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R.A. Streatfeild - The Opera

R >> R.A. Streatfeild >> The Opera




The success of Monteverde had its natural result. He soon had pupils
and imitators by the score. The Venetians speedily discovered that they
had an inherent taste for opera, and the musicians of the day delighted
to cater for it. Monteverde's most famous pupil was Cavalli, to whom may
with some certainty be attributed an innovation which was destined to
affect the future of opera very deeply. In his time, to quote Mr.
Latham's 'Renaissance of Music,' 'the _musica parlante_ of the earliest
days of opera was broken up into recitative, which was less eloquent,
and aria, which was more ornamental. The first appearance of this change
is to be found in Cavalli's operas, in which certain rhythmical
movements called "arias" which are quite distinct from the _musica
parlante_, make their appearance. The music assigned by Monteverde to
Orpheus when he is leading Eurydice back from the Shades is undoubtedly
an air, but the situation is one to which an air is appropriate, and
_musica parlante_ would be inappropriate. If the drama had been a play
to be spoken and not sung, there would not have been any incongruity in
allotting a song to Orpheus, to enable Eurydice to trace him through the
dark abodes of Hades. But the arias of Cavalli are not confined to such
special situations, and recur frequently,' Cavalli had the true Venetian
love of colour. In his hands the orchestra began to assume a new
importance. His attempts to give musical expression to the sights and
sounds of nature--the murmur of the sea, the rippling of the brook and
the tempestuous fury of the winds--mark an interesting step in the
history of orchestral development. With Marcantonio Cesti appears
another innovation of scarcely less importance to the history of opera
than the invention of the aria itself--the _da capo_ or the repetition
of the first part of the aria in its entirety after the conclusion of
the second part. However much the _da capo_ may have contributed to the
settlement of form in composition, it must be admitted that it struck at
the root of all real dramatic effect, and in process of time degraded
opera to the level of a concert. Cesti was a pupil of Carissimi, who is
famous chiefly for his sacred works, and from him he learnt to prefer
mere musical beauty to dramatic truth. Those of his operas which remain
to us show a far greater command of orchestral and vocal resource than
Monteverde or Cavalli could boast, but so far as real expression and
sincerity are concerned, they are inferior to the less cultured efforts
of the earlier musicians. It would be idle to attempt an enumeration of
the Venetian composers of the seventeenth century and their works. Some
idea of the musical activity which prevailed may be gathered from the
fact that while the first public theatre was opened in 1637, before the
close of the century there were no less than eleven theatres in the city
devoted to the performance of opera alone.

Meanwhile the enthusiasm for the new art-form spread through the cities
of Italy. According to an extant letter of Salvator Rosa's, opera was in
full swing in Rome during the Carnival of 1652. The first opera of
Provenzale, the founder of the Neapolitan school, was produced in 1658.
Bologna, Milan, Parma, and other cities soon followed suit. France, too,
was not behindhand, but there the development of the art soon deserved
the name a new school of opera, distinct in many important particulars
from its parent in Italy. The French nobles who saw the performance of
Peri's 'Euridice' at the marriage of Henry IV. may have carried back
tales of its splendour and beauty to their own country, but Paris was
not as yet ripe for opera. Not until 1647 did the French Court make the
acquaintance of the new art which was afterwards to win some of its most
brilliant triumphs in their city. In that year a performance of Peri's
'Euridice' (which, in spite of newer developments, had not lost its
popularity) was given in Paris under the patronage of Cadinal Mazarin.
This was followed by Cavalli's 'Serse,' conducted by the composer
himself. These performances quickened the latent genius of the French
people, and Robert Cambert, the founder of their school, hastened to
produce operas, which, though bearing traces of Italian influence, were
nevertheless distinctively French in manner and method. His works, two
of which are known to us, 'Pomone' and 'Les Peines et les Plaisirs de
l'Amour,' were to a certain extent a development of the masques which
had been popular in Paris for many years. They are pastoral and
allegorical in subject, and are often merely a vehicle for fulsome
adulation of the 'Roi Soleil.' But in construction they are operas pure
and simple. There is no spoken dialogue, and the music is continuous
from first to last. Cambert's operas were very successful, and in
conjunction with his librettist Perrin he received a charter from the
King in 1669, giving him the sole right of establishing opera-houses in
the kingdom. Quarrels, however, ensued. Cambert and Perrin separated.
The charter was revoked, or rather granted to a new-comer, Giovanni
Battista Lulli, and Cambert, in disgrace, retired to England, where he
died. Lulli (1633-1687) left Italy too young to be much influenced by
the developments of opera in that country, and was besides too good a
man of business to allow his artistic instinct to interfere with his
chance of success. He found Cambert's operas popular in Paris, and
instead of attempting any radical reforms, he adhered to the form which
he found ready made, only developing the orchestra to an extent which
was then unknown, and adding dignity and passion to the airs and
recitatives. Lulli's industry was extraordinary. During the space of
fourteen years he wrote no fewer than twenty operas, conceived upon a
grand scale, and produced with great magnificence. His treatment of
recitative is perhaps his strongest point, for in spite of the beauty of
one or two isolated songs, such as the famous 'Bois epais' in 'Amadis'
and Charon's wonderful air in 'Alceste,' his melodic gift was not great,
and his choral writing is generally of the most unpretentious
description. But his recitative is always solid and dignified, and often
impassioned and pathetic. Music, too, owes him a great debt for his
invention of what is known as the French form of overture, consisting
of a prelude, fugue, and dance movement, which was afterwards carried to
the highest conceivable pitch of perfection by Handel.

Meanwhile an offshoot of the French school, transplanted to the banks of
the Thames, had blossomed into a brief but brilliant life under the
fostering care of the greatest musical genius our island has ever
produced, Henry Purcell. Charles II. was not a profound musician, but he
knew what sort of music he liked, and on one point his mind was made
up--that he did not like the music of the elderly composers who had
survived the Protectorate, and came forward at his restoration to claim
the posts which they had held at his father's court. Christopher
Gibbons, Child, and other relics of the dead polyphonic school were
quietly dismissed to provincial organ-lofts, and Pelham Humphreys, the
most promising of the 'Children of the Chapel Royal,' was sent over to
Paris to learn all that was newest in music at the feet of Lulli.
Humphreys came back, in the words of Pepys, 'an absolute Monsieur,' full
of the latest theories concerning opera and music generally, and with a
sublime contempt for the efforts of his stay-at-home colleagues. His own
music shows the French influence very strongly, and in that of his pupil
Henry Purcell (1658-1695) it may also be perceived, although coloured
and transmuted by the intensely English character of Purcell's own
genius. For many years it was supposed that Purcell's first and,
strictly speaking, his only opera, 'Dido and AEneas,' was written by him
at the age of seventeen and produced in 1675. Mr. Barclay Squire has now
proved that it was not produced until much later, but this scarcely
lessens the wonder of it, for Purcell can never have seen an opera
performed, and his acquaintance with the new art-form must have been
based upon Pelham Humphrey's account of the performances which he had
seen in Paris. Possibly, too, he may have had opportunities of studying
the engraved scores of some of Lulli's operas, which, considering the
close intercourse between the courts of France and England, may have
found their way across the Channel. 'Dido and AEneas' is now universally
spoken of as the first English opera. Masques had been popular from the
time of Queen Elizabeth onwards, which the greatest living poets and
musicians had not disdained to produce, and Sir William Davenant had
given performances of musical dramas 'after the manner of the Ancients'
during the closing years of the Commonwealth, but it is probable that
spoken dialogue occurred in all these entertainments, as it certainly
did in Locke's 'Psyche,' Banister's 'Circe,' in fact, in all the
dramatic works of this period which were wrongly described as operas. In
'Dido and AEneas,' on the contrary, the music is continuous throughout.
Airs and recitatives, choruses and instrumental pieces succeed each
other, as in the operas of the Italian and French schools. 'Dido and
AEneas' was written for performance at a young ladies' school kept by
one Josias Priest in Leicester Fields and afterwards at Chelsea. The
libretto was the work of Nahum Tate, the Poet Laureate of the time. The
opera is in three short acts, and Virgil's version of the story is
followed pretty closely save for the intrusion of a sorceress and a
chorus of witches who have sworn Dido's destruction and send a messenger
to AEneas, disguised as Mercury, to hasten his departure. Dido's death
song, which is followed by a chorus of mourning Cupids, is one of the
most pathetic scenes ever written, and illustrates in a forcible manner
Purcell's beautiful and ingenious use of a ground-bass. The gloomy
chromatic passage constantly repeated by the bass instruments, with
ever-varying harmonies in the violins, paints such a picture of the
blank despair of a broken heart as Wagner himself, with his immense
orchestral resources, never surpassed. In the general construction of
his opera Purcell followed the French model, but his treatment of
recitative is bolder and more various than that of Lulli, while as a
melodist he is incomparably superior. Purcell never repeated the
experiment of 'Dido and AEneas.' Musical taste in England was presumably
not cultivated enough to appreciate a work of so advanced a style. At
any rate, for the rest of his life, Purcell wrote nothing for the
theatre but incidental music. Much of this, notably the scores of 'Timon
of Athens,' 'Bonduca,' and 'King Arthur,' is wonderfully beautiful, but
in all of these works the spoken dialogue forms the basis of the piece,
and the music is merely an adjunct, often with little reference to the
main interest of the play. In 'King Arthur' occurs the famous 'Frost
Scene,' the close resemblance of which to the 'Choeur de Peuples des
Climats Glaces' in Lulli's 'Isis' would alone make it certain that
Purcell was a careful student of the French school of opera.

Opera did not take long to cross the Alps, and early in the seventeenth
century the works of Italian composers found a warm welcome at the
courts of southern Germany. But Germany was not as yet ripe for a
national opera. During the first half of the century there are records
of one or two isolated attempts to found a school of German opera, but
the iron heel of the Thirty Years' War was on the neck of the country,
and art struggled in vain against overwhelming odds. The first German
opera, strictly so called, was the 'Dafne' of Heinrich Schuetz, the words
of which were a translation of the libretto already used by Peri. Of
this work, which was produced in 1627, all trace has been lost.
'Seelewig,' by Sigmund Staden, which is described as a 'Gesangweis auf
italienische Art gesetzet,' was printed at Nuremberg in 1644, but there
is no record of its ever having been performed. To Hamburg belongs the
honour of establishing German opera upon a permanent basis. There, in
1678, some years before the production of Purcell's 'Dido and AEneas,' an
opera-house was opened with a performance of a Singspiel entitled 'Der
erschaffene, gefallene und aufgerichtete Mensch,' the music of which was
composed by Johannn Theile. Three other works, all of them secular,
were produced in the same year. The new form of entertainment speedily
became popular among the rich burghers of the Free City, and composers
were easily found to cater for their taste.

For many years Hamburg was the only German town where opera found a
permanent home, but there the musical activity must have been
remarkable. Reinhard Keiser (1673-1739), the composer whose name stands
for what was best in the school, is said alone to have produced no fewer
than a hundred and sixteen operas. Nearly all of these works have
disappeared, and those that remain are for the most part disfigured by
the barbarous mixture of Italian and German which was fashionable at
Hamburg and in London too at that time. The singers were possibly for
the most part Italians, who insisted upon singing their airs in their
native language, though they had no objection to using German for the
recitatives, in which there was no opportunity for vocal display.
Keiser's music lacks the suavity of the Italian school, but his
recitatives are vigorous and powerful, and seem to foreshadow the
triumphs which the German school was afterwards to win in declamatory
music. The earliest operas of Handel (1685-1759) were written for
Hamburg, and in the one of them which Fate has preserved for us,
'Almira' (1704), we see the Hamburg school at its finest. In spite of
the ludicrous mixture of German and Italian there is a good deal of
dramatic power in the music, and the airs show how early Handel's
wonderful gift of melody had developed. The chorus has very little to
do, but a delightful feature of the work is to be found in the series of
beautiful dance-tunes lavishly scattered throughout it. One of these, a
Sarabande, was afterwards worked up into the famous air, 'Lascia ch' io
pianga,' in 'Rinaldo.' When the new Hamburg Opera-House was opened in
1874, it was inaugurated by a performance of 'Almira,' which gave
musicians a unique opportunity of realising to some extent what opera
was like at the beginning of the eighteenth century. In 1706 Handel left
Hamburg for the purpose of prosecuting his studies in Italy. There he
found the world at the feet of Alessandro Scarlatti (1659-1725), a
composer whose importance to the history of opera can scarcely be
over-estimated. He is said, like Cesti, to have been a pupil of
Carissimi, though, as the latter died in 1674, at the age of seventy, he
cannot have done much more than lay the foundation of his pupil's
greatness. The invention of the _da capo_ is generally attributed to
Scarlatti, wrongly, as has already been shown, since it appears in
Cesti's opera 'La Dori,' which was performed in 1663. But it seems
almost certain that Scarlatti was the first to use accompanied
recitative, a powerful means of dramatic expression in the hands of all
who followed him, while his genius advanced the science of
instrumentation to a point hitherto unknown.

Nevertheless, Scarlatti's efforts were almost exclusively addressed to
the development of the musical rather than the dramatic side of opera,
and he is largely responsible for the strait-jacket of convention in
which opera was confined during the greater part of the eighteenth
century, in fact until it was released by the genius of Gluck.

Handel's conquest of Italy was speedy and decisive. 'Rodrigo,' produced
at Florence in 1707, made him famous, and 'Agrippina' (Venice, 1708)
raised him almost to the rank of a god. At every pause in the
performance the theatre rang with shouts of 'Viva il caro Sassone,' and
the opera had an unbroken run of twenty-seven nights, a thing till then
unheard of. It did not take Handel long to learn all that Italy could
teach him. With his inexhaustible fertility of melody and his complete
command of every musical resource then known, he only needed to have his
German vigour tempered by Italian suppleness and grace to stand forth as
the foremost operatic composer of the age. His Italian training and his
theatrical experience gave him a thorough knowledge of the capabilities
of the human voice, and the practical common-sense which was always one
of his most striking characteristics prevented him from ever treating it
from the merely instrumental point of view, a pitfall into which many of
the great composers have fallen. He left Italy for London in 1710, and
produced his 'Rinaldo' at the Queen's Theatre in the Haymarket the
following year. It was put upon the stage with unexampled magnificence,
and its success was prodigious. 'Rinaldo' was quickly followed by such
succession of masterpieces as put the ancient glories of the Italian
stage to shame. Most of them were produced at the Haymarket Theatre,
either under Handel's own management or under the auspices of a company
known as the Royal Academy of Music. Handel's success made him many
enemies, and he was throughout his career the object of innumerable
plots on the part of disappointed and envious rivals. The most active of
these was Buononcini, himself a composer of no mean ability, though
eclipsed by the genius of Handel. Buononcini's machinations were so far
successful--though he himself was compelled to leave England in disgrace
for different reasons--that in 1741, after the production of his
'Deidamia,' Handel succumbed to bankruptcy and a severe attack of
paralysis. After this he wrote no more for the stage, but devoted
himself to the production of those oratorios which have made his name
famous wherever the English language is spoken.

In spite of their transcendent beauties, the form of Handel's operas has
long banished them from the stage. Handel, with all his genius, was not
one of the great revolutionists of the history of music. He was content
to bring existing forms to the highest possible point of perfection,
without seeking to embark upon new oceans of discovery. Opera in his day
consisted of a string of airs connected by recitative, with an
occasional duet, and a chorus to bring down the curtain at the end of
the work. The airs were, as a rule, fully accompanied. Strings,
hautboys, and bassoons formed the groundwork of the orchestra. If
distinctive colouring or sonority were required, the composer used
flutes, horns, harps, and trumpets, while to gain an effect of a special
nature, he would call in the assistance of lutes and mandolins, or
archaic instruments such as the viola da gamba, violetta marina,
cornetto and theorbo. The _recitativo secco_ was accompanied by the
harpsichord, at which the composer himself presided. The _recitativo
stromentato_, or accompanied recitative, was only used to emphasise
situations of special importance. Handel's incomparable genius infused
so much dramatic power into this meagre form, that even now the truth
and sincerity of his songs charm us no less than their extraordinary
melodic beauty. But it is easy to see that in the hands of composers
less richly endowed, this form was fated to degenerate into a mere
concert upon the stage. The science of vocalisation was cultivated to
such a pitch of perfection that composers were tempted, and even
compelled, to consult the tastes of singers rather than dramatic truth.
Handel's successors, such as Porpora and Hasse, without a tithe of his
genius, used such talent as they possessed merely to exhibit the vocal
dexterity of popular singers in the most agreeable light. The favourite
form of entertainment in these degraded times was the pasticcio, a
hybrid production composed of a selection of songs from various popular
operas, often by three or four different composers, strung together
regardless of rhyme or reason. Even in Handel's lifetime the older
school of opera was tottering to its fall. Only the man was needed who
should sweep the mass of insincerity from the stage and replace it by
the purer ideal which had been the guiding spirit of Peri and
Monteverde.




CHAPTER II

THE REFORMS OF GLUCK


The death of Lulli left French opera established upon a sure foundation.
The form which he perfected seemed, with all its faults, to commend
itself to the genius of the nation, and for many years a succession of
his followers and imitators, such as Campra and Destouches, continued to
produce works which differed little in scope and execution from the
model he had established. The French drama of the seventeenth century
had reached such a high point of development that its influence over the
sister art was all-powerful. The composers of the French court willingly
sacrificed musical to declamatory interest, and thus, while they steered
clear of the mere tunefulness which was the rock on which Italian
composers made shipwreck, they fell into the opposite extreme and wrote
works which seem to us arid and jejune. Paris at this time was curiously
isolated from the world of music, and it is strange to find how little
the development of Italian opera affected the French school. Marais
(1650-1718) was more alive to Southern influences than most of his
contemporaries, and in his treatment of the aria there is a perceptible
approach to Italian methods; but Rameau (1683-1764) brought back French
opera once more to its distinctive national style. Though he followed
the general lines of Lulli's school, he brought to bear upon it a richer
sense of beauty and a completer musical organisation than Lulli ever
possessed. In his treatment of declamation pure and simple, he was
perhaps Lulli's inferior, but in all other respects he showed a decided
advance upon his predecessor. He infused new life into the monotonous
harmony and well-worn modulations which had done duty for so many years.
His rhythms were novel and suggestive, and the originality and resource
of his orchestration opened the eyes of Frenchmen to new worlds of
beauty and expression. Not the least important part of Rameau's work lay
in the influence which his music exerted upon the genius of the man to
whom the regeneration of opera is mainly due. Christoph Willibald Gluck
(1714-1787) was the son of a forester. Such musical education as he
received he acquired in Italy, and his earlier works are written in the
Italian style which was fashionable at the time. There are few
indications in his youthful operas of the power which was destined later
to work such changes in the world of opera. He was at first
whole-hearted in his devotion to the school of Porpora, Hasse and the
others who did so much to degrade Italian opera. 'Artaserse,' his first
work, was produced in 1741, the year in which Handel bade farewell for
ever to the stage. It was successful, and was promptly followed by
others no less fortunate. In 1745 Gluck visited England where he
produced 'La Caduta de' Giganti,' a work which excited the contempt of
Handel. In the following year he produced 'Piramo e Tisbe,' a pasticcio,
which failed completely. Its production, however, was by no means labour
lost, if it be true, as the story goes, that it was by its means that
Gluck's eyes were opened to the degradation to which opera had been
reduced. It was about this time that Gluck first heard Rameau's music,
and the power and simplicity of it compared with the empty sensuousness
of Italian opera, must have materially strengthened him in the desire to
do something to reform and purify his art. Yet, in spite of good
resolutions, Gluck's progress was slow. In 1755 he settled at Vienna,
and there, under the shadow of the court, he produced a series of works
in which the attempt to realise dramatic truth is often distinctly
perceptible, though the composer had as yet not mastered the means for
its attainment. But in 1762 came 'Orfeo ed Euridice,' a work which
placed Gluck at the head of all living operatic composers, and laid the
foundation of the modern school of opera.

The libretto of 'Orfeo' was by Calzabigi, a prominent man of letters,
but it seems probable that Gluck's own share in it was not a small one.
The careful study which he had given to the proper conditions of opera
was not likely to exclude so important a question as that of the
construction and diction of the libretto, and the poem of 'Orfeo' shows
so marked an inclination to break away from the conventionality and sham
sentiment of the time that we can confidently attribute much of its
originality to the influence of the composer himself. The opening scene
shows the tomb of Eurydice erected in a grassy valley. Orpheus stands
beside it plunged in the deepest grief, while a troop of shepherds and
maidens bring flowers to adorn it. His despairing cry of 'Eurydice'
breaks passionately upon their mournful chorus, and the whole scene,
though drawn in simple lines, is instinct with genuine pathos. When the
rustic mourners have laid their gifts upon the tomb and departed,
Orpheus calls upon the shade of his lost wife in an air of exquisite
beauty, broken by expressive recitative. He declares his resolution of
following her to the underworld, when Eros enters and tells him of the
condition which the gods impose on him if he should attempt to rescue
Eurydice from the shades. Left to himself, Orpheus discusses the
question of the rescue in a recitative of great intrinsic power, which
shows at a glance how far Gluck had already distanced his predecessors
in variety and dramatic strength. The second act takes place in the
underworld. The chorus of Furies is both picturesque and effective, and
the barking of Cerberus which sounds through it is a touch, which though
its _naivete_ may provoke a smile, is characteristic of Gluck's
strenuous struggle for realism. Orpheus appears and pleads his cause in
accents of touching entreaty. Time after time his pathetic song is
broken by a sternly decisive 'No,' but in the end he triumphs, and the
Furies grant him passage. The next scene is in the Elysian fields.
After an introduction of charming grace, the spirits of the blessed are
discovered disporting themselves after their kind. Orpheus appears, lost
in wonder at the magical beauty of all around him. Here again is a
remarkable instance of Gluck's pictorial power. Simple as are the means
he employs, the effect is extraordinary. The murmuring of streams, the
singing of birds, and the placid beauty of the landscape are depicted
with a touch which, if light, is infallibly sure. Then follows the
famous scene in which Orpheus, forbidden to look at the face of his
beloved, tries to find her by touch and instinct among the crowd of
happy spirits who pass him by. At last she approaches, and he clasps her
in his arms, while a chorus of perfect beauty bids him farewell as he
leads her in triumph to the world above. The third act shows the two
wandering in a cavern on their way to the light of day. Eurydice is
grieved that her husband should never look into her eyes, and her faith
is growing cold. After a scene in which passionate beauty goes side by
side with strange relapses into conventionality, Orpheus gives way to
her prayers and reproaches, and turns to embrace her. In a moment she
sinks back lifeless, and he pours forth his despair in the immortal
strains of 'Che faro senza Euridice.' Eros then appears, and tells him
that the gods have had pity upon his sorrow. He transports him to the
Temple of Love, where Eurydice, restored to life, is awaiting him, and
the opera ends with conventional rejoicings.

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