Conradin Kreutzer (1780-1849) was a prolific contemporary of Marschner’s, but little of his music has remained to our time outside of Das Nachtlager von Granada and a few songs. The music of the opera is often thin, but now and then Kreutzer could catch the German folk-spirit as scarcely any others could save Weber. Lortzing (1801-1851) was a more gifted musician, and several of his operas are occasionally performed now. Chief of these is Czar und Zimmermann, which tells the adventures of Peter the Great of Russia working among his shipbuilders. In more farcical vein is Der Wildschütz. The music admirably suits the bustling comedy of peasant intrigue. E. T. A. Hoffmann, who so deeply influenced Schumann, was a talented composer, and a number of his operas, thoroughly in the romantic spirit, were popular at the time. Nicolai’s[101] setting of Shakespeare’s ‘Merry Wives of Windsor,’ dating from about this time, is a comic opera classic, and Friedrich von Flotow’s ‘Martha’ is everywhere known. Its composer (1812-1883) wrote numerous operas, German and French, and at least one besides ‘Martha’ is still popular in Germany—‘Stradella.’ His music is, however, more French than German, though its rhythmic grace and piquancy, its easy, simple melody are universal in their appeal.
Two more important figures, musically considered, are Schumann, with his one opera, ‘Genoveva,’ and Peter Cornelius, with several works which deserve more frequent performance than they receive. Schumann had well-defined longings toward dramatic activity, but had the customary difficulties of discriminating musicians in finding a libretto. He hit upon an adaptation of Hebbel’s Genoveva, a play drawn from a mediæval legend, rather diffuse and uneven in workmanship, but suffused with a noble poetic spirit that is only beginning to be appreciated. The play lacks the dramatic elements necessary for successful operas, and Schumann’s music, though filled with beauties, is not fully successful in characterization, and hence tends to become monotonous. The overture, however, is a permanent part of our concert programs. We feel about Schumann as about Schubert (whose several operas, Fierrabras, Alfonso und Estrella and others, need be no more than mentioned), that they might have produced great dramatic works had they been permitted to live a little longer.
A man of ample musical stature and far too little reputation is Cornelius.[102] He was an actor and painter before turning to music. For some years he served Liszt as secretary and confidant at Weimar, working hard at music while acting as a sort of literary press agent for the more radical tendencies in music. He was one of the earliest to understand and believe in Wagner’s music and theories (see Chapter XI). As early as 1855 he was attempting to apply them to comic opera. The result was the two-act opera ‘The Barber of Bagdad,’ which Liszt thought highly of and brought to performance under his own direction at the Weimar Court Theatre. But the denizens of Weimar were by this time tired of the fad of being radical, and laughed the piece off the stage. It was in disgust at this fiasco that Liszt decided to give up his directorship in Weimar, and, after a few more months of gradually slipping away from his duties, he left the town for Italy, returning thereafter only for occasional visits. ‘The Barber of Bagdad’ (the libretto by Cornelius himself) carries out Wagner’s theories concerning the close union of text and music, the dramatic and meaty character of the libretto, the fusion of recitative and cantilena style, and the use of the leit-motif. It is full-bodied music, excellent in technique and, moreover, filled with delightful musical humor and beautiful melodies. But it insists on treating its sparkling plot with high artistic seriousness, and this mystified the Weimar audience, who, no doubt, failed to see why one should take a comic opera so in earnest. Cornelius’ later opera, ‘The Cid,’ was a serious work in the Wagnerian style and necessarily was overshadowed by Wagner’s great works, then just becoming known. It is diffuse and uneven. But the last opera, Gunlöd, left unfinished at the composer’s death and completed by friends, contains much to justify frequent revival.
II
The movement which we have just discussed had its parallel in France, though there the nationalistic element was lacking—conditions did not call for it; the fight had long since been fought (cf. Chapter I). But in France, like in Germany, the romantic opera, the drame lyrique, was to grow out of the lighter type, the opéra comique, the French equivalent of the singspiel. Before discussing that development, however, we must consider for a moment the work of a composer who has already engaged our attention and who cannot be classed with any of his compatriots.
Hector Berlioz stood apart from the course of French opera. Fashionable people in his day applauded the pomposity of Meyerbeer and Halévy, the facility of Auber, but made short work of Berlioz’s operas, when these were fortunate enough to reach performance. Berlioz might conceivably have adapted himself to the popular taste, but he was too sincere an artist and too impetuous an egotist. He continued to the end of his life writing the best he was capable of—and contracting debts. His operas were much in advance of his day, and are in many respects in advance of ours. They continue to be appreciated by connoisseurs, but the public has little use for the high seriousness of their music. A daring French impresario recently brought himself to a huge financial failure by attempting a series of excellent operas on the best possible scale, and in his list was Benvenuto Cellini, which had no small part in swinging the scale of fortune against him. The second part of Les Troyens was performed near the end of Berlioz’s life, and was a flat failure; it did not even succeed in stirring up discussion; the public was simply indifferent. The first part of ‘The Capture of Troy’ did not reach the stage until Felix Mottl organized his Berlioz cycle at Carlsruhe in 1893. Doubtless the chief factor which led to the failure of these excellent works was their lack of balanced and readily intelligible melody. Berlioz’s melodic writing was always a little dry, and one must be something of a gourmet to get beneath the surface to the rare beauty within. But on the whole it is fair to say that the music fails of its effect simply because opera publics are too superficial and stupid. Yet it is possible to see signs of improvement in this respect, and we may hope for the day when Berlioz’s operas will have some established place on the lyric stage.
‘Beatrice and Benedict,’ the libretto adapted by Berlioz from Shakespeare’s ‘Much Ado about Nothing,’ is a work filled to the brim with romantic loveliness and animal life. It is one of that small class of comic operas (of which ‘The Barber of Bagdad’ is a distinguished member), which are of the finest musical quality throughout, yet thoroughly in accord with the gaiety of their subjects. The thrice lovely scene and duet which opens the opera has a pervading perfume of romanticism not often equalled in opera, and the rollicking chorus of drunken servants in the second act is that rarest of musical achievements, solid and scholarly counterpoint used to express boisterous humor. Shakespeare has rarely had the collaboration of a better poet-musician.
Benvenuto Cellini takes an episode in the artist’s life and narrates it against the brilliant background of fashionable Rome in carnival time. The music is picturesque and the carnival scenes are brilliant and effective. But a far greater interest attaches to Berlioz’s double opera ‘The Trojans.’ It was the work on which Berlioz lavished the affection and inspiration of his last years, the failure of which broke his heart. In it a remarkable change has come over the frenzied revolutionist of the thirties. It is a work of the utmost restraint, of the finest sense of form and proportion, of truly classical purity. Romain Rolland has pointed out the classical nature of Berlioz’s personality, and the paradox is amply justified by this last opera. In Rolland’s view Berlioz was a Mozart born out of his time. His sensitive soul, ‘eternally in need of loving or being loved,’ was seared by the noise and bustle of the age, and reflected it in his music until disappointment and failure had forced him to withdraw into his own personality and write for himself and the muses. Berlioz’s admiration for Gluck’s theories, music, and artistic personality is vividly recorded in the earlier pages of the Memoirs. But in his student days there was no opportunity for such an influence to show itself. In his last years it came back—all Gluck’s refinement, high artistic aim and classic self-control, but deepened by a wealth of technical mastery that Gluck knew nothing of. We are amazed, as we look over the choruses of ‘The Trojans,’ to see the utter simplicity of the writing, which is never for a moment routine or commonplace—the simplicity of high and rigid selection. The first division of the opera tells the story told in the Iliad, of the finding of the wooden horse, the entrance into Troy, the night sally, and the sack of the city. Cassandra, priestess of woe, warns her people, but is received with deaf ears. Over the work there hangs the tragic earnestness of the Iliad, which Berlioz loved and studied. In the second division the Trojans are at Carthage, and, instead of war we have the voluptuous lovemakings of Dido and Æneas, and the final tragedy of the Trojan queen, all told with such emotional intensity that the music is almost worthy to stand beside that of Wagner.
‘The Damnation of Faust,’ which follows the course of Goethe’s play with special emphasis on the supernatural elements (freely interpolated), is best known as a concert work, being hardly fitted for the stage at all. It is picturesque in the highest degree. Berlioz’s mastery of counterpoint and orchestration is here at its highest. The interpolated ‘Rackozcy March’ is universally known, and the ‘Dance of the Sylphs’ is one of the stock examples of Berlioz’s use of the orchestra for eerie effects. The chorus of demons is sung, for the sake of linguistic accuracy, to the words which Swedenborg gives as the authentic language of Hell.
Berlioz’s music admits of no compromise. Either it must come to us or we must come to it. We have been trying ever since his death to patch up some kind of middle course.