The Prologue in Heaven reveals Boïto’s fine skill in choral writing. Mascagni did not fail to note this when writing the prayer in Cavalleria Rusticana. The scene on the Brocken, the Witches’ Sabbath, is very difficult to realize scenically. It contains a big fugue. The dying scene is very strong, dramatically stronger than Gounod’s. Gounod set out to write a very effective operatic scena. His trio has in it the fire of the footlights. Boïto is possessed with the tragic beauty of the situation, and so presents a more affecting and dramatically truthful picture. Calvé has made this scene familiar to New York.
Boïto attempts Part II of Faust. The classical Sabbath leaves us dull, although the composer with his unrhymed dactylic and choriambic verse, and the accompanying music, with its old-fashioned harmonic flavor, endeavors to symbolize the embrace of German and Greek ideals.
The public sees only Faust consoling himself with the dark-haired Elena, and the symbolism falls flat. There is some effort at unity in the welding of the prologue and epilogue by using the opening theme as a chorale finale. The one well-known duo of this second part is La Luna Immobile for soprano and alto. But it is all too episodic to rivet the attention; indeed, Mefistofele is a series of loosely connected episodes. One is constantly reminded of Mascagni’s obligations to Boïto. The spoor of Verdi’s later style is also here. Boïto seems to have been the pivotal point of the neo-Italian school—himself remaining in the background—while the youngsters profited by his many experimentings. Mefistofele strikes one as an experiment, with Wagner as a model. The most admirable thing in the work is the free treatment of the declamatory passages. In this Boïto set the pace for Verdi.
Boïto’s devil is greater than Gounod’s. The French devil is not a terrible fellow; he is too fond of high living, and has a pretty taste in wine. The sardonic, mocking arch fiend of Boïto is more like the popular notion of mankind’s enemy. He is familiar with the Powers, and is contemptuous of earthworms. His defiant and evil song of Triumph is the best thing in the work. The solo in the Brocken scene, Here is the World Empty and Round, does not make the same impression as the Denial song. Faust in this version is rather colorless, and more philosopher than lover. Marguerite’s most musical episode is when she recalls her lost happiness in the mad scene. And there is much music that is ugly and dreary, for Boïto, no matter what he has accomplished in his unpublished music-drama, is in Mefistofele rather the poet than the composer. Of rich, red, musical blood, of vital figures, we are offered but little. This composition is a product for the closet. It lacks that quality possessed by musicians of meaner attainments than Boïto—the quality of humanity. There are dramatic moments, but the story halts, the symbolism is not appreciable, and the mystic element not quite realized. To give the world a Faust in tone one must be a musical Goethe. Neither Gounod nor Boïto was strong enough to cope with the grandeur and beauty of Goethe’s masterpiece among masterpieces. Gounod was a musical sensualist, lacking lofty imagination; Boïto fails in the sensuous temperament and is ever cerebral.
VIII
THE ETERNAL FEMININE
I
A Grand Piano underneath the Bough,
A Gramophone, a Chinese Gong, and Thou
Trying to sing an Anthem off the Key—
Oh, Paradise were Wilderness enow!