BARBAJA, the ex-waiter at the Ridotto of the San Carlo Theatre, was director of the San Carlo itself, and almost at the height of his glory, which Rossini was so much to increase, when Tancredi was brought out at Venice and L'Italiana in Algeri at Milan.

The year following was not for Rossini a very brilliant one; and neither Aureliano in Palmira, nor a cantata called Egle e Irene, written for the Princess Belgiojoso, nor Il Turco in Italia—all of the year 1814—did much to increase his reputation. But the success of Tancredi and of L'Italiana in Algeri was enough for Barbaja, who accordingly invited Rossini in 1814 to come to Naples and compose something for the San Carlo. On his arrival Rossini signed a contract with Barbaja for several years; binding himself to write two new operas annually, and to re-arrange the music of any old works the manager might wish to produce, either at his principal theatre or at the second Neapolitan opera-house, the Teatro del Fondo, of which also Barbaja was lessee. Rossini's emoluments were to be 40l. (200 ducats) a month with a share in the profits of the gambling saloon. Such an engagement would not seem very magnificent to a second or third rate composer of our own time. But it was better than 40l. an opera, at which rate Rossini had hitherto been paid. Provided, moreover, that he supplied Barbaja with his two new operas every year he was at liberty to write for other managers.

In the present day it is not uncommon to find an operatic manager of enterprise directing two lyrical theatres in two different countries. Mr. Lumley was manager at the same time of Her Majesty's Theatre in London and of the ThÉÂtre des Italiens in Paris. The late Mr. Gye entered into an arrangement (which however was not carried out) for directing the Imperial Opera House of St. Petersburg, while he was at the same time managing the Royal Italian Opera of London. Mr. Mapleson directs simultaneously Her Majesty's Theatre in London, and the Italian Opera which he has recently established at the so-called Academy of Music in New York. But these feats are nothing compared with the performances of Barbaja in the managerial line. It is much easier at the present time to get from London to New York or from London to St. Petersburg, than it was in the days of Barbaja to move from Naples or even from Milan to Vienna; and a manager must have possessed great administrative ability who could direct three operatic enterprises in three different capitals at the same time.

Barbaja had in his employment all the great composers and all the best singers of his native Italy. So numerous was his company that he scarcely knew who did and who did not belong to it; and a story is told of his meeting one day a singer of some celebrity, and offering him an engagement—when, to his consternation and horror, the vocalist informed him that he had been drawing a regular salary from the theatre for the last three months. "Go to Donizetti," cried Barbaja, "and tell him to give you a part without a moment's delay."

On one occasion Donizetti, engaged at that time as accompanist at the Scala Theatre, had been requested to try the voice of a lady who had come to Barbaja with a letter of recommendation. Donizetti asked her to go through a few exercises in solfeggio; on which Barbaja, mistaking do, re, mi, &c., for the words of some outlandish tongue, exclaimed that it would be useless to sing in a foreign language, and that the postulant for an engagement had better carry her talents elsewhere. Another time, when a favourite vocalist complained that the piano, to whose accompaniment she had been rehearsing her part, was too high, Barbaja at once promised that before the next rehearsal he would have it lowered. The following morning the instrument was, as before, half a note above the requisite pitch. It was pointed out to Barbaja that the piano still wanted lowering; upon which he flew into a violent passion and, summoning one of the stage carpenters, asked him why, when he had been told that the piano was too high, he had not shortened it by two or three inches instead of doing so only by one.

When his singers were genuinely successful he would take their part under all circumstances, and defend them against every attack. A popular prima donna told him one day, on arriving at the San Carlo Theatre, whither she had been borne in a sedan-chair, that one of the carriers had been very negligent in his duty, and had allowed her several times to be bumped on the ground. Barbaja called the porters to his room and, giving each a box on the ears, exclaimed, "Which of you two brutes was in fault?"

For the sake of teasing Barbaja, a few of the subscribers to the Scala Theatre agreed one night to hiss Rubini in one of his best parts. Barbaja, perfectly aghast, looked from his box, shook his fist at the seeming malcontents, and, alike indignant and enthusiastic, called out to the universally-admired tenor: "Bravo, Rubini, never mind those pigs! It is I who pay you, and I am delighted with your singing."

In spite of his long-continued success, Barbaja ended, like so many managers, by failing; and but that he stood well with the Austrian Government, who gave him a contract for building barracks at Milan, he might have died in poverty. There is nothing, however, to show that his collapse was due to ignorance of music. It would be probably nearer the truth to attribute it to that loss of energy and tact by which advancing years are generally accompanied.

Among the prime donne of the San Carlo Theatre Barbaja's favourite, in the fullest sense of the word, was Mademoiselle Colbran, who, after studying under Crescentini and Marinelli, made her first appearance with brilliant success at Paris in 1801. She was then but sixteen years of age, having been born at Madrid in 1785. When Rossini, then, first met her at Naples in 1815, she was already thirty. Her voice began to deteriorate soon afterwards, if we are to believe Stendhal—who, much as he had in common with the AbbÉ Carpani (including nearly the whole of the materials for his Life of Rossini), did not share that writer's admiration for a singer whom it was the fashion for royalists to laud, for republicans to decry. Stendhal, though he feared that opera, accustomed to subventions and to patronage of all kinds, could not flourish under republican institutions, was nevertheless inclined towards republicanism.

Mademoiselle Colbran has been described as a great beauty in the queenly style—dark hair, brilliant eyes, imposing demeanour; and though Stendhal is under the impression that her voice began to fall off soon after Rossini's arrival at Naples, it seems certain that she must have preserved it in all its beauty until long afterwards. Rossini in any case wrote for her many of his best parts which, had they not been perfectly sung, could scarcely have met with the success they actually obtained. Among these parts may be mentioned in particular those of Desdemona, Elcia in MosÈ in Egitto, Elena in La Donna del Lago, Zelmira in the opera of that name, and Semiramide. The artistic merits of Mademoiselle Colbran were, however, as has already been mentioned, discussed habitually from a political point of view. Revolutionists hissed her because the king admired her, while royalists were ready under all circumstances to applaud her. The first part which Rossini composed for Mademoiselle Colbran, his future wife, was that of Elisabetta in the opera of the same name; a work founded on Scott's novel of Kenilworth, and written appropriately enough by a certain Signor Smith. Smith's knowledge of the English language seems, in spite of his name, to have been imperfect; for, instead of taking his story direct from the original, he borrowed it in an adapted shape from a French melodrama.

The Neapolitans, up to this time, had not heard a note of Rossini's music. He had conquered the hearts of the Venetians and the Milanese. But he was unknown at Naples; and not to have earned the applause of the Neapolitan public was not to have achieved an Italian reputation. The connoisseurs of Naples were by no means disposed to accept Rossini on the strength of the success he had achieved at Milan and Venice; while the professors of the famous Conservatorio, whose classes he had not followed, were incredulous as to his being a composer of any sound musical learning, and were quite prepared to find him a much overrated man.

Rossini began by playing a trick on the Neapolitan audience; for in lieu of an original composition, he prefaced Elisabetta with an overture which he had written the year before at Milan for Aureliano in Palmira—and which he was to offer to the Romans a year afterwards as overture to Il Barbiere. The Neapolitans were delighted with the overture; but it has been surmised that had they known it to have been originally composed for an opera which had failed at Milan, they would not, perhaps, have applauded it so much. The first piece in the opera was, as Stendhal tells us, a duet for Leicester and his young wife, in the minor, which, says Stendhal, was "very original." The finale to the first act, in which the leading motives of the overture were introduced, called forth enthusiastic applause. "All the emotions of serious opera with no tedious intervals between:" such, Stendhal (or Carpani) informs us, was the phrase in which the general verdict of the Neapolitan public was expressed. Mademoiselle Colbran's greatest success, however, was not achieved until the second act where, on the rising of the curtain, Elisabetta, attired in an historical costume—warranted authentic and ordered expressly from London by a fanatical English admirer—had a grand scena. The concerted finale to this act was another triumph both for the composer and for the singers.

Elisabetta made but little mark beyond the frontiers of Italy. It contains much beautiful music; but the distribution of characters is not all that could be desired. Thus the parts of Norfolk, and of Leicester, are both given to tenors; though Norfolk as a wicked personage should have been represented by a baritone or bass. The bass singer, however, was still kept in the background; and at the San Carlo, though there were three admirable tenors—Davide, Nozzari, and Garcia,—there was no bass singer capable of taking a leading part. But for Rossini the bass singer might have remained indefinitely in obscurity. Gradually, however, he was brought to the front, not only in comic operas, where the Italians already tolerated him, but also in serious operas like Otello and Semiramide, and in half-character works such as Cenerentola and La Gazza Ladra. Elisabetta was the first Italian opera in which recitative was accompanied by the stringed quartet in place of the double bass and piano previously employed.

Rossini had plenty of work to do at Naples, for, besides composing two new operas every year he had to transpose parts and to correct and complete operatic scores. But in addition to all this he found time to write two works for Rome, which were produced in 1816, during the carnival. One of these, Torvaldo e Dorliska, was brought out at the Teatro Valle where it met with so little success that the composer informed his mother of the fact by sending her the drawing, not this time of a full-sized fiasco, but of a small fiasco or fiaschetto. Torvaldo e Dorliska, in which the principal parts were written for Remorini and Galli, the two best bass singers of their time, and for Donzelli, the celebrated tenor, must in spite of its failure have possessed some merit. It was performed at Paris in 1825 for the first appearance of Mademoiselle Garcia, the future Malibran; and Rossini borrowed from it the motive of the admirable letter duet in Otello.