative with the stringed quartet in lieu of the piano and double bass of former Italian composers. The score of “Otello” is the one usually cited (by M. Fétis, M. Castil Blaze, among other writers) as first exhibiting this important substitution.
CHAPTER III.
ROSSINI VISITS ROME—TORVALDO E DORLISKA.
AFTER the success of “Elisabetta,” Rossini went to Rome, where he was engaged to write two works for the carnival of 1816. On the 26th of December, 1815, he produced at the Teatro Valle, “Torvaldo e Dorliska;” composed for Remorini and Galli, the two best bass singers of the day, Donzelli, the celebrated tenor, and Madame Sala, a prima donna of great reputation, who, it is interesting to know, was the mother of our distinguished author and journalist, Mr. George Augustus Sala.
But though the singers were excellent, the orchestra was composed of very indifferent musicians, most of whom were workmen and petty shopkeepers engaged during the day in the pursuit of their trade. The first clarinet was a barber, who habitually shaved Rossini. In proof of the composer’s admirable presence of mind, it is narrated that, annoyed and irritated as he was at the rehearsals by the inability of the band to execute his music correctly, he never once said a severe thing to the first clarinet. He remonstrated with him very gently the next morning after the operation of shaving had been safely performed.
Altogether it is not astonishing that the opera was received rather coldly, or at least not with sufficient warmth to satisfy Rossini. On “Sigismondo” being hissed at Venice, Rossini had sent his mother a drawing of a fiasco; this time he forwarded her a sketch of a little bottle or fiaschetto.
“Torvaldo e Dorliska,” however, must have been an opera of some mark even among the operas of Rossini. It was received at Paris, in 1825, for the début of Mademoiselle Marietta Garcia, the future Malibran, and the composer borrowed from it the motive of the magnificent letter duet in “Otello.” The moderate success of the work is partly to be explained by the poorness of the libretto—the production, however, of a man who, immediately afterwards, furnished Rossini with one of the best opera books ever written.
“Torvaldo e Dorliska” and “Il Barbiere di Siviglia” were produced simultaneously; and the little attention paid to the former, may partly no doubt be explained by the immense, though not in the first instance uncontested, success of the latter.
CHAPTER IV.
BEAUMARCHAIS, PAISIELLO, AND ROSSINI.
AT Rome, where no opera reflecting directly or indirectly on the Roman Catholic religion and the rights of princes, or inculcating patriotism, or trifling with morality, or touching in any way upon anything that concerns the Papal Court, is permitted; where, consequently, neither “Les Huguenots,” nor “Guillaume Tell,” nor “Lucrezia Borgia,” nor “La Traviata,” can be played in the dramatic shape naturally belonging to them; the authorities were as scrupulous with regard to the choice of subjects in Rossini’s time as they are now.