Characteristics of Mozart’s Operas.—Mozart’s conception of the opera is that of the musician, not of the dramatist. This is plain from the indifferent texts he willingly accepted, yet so universal was his genius that he fused the two elements into a complete and consistent whole. Such a union of clearly-cut characterization and musical beauty is unknown in the opera. He made his characters eternal types by means of music so apposite to their individuality that it seems in each case to spring from inward necessity, yet which as music has never been surpassed for intrinsic grace and charm. Italian melody in its best estate on a foundation of German depth and solidity is its distinguishing characteristic. This characterization is confined, however, to details and personages; of the development of the drama as a whole he apparently had but little idea. This, however, was not called for by the taste of the times; the opera was not considered from a dramatic standpoint, save by Gluck and the composers of the French school; the libretto furnished a series of situations suitable for musical illustration, not a consistent and logical dramatic action.
Their Significance to German Art.—Mozart marks the highest point reached by the opera of the 18th century; he also marks the passing of Italian supremacy in Germany. The Germans were already masters of the other great forms, the Oratorio and the Symphony; Gluck and Mozart captured the Opera also for Germany, though it was not for several decades after Mozart’s death that German opera rose from its discredited position at the close of the century.
Beethoven’s Fidelio.—A mighty impulse was given to the development of a national school by the production of Fidelio (1805), Beethoven’s only opera. His two great predecessors had been obliged for the most part to write their operas to French and Italian texts. Beethoven (1770-1827), however, showed his independence and sturdy national character by choosing a subject totally alien to the frivolous intrigues which at that time ruled the Viennese stage—a story of heroic, wifely devotion—and composed it to German words and in the German style; that is, with dialogue instead of recitative. Essentially symphonic in character, Fidelio shows the same disregard of vocal limitations which characterizes the Ninth Symphony and the Mass in D. Difficult for the singers, it was still more difficult for the public. In subject and treatment it was above their heads; they turned it the cold shoulder and it soon disappeared from the boards. An appreciation of its greatness was reserved for a later day.
Italian Composers in France and Germany.—The popularity of Italian opera outside of Italy led to the expatriation of many Italian composers who exercised a powerful influence in France and Germany. Among these Antonio Salieri (1750-1825) deserves mention for his career in Vienna, where he was the successful rival of Mozart in court favor and later the teacher of Beethoven. More important was Luigi Cherubini (1760-1842), who found his way to Paris just before the Revolution. A master of the severe contrapuntal school, which was then passing away, Beethoven considered him the first composer of the day for the stage and studied his works zealously. Cherubini was present at the first performance of Fidelio, which shows strong traces of the influence exerted upon Beethoven by Les Deux Journées (The Two Days, known in Germany and England as The Water Carrier), Cherubini’s greatest opera. The two were on intimate terms during the stay of the latter in Vienna for the purpose of bringing out several of his operas. There was much in common between them; the Italian had the solidity, dignity and nobility of treatment generally associated with the German character. Beethoven’s choice of a subject for his opera was doubtless influenced by Les Deux Journées; the themes of both are much the same, involving devotion and self-sacrifice of the highest order.
Spontini and Rossini.—Another Italian composer who went first to France and afterward to Germany was Gasparo Spontini (1774-1851), who with La Vestale (The Vestal) enlarged the sphere of the opera in Paris. Spectacular and pompous in character, sonorous and powerful in instrumentation, it pointed directly to the type of grand opera originated by Meyerbeer nearly a generation later. In 1820, he was summoned to Berlin, where he remained as court composer and conductor for twenty-two years, a period coincident with the most significant development of the German school of opera. Spontini was the last of the many Italians who had for a century and a half borne almost uninterrupted sway in Germany.
The most brilliant and gifted of all these wandering sons of Italy was Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868). As rich in melody as Mozart, though of a less refined type, he owed more to nature than to study. His first successful opera, Tancredi (1813), set all Italy agog with the freshness and vivacity of its airs, and it was not long before he was the most popular composer in Europe. Gifted with prodigious facility—in one period of eight years he wrote twenty operas—his operas ruled all stages and fixed the standard by which all others were judged.
Gioacchino Rossini.
Characteristics of Rossini’s Operas.—They are, on the whole, a reversion to the conventionalized opera of Handel’s time in being written for the singer to exhibit his art and not to express the significance of the drama; this notwithstanding their undoubted charm, the many piquant and original touches in rhythm and harmony, the occasional suggestive instrumentation. An intensely florid style is used not only in the buffa school where it can readily be justified, but in operas of a tragic nature where it is manifestly out of place. In Semiramide, for instance, a story of battle, murder and sudden death is told in the same rippling rhythms and highly ornamented melodies that illustrate the intrigues of his Barbiere di Siviglia (Barber of Seville), where they are eminently appropriate.
His Change of Style.—This is true, however, only of his works composed for the Italian stage. His Guillaume Tell (William Tell), produced in 1829, five years after his arrival in Paris, showed the influence of his new environment by an almost startling change of style. Elevated and dramatic in treatment, shorn of redundant ornament as befits the character of the subject—taken from Schiller’s play of the same name—it remains his greatest achievement; at least in serious opera. It was also his last work for the stage. It is not known by what strange caprice he practically closed his career as composer at the age of thirty-nine.