Madame Belloc had sung her air a second time, and it was being called for again, when Rossini, from his place in the orchestra, appealed to the audience to allow the performance to proceed, saying that the part of Ninetta was very heavy, and that Madame Belloc, if called upon to repeat her solos, might be unable to get through it. This protest against the encore system found rational listeners, and the opera went on without further interruption.
Rossini had particularly counted on the success of the prayer for three voices—
“Oh, nume benefico!”
and he was not deceived in his expectation. The success of a prayer for three voices in Winter’s recently produced opera of “Maometto” is said to have determined Rossini to introduce a concerted preghiera of his own in “La Gazza Ladra.” It was a novelty in those days to see operatic characters address a formal invocation to Heaven. Now it is the first thing that occurs to them when they are in trouble.
A dozen operas might be mentioned in which one or more of the personages, and generally a whole crowd, fall down on their knees before the audience and begin to pray. In “La Gazza Ladra” there are two prayers; the one just mentioned, in the terzetto, and Ninetta’s prayer in the scene of her condemnation. Rossini, when he did take an idea from another composer, appropriated it so thoroughly that it belonged to him for ever afterwards. He practised in music the precept enjoined by Voltaire in literature,—not to rob without killing. Mosca’s crescendo ceased to belong to Mosca when it had once been adopted by Rossini; and Winter, after the trio of “La Gazza Ladra,” and above all, the preghiera in “Mosè,” could no longer pass, even in Italy, as the inventor of stage praying.
But were it not that the prayer in Winter’s “Maometto,” produced at Milan just before “La Gazza Ladra,” is known to have made a distinct impression on Rossini, and to have induced him to order a prayer forthwith from his own librettist, there would be no reason at all why the prayer in “La Gazza Ladra” should be attributed to Winter, considering that a much better model of the same operatic form already existed in the “trio of masks” in “Don Giovanni.”
Once more let it be remarked that almost everything new in Rossini was already old in Mozart. But apart from his own endless verve, gaiety, and melodic inventiveness, what really does belong to Rossini in the matter of operatic forms is the preghiera for a whole body of voices, as first introduced in “Mosè.”
CHAPTER X.
ARMIDA, ADELAIDA, AND ADINA.
AFTER the immense success of “La Gazza Ladra,” Rossini returned to Naples. It will be remembered that while he was at Rome superintending the production of “Il Barbiere di Siviglia” the San Carlo had been burnt down. King Ferdinand was in despair at the loss of his magnificent theatre; but that enterprising manager, Barbaja, hearing of his monarch’s grief, went to him, and promised to rebuild the San Carlo, more magnificent than ever, in nine months. Barbaja fulfilled his promise, and in January, 1817, the new San Carlo was reopened.
The same year, a few months after the production of “La Gazza Ladra,” Rossini brought out at the San Carlo an opera called “Armida,” in which the principal characters were assigned to Mdlle. Colbran, Nozzari, and Benedetti. Although very successful at the time, this opera seems soon to have been forgotten—doubtless by reason of the subject not being sufficiently modern for our modern taste. “Armida” is noticeable as the only one of Rossini’s Italian operas containing ballet music, a style in which, as in every other, he was a consummate master. Of this he gave brilliant proof a dozen years afterwards in the unrivalled ballet music of “Guillaume Tell.”