One important result of this practice was that the voices and abilities of the principal singers had to be considered in order that the arias might be effective. The singers were thus enabled to make such great personal impressions upon the public that they soon became the reigning power in opera, and actually made laws for the composers. This was the period of the famous male soprano singers Farinelli, Cafarelli, Senesino, Gizziello, and others, whose marvellous singing was due to long processes of training, and who were the adored and inexorable monarchs of the musical world. The state of Italian opera in the time of Handel (1685-1759) is more easily described than imagined. I have already told how the famous composer of "The Messiah" began his career as an opera composer. He wrote some forty operas, all of which have now only an historical interest. Arias and duets from them are frequently heard in concert, and are excellent examples of the manner in which composers treated text in those days. To two lines of text one frequently finds half a dozen pages of music, the words apparently being employed simply to give the singer syllables to pronounce. It must be said for Handel that he was too great a composer to turn out mere rubbish. While he displayed remarkable dexterity in writing passages of pure vocal exhibition work for the singers, he contrived to put a considerable quantity of very good music into his operas. Nevertheless he was under the control of the singer and the formulæ of the time.
The laws of Italian opera in that day prescribed six persons—three men and three women—as the proper number of singers. The men were always sopranos or tenors. The use of the baritone voice was quite unknown; sometimes a bass part was written for one of the men, but as there are only a few fine bass parts in any of the old operas, and no records of the fame of any great basses except Boschi, we must conclude that only the male soprano and tenor had any wide vogue. In Handel's "Teseo" there was neither bass nor tenor; all the parts were sopranos and contraltos. Of course there were male characters, so it is easy to conceive how far away from anything like dramatic truth the whole thing must have been. The common use of the baritone voice, the voice of the average man, did not begin till the latter part of the last century. The French composers, who, as we shall see, clung more faithfully to dramatic fidelity than the Italians, were the first to use it extensively. Gluck made frequent use of it, but it remained for Mozart to discover the full scope of its usefulness.
The rules made by the singers and in force in Handel's time did not stop at the distribution of the voices. They prescribed also the kinds and number of arias, duets, etc. There were five kinds of aria: aria cantabile, aria di portamento, aria di mezzo carattere, aria parlante, and aria di bravura. Aria cantabile was slow and flowing and usually pathetic in style. Aria di portamento was also slow, but with stronger rhythm and wider intervals. Aria parlante was declamatory. Aria di mezzo carattere was an air of medium character, containing a fusion of styles. Aria di bravura was one in which every possible opportunity was given the singer for a display of agility in the way of runs, trills, jumps, et cætera. The rules also commanded that every scene in an opera should end with an aria, and that in each act every principal singer should have one aria. No singer could have two arias in succession, nor in any circumstances might two arias of the same kind stand together. The hero and heroine had each to have one aria di bravura and one duet. The opera ended with a dance and chorus. At one time no trios, quartets, or concerted pieces were allowed.
A natural result of such rules was that opera librettos were very poor stuff generally, and had little dramatic sense or force. Composers often took a lot of good airs and duets from operas which had failed, and strung them together with new text to make a new opera. It was an experiment of this kind which led Gluck, as we shall see, to doubt the possibility of producing anything artistic according to the extant methods of Italian opera. As Gluck's movement of reform was undertaken in Paris, and as his works lie rather in the line of development of French opera than of Italian, I shall recount the story of his battle in the narrative of the growth of the French school. It is sufficient for the present to say that his labors had no very serious influence on Italian composers. They continued to write tune for tune's sake, and their modifications in style and form would have come about without the intervention of Gluck.
Immediately after Handel the Neapolitan school of composers was conspicuous through its development of opera buffa, comic grand opera. The principal writers were Logroscino, Leo, Hasse, and Pergolesi. The last was popular both as a serious and a comic writer somewhat later than 1770. Later still came forward Sacchini, Galuppi, Paisiello and Piccini. The last named, a contemporary of Gluck and Mozart, and Gluck's opponent in Paris, was a most melodious writer. He deserves special mention for his development of the operatic finale. His finales were long concerted pieces in which the various voices were united in rich harmonies so as to produce a strong effect.
[Chapter XX]
Italian Opera to Verdi
Cimarosa, Rossini, Donizetti, and Bellini—The last writers of the Neapolitan school—Tune for tune's sake—Rossini's improvements in methods of opera writing—Verdi and his three styles—"Aïda," and "Otello," "Falstaff," and the new school of Italian opera.