“All this avalanche of music, from the clash of cymbals in common time, has been gathering up to this contest of three voices. The magic of evil triumphs! Alice flies, and you have the duet in D between Bertram and Robert. The devil sets his talons in the man’s heart; he tears it to make it his own; he works on every feeling. Honor, hope, eternal and infinite pleasures—he displays them all. He places him, as he did Jesus, on the pinnacle of the Temple, and shows him all the treasures of the earth, the storehouse of sin. He nettles him to flaunt his courage; and the man’s nobler mind is expressed in his exclamation:
“Des chevaliers de ma patrie
L’honneur toujours fut le soutien!
“And finally, to crown the work, the theme comes in which sounded the note of fatality at the beginning. Thus, the leading strain, the magnificent call to the deed:
“Nonnes qui reposez sous cette froide pierre,
M’entendez-vous?
“The career of the music, gloriously worked out, is gloriously finished by the allegro vivace of the bacchanalian chorus in D minor. This, indeed, is the triumph of hell! Roll on, harmony, and wrap us in a thousand folds! Roll on, bewitch us! The powers of darkness have clutched their prey; they hold him while they dance. The great genius, born to conquer and to reign, is lost! The devils rejoice, misery stifles genius, passion will wreck the knight!”
And here Gambara improvised a fantasia of his own on the bacchanalian chorus, with ingenious variations, and humming the air in a melancholy drone as if to express the secret sufferings he had known.
“Do you hear the heavenly lamentations of neglected love?” he said. “Isabella calls to Robert above the grand chorus of knights riding forth to the tournament, in which the motifs of the second act reappear to make it clear that the third act has all taken place in a supernatural sphere. This is real life again. This chorus dies away at the approach of the hellish enchantment brought by Robert with the talisman. The deviltry of the third act is to be carried on. Here we have the duet with the viol; the rhythm is highly expressive of the brutal desires of a man who is omnipotent, and the Princess, by plaintive phrases, tries to win her lover back to moderation. The musician has here placed himself in a situation of great difficulty, and has surmounted it in the loveliest number of the whole opera. How charming is the melody of the cavatina ‘Grace pour toi!’’ All the women present understood it well; each saw herself seized and snatched away on the stage. That part alone would suffice to make the fortune of the opera. Every woman felt herself engaged in a struggle with some violent lover. Never was music so passionate and so dramatic.
“The whole world now rises in arms against the reprobate. This finale may be criticised for its resemblance to that of Don Giovanni; but there is this immense difference: in Isabella we have the expression of the noblest faith, a true love that will save Robert, for he scornfully rejects the infernal powers bestowed on him, while Don Giovanni persists in his unbelief. Moreover, that particular fault is common to every composer who has written a finale since Mozart. The finale to Don Giovanni is one of those classic forms that are invented once for all.
“At last religion wins the day, uplifting the voice that governs worlds, that invites all sorrow to come for consolation, all repentance to be forgiven and helped.
“The whole house was stirred by the chorus: