Jommelli’s last Stuttgart opera was Fetonte.[5] When he returned to Italy in 1769 he found the public mad with enthusiasm over a new opera buffa entitled Cecchina, ossia la buona figliuola. In Rome it was played in all the theatres, from the largest opera house down to the marionette shows patronized by the poor. Fashions were all alla Cecchina; houses, shops, and wines were named after it, and a host of catch-words and phrases from its text ran from lip to lip. ‘It is probably the work of some boy,’ said the veteran composer, but after he had heard it—‘Hear the opinion of Jommelli—this is an inventor!’
The boy inventor of Cecchina was Nicola Piccini, another Neapolitan, born in 1728, pupil of Leo and Durante, who was destined to become the most famous Italian composer of his day, though his works have not survived to our time. His debut had been made in 1754 with Le donne dispettose, followed by a number of other settings of Metastasio texts. We are told that he found difficulty in getting hearings at first, because the comic operas of Logroscino monopolized the stage. Already, then, composers were forced into the opera buffa with its greater vitality and variety. Piccini’s contribution to its development was the extension of the duet to greater dramatic purpose, and also of the concerted finale first introduced by Logroscino. We shall meet him again, as the adversary of Gluck. Of hardly less importance than he were Tommaso Traetto (1727-1779), ‘the most tragic of the Italians,’ who surpassed his contemporaries and followers in truth and force of expression, and in harmonic strength; Pietro Guglielmi (1727-1804), who with his 115 operas gained the applause of all Italy, of Dresden, of Brunswick, and London; Antonio Sacchini (1734-1786), who, besides grace of melody, attained at times an almost classic solidity; and Giovanni Paesiello (1741-1816), whose decided talent for opera buffa made him the successful rival of Piccini and Cimarosa.
Paesiello, with Domenico Cimarosa (1749-1801), was the leading representative of the buffa till the advent of Mozart. As Hadow suggests, he might have achieved real greatness had he been less constantly successful. ‘His life was one triumphal procession from Naples to St. Petersburg, from St. Petersburg to Vienna, from Vienna to Paris.’ Ferdinand of Sicily, Empress Catharine of Russia, Joseph II of Austria, and even Napoleon were successively his patrons; and his productiveness was such that he never had time, even had he had inclination, to criticise his own works. Of his ninety-four operas only one, ‘The Barber of Seville,’ is of historic interest, for its popularity was such that, until Rossini, no composer dared to treat the same theme. Cimarosa deserves perhaps more extended notice than many others on account of his Matrimonio segreto, written in Russia, which won unprecedented success there and in Italy. It is practically the only one of all the works of composers just mentioned that has not fallen a victim to time. Its music is simple and tuneful, fresh and full of good humor.
The eighteenth century public based its judgments solely on mere externals—a pleasing tune, a brilliant singer, a sumptuous mise-en-scène caught its favor, the merest accident or circumstance might kill or make an opera. To-day a composer is carried off in triumph, to be hissed soon after by the same public. Rivalry among composers is the order of the day. Sacchini, Piccini, Paesiello, Cimarosa, are successively favorites of Italian audiences; in London Christian Bach and Sacchini divide the public as Handel and Bononcini did before them; in Vienna Paesiello and Cimarosa are applauded with the same acclaim as Gluck; in St. Petersburg Galuppi,[6] Traetta, Paesiello, and Cimarosa follow each other in the service of the sovereign (Catharine II), who could not differentiate any tunes but the howls of her nine dogs; in Paris, at last, the leading figures become the storm centre of political agitations. All these composers’ names are glibly pronounced by the busy tongues of a brilliant but shallow society. Favorite arias, like Galuppi’s Se per me, Sacchini’s Se cerca, se dice, Piccini’s Se il ciel, are compared after the manner of race entries. Florimo, the historian of the Naples opera, dismissed the matter with a few words: ‘Piccini is original and prolific; Sacchini gay and light, Paesiello new and lithe, Cafaro learned in harmony, Galuppi experienced in stagecraft, Gluck a filosofia economica.’ They all have their merits—but, after all, the difference is a matter of detail, a fit subject for the gossip of an opera box. Even Gluck is but one of them, if his Italian operas are at all different the difference has escaped his critics.
But all of these composers, as well as some of their predecessors, worked consciously or unconsciously in a regeneration that was slowly but surely going forward. The working out of solo and ensemble forms into definite patterns; the development of the recitative from mere heightened declamation to a free arioso, fully accompanied, and to the accompagnato not followed by an aria at all; the introduction of concertising instruments which promptly developed into independent inner voices and broadened the orchestral polyphony, the dynamic contrasts—at first abrupt, then gradual—which Jommelli took over from the orchestral technique of Mannheim; the ingenious construction of ensembles and the development of the finale into a pezzo concertanto—all these tended toward higher organization, individual and specialized development, though purely musical at first and strictly removed from the influence of other arts. The dramatic elements, the plastic and phantastic, which, subordinated at first, found their expression in ‘laments’ and in simile arias (in which a mood was compared to a phenomena of nature), then in ombra scenes, where spirits were invoked, and in similar exalted situations, gradually became more and more prominent, foreshadowing the time when the portrayal of human passions was to become once more the chief purpose of opera.
IV
The last and decisive step in the revolution was the coming of Gluck. ‘It seems as if a century had worked to the limit of its strength to produce the flower of Gluck—the great man is always the composite genius of all the confluent temporal streams.’[7] Yet he himself was one of these composite forces from which the artistic purpose of his life was evolved. The Gluck of the first five decades, the Gluck of Italian opera, of what we may call the Metastasio period, was simply one of the many Italians unconsciously working toward that end. His work through two-thirds of his life had no more significance than that of a Leo, a Vinci, or a Jommelli. Fate willed, however, that Gluck should be impressed more strongly by the growing public dissatisfaction with senseless Italian opera, and incidentally should be brought into close contact with varied influences tending to the broadening of his ideas. Cosmopolite that he was, he gathered the essence of European musical culture from its four corners. Born in Germany, he was early exposed to the influence of solid musicianship; trained in Italy he gained, like Handel, its sensuous melody; in England he heard the works of Handel and received in the shape of artistic failure that chastisement which opened his mind to radical change of method. In France, soon after, he was impressed with the plastic dramatic element of the monumental Lully-Rameau opera. Back in Vienna, he produced opéra comique and held converse with lettered enthusiasts. Calzabigi, like Rinuccini in 1600, brought literary ideas of reform. Metastasio was relegated—yet not at once, for Gluck was careful, diplomatic. He fed his reform to the public in single doses—diluted for greater security, interspersed with Italian operas of the old school as sops to the hostile singers, jealous of their power. Only thus can we explain his relapses into the current type. He knew his public must first be educated. He felt the authority of a teacher and he resorted to the didactic methods of Florence—of his colleagues of 1600, whom Calzabigi knew and copied. Prefaces explaining the author’s purpose once more became the order of the day; finally the reformer was conscious of being a reformer, of his true life mission. Except for what human interest there is in his early life we may therefore pass rapidly over the period preceding 1762, the momentous year of Orfeo ed Euridice.
Born July 2, 1714, at Weidenwang, in the upper Palatinate, Christoph Willibald Gluck’s early years were passed in the forests of Bavaria and Bohemia. His father, Alexander Gluck, had been a game-keeper, who, having established himself in Bohemia in 1717, had successively entered the employ of various territorial magnates—Count Kaunitz in Neuschloss, Count Kinsky in Kamnitz, Prince Lobkowitz in Eisenberg, and, finally, the grand-duchess of Tuscany in Reichstadt. His intention toward his son had been at first to make of him a game-keeper, and it is recorded that young Christoph was put through a course of Spartan discipline with that end in view, during which he was obliged to accompany his father barefooted through the forest in the severest winter weather.
Birthplace of Gluck at Weidenwang (Central Franconia)