The work to which we allude is the opera "Omano,"—the libretto in Italian by Signor Manetta, the music by Mr. L. H. Southard. We shall not stop now to consider the question, whether American Art is to be benefited by the production of operas in the Italian tongue; it is enough to say, that, until we have native singers capable of rendering a great dramatic work, singers who can give us in English the effects which Grisi, Badiali, Mario, and Alboni produce in their own language, we must be content with the existing state of things, and allow our composers to write for those artists who can do justice to their conceptions. We hope to live to hear operas in English; but meanwhile we must have music, and, at present, the Italian stage is the only common ground.
Mr. Southard's opera is founded upon Beckford's Oriental tale, "Vathek," with such alterations as are necessary to adapt it for representation. We are told that the plot is full of dramatic situations, full of human interest, and that its scenes appeal to all the faculties, ranging through comedy, ballet, and melodrama, and leading to the awful Hall of Eblis at last. The principal characters are the Caliph Omano, baritone; Carathis, his mother, mezzo soprano; Hinda, a slave in his harem, soprano; Rustam, her lover, tenor; and Albatros, basso, a Mephistophelean spirit who tempts the Caliph on to his destruction. Selections were made from this opera, and were performed by resident artists, without the aid of stage effects or orchestral accompaniments. Only the music was given, with as much of the harmony as could be played on the grand piano by one pair of hands. There could be no severer test than this. The music is generally Italian in form, especially in the flowing grace of the cantabile passages, and in the working up of the climaxes. But we did not hear one of the stereotyped Italian cadenzas, nor did we fall into old ruts in following the harmonic progressions. The orchestral figures—the framework on which the melodies are supported—are new, ingenious, and beautiful. The duets, quartette, and quintette show great command of resources and the utmost skill in construction; we can hardly remember any concerted pieces in the modern opera where the "working up" is more satisfactory, or the effect more brilliant. How far the music exhibits an absolutely original vein of melody, it is perhaps premature to say. No composer has ever been free at first from the influence of the masters whom he most admired. To mention no later instances, it is well known that Beethoven's early works are all colored by his recollections of Mozart, and that his own peculiar qualities were not clearly brought out until he had reached the maturity of his powers. This seems to be the law in all the arts; imitation first, self-development and originality afterwards. Happy are those who do not stop in the first stage! It is certain that Mr. Southard's music pleased, and that some of the most critical of the audience were roused to a real enthusiasm. And it is to be borne in mind that the music is cast in a grand mould; it has no prettiness; it is either great in itself, or wears the semblance of greatness. On the whole, we are inclined to think that the "Diarist" in Dwight's "Journal of Music" was not extravagant in saying that no first work since the time of Beethoven has had so much of promise as the opera "Omano." We shall look with great interest for its production upon the stage with the proper accompaniments and scenic effects. It is due to the composer that this should be done. If the music we heard had been performed by a company of great artists in the Boston Theatre or in the Academy of Music, it would have been received with tumultuous applause. The singers on this occasion gained to themselves great credit by their conscientious endeavors. They generously offered their services, and sang with a heartiness that showed a warm interest in the work. One of them, at least, Mrs. J. H. Long, would have established her reputation as an accomplished artist, even if she had never appeared in public before.
We suppose our readers will agree with us in looking with eager delight to the promise of a national school of music. Every nation must create its own song. The passionate music of Italy electrifies our cooler blood, but it does not adequately express all our feelings nor in any way represent our character. We also find many of the compositions of Germany so purely intellectual that they do not touch us until we have learned to like them. If we ever have a school of music, it will be in harmony with our rapidly developing characteristics. But it must grow up on our own soil; exotics never flourish long under strange skies. We think that many things point to this country as the place where music will achieve new triumphs. We are not bound by old traditions, we have few prejudices to unlearn, and we are able to see merit in more than one school. The same audience that becomes almost intoxicated with the excitement of the Italian opera will listen with the fullest, serenest pleasure to the majestic symphonies of Beethoven or to the sublime choruses of Handel. The devotees of the various European schools have none of this catholicity. A very accomplished Italian musician used frankly to say, that a symphony always put him to sleep; and as for the songs of Franz and other recent German composers, he would rather hear the filing of saws with an accompaniment of wet fingers on a window-pane. The Germans, on the other hand, have an equal contempt for Italian music. For them, Donizetti is melodramatic, Bellini puerile and silly, and even Rossini (who has written as many melodies as any composer, save Mozart) is only fit to compose for hand-organs. The American musical public can and do render to both schools the justice they deny each other,—and this because we appreciate the aim and direction of both. The tendency of modern German music is more and more in what we might call a mathematical direction; the Teutonic listener examines the structure of a movement as he would a geometrical proposition; he notices the connection and dependence of the several parts, and at the end, if he like it, he thinks Q.E.D.; his pleasure is quiet, but sincere. The Italian, on the other hand, makes everything subordinate to feeling; for him the music must sparkle with pleasure, burn with passion, or lighten with rage; borne upon the tide of emotion, the under-current of harmony is a matter of little moment; there may be symmetry of structure, and learning in the treatment of themes; if so, well; if not, their absence is not noticed as an essential defect.
For lyrical purposes the Italian style will always take the precedence, because music must primarily be addressed to the feelings. But it may happen, if ever we have great composers here in America, that to the instinctive grace and beauty of this Southern school the magnificent orchestral effects of the North may be added, and thereby a grander and more perfect whole be produced. At least, we can continue to be eclectic, and in due time we may develope music which, like Corinthian brass, shall contain the valuable qualities of all the elements we appropriate.
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LITERARY NOTICES.
Biography of Elisha Kent Kane. By WILLIAM ELDER. Philadelphia: Childs & Peterson.
If Dr. Kane's character had not been free from any taint of imposture and vainglory, and if his reputation had not been of that kind which can be submitted to the austerest tests without being materially lessened, he would have suffered much in having so frank and truthful a biographer as Dr. Elder. Nobody could have been selected for the task who would have worse performed the business of puffing, or the work of recognizing and celebrating lofty traits of character and vigorous mental endowments better. He is a friendly biographer,—and well he may be; for he declares that his researches into Dr. Kane's private correspondence and papers revealed not a line which, if published, would injure his fame. It is, of course, impossible for so genuine a man as Dr. Elder to refrain from hearty eulogium where not to praise is the sign of a cynical rather than a critical spirit; but his panegyric has the raciness and sincerity which proceed from the generous recognition of merit, and never indicates that ominous falseness of feeling which the simplest reader instinctively detects in the formal constructer of complimentary sentences. Throughout the book, the biographer writes in the spirit of that sound maxim which declares it to be as base to refuse praise where it is due, as to give praise where it is not due; and we think that few readers will be inclined to quarrel with him for the quickness and depth of his sympathies with his hero, except that small class of "knowing" minds who, mistaking disbelief in human probity for acuteness of intellect, find a mischievous satisfaction in depressing heroes into coxcombs, and resolving noble actions into ignoble motives.
We have been especially interested in the account given of Dr. Kane's boyhood and early life. As a boy, he had too much force, originality, and decided bias of nature to be what is called a "good boy,"—one of those unfortunate children whose weakness of individuality passes for moral excellence, and who give their guardians so little trouble in the early development and so much trouble in the maturity of their mediocrity. He would not learn what he did not like, and what he felt would be of no use to him. He kept his memory free from all intellectual information which could not be transmuted into intellectual ability. The same daring, confidence, enterprise, and passion for action, which in after life made him an explorer, were first expressed in that love of mischief which vexes the hearts of parents and calls into exercise the pedagogue's ferule. All arbitrary authority found him a resolute little rebel. Dr. Elder furnishes some amusing instances of his audacity and determination. Though smaller than other boys of his age, he possessed "the clear advantage of that energy of nerve and that sort of twill in the muscular texture which give tight little fellows more size than they measure and more weight than they weigh." At school he had under his charge a brother, two years younger than himself, who was once called up by the master to be whipped. This disturbed Elisha's notions of justice and his conceptions of the duties of a guardian, and, springing from his seat, he exclaimed, "Don't whip him, he's such a little fellow!—whip me!" The master, interpreting this to be mutiny, which really was intended for fair compromise, answered, "I'll whip you, too, Sir!" Strung for endurance, the sense of injustice changed his mood to defiance, and such fight as he was able to make quickly converted the discipline into a fracas, and Elisha left the school with marks which required explanation.
In his eighteenth year he was prostrated by a disease which developed into inflammation of the lining membrane of the heart, from which he never recovered. The verdict of the physician was ever in his mind: "You may fall at any time as suddenly as from [by] a musket-shot." His life was afterwards, indeed, like the life of a soldier constantly under fire. Instead of making him a valetudinary, this continual liability to death aided to make him a hero. He acted in the spirit of his father's advice,—"If you must die, die in harness." Dr. Elder proves that his existence was prolonged by the hardihood which made him careless of death. "The current of his life shows convincingly that incessant toil and exposure was [were] a sound hygienic policy in his case. Naturally his physical constitution was a case of coil springs, compacted till they quivered with their own mobility; nervous disease had added its irritability, and mental energy electrified them. It was doing or dying, with him. And it was not a tyrant selfishness, a wild ambition, that ruled his life, but a rare concurrence of mental aptitude, moral impulse, and bodily necessity, that kept him incessant in adventure." Nothing could damp this ardor. He contracted the peculiar disease of every country and climate he visited, and was frequently on what seemed his death-bed; but no experience of physical misery had any influence in blunting his intellectual curiosity or impairing the energies of his will. One of those elastic natures "who ever with a frolic welcome take the thunder or the sunshine," his whole existence was wedded to action, and he was always ready to suffer everything, if he could thereby do anything.