The worth of Meyerbeer’s talent has long been realized, despite the fact that Wagner, urged by personal reasons, has ungratefuly called him ‘a miserable music-maker,’ and ‘a Jewish banker to whom it occurred to compose operas.’ Granting that his qualities were those of the master artisan rather than the master artist, admitting his weakness for ‘voluptuous ballets, for passion torn to tatters, ecclesiastical display, and violent death,’ for violent contrast rather than subtle characterization, he still lives in his influence, which may be said to have founded the melodramatic school of opera now so popular, of which Cavalleria rusticana is perhaps the most striking example. As long as intensity of passion and power of dramatic treatment are regarded as fitting in dramatic music his name will live. Zola’s eulogy, put in the mouth of one of the characters in his L’Œuvre, rings true:
‘Meyerbeer, a shrewd fellow who profited by everything, ... bringing, after Weber, the symphony into opera, giving dramatic expression to the unconscious formula of Rossini. Oh, what superb evocations, feudal pomp, military mysticism, the thrill of fantastic legend, the cries of passion traversing history. And what skill the personality of the instruments, dramatic recitative symphonically accompanied by the orchestra, the typical phrase upon which an entire work is built.... An ingenious fellow, a most ingenious fellow!’
The French grand opera of Rossini and Meyerbeer was the musical expression of dramatic passionate sentiments, affording scope to every excellence of vocal and orchestral technique and even to every device of stage setting. It is not strange that it appealed to contemporary composers, even Auber, Hérold, Halévy, and Adam, though more generally identified with the opéra comique, attempted grand opera with varying success.
Auber, in his La muette de Portici (‘Masaniello’), given in 1828, meets Spontini, Rossini, and Meyerbeer on their own ground with a historical drama of considerable beauty and power. Its portrayal of revolutionary sentiment was so convincing that its first performance in Brussels (1830) precipitated the revolution which ended in the separation of Holland and Belgium. Hérold united with Auber’s elegance and polish greater depth of feeling. Zampa (1831), a grand opera on a fanciful subject, and Le pré aux clercs (1832) are his best serious operas. His early death cut short the development of his unusual dramatic gift. Halévy even went so far as to distort his natural style in the effort to emulate Meyerbeer. Of his grand operas, La Juive (1835), La Reine de Chypre (1841), Charles VI (1834), La Tempesta (1850), only the first, a work of gloomy sublimity, with fine melodies and much good instrumentation, may be called a masterpiece. Adam’s few attempts at grand opera were entirely unsuccessful, though his comic operas enjoyed tremendous vogue.
But the influence of Rossini and Meyerbeer on grand opera has continued far beyond their own time. The style of La Patrie by Paladilhe is directly influenced by Meyerbeer. Verdi, in his earlier works, Guido, Trovatore, I Lombardi, shows traces of his methods. Gounod, in the ‘dispute’ scene in the fourth act of Romeo et Juliette likewise reflects Meyerbeer; and Wagner was not above profiting from him whom he most scornfully and unjustly belittled.
In summing up the contributions of Rossini and Meyerbeer to the history of music, it may be said that their operas, and in particular those of the latter, are a continuation and amplification of the heritage of Gluck. Édouard Schuré says in his important work, Le Drame Musical: ‘The secret of the opera of Meyerbeer is the pursuit of effect for effect’s sake.’ Yet it will be remembered that Gluck himself wrote in the preface of his Alceste: ‘I attach no importance to formulas; I have sacrificed all to the effect to be produced.’ The art of Gluck and the art of Meyerbeer have the same point of departure, and each is expressed in formulas which, while quite distinct and individual, denote the highest dramatic genius. Both Rossini and Meyerbeer increased the value of the orchestra in expressing emotion in all its phases in connection with the drama; and helped to open the way for the later development of French grand opera and the innovations of Richard Wagner. Weber and Schubert had both died before Meyerbeer began to play an important part. Succeeding Spontini and Rossini as the dominant figure of the grand opera stage, his real successor was Richard Wagner. But, though Rossini, Meyerbeer, and their followers had enriched the technical resources of opera, had broadened the range of topic and plot, yet they had not turned aside the main current of operatic composition very far from its bed. The romantic and dramatic tendencies which they had introduced, however, were to bear fruit more especially in French romanticism and the development of the evolution of the French opéra comique into the drame lyrique.
IV
An account of the origin and development of the French opéra comique as a purely national form of dramatic musical entertainment has already been given in the chapter dealing with Gluck’s operatic reform. Here we will briefly show its development during the period of which he have spoken.
François-Adrien Boieldieu[72] may be considered (together with Niccolò Isouard) the last composer of the older type of opéra comique, to which his operas Jean de Paris and La dame blanche gave a new and lasting distinction. As Pougin says: ‘It is positive that comic opera, as Boieldieu understood it, was an art-work, delicate in type, with genuine flavor and an essentially varied color.’ Boieldieu was especially successful in utilizing the rhythmic life of French folk song, and La dame blanche has those same qualities of solid merit and real musical invention found in the serious opéra comique of Cherubini and Méhul. In fact, it was these three composers who gave the genre a new trend. In Scudo’s words, Boieldieu’s work is ‘the happy transition from Grétry to Hérold and, together with Méhul and Cherubini, the highest musical expression in the comic opera field. After Boieldieu’s time the influence of Rossini became so strong that opéra comique began to lose its character as a distinct national operatic form.’