Mademoiselle Jenny Vertpré was acting with great success in “La Pie Voleuse,” when Paer, happening to see the piece, was struck with its capabilities for musical setting, bought the book, made notes in the margin with a view to its conversion into an opera, and forwarded it to his librettist. The librettist thought, with Paer, that the subject was excellent for music; but he preferred to treat it for Rossini, who seems to have profited by the treachery of Paer’s poet in ordinary.
The story of the Maid and the Magpie does not in the present day seem to have been worth quarrelling about; nor, for that matter, did it lead to any positive dispute. Only Rossini constructed a fine musical work on a dramatic scaffolding furnished by Paer, who had no more wish to help him to a plot than one rival generally has to assist another, especially when the aid is to come from the less successful of the two.
The same Paer, composer of “Agnese” and several works which were very popular during his lifetime, was more unfortunate still with a libretto which he did make into an opera, and which Beethoven nevertheless adopted for his “Fidelio.”
“I have seen your piece,” said Beethoven to Paer, with cruel thoughtlessness, “and think of setting it to music!” Thus, Paer’s “Leonora, ossia l’amore conjugale” came to be overshadowed by the superior presence of Beethoven’s great work.
“La Gazza Ladra” belongs neither to opera seria nor to opera buffa; nor can it be classed with those operas of mezzo carattere, “Il Barbiere,” and “La Cenerentola.” It is a domestic drama set to music—very inferior, as to the subject, to its successors in the same style, “La Sonnambula,” and “Linda di Chamouni.”
The heroine of each of these dramas is the victim of a slight mistake. Whether ‘tis nobler to be suspected of carrying on an intrigue with a village count or of stealing a silver spoon, may be left to the decision of those prima donnas who have represented both Ninetta and Amina; but the story of “La Sonnambula” is certainly both more probable, and more pleasing, than that of “La Gazza Ladra,” which Rossini does not seem to have been able to treat seriously. The plot is so badly woven in “La Gazza Ladra” that it scarcely hangs together at all. We feel almost from the beginning that everything can be explained at any moment if Ninetta will only give herself the trouble to speak.
Fernando cannot say a word in defence of his daughter, though it is to save her that he has given himself up to the authorities. If Ninetta will make no statement, it is for fear of compromising her father—who, however, by his own act is already as much compromised as he well can be.
In “La Sonnambula,” on the other hand, appearances are entirely against the unfortunate Amina, who, to the last moment, is entirely unable to explain her conduct.
In “La Gazza Ladra” Rossini makes some amends to the contralto voice for dethroning it from the highest position, formerly assigned to it in serious opera. Before Rossini’s time, when a soprano and a contralto part were introduced together, the former was for the primo uomo (sopranist), the latter for the prima donna. We have seen that Rossini after writing one part for a sopranist (Velluti in “Aureliano”), never wrote a second. Taking his prima donnas as he found them, he continued to compose the principal female part for the contralto, and dispensed with the soprano, except where, as in “L’Italiana,” he found it convenient to introduce a soprano voice merely for the sake of the concerted pieces.
In writing “La Gazza Ladra” for the company of La Scala at Milan, he found two female vocalists to whom he could with advantage give leading parts: one a soprano, or mezzo-soprano, as she would now be called, Madame Theresa Belloc; and the other a contralto, Mademoiselle Galianis. The former was the prima donna; for the latter Rossini composed the charming part of Pippo—the first secondary auxiliary part for the contralto which occurs in opera.