Verdi declared that he did not wish to compose, but the worthy impresario forced the ma.n.u.script on him, and persisted that he should undertake the work. The composer returned home with the libretto, but threw it on one side without looking at it, and for the next five months continued his reading of bad romances and yellow-covered novels.
The impulse of work soon came again, however. One beautiful June day the ma.n.u.script met his eye, while looking listlessly over some old papers.
He read one scene and was struck by its beauty. The instinct of musical creation rushed over him with irresistible force; he seated himself at the piano, so long silent, and began composing the music. The ice was broken. Verdi soon entered into the spirit of the work, and in three months "Nabucco" was entirely completed. Merelli gladly accepted it, and it was performed at La Scala in the spring of 1842. As a result Verdi was besieged with pet.i.tions for new works from every impresario in Italy.
II.
From 1812 to 1851 Verdi"s busy imagination produced a series of operas, which disputed the palm of popularity with the foremost composers of his time. "I Lombardi," brought out at La Scala in 1843; "Ernani," at Venice in 1844; "I Due Foscari," at Rome in 1844; "Giovanna D"Arco," at Milan, and "Alzira," at Naples in 1845; "Attila," at Venice in 1846; and "Macbetto," at Florence in 1847, were--all of them--successful works.
The last created such a genuine enthusiasm that he was crowned with a golden aurel-wreath and escorted home from the theatre by an enormous crowd. "I Masnadieri" was written for Jenny Lind, and performed first in London in 1847 with that great singer, Gardoni, and Lablache, in the cast. His next productions were "Il Corsaro," brought out at Trieste in 1848; "La Battaglia di Legnano" at Rome in 1849; "Luisa Miller" at Naples in the same year; and "Stiffelio" at Trieste in 1850. By this series of works Verdi impressed himself powerfully on his age, but in them he preserved faithfully the color and style of the school in which he had been trained. But he had now arrived at the commencement of his transition period. A distinguished French critic marks this change in the following summary: "When Verdi began to write, the influences of foreign literature and new theories on art had excited Italian composers to seek a violent expression of the pa.s.sions, and to leave the interpretation of amiable and delicate sentiments for that of sombre flights of the soul. A serious mind gifted with a rich imagination, Verdi became the chief of the new school. His music became more intense and dramatic; by vigor, energy, _verve_, a certain ruggedness and sharpness, by powerful effects of sound, he conquered an immense popularity in Italy, where success had hitherto been attained only by the charm, suavity, and abundance of the melodies produced."
In "Rigoletto," produced in Venice in 1851, the full flowering of his genius into the melodramatic style was signally shown. The opera story adapted from Victor Hugo"s "Le Roi s"amuse" is itself one of the most dramatic of plots, and it seemed to have fired the composer into music singularly vigorous, full of startling effects and novel treatment. Two years afterward were brought out at Rome and Venice respectively two operas, stamped with the same salient qualities, "Il Trovatore" and "La Traviata," the last a lyric adaptation of Dumas _fils"s_ "Dame aux Camelias." These three operas have generally been considered his masterpieces, though it is more than possible that the riper judgment of the future will not sustain this claim. Their popularity was such that Verdi"s time was absorbed for several years in their production at various opera-houses, utterly precluding new compositions. Of his later operas may be mentioned "Les Vepres Siciliennes," produced in Paris in 1855; "Un Ballo in Maschera," performed at Rome in 1859; "La Forza del Destino," written for St. Petersburg, where it was sung in 1863; "Don Carlos," produced in London in 1867; and "Aida" in Grand Cairo in 1872. When the latter work was finished, Verdi had composed twenty-nine operas, beside lesser works, and attained the age of fifty-seven.
Verdi"s energies have not been confined to music. An ardent patriot, he has displayed the deepest interest in the affairs of his country, and taken an active part in its tangled politics. After the war of 1859 he was chosen a member of the a.s.sembly of Parma, and was one of the most influential advocates for the annexation to Sardinia. Italian unity found in him a pa.s.sionate advocate, and, when the occasion came, his artistic talent and earnestness proved that they might have made a vigorous mark in political oratory as well as in music.
The cry of "Viva Verdi" often resounded through Sardinia and Italy, and it was one of the war-slogans of the Italian war of liberation. This enigma is explained in the fact that the five letters of his name are the initials of those of Vittorio Emanuele Re D"Italia. His private resources were liberally poured forth to help the national cause, and in 1861 he was chosen a deputy in Parliament from Parma. Ten years later he was appointed by the Minister of Public Instruction to superintend the reorganization of the National Musical Inst.i.tute.
The many decorations and t.i.tular distinctions lavished on him show the high esteem in which he is held. He is a member of the Legion of Honor, corresponding member of the French Academy of Fine Arts, grand cross of the Prussian order of St. Stanislaus, of the order of the Crown of Italy, and of the Egyptian order of Osmanli. He divides his life between a beautiful residence at Genoa, where he overlooks the waters of the sparkling Mediterranean, and a country villa near his native Busseto, a house of quaint artistic architecture, approached by a venerable, moss-grown stone bridge, at the foot of which are a large park and artificial lake. When he takes his evening walks, the peasantry, who are devotedly attached to him, unite in singing choruses from his operas.
In Verdi"s bedroom, where alone he composes, is a fine piano--of which instrument, as well as of the violin, he is a master--a modest library, and an oddly-shaped writing-desk. Pictures and statuettes, of which he is very fond, are thickly strewn about the whole house. Verdi is a man of vigor" ous and active habits, taking an ardent interest in agriculture. But the larger part of his time is taken up in composing, writing letters, and reading works on philosophy, politics, and history.
His personal appearance is very distinguished. A tall figure with st.u.r.dy limbs and square shoulders, surmounted by a finely-shaped head; abundant hair, beard, and mustache, whose black is sprinkled with gray; dark-gray eyes, regular features, and an earnest, sometimes intense, expression make him a noticeable-looking man. Much sought after in the brilliant society of Florence, Rome, and Paris, our composer spends most of his time in the elegant seclusion of home.
III.
Verdi is the most nervous, theatric, sensuous composer of the present century. Measured by the highest standard, his style must be criticised as often spasmodic, tawdry, and meretricious. He instinctively adopts a bold and eccentric treatment of musical themes; and, though there are always to be found stirring movements in his scores as well as in his opera stories, he constantly offends refined taste by sensation and violence.
With a redundancy of melody, too often of the cheap and shallow kind, he rarely fails to please the ma.s.ses of opera-goers, for his works enjoy a popularity not shared at present by any other composer. In Verdi a sudden blaze of song, brief spirited airs, duets, trios, etc., take the place of the elaborate and beautiful music, chiseled into order and symmetry, which characterizes most of the great composers of the past.
Energy of immediate impression is thus gained at the expense of that deep, lingering power, full of the subtile side-lights and shadows of suggestion, which is the crowning benison of great music. He stuns the ear and captivates the senses, but does not subdue the soul.
Yet, despite the grievous faults of these operas, they blaze with gems, and we catch here and there true swallow-flights of genius, that the n.o.blest would not disown. With all his puerilities there is a mixture of grandeur. There are pa.s.sages in "Ernani," "Rigoletto," "Traviata,"
"Trovatore," and "Aida," so strong and dignified, that it provokes a wonder that one with such capacity for greatness should often descend into such bathos.
To better ill.u.s.trate the false art which mars so much of Verdi"s dramatic method, a comparison between his "Rigoletto," so often claimed as his best work, and Rossini"s "Otello" will be opportune. The air sung by _Gilda_ in the "Rigoletto," when she retires to sleep on the eve of the outrage, is an empty, sentimental yawn; and in the quartet of the last act, a n.o.ble dramatic opportunity, she ejects a chain of disconnected, unmusical sobs, as offensive as _Violetta"s_ consumptive cough. _Desdemona"s_ agitated air, on the other hand, under Rossini"s treatment, though broken short in the vocal phrase, is magnificently sustained by the orchestra, and a genuine pa.s.sion is made consistently musical; and then the wonderful burst of bravura, where despair and resolution run riot without violating the bounds of strict beauty in music--these are master-strokes of genius restrained by art.
In Verdi, pa.s.sion too often misses intensity and becomes hysterical.
He lacks the elements of tenderness and humor, but is frequently picturesque and charming by his warmth and boldness of color. His attempts to express the gay and mirthful, as for instance in the masquerade music of "Traviata" and the dance music of "Rigoletto," are dreary, ghastly, and saddening; while his ideas of tenderness are apt to take the form of mere sentimentality. Yet generalities fail in describing him, for occasionally he attains effects strong in their pathos, and artistically admirable; as, for example, the slow air for the heroine, and the dreamy song for the gypsy mother in the last act of "Trovatore." An artist who thus contradicts himself is a perplexing problem, but we must judge him by the habitual, not the occasional.
Verdi is always thoroughly in earnest, never frivolous. He walks on stilts indeed, instead of treading the ground or cleaving the air, but is never timid or tame in aim or execution. If he cannot stir the emotions of the soul he subdues and absorbs the attention against even the dictates of the better taste; while genuiue beauties gleaming through picturesque rubbish often repay the true musician for what he has undergone.
So far this composer has been essentially representative of melodramatic music, with all the faults and virtues of such a style. In "Aida,"
his last work, the world remarked a striking change. The n.o.ble orchestration, the power and beauty of the choruses, the sustained dignity of treatment, the seriousness and pathos of the whole work, reveal how deeply new purposes and methods have been fermenting in the composer"s development. Yet in the very prime of his powers, though no longer young, his next work ought to settle the value of the hopes raised by the last.
CHERUBINI AND HIS PREDECESSORS.
I.
In France, as in Italy, the regular musical drama was preceded by mysteries, masks, and religious plays, which introduced short musical parts, as also action, mechanical effects, and dancing. The ballet, however, where dancing was the prominent feature, remained for a long time the favorite amus.e.m.e.nt of the French court until the advent of Jean Baptiste Lulli. The young Florentine, after having served in the king"s band, was promoted to be its chief, and the composer of the music of the court ballets. Lulli, born in 1633, was bought of his parents by Chevalier de Guise, and sent to Paris as a present to Mlle, de Montpensier, the king"s niece. His capricious mistress, after a year or two, deposed the boy of fifteen from the position of page to that of scullion; but Count Nogent, accidentally hearing him sing and struck by his musical talent, influenced the princess to place him under the care of good masters. Lulli made such rapid progress that he soon commenced to compose music of a style superior to that before current in divertiss.e.m.e.nts of the French court.
The name of Philippe Quinault is closely a.s.sociated with the musical career of Lulli; for to the poet the musician was indebted for his best librettos. Born at Paris in 1636, Quinault"s genius for poetry displayed itself at an early age. Before he was twenty he had written several successful comedies. Though he produced many plays, both tragedies and comedies, well known to readers of French poetry, his operatic poems are those which have rendered his memory ill.u.s.trious. He died on November 29,1688. It is said that during his last illness he was extremely penitent on account of the voluptuous tendency of his works. All his lyrical dramas are full of beauty, but "Atys," "Phaeton," "Isis," and "Armide" have been ranked the highest. "Armide" was the last of the poet"s efforts, and Lulli was so much in love with the opera, when completed, that he had it performed over and over again for his own pleasure without any other auditor. When "Atys" was performed first in 1676, the eager throng began to pour in the theatre at ten o"clock in the morning, and by noon the building was filled. The King and the Count were charmed with the work in spite of the bitter dislike of Boileau, the Aristarchus of his age. "Put me in a place where I shall not be able to hear the words," said the latter to the box-keeper; "I like Lulli"s music very much, but have a sovereign contempt for Quinault"s words."
Lulli obliged the poet to write "Armide" five times over, and the felicity of his treatment is proved by the fact that Gluck afterward set the same poem to the music which is still occasionally sung in Germany.
Lulli in the course of his musical career became so great a favorite with the King that the originally obscure kitchen-boy was enn.o.bled. He was made one of the King"s secretaries in spite of the loud murmurs of this pampered fraternity against receiving into their body a player and a buffoon. The musician"s wit and affability, however, finally dissipated these prejudices, especially as he was wealthy and of irreproachable character.
The King having had a severe illness in 1686, Lulli composed a "Te Deum"
in honor of his recovery. When this was given, the musician, in beating time with great ardor, struck his toe with his baton. This brought on a mortification, and there was great grief when it was announced that he could not recover. The Princes de Vendome lodged four thousand pistoles in the hands of a banker, to be paid to any physician who would cure him. Shortly before his death his confessor severely reproached him for the licentiousness of his operas, and refused to give him absolution unless he consented to burn the score of "Achille et Polyxene," which was ready for the stage. The ma.n.u.script was put into the flames, and the priest made the musician"s peace with G.o.d. One of the young princes visited him a few days after, when he seemed a little better.
"What, Baptiste," the former said, "have you burned your opera? You were a fool for giving such credit to a gloomy confessor and burning good music."
"Hush, hush!" whispered Lulli with a satirical smile on his lip. "I cheated the good father. I only burned a copy."
He died singing the words, "Il faut mourir, pecheur, il faut mourir" to one of his own opera airs.
Lulli was not only a composer, but created his own orchestra, trained his artists in acting and singing, and was machinist as well as ballet-master and music-director. He was intimate with Corneille, Moliere, La Fontaine, and Boileau; and these great men were proud to contribute the texts to which he set his music. He introduced female dancers into the ballet, disguised men having hitherto served in this capacity, and in many essential ways was the father of early French opera, though its foundation had been laid by Cardinal Mazarin. He had to fight against opposition and cabals, but his energy, tact, and persistence made him the victor, and won the friendship of the leading men of his time. Such of his music as still exists is of a pleasing and melodious character, full of vivacity and lire, and at times indicates a more deep and serious power than that of merely creating catching and tuneful airs. He was the inventor of the operatic overture, and introduced several new instruments into the orchestra. Apart from his splendid administrative faculty, he is ent.i.tled to rank as an original and gifted, if not a great, composer.
A lively sketch of the French opera of this period is given by Addison in No. 29 of the "Spectator." "The music of the French," he says, "is indeed very properly adapted to their p.r.o.nunciation and accent, as their whole opera wonderfully favors the genius of such a gay, airy people.
The chorus in which that opera abounds gives the parterre frequent opportunities of joining in concert with the stage. This inclination of the audience to sing along with the actors so prevails with them that I have sometimes known the performer on the stage to do no more in a celebrated song than the clerk of a parish church, who serves only to raise the psalm, and is afterward drowned in the music of the congregation. Every actor that comes on the stage is a beau. The queens and heroines are so painted that they appear as ruddy and cherry-cheeked as milkmaids. The shepherds are all embroidered, and acquit themselves in a ball better than our English dancing-masters. I have seen a couple of rivers appear in red stockings; and Alpheus, instead of having his head covered with sedge and bulrushes, making love in a fair, full-bottomed periwig, and a plume of feathers; but with a voice so full of shakes and quavers, that I should have thought the murmur of a country brook the much more agreeable music. I remember the last opera I saw in that merry nation was the "Rape of Proserpine," where Pluto, to make the more tempting figure, puts himself in a French equipage, and brings Ascalaphus along with him as his _valet de chambre_. This is what we call folly and impertinence, but what the French look upon as gay and polite."
II.
The French musical drama continued without much chance in the hands of the Lulli school (for the musician had several skillful imitators and successors) till the appearance of Jean Philippe Rameau, who inaugurated a new era. This celebrated man was born in Auvergne in 1683, and was during his earlier life the organist of the Clermont cathedral church.
Here he pursued the scientific researches in music which ent.i.tled him in the eyes of his admirers to be called the Newton of his art. He had reached the age of fifty without recognition as a dramatic composer, when the production of "Hippolyte et Aricie" excited a violent feud by creating a strong current of opposition to the music of Lulli. He produced works in rapid succession, and finally overcame all obstacles, and won for himself the name of being the greatest lyric composer which France up to that time had produced. His last opera, "Les Paladins," was given in 1760, the composer being then seventy-seven.
The bitterness of the art-feuds of that day, afterward shown in the Gluck-Piccini contest, was foreshadowed in that waged by Rameau against Lulli, and finally against the Italian newcomers, who sought to take possession of the French stage. The matter became a natioual quarrel, and it was considered an insult to France to prefer the music of an Italian to that of a Frenchman--an insult which was often settled by the rapier point, when tongue and pen had failed as arbitrators. The subject was keenly debated by journalists and pamphleteers, and the press groaned with essays to prove that Rameau was the first musician in Europe, though his works were utterly unknown outside of France. Perhaps no more valuable testimony to the character of these operas can be adduced than that of Baron Grimm:
"In his operas Rameau has overpowered all his predecessors by dint of harmony and quant.i.ty of notes. Some of his choruses are very fine.
Lulli could only sustain his vocal psalmody by a simple ba.s.s; Rameau accompanied almost all his recitatives with the orchestra. These accompaniments are generally in bad taste; they drown the voice rather than support it, and force the singers to scream and howl in a manner which no ear of any delicacy can tolerate. We come away from an opera of Rameau"s intoxicated with harmony and stupefied with the noise of voice and instruments. His taste is always Gothic, and, whether his subject is light or forcible, his style is equally heavy. He was not dest.i.tute of ideas, but did not know what use to make of them. In his recitatives the sound is continually in opposition to the sense, though they occasionally contain happy declamatory pa.s.sages.... If he had formed himself in some of the schools of Italy, and thus acquired a notion of musical style and hahits of musical thought, he never would have said (as he did) that all poems were alike to him, and that he could set the "Gazette de France" to music."
From this it may be gathered that Rameau, though a scientific and learned musician, lacked imagination, good taste, and dramatic insight--qualities which in the modern lyric school of France have been so preeminent. It may be admitted, however, that he inspired a taste for sound musical science, and thus prepared the way for the great Gluck, who to all and more of Rameau"s musical knowledge united the grand genius which makes him one of the giants of his art.
Though Rameau enjoyed supremacy over the serious opera, a great excitement was created in Paris by the arrival of an Italian company, who in 1752 obtained permission to perform Italian burlettas and intermezzi at the opera-house. The partisans of the French school took alarm, and the admirers of Lulli and Rameau forgot their bickerings to join forces against the foreign intruders. The battle-field was strewed with floods of ink, and the literati pelted each other with ferocious lampoons.
Among the literature of this controversy, one pamphlet has an imperishable place, Rousseau"s famous "Lettre sur la Musique Francaise,"
in which the great sentimentalist espoused the cause of Italian music with an eloquence and acrimony rarely surpa.s.sed. The inconsistency of the author was as marked in this as in his private life. Not only did he at a later period become a great advocate of Gluck against Piocini, but, in spite of his argument that it was impossible to compose music to French words, that the language was quite unfit for it, that the French never had music and never would, he himself had composed a good deal of music to French words and produced a French opera, "Le Devin du Village." Diderot was also a warm partisan of the Italians. Pergolesi"s beautiful music having been murdered by the French orchestra players at the Grand Opera-House, Diderot proposed for it the following witty and laconic inscription: "Hic Marsyas Apollinem."*
* Here Marsyas flayed Apollo.
Rousseau"s opera, "Le Devin du Village," was performed with considerable success, in spite of the repugnance of the orchestral performers, of whom Rousseau always spoke in terms of unmeasured contempt, to do justice to the music. They burned Rousseau in effigy for his scoffs.
"Well," said the author of the "Confessions," "I don"t wonder that they should hang me now, after having so long put me to the torture."
The eloquence and abuse of the wits, however, did not long impair the supremacy of Rameau; for the Italian company returned to their own land, disheartened by their reception in the French capital. Though this composer commenced so late in life, he left thirty-six dramatic works.
His greatest work was "Castor et Pollux." Thirty years later Grimm recognized its merits by admitting, in spite of the great faults of the composer, "It is the pivot on which the glory of French music turns."
When Louis XIV. offered Rameau a t.i.tle, he answered, touching his breast and forehead, "My n.o.bility is here and here." This composer marked a step forward in French music, for he gave it more boldness and freedom, and was the first really scientific and well-equipped exponent of a national school. His choruses were full of energy and fire, his orchestral effects rich and ma.s.sive. He died in 1764, and the mortuary music, composed by himself, was performed by a double orchestra and chorus from the Grand Opera.
III.