At the commencement of this century, I must add to the list such names as Winter, Hummel the pianist, Weigl, Himmel, and, last and greatest, Beethoven, whose one opera, “Fidelio,” will endure in its pure nobility as long as music endures.
The romantic school of poetry now finding its way into Germany, was soon aided by appropriate musical settings by Spohr, Marschner, and Weber—the greatest of them all. Of his operas, “Der Freischütz” is the finest, the most popular, and the most thoroughly German.
Schumann wrote one opera, “Genoveva,” and Mendelssohn, ever searching for a libretto, commenced setting Geibel’s “Loreley,” but death came before he could finish it.
Meyerbeer, a Berliner by birth, and sometimes German in work, we have already noticed in connection with his French operas.
Richard Wagner, by his theories and his great compositions, has caused opera once more to become the field for dispute, research, and speculative thought.
He maintains, to put it briefly, that the real character and meaning of opera has been all this time misunderstood. He carries into practice what Gluck preached, viz., that music should second poetry, in order to be in its proper place. He says, “The error of the operatic art-form consists in the fact that music, which is really only a means of expression, is turned into an aim; while the real aim of expression, viz., the drama, is made a mere means.”
It seemed to him that the chief hindrance to the free action of drama was the concert aria, so he drops it altogether, using a melodious recitation in lieu of it, and calls his works dramas, not operas. His orchestra illustrates the emotions and thoughts of each character, and the peculiar timbre of each instrument supplies the individuality of the person represented—a practice suggested first by Monteverde; and he further binds together the various episodes and scenes in the story, by using short motovos or phrases which shall recall to the audience previous situations and events—a device used by Gluck, amongst others. Wagner very happily combines in himself the poet and musician. He rightly claims that his music should not be heard apart from its companions of equal value—the poem, the scenery, and the action. He has met with as much opposition as did Gluck, but the time has come when his works receive due recognition, and an appreciation increasing yearly in proportion to our unbiassed study of them.
However excessive we may feel the reformer’s zeal to have been, these masterly art-forms supply wholesome food for meditation, and numberless suggestions for action, to every earnest and unbigoted student of this and coming generations.