In his next opera, "Otello," written at a time when most composers would have retired to rest on their laurels, Verdi made another tremendous stride upward, and stamped himself as one of the world's genuine masters. In "Otello" he abandoned all the old forms. There are no set instrumental introductions to arias, not set arias, no cabaletti. The only lyrics are Desdemona's "Ave Maria" and "Willow" song, which are introduced as songs might be in a spoken drama. Verdi named "Otello" a lyric drama, and that is precisely what it is. The single speeches are treated as speeches, not as songs, and the dialogue is pure dialogue, not as duets or trios. Much of the score is in the modern style of arioso, a species of recitative in which the phrases are highly melodic in style without forming a complete tune, and yet preserve their dramatic truthfulness. The orchestration is immensely rich and expressive, and is quite independent of the voices. One or two leading motives of the Wagnerian kind are employed with much judgment and moderation. The libretto, a remarkably fine adaptation of the Shakespearian play, is by Arrigo Boito (born 1842), himself the composer of a very fine opera, "Mefistofele," intensely modern in style.
Verdi was accused of imitating Wagner in both "Aïda" and "Otello," chiefly because he modified and afterward abandoned the recognized forms of the Italian school. The charge cannot be sustained. Verdi has never for an instant sacrificed his individuality, and his music is as purely and intensely Italian as Wagner's is German. The same charge was made against Gounod when he wrote "Romeo et Juliette," a thoroughly French work. Verdi in these operas was simply following the dictates of his mature genius, which was leading him toward one of the most significant developments of our time. He was struggling to adapt to the fundamental theories of opera, as expounded by its founders, Rinuccini and Peri, the vast and complicated materials of modern musical expression. In "Aïda" he endeavored to reconcile the formulæ of the Neapolitan school with the esthetic principles of the Greek drama and approached as closely to complete success as the opposing nature of the two chief elements would permit. In "Otello" he confessed the unsuitability of the Neapolitan forms to the full and detailed union of text and music. He preserved the Italian beauty of the vocal part of opera, constructed it with a consistent, determined, and generally successful attempt at organic union with the text, and so produced an opera which will, I believe, live. That he was wholly uninfluenced by Wagner's style, though he was attentive to Wagner's proclamations of the true theory of dramatic composition, is demonstrated by "Otello," and still more conclusively by his last work, "Falstaff," which is as far away from Wagner's style as is Mozart's "Nozze di Figaro," and yet which is built on precisely the same dramatic principles as Wagner's "Die Meistersinger."
In "Falstaff" we hear the voice of Mozart. If Mozart had lived in the latter part of this century he might have written this noble work. In "Falstaff" Verdi has, as in "Otello," declined to use any of the Neapolitan paraphernalia. There is not a single number that approaches the old aria form except two small lyrics in the last scene. There are quartets, but they are in disguise. They are dialogues for four persons, written with profound musical learning, and with the unaffected freedom of the most playful fancy. But the great bulk of the dialogue is in the true Verdian arioso style, that glowing recitation which is the chief means of expression in this master's last works. There are no Wagnerian leading motives in the orchestration, but the orchestra independently accompanies and explicates the drama in a series of picturesque phrases whose beauties and significance will not be exhausted in many hearings. But what will most delight and amaze every hearer of this music is its youthful vigor. It is as fresh and spontaneous as the work of a young man in the blush of his first love, yet it is full of the wisdom and experience of him who is the epitome of more than half a century of Italian opera. It bustles, it glows, it inspires, yet it never transcends the modesty of art. Rich, complex, brilliant, and eloquent as the orchestration is, it never strains for effects and it is never blatant. Subtle, varied, polished as the recitation is, it has not a measure that cannot be sung, and neither the voice of the singer nor the ear of the hearer is ever outraged. In short, "Falstaff" is the work of a man whose genius is inexhaustible, whose natural fire burned in his eightieth year with all the glow of that dawn when "Ernani" was the morning star.
The latest development of Italian opera is the short work as seen in the "Cavalleria Rusticana" and "Pagliacci,—" probably a passing fashion. It shows no evidences of permanency, for its composers have produced no new style. They have employed the whole material of Verdi's later operas, and the only new feature is the condensation, which does not always give good musical results, because the emotions shift too constantly to permit a complete and influential musical embodiment of any one state. These young composers have tried to advance beyond Verdi in complexity of rhythm and boldness of modulation. Some of their modulations are made obviously for the sake of oddity. The aria da capo has disappeared entirely from the modern Italian opera. But the greatest achievement of the latest writers, chiefly Verdi, is the development, to what seems to be the highest possible point, of the beautiful arioso style of Italy,—the style which combines most of the power of German declamation with all the elegance and singable quality of the Neapolitan manner.
Arrigo Boito, born at Padua, Feb. 24, 1842, and still living, produced one remarkable opera, "Mefistofele," first performed on March 5, 1868, at La Scala Theatre, Milan. The work, in its original form, was so subtle, so philosophical, so undramatic, so thoroughly in sympathy with the spirit of Goethe's "Faust," and withal such a radical departure from everything recognized as opera by the Italians, that it caused the most heated controversy. In 1875 a revised version, that now known to the public, was put forward, and this has pleased the majority of opera-goers. The work is episodic and disjointed, but its characterization is most graphic, and the dramatic force of some of its scenes, notably that in the prison, is enormous. "Mefistofele" shares with "Aïda" the honor of having restored dramatic truth to the Italian lyric stage, but it lacks the skill in theatrical construction shown in Verdi's work. Boito has contented himself in later years with writing Verdi's libretti, but Verdi himself is authority for the statement that Boito has written an opera called "Nerone," which is a masterpiece.
The opera music of the Italian school, in its entirety, is marked by greater floridity than that of other schools. The superficial, sensuous charms of the human voice have always appealed powerfully to the Italian race, and its composers have catered to this taste. An honorable ambition for a fame wider than the limits of their own country has led Italian composers to select from other schools their most immediately popular elements. The present Italian opera is eclectic. Its excellence lies largely in the fact that it does not run to extremes in any direction.