Thirdly, Rossini has been accused of feeling annoyed at the success of Meyerbeer.
Fourthly, Rossini’s forty years’ abstinence from dramatic writing is explained by “laziness,” as though he had not written in the most industrious manner for the stage from the age of seventeen to that of thirty-seven, when, after taking six months to compose an opera (an age for Rossini), we suddenly find him abandoning dramatic composition for ever.
Some of these pretended explanations may be disposed of at once. As for Rossini’s alleged jealousy of Meyerbeer, it must be remembered that Rossini was the means of bringing Meyerbeer to Paris; that the two composers were always excellent friends; and that one of Rossini’s last productions, probably the very last composition he ever put to paper, was a pianoforte fantasia it pleased him to write on motives from “L’Africaine,” after attending the last rehearsal of that work.
As to the laziness with which Rossini is so often charged, it is curious to remark that this habit of mind or body, or both, was somehow compatible with the production of the thirty-four operas which Rossini wrote between the years 1810 and 1823. After he had settled in Paris, from 1824 to 1829, he still worked with prodigious activity, and did not produce less than one opera every year,—“Il Viaggio a Reims” in 1825, “Le Siège de Corinthe” in 1826, “Moïse” in 1827, “Le Comte Ory” in 1828, and “Guillaume Tell” in 1829.
Rossini must at this time have been richer by some two or three thousand a year than when he was working in Italy, and that without counting his “author’s rights” from the Opera, and reckoning only the capital of seven thousand pounds which he had brought back from London, the four hundred a year from his wife’s dowry, the eight hundred a year which he received from the Civil List and the sums for which he sold his scores year by year to Troupenas, the publisher. One reason, then, for Rossini’s inactivity may have been that one great stimulus to activity, poverty, urged him no longer.
But as Heine says of a composer whose friends had boasted that he was “not obliged to write,”—a windmill might as well say that it is not obliged to turn. If there is wind, it must turn; and when it ceases to turn, we know that the wind has gone down.
What makes the puzzle of Rossini’s silence puzzling indeed, is, that he does not seem quite to have known why he was silent himself. It is astonishing how many persons had the coolness, not to say impertinence, to ask Rossini why he never composed anything for the stage after “Guillaume Tell;” and it is amusing, though also provoking, to find that to most of these inquisitive persons he returned very evasive answers.
But, from Rossini’s recorded conversations with his friend Ferdinand Hiller, it is evident that it was not one cause alone which made him determine to produce no more operas. It struck Hiller, with reference to the maestro’s physical condition in the year 1854, that, “when a man has composed operas during twenty entire years, and been worshipped during five-and-forty, it is really not surprising that he should feel somewhat worn out.” “But a nabob is a nabob,” he continues, “even after losing two or three thousand thalers, and in the same manner Rossini’s mind is still what it always was; his wit, his memory, his lively powers of narration, are undiminished. And as he has written nothing for twenty years, he has at least not given any one the right of asserting that his musical genius has deteriorated,—the last work he wrote was ‘Guillaume Tell.’”
It was just at this time that Rossini exchanged some remarks with the Chevalier Neukomm on the subject of industry and idleness, which again throw a little light on the much vexed and certainly most interesting question of Rossini’s prolonged silence. “You are still indefatigable,” he observed to Neukomm.
“Whenever I am no longer able to work,” replied the latter, “you may place me between six planks and nail me down, for I shall not desire to have anything more to do with life.”