As in the case of the arias, so Gluck also endeavored to make his recitative purely expressive rather than merely conventional. In this his task was easier, because he was advancing along the path already trodden by Lulli and Rameau. He strove furthermore to make the ballet and the chorus integral parts of the action of the play. No finer example of this is to be found anywhere in his works than in the scene in Hades in "Orfeo." The dance of the demons, tentative in style as it seems to us today, is at least an honest attempt to give the dancing a pantomimic value, and the whole action of the chorus in this scene, with its expressive gestures and its vigorous shouts of "No" to the pleadings of Orpheus, is an example of dramatic organization of the highest kind. In this scene poetry, painting, music, and action are as firmly and indissolubly joined as they are in any scene in those dramas which a century later were called "the art work of the future." Even the instrumentation is as carefully designed for dramatic purposes as that of Wagner. The differences are in the state of development of the art, not in design. In Gluck's day orchestral effects had not been developed as they are now, but I am quite prepared to adopt the words of Dr. Parry: "Mozart was the first to show real natural gift and genuine feeling for beautiful disposition of tone, but Gluck anticipated modern procedure in adapting his colors exactly to the mood of the situation. A good deal had been attempted already in a sort of half-hearted and formal manner, but he was the first to seize firmly on the right principles and to carry out his objects with any mastery of resources."
Gluck's immediate influence was confined to French opera, and it is because of this that I have placed him in the history of opera in France. He seems to have had absolutely no effect on Italian opera. Less than thirty years after his death all Europe was whistling or strumming "Di tanti palpiti." On French opera, however, the influence of Gluck was permanent. He fastened upon it the sound traditions of Rameau, and he pointed out the true path of progress. That his immediate successors so frequently mistook the means for the end, and became merely prosy and prolix where he was simple and chaste, or in their endeavors to avoid this fate fell into pretentious bombast, was due to the fact that Gluck was unquestionably ahead of his time. In his attempts to put his theories into practice he himself was hampered by the incomplete development of musical material in his day. We find him constantly struggling for full dramatic expression and missing it because he had not the later composer's palette of color at his command. His imitators, less gifted than he and moved less by unyielding artistic convictions than by the desire to gain general approval, could hardly be expected to equal him. It was not till French opera had reached the period in which its composers by the study of the works of German and Italian masters had formulated an eclectic system of expression that it was able to take its place in the high seat of dramatic art. Yet one seeks in vain through the contents of French musical drama for any works which are so pure in their attempt at dramatic sincerity as those of Gluck.
His immediate successor, and the one who best succeeded in maintaining his traditions, was Étienne Henri Méhul (1763-1817). His principal works were: "Stratonice" (1792), "Ariodant" (1799), and "Joseph" (1807). His music is simple and dignified in style and full of expressive force. But his operas had to give way to the more easily popular Italian works in all countries outside of France. Luigi Cherubini (1760-1842) was an Italian, but passed most of his life in Paris when he was director of the Conservatory of Music. His principal operas were: "Les deux Journées" (1800) and "Faniska" (1806). Cherubini began his career by writing old-fashioned Italian opera, but became a convert to the theories of Gluck. He was a writer of no small force and originality. Beethoven was his enthusiastic admirer, and it is certain that, although the antiquated style of his recitative and arioso makes his music unpalatable now, he was sincere in his attempt at dramatic fidelity. Another Italian who wrote for the French stage and tried to imitate the French manner was Gasparo Spontini (1774-1851). His principal operas were: "La Vestale" (1807), "Ferdinand Cortez" (1809), "Olympie" (1819), and "Agnes von Hohenstaufen" (1829). The last named opera was written for Berlin. Spontini's style seems very dry and stilted to us now, and it is quite certain that he had neither the melodic gift of Méhul nor the dramatic inspiration of Cherubini. In his attempts at scenic display, glittering stage pictures, and the employment of imposing effects, he foreshadowed Meyerbeer. Daniel François Auber (1784-1871) wrote "La Muette de Portici," generally known by its Italian title "Massaniello," and "Fra Diavolo" (1830). The former work is directly in the line of transition from Spontini to Meyerbeer. The latter belongs rather to the school of opéra comique. Jacques François Halévy (1799-1862) wrote several operas, of which only "La Juive" (1835) holds the stage. The works of Auber and Halévy show a decided tendency away from the simple directness of the earlier French composers towards a cheap and easy theatrical effectiveness. "La Juive," however, contains some passages of singular beauty and genuine power.
[Chapter XXIII]
Meyerbeer and his Influence
The grandiose style and its ground plan—External display and internal emptiness—Gounod and his dramatic power—Bizet and "Carmen"—Works and tendency of living writers of French opera.
THE gradual drift of French opera away from the pure style of Gluck led to the success of one of the most remarkable figures in the history of music, a composer whose works persist in pleasing the public, while they enrage both critics and musicians. This composer was Jacob Meyerbeer, born of wealthy Jewish parents at Berlin, Sept. 5, 1791. He studied music under Lauska, Clementi, and Vogler, and began his public career as a juvenile pianist. His first opera was "Jephthah's Vow,"—a failure, as were several other early works. His successful operas were: "Robert le Diable" (Paris, 1831), "Les Huguenots" (Paris, 1835), "The Camp in Silesia" (Vienna, 1843), and afterwards remodelled as "L'Étoile du Nord," (Paris, 1854), "Le Prophète" (1849), "Le Pardon de Ploermel", generally called "Dinorah" (Paris, 1859), and "L'Africaine" (Paris, 1865). He did not live to see the production of the last work, but died May 2, 1864. Of these works "Robert" is now performed infrequently, and "Dinorah" only to please some light, colorature soprano. "L'Étoile du Nord" is practically dead. "Les Huguenots," "Le Prophète," and "L'Africaine" are still popular. The most consistent and sustained of these three is "L'Africaine," though the greatest heights to which Meyerbeer ever ascended are to be found in "Les Huguenots." It is generally conceded that the duet between Valentine and Raoul in the fourth act is a genuinely great piece of dramatic writing. Even Schumann and Wagner, the severest critics of Meyerbeer, admitted that.
The operas of Meyerbeer are remarkable examples of a skill entirely devoted to the production of ad captandum effects. Everything imposing, grandiose, delusive in splendor, or dazzling in cheap finery is to be found in these works, which are arranged on a grand plan. Meyerbeer's distribution of arias, duets, ensembles, and finales is the result of a deliberate eclecticism. He took for his purpose all that seemed most effective in the Italian and French schools. His finales, for instance, are often ridiculously weak in melodic ideas, as in that of the second act of "Les Huguenots," but they are always worked up with a clever combination of action, stage pictures, and pretentious orchestration. His arias are deliberately designed to catch the applause of an audience. He uses ballets, processions, pageants, and glittering masses of people on the stage to hide his poverty of ideas, and, as Dr. Parry well notes, when he has absolutely no idea at all, he distracts your attention from that fact by a cadenza for the clarinet. His most successful combination of music and pageantry is in the return of Selika to her kingdom in "L'Africaine." His poorest is the wedding festivities of Valentine in "Les Huguenots." There is no heart in Meyerbeer's works. He was capable of taking infinite pains, but all for the sake of instantaneous effect. To quote Dr. Parry again: "The scenes are collections of the most elaborate artifices, carefully contrived and eminently effective from the baldest theatrical point of view. But for continuity, development, real feeling, nobility of expression, greatness of thought, anything that may be truly honored in the observance, there is but the rarest trace."