On the day we arrived, and almost every evening since, we have been to the theatre in the Via della Pergola. They are now giving an opera of Rossini’s, “L’Italiana in Algeri,” and a grand ballet. Rossini is now the favorite composer of the Italians, and several of his operas, “Tancredi,” “Il Turco in Italia,” and the above-named, are performed with great applause in almost every town in Italy. I was therefore glad, after having heard his compositions so frequently and highly praised in Milan and Venice, to hear something of his myself. This opera has, however, not wholly satisfied my expectations; in the first place it is wanting, like all Italian music, in purity of style, characteristic proprieties in the personages, and judicious calculation of the length or shortness of the music for the scene. These indispensable qualities of an opera to which we would give the appellation classic, I had however not expected, as we do not at all miss them in an Italian opera. One is accustomed to have the same person sing alternately in the tragic and comic style, and to hear from a peasant girl the same pompous vocal ornamentation as from a queen or a heroine, and to hear one of the persons performing sing alone, for a quarter of an hour at a time, in situations of the most impassioned kind, while the others walk about in the back-ground, or partly behind the scenes, and chat and laugh with their acquaintances. But I did indeed expect qualities which should distinguish Rossini’s work above that of his colleagues—novelty of ideas, for instance; purity of harmony, etc.; but of all these I found but little. What the Italians consider new in Rossini’s operas is not new to us; for they consist of ideas and modulations for the most part long since known in Germany; for instance the appoggiatura in the bass at the beginning of the much-admired duett in the first act:
which the musicians in Florence boasted of to me as something quite new, and discovered by Rossini. In Milan, where I heard the same duet at a concert, it was probably found too hard, and the fifth and sixth measures were thus changed:
Or the following modulation, also, at the finale of the first act:
Purity of harmony is not to be found in him any more than in any other modern Italian composer; and I have heard many sequences of quints like the following:
But in attention to the rhythm and in the complete use he makes of the orchestra, he distinguishes himself above his countrymen.