So, the foppish Offenbach sowed fruitful seed, and the crop that followed him have given high pleasure and delightful times to many, and probably will, for years to come.
An Italian Trio—Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti
We have dipped into Germany and France so now we must see what was going on in Italy.
Few Italians realized that great musical advances were being made in other countries and kept on doing the same old things. But one or two became famous because they left Italy to mingle with the other composers and audiences of Europe.
Among the best known of these was Giacchino Rossini (1792–1868), who became director of the Theatre Italien, in Paris, after visits to Vienna and London. His masterpiece was William Tell, based on the Schiller poem dealing with the hero of Swiss history. Among other things, and very delightful, was his Barber of Seville, which was modelled after the Marriage of Figaro, the conversational opera invented by Mozart, whose influence can also be seen in his Semiramide.
Rossini’s church music, such as the well known Stabat Mater is also florid but full of beautiful living melody. This and the Solemn Mass are often given today. He was a brilliant composer, an innovator and did much to abolish the foolish cadenza in opera. His work is very ornate but shows skill in concerted pieces,—choruses and the endings or finales of the acts.
One of the best known followers of Rossini in Italy was Gaetano Donizetti (1797–1848) with his Daughter of the Regiment, Lucrezia Borgia and Lucia di Lammermoor from Sir Walter Scott’s story, The Bride of Lammermoor. He wrote showy brilliant things like the sextet and the mad scene from Lucia and by his very skill in these musical fireworks, kept back opera founded on truth and sincerity.
Vincenzo Bellini (1801–1835), unlike Donizetti, wrote only in the grand style and not in the comique. His best known works are Norma, I Puritani (The Puritan) and La Sonnambula (The Sleep Walker). Though he was a better writer than Donizetti, Bellini is heard far less often today. He also used too many frilly, frothy effects and held back the advance of opera.
Opera Singers of the Period
As there cannot be successful opera without opera singers, here are the names of a few who have gone down to history: Angelica Catalani, Giudittza Pasta, Henriette Sontag, Wilhelmine Schroeder-Devrient, Maria Garcia Malibran, Pauline Viardot Garcia, Henriette Nissen, Giulia Grisi, Jenny Lind, Caroline Carvalho, Euphrosyne Parepa-Rosa, Zelia Trebelli, Pauline Lucca, and Adelina Patti, and Manuel Garcia, John Braham, Domenico Ronconi, Nicholas Levasseur, Joseph Tichatschek, Guiseppe Mario, Enrico Tamberlick, Theodor Wachtel, Charles Santley and John Sims Reeves.