The Life of Rossini

by H. Sutherland Edwards

The sum received by Rossini for the copyright of “Le Siège de Corinthe” was not a large one. At least in these days of international treaties, when, moreover, the sale of music has everywhere increased, it would not be so considered. Troupenas, the afterwards well-known publisher, had then just gone into business, and thought with reason that he could not make a better beginning than by bringing out Rossini’s new work, the first of the series of operas which he was to compose for the French stage.

Injudicious friends advised him not to invest his money in an opera only half new; but he was not to be dissuaded from his intention, and ended by purchasing the copyright of “Le Siège de Corinthe” for six thousand francs. If this opera had been produced thirty years later, the music would have been worth to a publisher at least sixty, eighty, perhaps one hundred thousand francs.

But Rossini was never exorbitant in his demands, and seems to have been quite contented with the comparatively moderate payment made to him by M. Troupenas, remembering, no doubt, that in Italy he would have received nothing.

The next of his Italian works which Rossini proposed to arrange for the French stage was “Mosè.” M. Balocchi and M. de Jouy, one of the future librettists of “Guillaume Tell,” prepared the “book,” and added to the original opera several scenes and one or two personages of their own invention. The pieces composed specially by Rossini for the French version of “Mosè,” are the introduction to the first act, the quartet with chorus, “Dieu de la Paix,” “Dieu de la Guerre,” the chorus “La douce Aurore,” the march with chorus and recitations in the third act, “Reine des Cieux,” a portion of the ballet music, the finale “Je réclame la foi promise,” and the air of the fourth act, “Quelle horrible destinée.”

The finale, however, is said to be that of “Ciro in Babilonia,” remodelled, while most of the dance music came from “Armida.”

“Moïse,” highly successful on its first production, was revived in 1852, and again in 1863. An Italian version of the work was produced in London some twenty years ago at the Royal Italian Opera. It was, of course, found necessary to reconstruct the drama, which in England became “Zora,” as the Italian “Mosè,” five-and-twenty years before, had become “Pietro l’Eremita.” Notwithstanding the magnificence of the music, the piece, as adapted to the requirements of the English stage and English society, did not prove generally successful. It was admirably represented, like the rest of the later works by Rossini, which but for the Royal Italian Opera would never have been heard in this country at all.

Having now produced two serious operas at the Académie, Rossini proposed to write for the same theatre a comic opera, or opera “di mezzo carattere,” for which the music of “Il Viaggio a Reims,” or a good portion of it, was found serviceable. The libretto of “Le Comte Ory,” the third work contributed by Rossini to the repertory of the French opera, is founded on a vaudeville of the same name, of which the original subject is taken from an old French song. This time, Rossini had a librettist of some brains. It was M. Scribe, the future author of all Auber’s best libretti, and the inventor of several universally known operatic subjects (those, for instance, of “La Sonnambula” and “L’Elisir d’Amore”). Certainly nothing more ingenious, or more perfectly suited in the half character style to musical purposes has ever been produced than Scribe’s “book” of “Le Comte Ory,” in which Nourrit, who afterwards gave some valuable hints for “Les Huguenots,” is said to have assisted him.

The librettist, or librettists, for there were two, M. Scribe and M. Poirson, had rather arduous labours to perform; for contrary to the usual practice, they had to supply words to music already composed. The writer of a criticism on “Le Comte Ory,” published just after its production, says that Messieurs Scribe and Poirson were two months fitting French words to the pieces which Rossini borrowed from “Il Viaggio,” while Rossini set the whole of the second act to original music in a fortnight.

Rossini is said not to have been over-pleased with Scribe, whose business-like manner of apportioning his time did not leave him enough to devote to the composer of “Le Comte Ory.” It is to be regretted all the same, that Rossini did not apply to Scribe when he was meditating his opera of “Guillaume Tell,” which though it contains Rossini’s grandest music, is, through the poorness of the libretto, by no means the most perfect work that bears Rossini’s name.

“Le Comte Ory,” like “Le Siège de Corinthe,” “Moïse,” and “Guillaume Tell,” belongs to the repertory of the Royal Italian Opera, the only theatre in Europe which includes all the great works written for the Académie. In “Le Comte Ory,” as in all Rossini’s French operas, considerable prominence is given to the orchestral parts. “There is not only much harmony, there is also much melody in the accompaniment,” wrote a critic of the period. “The composer,” he ingeniously but absurdly adds, “has put the pedestal on the stage and the statue in the orchestra, so that there is more singing in the latter than on the former.”