Owing to Rossini’s activity in his new position, which he held for only eighteen months, the technical standard of performance was decidedly raised. Among the works he produced were Il viaggio a Reims (1825), heard again three years later in a revised and augmented version as Le Comte Ory, and Meyerbeer’s Il Crociato, the first work of that composer to be heard in Paris. In 1826 Charles X appointed him ‘first composer to the king’ and ‘inspector-general of singing in France,’ two sinecures the combined salaries of which amounted to twenty thousand francs. Rossini, who had a keen sense of humor, is said to have been in the habit of stopping in the street, when some pavement singer raised his voice, or the sound of song floated down from some open window, and whispering to his friends to be silent ‘because the inspector of singing was busy gathering material for his next official report.’
The leisure thus afforded him gave him an opportunity to revise and improve his older works, and to devote himself to a serious study of Beethoven. Between 1810 and 1828 he had produced forty distinct works; in 1829 he produced the one great score of his second period, which in most respects outweighs all the others. It was to be the first of a series of five operas which the king had commissioned him to write for the Paris opera, but the overthrow of Charles X made the agreement void in regard to the others.
The libretto of Guillaume Tell, which adheres closely to Schiller’s drama, was written by Étienne Jouy and Hippolyte Bis, and further altered according to Rossini’s own suggestions. Though the original drama contains fine situations, the libretto was not an ideal one for musical treatment. Musically it ranks far above any of his previous scores, since into the Italian fabric of his own creation he had woven all that was best in French operatic tradition. The brilliant and often inappropriate fioriture with which many of the works of his first period were overladen gave way to a clear melodic style, befitting the simple nobility of his subject and better qualified than his earlier style to justify the title given him of ‘father of modern operatic melody.’ No longer abstract types nor mere vehicles for vocal display, his singers sang with the dramatic accents of genuine passion. The conventional cavatina was deliberately avoided. The choruses were planned with greater breadth and with an admirable regard for unity. The orchestration developed a wonderful diversity of color, and breathed fresh and genuine life through the entire score. The overture, not a dramatic preface, but a pastoral symphony in abridged form, with the obligatory three movements—allegro, andante, presto; the huntsman’s chorus; the duet between Tell and Arnold; the finale of the first act; the prelude to the second and Matilda’s aria; the grandiose scene on the Rütli, the festival scene and the storm scene are, perhaps, the most noteworthy numbers.
It cost Rossini six months to compose Guillaume Tell, the time in which he might have written six of his earlier Italian operas. The result of earnest study and deep reflection, it shows both French and German influences; something of German depth and sincerity of expression, a good deal of French esprit and dramatic truth, and the usual Italian grace are its composite elements. The ease and fluency of Rossini’s style persist unchanged, while he discards mere mannerisms and rises to heights of genuine dramatic intensity he had not before attained. The new and varied instrumental timbres he employed no doubt had a considerable share in forming modern French composers’ taste for delicate orchestral effects.
Tell marks a transitional stage in the history of opera. It is to be regretted that it does not also mark a transitional stage in the composer’s own creative activity, instead of its climax. There is interesting matter for speculation in what Rossini might have accomplished had he not decided to retire from the operatic field at the age of thirty-seven. After the success of Guillaume Tell he retired for a time to Bologna to continue his work according to the terms of his Paris contract—he had been considering the subject of Faust for an opera—and was filled with ambitious plans for the inauguration of a new epoch in French opera. When, in November, 1830, he returned to Paris his agreement had been repudiated by the government of Louis Philippe, and the interest in dramatic music had waned. In 1832 he wrote six movements of his brilliant Stabat mater (completed in 1839, the year of his father’s death) and in 1836, after the triumph of Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots, he determined to give over operatic composition altogether. His motive in so doing has always been more or less a mystery. It has been claimed that he was jealous of Meyerbeer’s success, but his personal relations with Meyerbeer were friendly. One of Rossini’s last compositions, in fact, was a pianoforte fantasia on motives of Meyerbeer’s L’Africaine, the final rehearsal of which he had attended. And after his death there was found among his manuscripts a requiem chant in memory of Meyerbeer, who had died four years before. Another and more probable theory is that the successive mutilation of what he regarded as his greatest work (it was seldom given in its complete form) checked his ardor for operatic composition. Again, as he himself remarked to a friend, ‘A new work if successful could not add to my reputation, while if it failed it might detract from it.’ And, finally, Rossini was by nature pleasure-loving and fond of the good things of life. He had amassed a considerable fortune, and it is quite possible that he felt himself unequal to submitting again to the strain he had undergone in composing Tell. He told Hiller quite frankly that when a man had composed thirty-seven operas he began to feel a little tired, and his determination to write no more allowed him to enjoy the happiness of not outliving his capacity for production, far less his reputation.
His first wife had died in 1845. In the interval between the production of Tell and his second marriage in 1847, with Olympe Pelissier (who sat to Horace Vernet for his picture of ‘Judith and Holofernes’), the reaction of years of ceaseless creative work, domestic troubles, and the annoyance of his law suit against the French government had seriously affected him physically and mentally. His marriage with Mme. Pelissier was a happy one, and he regained his good spirits and health. Leaving Bologna during the year of his second marriage, he remained for a time in Florence, and in 1855 settled in Paris, where his salon became an artistic and musical centre. Here Richard Wagner visited him in 1860, a visit of which he has left an interesting record. The Stabat mater (its first six numbers composed in 1832), completed in 1842, and given with tremendous success at the Italiens; his Soirées musicales (1834), a set of album leaves for one and two voices; his Requiem Mass (Petite messe solennelle), and some instrumental solos comprise the entire output of his last forty years. He died Nov. 13, 1868, at his country house at Passy, rich in honors and dignities, leaving the major portion of a large fortune to his native town of Pesaro, to be used for humanitarian and artistic ends.
It has been said, and with truth, that to a considerable extent the musical drama from Gluck to Richard Wagner is the work of Rossini. He assimilated what was useful of the old style and used it in establishing the character of his reforms. In developing the musical drama Rossini, in spite of the classic origin of his manner, may be considered one of the first representatives of romantic art. And by thus laying a solid foundation for the musical drama Rossini afforded those who came after him an opportunity of giving it atmosphere and, eventually, elevating its style. ‘As a representative figure Rossini has no superior in the history of the musical drama and his name is the name of an art epoch.’
Rossini’s remodelling of Italian opera, representing, as it did, the Italian spirit of his day in highest creative florescence, could not fail to influence his contemporaries. Chief among those who followed in his footsteps were Donizetti and Bellini. Though without the artistic genius of their illustrious countryman, they are identified with him in the movement he inaugurated and assisted him in maintaining Italian opera in its old position against the increasing onslaughts from foreign quarters.
II
Gaetano Donizetti (1798-1848) was a pupil of Simon Mayr in his native city of Bergamo, and later of Rossini’s master, Mattei, of Bologna. His first dramatic attempt was an opera seria, Enrico conte di Borgogna, given successfully in Venice in 1818. Obtaining his discharge from the army, in which he had enlisted in consequence of a quarrel with his father, he devoted himself entirely to operatic composition, writing in all sixty-five operas—he composed with incredible rapidity and is said to have orchestrated an entire opera in thirty hours—but, succumbing to brain trouble, brought on by the strain of overwork, he died when barely fifty years of age.