What was the influence of the Opéra Comique?
What was the established form of Grand Opéra?
Who contributed to a change of style? What were the changes?
Give an account of Meyerbeer and his work in Opera.
LESSON XXXIX.
The Italian School of the XIXth Century.
Later Italian School.—While Meyerbeer was dominating the French stage and through it exerting a powerful influence on serious opera in all countries, the Italian school was recovering in part from the impulse given it by Rossini. The highly ornamented style which he brought into vogue was modified in the works of several composers who also gave more consideration to truth of expression. With these, melody still reigned supreme, but it was shorn of the excessive ornamentation which overloaded Rossini’s music; in character and rhythm it was also more generally in accord with sentiment and situation. The florid element was by no means suppressed; it had been an integral factor in Italian music for two centuries and was too strongly entrenched in public favor to be banished so completely as it had been in the German romantic opera, but it was kept in subordination and in the main not allowed to dictate the melodic idea. This was a step in advance for the Italian school of that period, which through the fluent warblings of Rossini and his imitators, had approached dangerously near the Scarlatti-Handel type of the previous century.
Donizetti.—This reaction in the direction of greater simplicity and sincerity was led by Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848). At first a follower of Rossini, he only attained success after the latter had ceased composing and he himself had acquired a style of his own. Donizetti was not without innate force, but his great melodic facility led him to rely upon melody rather than upon musical development or dramatic characterization. Hence his tragic operas, though often admirable in detail, lack the sustained strength demanded by their subjects. Of these, Lucia (founded upon Scott’s “Bride of Lammermoor”) achieved the greatest popularity, while in La Favorita (composed for the Grand Opéra) he shows more dramatic power than in any of his more than three-score operas. In many of his lighter works he is particularly happy; for example, in Don Pasquale, which compares favorably with Rossini’s Il Barbiere, and in L’Elisire d’Amore (The Elixir of Love). La Fille du Régiment (The Daughter of the Regiment—written for the Opéra Comique) has made the tour of the world.
Bellini.—His younger contemporary, Vincenzo Bellini (1801-1835), on the contrary, displays no capacity for humor nor is he much better fitted to cope with the somber or the heroic. Essentially a lyrical temperament, neither broad nor deep but endowed with exquisite sensibility within certain limits, his sphere is the emotional, the tender and the elegiac. For this reason his charming opera, La Sonnambula (The Somnambulist), on account of its idyllic subject, is a more representative work than Norma or I Puritani (The Puritans), though both enjoyed high popularity until within recent years. Much of Bellini’s vogue was due to the admirable singing of a number of Italian artists who were identified with his works—Pasta, Grisi, sopranos; Mario, tenor; Tamburini, baritone; Lablache, basso, not to forget Jenny Lind, who was at her best in his operas. With their passing and the establishment of the modern school of dramatic composition, in which the voice is only one of many factors instead of being the chief element of expression, they have gradually dropped from the repertory.
Verdi.—A far more significant personality than either Donizetti or Bellini is Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901). Not merely a melodist but a dramatist as well, his long life gave him the opportunity of profiting by the many influences which brought about the mighty musical development of the last hundred years. The fact that he did so without compromising his artistic or national individuality shows the inherent genius which gives to him the distinction of being the great Italian composer of the century. Strong and sturdy from the first, his early works, if somewhat coarse in fiber, seemed doubly powerful in contrast with those of his contemporaries, which were distinguished by sweetness and melody rather than by depth or vigor. From Ernani to Rigoletto, from the much sung Trovatore to Don Carlos, to mention only a few of his thirty operas, Verdi shows a steady growth in largeness of style and command of means which culminated in Aïda, written for the Khedive of Egypt to celebrate the opening of the Suez canal in 1871.