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THE OPERA

A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions of all
Works in the Modern Repertory.

BY R.A. STREATFEILD

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY J.A. FULLER-MAITLAND

_THIRD EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED_

LONDON

GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS, LIMITED

PHILADELPHIA: J.B. LIPPINCOTT CO.

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

INTRODUCTION vii

I. THE BEGINNINGS OF OPERA 1

PERI--MONTEVERDE--CAVALLI--CESTI--CAMBERT--LULLI--PURCELL--
KEISER--SCARLATTI--HANDEL

II. THE REFORMS OF GLUCK 19

III. OPERA BUFFA, OPERA COMIQUE, AND SINGSPIEL 40

PERGOLESI--ROUSSEAU--MONSIGNY--GRETRY--CIMAROSA--HILLER

IV. MOZART 52

V. THE CLOSE OF THE CLASSICAL PERIOD 74

MEHUL--CHERUBINI--SPONTINI--BEETHOVEN--BOIELDIEU

VI. WEBER AND THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL 87

WEBER--SPOHR--MARSCHNER--KREUTZER--LORTZING--NICOLAI--FLOTOW--
MENDELSSOHN--SCHUBERT--SCHUMANN

VII. ROSSINI, DONIZETTI, AND BELLINI 106

VIII. MEYERBEER AND FRENCH OPERA 126

HEROLD--MEYERBEER--BERLIOZ--HALEVY--AUBER

IX. WAGNER'S EARLY WORKS 151

X. WAGNER'S LATER WORKS 176

XL. MODERN FRANCE 214

GOUNOD--THOMAS--BIZET--SAINT SAENS--REYER---MASSENET--BRUNEAU--
CHARPENTIER--DEBUSSY

XII. MODERN ITALY 262

VERDI--BOITO--PONCHIELLI--PUCCINI--MASCAGNI--LEONCAVALLO--GIORDANO

XIII. MODERN GERMAN AND SLAVONIC OPERA 302

CORNELIUS--GOETZ---GOLDMARK--HUMPERDINCK--STRAUSS--SMETANA--
GLINKA--PADEREWSKI

XIV. ENGLISH OPERA 323

BALFE--WALLACE--BENEDICT--GORING THOMAS--MACKENZIE--STANFORD--
SULLIVAN--SMYTH

INDEX OF OPERAS 351

INDEX OF COMPOSERS 361

INTRODUCTION

If Music be, among the arts, 'Heaven's youngest-teemed star', the
latest of the art-forms she herself has brought forth is
unquestionably Opera. Three hundred years does not at first seem a
very short time, but it is not long when it covers the whole period of
the inception, development, and what certainly looks like the
decadence, of an important branch of man's artistic industry. The art
of painting has taken at least twice as long to develop; yet the three
centuries from Monteverde to Debussy cover as great a distance as that
which separates Cimabue from Degas. In operatic history, revolutions,
which in other arts have not been accomplished in several generations,
have got themselves completed, and indeed almost forgotten, in the
course of a few years. Twenty-five years ago, for example, Wagner's
maturer works were regarded, by the more charitable of those who did
not admire them, as intelligible only to the few enthusiasts who had
devoted years of study to the unravelling of their mysteries; the
world in general looked askance at the 'Wagnerians', as they were
called, and professed to consider the shyly-confessed admiration of
the amateurs as a mere affectation. In that time we have seen the
tables turned, and now there is no more certain way for a manager to
secure a full house than by announcing one of these very works. An
even shorter period covers the latest Italian renaissance of music,
the feverish excitement into which the public was thrown by one of its
most blatant productions, and the collapse of a set of composers who
were at one time hailed as regenerators of their country's art.

But though artistic conditions in opera change quickly and continually,
though reputations are made and lost in a few years, and the real
reformers of music themselves alter their style and methods so radically
that the earlier compositions of a Gluck, a Wagner, or a Verdi present
scarcely any point of resemblance to those later masterpieces by which
each of these is immortalised, yet the attitude of audiences towards
opera in general changes curiously little from century to century; and
plenty of modern parallels might be found, in London and elsewhere, to
the story which tells of the delay in producing 'Don Giovanni' on
account of the extraordinary vogue of Martini's 'Una Cosa Rara', a work
which only survives because a certain tune from it is brought into the
supper-scene in Mozart's opera.

There is a good deal of fascination, and some truth, in the theory
that different nations enjoy opera in different ways. According to
this, the Italians consider it solely in relation to their sensuous
emotions; the French, as producing a titillating sensation more or
less akin to the pleasures of the table; the Spaniards, mainly as a
vehicle for dancing; the Germans, as an intellectual pleasure; and the
English, as an expensive but not unprofitable way of demonstrating
financial prosperity. The Italian might be said to hear through what
is euphemistically called his heart, the Frenchman through his palate,
the Spaniard through his toes, the German through his brain, and the
Englishman through his purse. But in truth this does not represent the
case at all fairly. For, to take only modern instances, Italy, on
whose congenial soil 'Cavalleria Rusticana' and the productions it
suggested met with such extraordinary success, saw also in 'Falstaff'
the wittiest and most brilliant musical comedy since 'Die
Meistersinger', and in 'Madama Butterfly' a lyric of infinite
delicacy, free from any suggestion of unworthy emotion. Among recent
French operas, works of tragic import, treated with all the intricacy
of the most advanced modern schools, have been received with far
greater favour than have been shown to works of the lighter class
which we associate with the genius of the French nation; and of late
years the vogue of such works as 'Louise' or 'Pelleas et Melisande'
shows that the taste for music without any special form has conquered
the very nation in which form has generally ranked highest. In
Germany, on the other hand, some of the greatest successes with the
public at large have been won by productions which seem to touch the
lowest imaginable point of artistic imbecility; and the
ever-increasing interest in musical drama that is manifested year
after year by London audiences shows that higher motives than those
referred to weigh even with Englishmen. The theory above mentioned
will not hold water, for there are, as a matter of fact, only two ways
of looking at opera: either as a means, whether expensive or not, of
passing an evening with a very little intellectual trouble, some
social _eclat_, and a certain amount of pleasure, or as a form of art,
making serious and justifiable claims on the attention of rational
people. These claims of opera are perhaps more widely recognised in
England than they were some years ago; but there are still a certain
number of persons, and among them not a few musical people, who
hesitate to give opera a place beside what is usually called
'abstract' music. Music's highest dignity is, no doubt, reached when
it is self-sufficient, when its powers are exerted upon its own
creations, entirely without dependence upon predetermined emotions
calling for illustration, and when the interest of the composition as
well as the material is conveyed exclusively in terms of music. But
the function of music in expressing those sides of human emotion which
lie too deep for verbal utterance, a function of which the gradual
recognition led on to the invention of opera, is one that cannot be
slighted or ignored; in it lies a power of appeal to feeling that no
words can reach, and a very wonderful definiteness in conveying exact
shades of emotional sensation. Not that it can of itself suggest the
direction in which the emotions are to be worked upon; but this
direction once given from outside, whether by a 'programme' read by
the listener or by the action and accessories of the stage, the force
of feeling can be conveyed with overwhelming power, and the whole
gamut of emotion, from the subtlest hint or foreshadowing to the fury
of inevitable passion, is at the command of him who knows how to wield
the means by which expression is carried to the hearer's mind. And in
this fact--for a fact it is--lies the completest justification of
opera as an art-form. The old-fashioned criticism of opera as such,
based on the indisputable fact that, however excited people may be,
they do not in real life express themselves in song, but in
unmodulated speech, is not now very often heard. With the revival in
England of the dramatic instinct, the conventions of stage declamation
are readily accepted, and if it be conceded that the characters in a
drama may be allowed to speak blank verse, it is hardly more than a
step further to permit the action to be carried on by means of vocal
utterance in music. Until latterly, however, English people, though
taking pleasure in the opera, went to it rather to hear particular
singers than to enjoy the work as a whole, or with any consideration
for its dramatic significance. We should not expect a stern and
uncompromising nature like Carlyle's to regard the opera as anything
more than a trivial amusement, and that such was his attitude towards
it appears from his letters; but it is curious to see that a man of
such strongly pronounced dramatic tastes as Edward FitzGerald, though
devoted to the opera in his own way, yet took what can only be called
a superficial view of its possibilities.

The Englishman who said of the opera, 'At the first act I was
enchanted; the second I could just bear; and at the third I ran away',
is a fair illustration of an attitude common in the eighteenth
century; and in France things were not much better, even in days when
stage magnificence reached a point hardly surpassed in history. La
Bruyere's 'Je ne sais comment l'opera avec une musique si parfaite, et
une depense toute royale, a pu reussir a m'ennuyer', shows how little
he had realised the fatiguing effect of theatrical splendour too
persistently displayed. St. Evremond finds juster cause for his bored
state of mind in the triviality of the subject-matter of operas, and
his words are worth quoting at some length: 'La langueur ordinaire ou
je tombe aux operas, vient de ce que je n'en ai jamais vu qui ne m'ait
paru meprisable dans la disposition du sujet, et dans les vers. Or,
c'est vainement que l'oreille est flattee, et que les yeux sont
charmes, si l'esprit ne se trouve pas satisfait; mon ame
d'intelligence avec mon esprit plus qu'avec mes sens, forme une
resistance aux impressions qu'elle peut recevoir, ou pour le moins
elle manque d'y preter un consentement agreable, sans lequel les
objets les plus voluptueux meme ne sauraient me donner un grand
plaisir. Une sottise chargee de musique, de danses, de machines, de
decorations, est une sottise magnifique; c'est un vilain fonds sous de
beaux dehors, ou je penetre avec beaucoup de desagrement.'

The cant phrase in use in FitzGerald's days, 'the lyric stage', might
have conveyed a hint of the truth to a man who cared for the forms of
literature as well as its essence. For, in its highest development,
opera is most nearly akin to lyrical utterances in poetry, and the most
important musical revolution of the present century has been in the
direction of increasing, not diminishing, the lyrical quality of
operatic work. The Elizabethan writers--not only the dramatists, but the
authors of romances--interspersed their blank verse or their prose
narration with short lyrical poems, just as in the days of Mozart the
airs and concerted pieces in an opera were connected by wastes of
recitative that were most aptly called 'dry'; and as it was left to a
modern poet to tell, in a series of lyrics succeeding one another
without interval, a dramatic story such as that of _Maud_, so was it a
modern composer who carried to completion, in 'Tristan und Isolde', the
dramatic expression of passion at the highest point of lyrical
utterance. It is no more unnatural for the raptures of Wagner's lovers,
or the swan-song of ecstasy, to be sung, than for the young man whose
character Tennyson assumes, to utter himself in measured verse,
sometimes of highly complex structure. The two works differ not in kind,
but in degree of intensity, and to those whose ears are open to the
appeal of music, the power of expression in such a case as this is
greater beyond all comparison than that of poetry, whether declaimed or
merely read. That so many people recognise the rational nature of opera
in the present day is in great measure due to Wagner, since whose
reforms the conventional and often idiotic libretti of former times have
entirely disappeared. In spite of the sneers of the professed
anti-Wagnerians, which were based as often as not upon some ineptitude
on the part of the translator, not upon any inherent defect in the
original, the plots invented by Wagner have won for themselves an
acceptance that may be called world-wide. And whatever be the verdict on
his own plots, there can be no question as to the superiority of the
average libretto since his day. No composer dare face the public of the
present day with one of the pointless, vapid sets of rhymes, strung
together with intervals of bald recitative, that pleased our
forefathers, and equally inconceivable is the re-setting of libretti
that have served before, in the manner of the eighteenth century
composers, a prodigious number of whom employed one specially admired
'book' by Metastasio.

Unfortunately those who take an intelligent interest in opera do not
even yet form a working majority of the operatic audience in any
country. While the supporters of orchestral, choral, or chamber music
consist wholly of persons, who, whatever their degree of musical
culture, take a serious view of the art so far as they can appreciate
it, and therefore are unhampered by the necessity of considering the
wishes of those who care nothing whatever about the music they perform.
In connection with every operatic enterprise the question arises of how
to cater for a great class who attend operatic performances for any
other reason rather than that of musical enjoyment, yet without whose
pecuniary support the undertaking must needs fail at once. Nor is it
only in England that the position is difficult. In countries where the
opera enjoys a Government subsidy, the influences that make against true
art are as many and as strong as they are elsewhere. The taste of the
Intendant in a German town, or that of the ladies of his family, may be
on such a level that the public of the town, over the operatic
arrangement of which he presides, may very well be compelled to hear
endless repetitions of flashy operas that have long passed out of every
respectable repertory; and in other countries the Government official
within whose jurisdiction the opera falls may, and very often does,
enforce the engagement of some musically incompetent prima donna in whom
he, or some scheming friend, takes a particular interest.

The moral conditions of the operatic stage are no doubt far more
satisfactory than they were, and in England the general deodorisation of
the theatre has not been unfelt in opera; but even without the unworthy
motives which too often drew the bucks and the dandies of a past day to
the opera-house, the influence of the unintelligent part of the
audience upon the performers is far from good in an artistic sense. It
is this which fosters that mental condition with which all who are
acquainted with the operatic world are only too familiar. Now, just as
in the days when Marcello wrote his _Teatro alla moda_, there is
scarcely a singer who does not hold, and extremely few who do not
express, the opinion that all the rest of the profession is in league
against them; and by this supposition, as well as by many other
circumstances, an atmosphere is created which is wholly antagonistic to
the attainment of artistic perfection. All honour is due to the purely
artistic singers who have reached their position without intrigue, and
whose influence on their colleagues is the best stimulus to wholesome
endeavour. It is beyond question that the greater the proportion of
intelligent hearers in any audience or set of subscribers, the higher
will the standard be, not only in vocalisation, but in that combination
which makes the artist as distinguished from the mere singer. For every
reason, too, it is desirable that opera should be given, as a general
rule, in the language of the country in which the performance takes
place, and although the system of giving each work with its own original
words is an ideally perfect one for trained hearers, yet the
difficulties in the way of its realisation, and the absurdities that
result from such expedients as a mixture of two or more languages in the
same piece, render it practically inexpedient for ordinary operatic
undertakings. The recognition of English as a possible medium of vocal
expression may be slow, but it is certainly making progress, and in the
last seasons at Covent Garden it was occasionally employed even before
the fashionable subscribers, who may be presumed to have tolerated it,
since they did not manifest any disapproval of its use. Since the first
edition of this book was published, the Utopian idea, as it then seemed,
of a national opera for London has advanced considerably towards
realisation, and it is certain that when it is set on foot, the English
language alone will be employed.

While opera is habitually performed in a foreign language, or, if in
English, by those who have not the art of making their words
intelligible, there will always be a demand for books that tell the
story more clearly than is to be found in the doggerel translations of
the libretti, unless audiences return with one accord to the attitude of
the amateurs of former days, who paid not the slightest attention to the
plot of the piece, provided only that their favourite singers were
taking part. Very often in that classic period the performers themselves
knew nothing and cared less about the dramatic meaning of the works in
which they appeared, and a venerable anecdote is current concerning a
certain supper party, the guests at which had all identified themselves
with one or other of the principal parts in 'Il Trovatore'. A question
being asked as to the plot of the then popular piece, it was found that
not one of the company had the vaguest notion what it was all about.
The old lady who, during the church scene in 'Faust', asked her
grand-daughter, in a spirit of humble inquiry, what the relationship was
between the two persons on the stage, is no figment of a diseased
imagination; the thing actually happened not long ago, and one is left
to wonder what impression the preceding scenes had made upon the hearer.

Of books that profess to tell the stories of the most popular operas
there is no lack, but, as a rule, the plots are related in a 'bald and
unconvincing' style, that leaves much to be desired, and sometimes in a
confused way that necessitates a visit to the opera itself in order to
clear up the explanation. There are useful dictionaries, too, notably
the excellent 'Opern-Handbuch' of Dr Riemann, which gives the names and
dates of production of every opera of any note; but the German scientist
does not always condescend to the detailed narration of the stories,
though he gives the sources from which they may have been derived. Mr
Streatfeild has hit upon the happy idea of combining the mere
story-telling part of his task with a survey of the history of opera
from its beginning early in the seventeenth century to the present day.
In the course of this historical narrative, the plots of all operas that
made a great mark in the past, or that have any chance of being revived
in the present, are related clearly and succinctly, and with a rare and
delightful absence of prejudice. The author finds much to praise in
every school; he is neither impatient of old opera nor intolerant of
new developments which have yet to prove their value; and he makes us
feel that he is not only an enthusiastic lover of opera as a whole, but
a cultivated musician. The historical plan adopted, in contradistinction
to the arrangement by which the operas are grouped under their titles in
alphabetical order, involves perhaps a little extra trouble to the
casual reader; but by the aid of the index, any opera concerning which
the casual reader desires to be informed can be found in its proper
place, and the chief facts regarding its origin and production are given
there as well as the story of its action.

J.A. FULLER-MAITLAND

_June 1907_

THE OPERA

CHAPTER I

THE BEGINNINGS OF OPERA

PERI--MONTEVERDE--CAVALLI--CESTI--CAMBERT--LULLI--PURCELL--
KEISER--SCARLATTI--HANDEL

The early history of many forms of art is wrapped in obscurity. Even in
music, the youngest of the arts, the precise origin of many modern
developments is largely a matter of conjecture. The history of opera,
fortunately for the historian, is an exception to the rule. All the
circumstances which combine to produce the idea of opera are known to
us, and every detail of its genesis is established beyond the
possibility of doubt.

The invention of opera partook largely of the nature of an accident.
Late in the sixteenth century a few Florentine amateurs, fired with the
enthusiasm for Greek art which was at that time the ruling passion of
every cultivated spirit in Italy, set themselves the task of
reconstructing the conditions of the Athenian drama. The result of their
labours, regarded as an attempted revival of the lost glories of Greek
tragedy, was a complete failure; but, unknown to themselves, they
produced the germ of that art-form which, as years passed on, was
destined, in their own country at least, to reign alone in the
affections of the people, and to take the place, so far as the altered
conditions permitted, of the national drama which they had fondly hoped
to recreate.

The foundations of the new art-form rested upon the theory that the
drama of the Greeks was throughout declaimed to a musical accompaniment.
The reformers, therefore, dismissed spoken dialogue from their drama,
and employed in its place a species of free declamation or recitative,
which they called _musica parlante_. The first work in which the new
style of composition was used was the 'Dafne' of Jacopo Peri, which was
privately performed in 1597. No trace of this work survives, nor of the
musical dramas by Emilio del Cavaliere and Vincenzo Galilei to which the
closing years of the sixteenth century gave birth. But it is best to
regard these privately performed works merely as experiments, and to
date the actual foundation of opera from the year 1600, when a public
performance of Peri's 'Euridice' was given at Florence in honour of the
marriage of Maria de' Medici and Henry IV. of France. A few years later
a printed edition of this work was published at Venice, a copy of which
is now in the library of the British Museum, and in recent times it has
been reprinted, so that those who are curious in these matters can study
this protoplasmic opera at their leisure. Expect for a few bars of
insignificant chorus, the whole work consists of the accompanied
recitative, which was the invention of these Florentine reformers. The
voices are accompanied by a violin, _chitarone_ (a large guitar), _lira
grande_, _liuto grosso_, and _gravicembalo_ or harpsichord, which filled
in the harmonies indicated by the figured bass. The instrumental
portions of the work are poor and thin, and the chief beauty lies in the
vocal part, which is often really pathetic and expressive. Peri
evidently tried to give musical form to the ordinary inflections of the
human voice, how successfully may be seen in the Lament of Orpheus which
Mr. Morton Latham has reprinted in his 'Renaissance of Music,' The
original edition of 'Euridice' contains an interesting preface, in which
the composer sets forth the theory upon which he worked, and the aims
which he had in view. It is too long to be reprinted here, but should be
read by all interested in the early history of opera.

With the production of 'Euridice' the history of opera may be said to
begin; but if the new art-form had depended only upon the efforts of
Peri and his friends, it must soon have languished and died. With all
their enthusiasm, the little band of Florentines had too slight an
acquaintance with the science of music to give proper effect to the
ideas which they originated. Peri built the ship, but it was reserved
for the genius of Claudio Monteverde to launch it upon a wider ocean
than his predecessor could have dreamed of. Monteverde had been trained
in the polyphonic school of Palestrina, but his genius had never
acquiesced in the rules and restrictions in which the older masters
delighted. He was a poor contrapuntist, and his madrigals are chiefly
interesting as a proof of how ill the novel harmonies of which he was
the discoverer accorded with the severe purity of the older school But
in the new art he found the field his genius required. What had been
weakness and license in the madrigal became strength and beauty in the
opera. The new wine was put into new bottles, and both were preserved.
Monteverde produced his 'Arianna' in 1607, and his 'Orfeo' in 1608, and
with these two works started opera upon the path of development which
was to culminate in the works of Wagner. 'Arianna,' which, according to
Marco da Gagliano, himself a rival composer of high ability, 'visibly
moved all the theatre to tears,' is lost to us save for a few
quotations; but 'Orfeo' is in existence, and has recently been reprinted
in Germany. A glance at the score shows what a gulf separates this work
from Peri's treatment of the same story. Monteverde, with his orchestra
of thirty-nine instruments--brass, wood, and strings complete--his rich
and brilliant harmonies, sounding so strangely beautiful to ears
accustomed only to the severity of the polyphonic school, and his
delicious and affecting melodies, sometimes rising almost to the dignity
of an aria, must have seemed something more than human to the eager
Venetians as they listened for the first time to music as rich in colour
as the gleaming marbles of the Ca d'Oro or the radiant canvases of
Titian and Giorgione.

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