Gentlemen, permit me to repeat the question which was laid before you in the beginning. What is the reason that modern opera has gained the favor of the public to so eminent a degree that not only the classical works of this kind, but also the masterpieces of declaimed drama, are banished from the theatre? Now, we can answer this question. The reason of this surprising phenomenon is that, by the modern opera, art has entered into the service of sensuality, art has lost all generous and elevated motives. It has tasked itself to amuse a public depraved by pleasures of every kind—to satisfy curiosity, to flatter the bad passions, the errors and prejudices of the age, and to make a bad use of the questions of the day.
Those who still doubt what I say
have but to notice the intimate union of the ballet with the opera which the prevailing taste dictates as an inexorable law. In most cases, the ballet has no logical or artistic connection with the opera. It is a foreign element which imposes itself upon musical and dramatic action, and which is given with the avowed intention of exciting voluptuousness. Reason is forced to despise the ballet; moral sentiment condemns it; musical art is obliged to lament over it as a sad aberration; nevertheless, modern opera has concluded an alliance for life with this frivolous creation of the present time. You know the proverb, “Tell me what company you keep: I will tell you what you are.”
Our friends of the opera do not like to be told these things. Judgments like these are for them the expressions of a mind opposed to modern civilization, and lost in obsolete ideas. If one of these partisans of modern opera hears what I have just said, he will certainly say that the darkness of my ultramontane soul is blacker than the color of my robe. He will maintain that it is only æsthetic education, artistic sense, enthusiasm for music, which draws him and his equals to similar works; and, nevertheless, the old operas which are veritable works of art, but which do not contain any piquant subject and little food for sensuality, leave them cold and indifferent in the depth of their hearts. The symphonies of Beethoven and Mozart cause these lovers of art to yawn, and the name alone of an oratorio makes their flesh creep.
What position have we Christians to take, in order to oppose these alarming phenomena of the present day? A critic of the seventeenth century, named Wehrenfels, has laid down this principle for dramatic art
in general: “Finally, all our dramatic representations should be such that Plato could tolerate them in his republic, that Cato could listen to them with pleasure, that vestals could witness them without wounding their chastity, and, what is more important, that Christians could listen to them.”
You will say this is too antiquated a principle. Among the greater part of our amateurs at the theatre it will only provoke expressions of doubt; they will say that this poor Wehrenfels is far behind modern civilization. Notwithstanding, no one undertakes to refute this principle, to demonstrate that these requirements are groundless. But as long as they are not refuted, we must consider them justified, and we ask if they should not be applied to the opera. Is not the drama when sung to be submitted to the same true moral and æsthetic laws as the drama recited?
To the phenomena of life as produced before our eyes, we apply the scale of conscience and of reason. Why should it not be our right and our duty to apply them also to the opera, and to regulate our conduct from the result of such an examination? No one will deny that this question is well founded. Nevertheless, it would meet with much resistance. Our enthusiasts of the opera have tacitly agreed that, where it is a question of opera, good sense and conscience should be silent. But ourselves, gentlemen, ought never to abandon these principles. We should no longer be Christians, if we did not apply to the opera the principles we practise in our lives.
Let us, then, apply these principles to the music of our day. What must we do if it be condemned for frivolity, for immodesty and abuse of religious things? If we find that the scenes are arranged solely with a view to effect, and in disregard of
good sense and logic? If reason and conscience, by common accord, condemn this degradation of art, and the deception with which this degradation is presented as veritable art? What must we do, in presence of these great accusations against modern opera?