CHAPTER I.
A VISIT TO LONDON—ROSSINI AND GEORGE IV.

ROSSINI until after his marriage never left Italy. But he then made up his mind to travel, and one journey leads naturally to another. The composer’s visit to Vienna procured him the invitation to Verona, and at Verona he was brought into contact with the ambassadors of all the principal Powers in Europe.

And it must not be thought that ambassadors did not occupy themselves very practically in those days with operatic matters. Mr. Ebers, in his “Seven Years of the King’s Theatre,” tells us that on one occasion the English ambassador at Paris exercised his influence to obtain the best artists from that city. The Baron de la FertÉ was about the same time sent on a mission to London to reclaim some other artists, who had stayed beyond the period of leave granted to them by the AcadÉmie Royale; and a few years later it was through Prince Polignac, French ambassador at London, that Rossini’s engagement to direct the Italian Opera at Paris was effected.

It was at Bologna, immediately after his return from Verona, that Rossini received an invitation from the management of the King’s Theatre to pass the next season (from January to May, 1824) in London. A formal engagement was at the same time proposed to him, by which the services of himself as composer, and of his wife as singer, were secured.

The King’s Theatre was then in the hands of Mr. Ebers, who has left an interesting and instructive account of his operatic experience. The out-going manager, like all his predecessors from the beginning, had failed, and there was an execution in the theatre when Mr. Ebers undertook to re-open it for the season of 1821. The new director, either to give himself confidence or to inspire confidence in the subscribers and general public, prevailed upon five noblemen to form a “Committee of Superintendence;” but their duties do not seem to have been well defined, and all the responsibilities of management rested with Mr. Ebers.

Rossini must have had a good company to write for at the King’s Theatre. The singers engaged by Mr. Ebers, when he commenced his career as manager in 1821, were Madame Camporese, Madame Vestris, Madame Ronzi de Begnis; and MM. Ambrogetti, Angrisani, Begrez, and Curioni. Many if not all these artistes were doubtless re-engaged at the end of the first season, for we are told significantly enough that “it was considered successful though the manager lost money by it;” and in 1824 the company was further strengthened by the accession of Madame Pasta and Madame Catalani.

During his first “successful” season Mr. Ebers lost seven thousand pounds, when, by way of encouraging him, the proprietor, Mr. Chambers, increased his rent from three thousand one hundred and eighty pounds to ten thousand. Altogether from the beginning of 1821 to the end of 1827, Mr. Ebers dropped money regularly every year; the smallest deficit in the budget of any one season being that of the last, when the manager thought himself fortunate to escape with a loss of not quite three thousand pounds.

In England theatres do not receive “subventions” from the State; but in support of opera, if not of other forms of the drama, enterprising persons have always been found willing to lose from time to time a little fortune. As a consequence of this happy infatuation the Italian Opera in England, like England itself as a musical country, has always had an excellent name with foreign artistes; and Rossini did not err in anticipating for himself and wife a rich harvest from their united efforts during the London season of 1824.

The reputation of Rossini in England was immense with the general public and the great majority of dilettanti, though, as in Vienna and Paris, critics could be found to deny his merit. The objections to his music seem to have proceeded chiefly from persons who had become attached by inveterate habit to works of an older school. Some, too, may have complained of the constant preference given to his operas above those of all other composers, from mere professional jealousy.

Still there was no musician at our Italian Opera to play towards Rossini the part with which, as we shall afterwards see, Paer was credited in Paris; and if our English composers ever injured Rossini it was not by attacking him in print, nor by getting up intrigues against him, but by taking him under their patronage, and presenting him to the public with additions and adornments of their own.

“Tom” Cook, Mr. Rophino Lacy, Sir Henry Bishop, instead of undervaluing distinguished foreign composers in the French style, were in the habit of “adapting” and editing their works, introducing new airs into them, and furnishing them with new overtures—the old ones not being good enough.

However, at the King’s Theatre Rossini’s operas were produced in their original Italian form; and Lord Mount Edgcumbe tells us that for many years after the first introduction of Rossini’s works into England, “so entirely did he engross the stage, that the operas of no other master were ever to be heard, with the exception only of those of Mozart; and of his, only ‘Don Giovanni’ and ‘Le Nozze de Figaro.’ Every other composer past and present was totally put aside, and these two alone named or thought of.”

Rossini then was at least admired in good company; but the admiration generally felt for him was not entertained by the author just mentioned. It has already been seen that Lord Mount Edgcumbe, who no doubt represented a number of old amateurs, the dilettanti of a past age, was by no means delighted with Rossini’s brilliant style, nor, above all, with his innovations in regard to form.

“The construction of these newly invented pieces,” he justly remarks, “is essentially different from the old. The dialogue,” he continues—with less justice—“which used to be carried on in recitative, and which in Metastasio’s operas is often so beautiful and interesting, is now cut up (and rendered unintelligible if it were worth listening to) into pezzi concertati, or long singing conversations, which present a tedious succession of unconnected, ever-changing motivos, having nothing to do with each other. Single songs are almost exploded. Even the prima donna, who would formerly have complained at having less than three or four airs allotted to her, is now satisfied with one trifling cavatina for a whole evening.”

The beauty of Lord Mount Edgcumbe’s criticism is that his bare facts, however absurdly he may qualify them, do in themselves possess a certain amount of truth. It is only his feelings and opinions that are erroneous. It is observable, too, that though he does not like the new composer himself, he never attempts to deny Rossini’s great success with the public.

Mr. Ebers is equally explicit as to the popularity of Rossini just at the time when he was expected in London. “Of all the operas,” he says, “produced from 1821 to 1828, nearly half were Rossini’s, or in exact numbers fourteen out of thirty-four;” and it must be remembered that the majority of these were constantly repeated, whereas most of the others were brought out only for a few nights and then laid aside.

The visit, then, of Rossini to London in 1824 was looked forward to by all the musical and fashionable society of London with great interest, and it doubtless had a happy effect on the subscription list at the King’s Theatre. On leaving Bologna Rossini took route to London through Paris, where he arrived with his wife at the beginning of November. He was received with much enthusiasm, though, as we shall afterwards see, some unavailing attempts were made to persuade the public that he was, after all, a very much over-rated man.

After remaining a month in Paris, whither he was to return a few months later, Rossini started for England, and after a very bad passage, arrived in London suffering from the combined effects of exhaustion and a particularly bad cold.

He had only been a few minutes in his apartments when Count Lieven, the Russian ambassador, was announced. The Count had called, on the part of the king, to say that his Majesty wished to see Rossini before any one else. It must be explained that Rossini had met the Countess Lieven at Verona, and it is to be presumed that she had recommended him to her husband.

The composer acknowledged this signal attention in becoming terms. The state of his health did not allow him to profit forthwith by the king’s invitation, but he promised to inform his Majesty as soon as he got better, and in the meanwhile to receive no visitors. He accordingly remained in the house, and denied himself to every one.

Three days afterwards, feeling better, and his cold having disappeared, Rossini started with Count Lieven for Brighton, and was presented to George IV. at the Pavilion.

His Majesty was playing at cards with a lady. He received Rossini very cordially, and invited him to take a hand at ÉcartÉ, but the composer modestly declined, saying that he would rather not have so powerful an opponent. After a few minutes’ conversation, which seems to have left a very agreeable impression upon Rossini, the king asked him if he would like to hear his band, and taking him by the arm, conducted him to the concert-room.

When they reached the concert-room, the king said to Rossini that he would now hear a piece of music which would perhaps not be to his liking; “but,” he continued, “I have only chosen the first piece. After that the band will play whatever you wish.”

The first piece must have been more or less to Rossini’s taste, for it was the overture to the “Barber of Seville.” So, at least, says Mr. Ebers. M. Azevedo says it was the overture to “La Gazza Ladra;” at all events it was an overture by Rossini.

The maestro was pleased with the king’s attention, and seems to have thought the performance really good. He had in the meanwhile found out from Mayer, the conductor of the orchestra, what were the king’s favourite pieces, and asked for them, pointing out during the execution their characteristic beauties. Finally, he said to Mayer that he had never heard “God save the King,” except on the piano, and that he should like to hear it performed by his excellent band. The king accepted this as a return compliment for the choice of the overture, and was evidently gratified.

Rossini used to say that Alexander I. of Russia, and George IV. of England, were the two most amiable crowned heads he had ever met; and he assured Ferdinand Hiller that “of the charm of George IV.’s personal appearance and demeanour it was scarcely possible to form an idea.”

During the progress of the concert in the music-hall of the Pavilion, George IV. presented Rossini to all the principal personages of the court; and the effect of this introduction from the sovereign himself was shown in the formation of a committee of lady patronesses, who organised two concerts at Almack’s for Rossini’s benefit at two guineas a ticket.

All the principal singers in London offered Rossini their services, and would not hear of remuneration. The orchestra, chorus, and copyists had alone to be paid, and the receipts were enormous. The only thing that displeased Rossini in the matter was the refusal of the highly exclusive committee to give him some tickets for the artists who had offered him their gratuitous assistance.

At the first concert Rossini produced a cantata, of which as little seems to be known in the present day as of the Opera which he had undertaken to write for the King’s Theatre. The cantata was called “Homage to Byron;” it was written for a single voice, chorus and orchestra, and Rossini himself sang the solo. At a second concert he joined the celebrated Madame Catalani in the duet “Se fiato” from “Il Matrimonio Segretto,” and both in the solo and in the duet was enthusiastically applauded.

Of course, too, Madame Rossini-Colbran took part in these concerts, the attractiveness of which was further increased by the co-operation of Madame Catalani, Madame Pasta, Curioni, the tenor, Placci, the bass, and all the principal singers of the King’s Theatre.

It is satisfactory to know that Rossini preserved some agreeable recollections of his visit to London. He told Ferdinand Hiller that until he went to England, he was never able to save a farthing; and it was something, after all, to gain there in four months more than he had gained in Italy during his whole career.

“From the beginning,” he said,[30] “I had an opportunity of observing how disproportionately singers were paid in comparison with composers. If the composer got fifty ducats, the singer received a thousand. Italian operatic composers might formerly write heaven knows how many operas, and yet only be able to exist miserably. Things hardly went otherwise with myself until my appointment under Barbaja.”

“‘Tancredi’ was your first opera which really made a great hit, maestro; how much did you get for it?”

“Five hundred francs,” replied Rossini; “and when I wrote my last Italian opera, ‘Semiramide,’ and stipulated for five thousand francs, I was looked upon, not by the impresario alone, but by the entire public, as a kind of pickpocket.”

“You have the consolation of knowing,” said Hiller, “that singers, managers, and publishers have been enriched by your means.”

“A fine consolation,” replied Rossini. “Except during my stay in England, I never gained sufficient by my art to be enabled to put by anything; and even in London I did not get money as a composer, but as an accompanyist.”

“But still,” observed Hiller, “that was because you were a celebrated composer.”

“That is what my friends said,” replied Rossini, “to decide me to do it. It may have been prejudice, but I had a kind of repugnance to being paid for accompanying on the piano, and I have only done so in London. However, people wanted to see the tip of my nose, and to hear my wife. I had fixed for our co-operation at musical soirÉes the tolerably high price of fifty pounds—we attended somewhere about sixty such soirÉes, and that was after all worth having. In London, too, musicians will do anything to get money, and some delicious facts came under my observation there. For instance, the first time that I undertook the task of accompanyist at a soirÉe of this description, I was informed that Puzzi, the celebrated horn-player, and Dragonetti, the more celebrated contrebassist, would also be present. I thought they would perform solos; not a bit of it! They were to assist me in accompanying. ‘Have you, then, your parts to accompany these pieces?’ I asked them.

“‘Not we,’ was their answer; ‘but we get well paid, and we accompany as we think fit.’

“These extemporaneous attempts at instrumentation struck me as rather dangerous, and I therefore begged Dragonetti to content himself with giving a few pizzicatos, when I winked at him and Puzzi to strengthen the final cadenzas with a few notes, which, as a good musician, as he was, he easily invented for the occasion. In this manner things went off without any disastrous results, and every one was pleased.”

“Delicious,” exclaimed Hiller. “Still it strikes me that the English have made great progress in a musical point of view. At the present time a great deal of good music is performed in London—it is well performed, and listened to attentively—that is to say, at public concerts. In private drawing-rooms music still plays a sorry part, and a great number of individuals, totally devoid of talent, give themselves airs of incredible assurance, and impart instruction on subjects of which their knowledge amounts to about nothing.”

“I knew in London a certain X., who had amassed a large fortune as a teacher in singing and the pianoforte,” said Rossini, “while all he understood was to play a little, most wretchedly, on the flute. There was another man, with an immense connection, who did not even know the notes. He employed an accompanyist, to beat into his head the pieces he afterwards taught, and to accompany him in his lessons; but he had a good voice.”

CHAPTER II.
ROSSINI’S OPERA FOR THE KING’S THEATRE.

DURING that season of 1824, which, at the King’s Theatre was so “successful,” that Mr. Ebers lost only seven thousand pounds, there certainly was no lack of money among the amateurs of London, for Madame Catalani, between the months of January and May, realised as much as ten thousand pounds, while Rossini and his wife are said to have gained seven thousand pounds—just what Mr. Ebers lost.

The small gains of the composer, and the large gains of the singer, have often been contrasted. But what a contrast is offered by the singer’s large gains and the manager’s large losses! A book, entitled “Operatic Martyrs,” might be written, showing how many fortunes have been lost, and who have lost them, in carrying on the struggle so gallantly maintained in England during the last century and a half in support of Italian Opera.

In Handel’s time, when opera was first set going in this country, the king, the court, certain members of the aristocracy, would subscribe to give the unfortunate manager some little chance—to give him, at least, enough “law” to prevent his being run down before the end of the season. When the English nobility became tired of offering their very modest contributions in support of art, the manager still went on failing; but rich dilettante speculators were found ready to throw their treasures into the gulf—Mr. Caldas, a wine merchant; Mr. Ebers, a librarian; Mr. Chambers, a banker; Mr. Delafield, a brewer.

Indeed, nothing is more certain than that opera as a speculation must always fail in England,—except that fresh operatic speculators will always be found ready to fail again.

The reason of these constant collapses may be explained by simple arithmetic. The English managers, without a subvention and with heavy rent to pay, have to make their remuneration to artistes at least equal to that of foreign managers who have no rent to pay, and are in the receipt of a heavy subvention.

For instance, in Mr. Ebers’s time, the manager of the Italian Opera of Paris was in a better position than the manager of the Italian Opera in London by fifteen thousand pounds a season, or three thousand seven hundred and fifty pounds a month.

Mr. Ebers paid ten thousand pounds a year for the King’s Theatre—practically, ten thousand pounds for a term or season of four months.

The manager of the Italian Opera in Paris paid no rent, and received a subvention of one hundred and twenty thousand francs, or four thousand eight hundred pounds.

The expenses, then, of the English manager were greater than those of the French manager by nearly fifteen thousand pounds, and he had to spend at least as much as his competitor (in fact, rather more,) in salaries to singers and musicians.

The prices of admission were, it is true, considerably higher in London than in Paris, as they are now; but to induce the public to pay these prices, it has always been found necessary to engage an unusually large number of first-rate artistes for London. In fine, the English manager has to spend more money in salaries than the French manager; he has a heavy rent to pay, and he receives no assistance from the government. If Mr. Ebers, in the year 1824, had been in the same position as the manager of the Italian Opera in Paris, instead of losing seven thousand pounds, he would have gained about eight thousand.

The position of the English manager relatively to that of foreign managers (not only in Paris, but in St. Petersburgh, Berlin, Vienna, &c.) remains in principle the same. He is weighted in the race, and always ends by ruining himself, or his backers, or both.—Bankrupturus vos salutat is the fitting motto of the British impresario on entering the managerial arena.

However, it is not true, as M. Azevedo imagines, that the manager of the King’s Theatre was so unsuccessful the year of Rossini’s visit, that he could not get through the season. On the contrary, we have seen that Mr. Ebers got through triumphantly—with the loss of only seven thousand pounds. He did not, according to the announcement made to the public, bring out Rossini’s opera; but it is not at all certain that in this matter Rossini himself was not to blame.

Indeed, the history of the opera Rossini was to compose for London, and of which he certainly finished one act, is very imperfect: and we have an English and a French version of the matter, which are, in some points, quite contradictory.

M. Azevedo says, that the libretto was entitled “La Figlia dell’Aria;” that Rossini was to receive six thousand francs for the opera, in three instalments; that he completed and delivered the first act; that he was unable to get paid for it; and that the manuscript was still at the King’s Theatre when he quitted London, after empowering a friend to take proceedings for its recovery—in spite of which, it seems never afterwards to have been heard of.

But Mr. Ebers being manager of the King’s Theatre at the time, must have known something about the matter, and according to his version the opera was entitled “Ugo re d’Italia,” and the only defaulter was Rossini, who did not supply it according to his agreement.

Mr. Ebers says that Rossini had promised at the beginning of the season in January, to compose the work; but that after it had been repeatedly announced for performance, it appeared at the end of May that it was “only half finished.”

That is to say, the first act was finished, on the delivery of which, Rossini should have received his second instalment.

But Rossini had at this time, says Mr. Ebers, quarrelled with the management [cause not given], and accepted the post of director at the Italian Opera of Paris; and he adds, that the score of the opera, or rather of the first act, was deposited with Messrs. Ransom, the bankers. To finish the story, Messrs. Ransom, asked by the present writer for information on the subject, declare that they never had a score of Rossini’s in their possession.

It would appear, then, that an entire act by Rossini got somehow lost in London, and it will have been observed, that there is a discrepancy between the English and French versions of the affair as to the title of the missing work. M. Azevedo, M. FÉlix Clement, and the French biographers of Rossini, generally call it “La Figlia dell’Aria.” Mr. Ebers, who says it was actually announced for representation, calls it “Ugo re d’Italia.”

To make the matter still more confused, not “Ugo,” but “Ottone re d’Italia” appears in Zanolini’s catalogue as the title of one of Rossini’s complete operas, and this “Ottone re d’Italia” is said by M. Azevedo to be nothing more than “Adelaida di Borgogna” under another name.

The general result, then, of Rossini’s visit to London may be thus summed up. As a composer he did worse than nothing; for he wrote an entire act, which was lost, or which at least he was never able to recover. He also produced “Zelmira,” with his wife in the principal part; but the music, though greatly admired by connoisseurs, made no impression on the public.

The other feature in the result was the seven thousand pounds; but though this sum may have given Rossini a high idea of English liberality, the general inability to appreciate “Zelmira,” and the bungling or bad faith manifested in connection with his opera, “Ugone re d’Italia,” or “La Figlia dell’Aria,”—whichever it was,—must have made him think but poorly of England as an artistic country.

CHAPTER III.
ROSSINI IN PARIS.

ROSSINI’S journey to London was not merely an excursion from Paris. But he started from Paris to come to London; he returned to Paris as soon as he had made his seven thousand pounds, and, owing, no doubt, to his horror of sea water, never paid us the compliment of calling again.

M. Castil-Blaze, whose works on musical subjects are full of interesting information, but quite without order, tells us somewhere that large sums were offered to Rossini if he would only put on the jacket of Figaro and appear at the Italian Opera of London in his own immortal “Barber.” But this proposition was not likely to suit Rossini, and it is even to be feared that concert singing was not altogether to his taste, though he managed to go through a certain amount of it when he was in London, in consideration of the few hundreds a week that it brought him.

Nor was he above giving lessons during this brief but lucrative visit to England; and a story is told of his having once accompanied the vocal efforts of George IV. himself. The king made a mistake and was about to stop, but as Rossini went on he did the same. He afterwards spoke of having got into the wrong key, and of Rossini’s continuing to play as though nothing had happened.

“It was my duty to accompany your Majesty,” replied Rossini. “I am ready to follow you wherever you may go.”

Before coming to London Rossini had been uncertain whether to return to Paris or not. At least he had not accepted a proposition made to him by the Duke de Lauriston to undertake the direction of the Italian Opera in Paris. He agreed to it, however, when the offer was renewed to him in London by Prince Polignac, the French ambassador, and it was made the basis of a formal contract, which Rossini signed in the prince’s presence.

Rossini’s arrival in the French capital was the signal for the renewal of disputes as to the merit of his music compared with the good old national music of the country he had come to reside in. It was a feeble attempt to get up the same sort of feud which had divided all Paris when an attempt was made to introduce Italian Opera seventy years before.

Until the end of the eighteenth century the French were unable to understand, or unwilling to acknowledge, the immense superiority of the Italians in everything pertaining to music; and in 1752 the performance of Pergolese’s “Serva Padrona” by an Italian company caused a series of pitched battles between the partisans of French and Italian opera, the end of which was that “La Serva Padrona” was hissed, and the two singers who appeared in it driven from Paris.

As the French, however, progressed in the study and knowledge of music, so did they progress in their appreciation of the music of the Italians; and the little cabal got up against Rossini when he went to Paris in the year 1824, had no power to injure him.

But Rossini’s relations with the Parisians had commenced in December the year previous. Before coming to London he had passed a month in Paris, during which time the sentiments of the musicians and amateurs of France towards their illustrious visitor had manifested themselves clearly enough. A representation of the “Barber of Seville” was given in Rossini’s honour immediately after his arrival. The composer on appearing in the theatre was received with great demonstrations of enthusiasm, and at the end of the first act was called on to the stage—at that time a novel and distinguished compliment. In the music lesson scene, Garcia pronounced with significant emphasis the words “Giovvane di gran genio!” which was the signal for renewed applause.

A dinner was given to Rossini a few days afterwards, at which Auber, HÉrold, Boieldieu, Garcia, Horace Vernet, Madame Pasta, Mademoiselle Mars, and other artistic celebrities were present.

The toasts were interesting and characteristic. Lesueur, the greatest composer of the French school, began by proposing the health of Rossini, “whose ardent genius has opened a new road and marked a new epoch in musical art.”

Rossini replied by proposing “The French school and the prosperity of the Conservatoire;” and the formal, indispensable toasts having been disposed of, Lesueur drank to GlÜck, Boieldieu to MÉhul, HÉrold to Paisiello, Auber to Cimarosa, and Rossini to Mozart.

M. Scribe, then just beginning his career, made the banquet to Rossini the subject of a vaudeville, called “Rossini À Paris, ou le Grand Diner.” Rossini was invited to attend the rehearsal, and if any passages in the work displeased him to point them out. He went to the rehearsal, but nothing seems to have displeased him except the airs to which the vaudeville couplets were sung.

“If that is their national music,” he said, “I shall do no good here, and may as well pack up my things at once.”

It was a proof of good nature on the part of Rossini, better still of good sense, not to be offended by the vaudeville of which his arrival in Paris had been made the subject, and which, by the way, seems to have been the model of fifty similar works, showing how a man coming home from a masquerade may be mistaken for a true Eastern prince, a chorus singer for a great prima donna, a Quaker bearing the name of a prize-fighter, for the prize-fighter himself, &c., &c.

The piece entitled “Rossini À Paris” caused a good deal of excitement. There was a strong “national” party in the house, who wanted to know why an Italian composer should be set above composers of French origin (a mystery which Auber, HÉrold, and Boieldieu could easily have explained), and who were pleased to see the enthusiastic admirers of Rossini exhibited as grotesque fanatics. On the other hand, many of Rossini’s friends, taking perhaps an unduly serious view of a piece of pleasantry, thought that M. Scribe had treated the great composer with too much levity.

A great deal has been said about the intrigues against Rossini, and the attacks made upon his music in the newspapers on his first arrival in Paris. Writers in the present day are astonished that writers in that day should have been so unjust. Musicians are not astonished that writers at any time should have been so ignorant.

After reading the extracts from the journals of the period, given by Stendhal, and by M. Azevedo, it is easy to see that Rossini was not nearly so ill-treated as is generally supposed; and it is worth noticing that the most important and persistent of the adverse criticisms and all the organised hostility proceeded from musicians. Indeed it is difficult to understand how any man with a natural taste for music, and a more or less cultivated ear, unless hampered by professional prejudices or professional interests, would not be charmed by the music of Rossini.

Among the enemies of Rossini in Paris were a few obscure journalists, who held absurd theories on the subject of French music and Italian music, music which appealed only to the senses, and music which appealed to the heart, &c.; but the chief of the cabal were Berton, the composer of “Montano et StÉphanie,” and Paer, the then celebrated Italian composer, who held the office of musical conductor at the Italian Opera of Paris.

Berton may have been quite sincere in not liking the brilliant dramatic music of the young Italian maestro, and he doubtless found sincere supporters among elderly amateurs, whose admiration for the milder and more meagre music of a previous age was connected with all sorts of impressions and associations of their youth. The music of Paisiello and Cimarosa was the music of their first love. Now when they went to hear Rossini’s music the gout troubled them.

As for Berton, who was treated by the Rossinists of the period as nothing less than a malefactor, and who was certainly of a mean and envious disposition, he began by criticising the music of the new and rising composer, severely, no doubt, and, in an artistic sense, unjustly; but it was not until he had been provoked by rejoinders—it was in the heat of discussion—that he uttered his grand absurdity, “que M. Rossini ne serait jamais qu’un petit discoureur en musique.” Stendhal quotes a letter of Berton’s from “L’Abeille,” in which the worst that the French composer of the past has to say against the Italian composer of the present and the future is what follows:—

“M. Rossini has a brilliant imagination, verve, originality, great fecundity; but he knows that he is not always pure and correct; and, whatever certain persons may say, purity of style is not to be disdained, and faults of syntax are never excusable. Besides, since the writers of our daily journals constitute themselves judges in music, having qualified myself by ‘Montano,’ ‘Le DÉlire,’ ‘Aline,’ &c., I think I have the right to give my opinion ex professo. I give it frankly and sign it, which is not done by certain persons who strive incognito to make and unmake reputations. All this has been suggested only by the love of art and in the interest of M. Rossini himself. This composer is beyond contradiction the most brilliant talent that Italy has produced since Cimarosa; but one may deserve to be called celebrated without being on an equality with Mozart.”

To understand the position and attitude of Berton in the war which for a time raged in Paris on the subject of Rossini’s merit, it is necessary to remember that the praise lavished upon the Italian composer was not only extravagant in regard to Rossini himself (which might be excused as the natural product of enthusiasm), but also unjust to other composers.

Berton, with all his love for art in the abstract, thought no doubt much more of his own reputation than of the reputation of Mozart; but Boieldieu seems also to have thought that the “Rossinists” were carrying their idolatry rather too far.

“The French Rossinists,” says Boieldieu, in a letter dated 1823,[31] “want to put us completely under the feet of their idol. But the Italian Rossinists, and Rossini himself, are more just. He has no need of that to raise himself; his great talent will always put him in his proper place. If people would be reasonable, they would do in musical matters what is done in literature and in painting; it is possible to have Dante, and Tasso, and others, in the same library, and to admire Rubens and Raphael in the same gallery. Honour to Rossini, but honour also to Mozart, GlÜck, Cimarosa, &c. Rossini, with whom I have conversed a great deal, is quite of the same way of thinking. He has made a style of his own by taking, from other styles, examples which have guided him.”

Indeed, Boieldieu, HÉrold, Auber, were all fervent admirers of Rossini, and all to a certain extent adopted him as a model. HÉrold was “maestro al piano” at the Italian theatre of Paris when Rossini was director, and may almost be said to have studied under him. The influence of Rossini upon Auber was equally remarkable. With regard to Auber’s personal opinion of Rossini, and of his sentiments towards him when Rossini first visited Paris, the following passage[32] from a highly interesting memoir of Auber, by M. Jouvin (well known to readers of the Paris Figaro), may be quoted:—

“M. Auber has told me,” says M. Jouvin, “how he met Rossini for the first time at a dinner given by Carafa in honour of his illustrious compatriot. On rising from table the maestro, at the request of his host, went to the piano and sang Figaro’s cavatina, ‘Largo al fattotum della cita.’

“I shall never forget,” said M. Auber to me, “the effect produced by his lightning-like execution. Rossini had a very beautiful baritone voice, and he sang his music with a spirit and verve which neither Pellegrini, nor Galli, nor Lablache approached in the same part. As for his art as an accompanyist, it was marvellous; it was not on a keyboard, but on an orchestra that the vertiginous hands of the pianist seemed to gallop. When he had finished I looked mechanically at the ivory keys; I fancied I could see them smoking. On arriving home I felt much inclined to throw my scores into the fire. ‘It will warm them, perhaps,’ I said to myself; ‘besides, what is the use of composing music, if one cannot compose like Rossini?’”

With Auber, HÉrold, and Boieldieu on his side, it does not matter much what the views of any other of the French composers may have been.

As for Paer, the director of the Italian theatre, his position did not allow him to express any opinion publicly on the works of the rival by whose fame his own had already been eclipsed. But that position gave him, as we shall afterwards see, the opportunity of carrying on war against him in a much more practical manner. Paer possessed the right of keeping back Rossini’s operas, of presenting them as he thought fit, and finally, of producing, as if in contrast, works by other composers, whom Rossini’s adverse critics declared to be altogether his superiors.

Some years later, a few nights after the production of “Guillaume Tell,” a serenade was given to Rossini, by the artists of the Opera, under the direction of Habeneck, the chef d’orchestre. MÉry, in the preface to his French version of “Semiramide,” has given a lively description of the scene.

“Habeneck,” he says, “conducted his army on to the boulevard, and made it execute the overture to ‘Guillaume Tell.’ SouliÉ, the charming writer of ‘La Quotidienne,’ had brought up a crowd of Royalists; Armand Marrast, Carrel, Rabbe, and myself, represented the Liberal journals. The applause shook the windows on the boulevard; and the enthusiasm became really frantic when Levasseur, Nourrit, and Dabadie, sang the trio of the oath.

“Boieldieu, that musician of genius and of heart, who lodged in the same house, went down to Rossini and embraced him.

“Paer and Berton sat at the CafÉ des VariÉtÉs, taking an ice, and saying to one another, in a duet, ‘Art is lost!’”

Why, it may be asked, does MÉry point out that Rossini’s music, in the year 1829, was applauded both by Royalists and Liberals?

The explanation is, that the question of Rossini’s merit had become, to a certain extent, a political question, like the disputes between the Gluckists and the Piccinnists; and at an earlier period (1752) between the supporters of Italian and the supporters of French music.

Shortly before the French Revolution of 1789, the party of Marie Antoinette believed only in Gluck, while the party of Madame Dubarry swore by Piccinni.

During the Restoration and until the Revolution of 1830, it was the sign of a good royalist to praise Rossini’s music, and a sign of liberalism to condemn it. This had nothing whatever to do with Rossini’s own political opinions, which were never very marked. But Rossini’s music and the romantic school of poetry and painting were classed together, and the romantic school, with Victor Hugo, Lamartine, and Alfred de Vigny at its head, began by being royalist.

Balzac describes somewhere a hero of this period as devoted to “Byron’s poetry, GÉricault’s painting, Rossini’s music;” and persons who entertained these tastes were looked upon as Royalists, and denounced accordingly by the Liberals.

It was absurd, but so it was. Of course, too, there were limits to the absurdity; and it must have been near its end when Armand Carrel went out on the boulevard to applaud the overture to “Guillaume Tell.”

CHAPTER IV.
ROSSINI AND HIS CRITICS.

“Now I think of it,” said Rossini, a great many years afterwards, to Ferdinand Hiller, “what was not written against me when I went to Paris! Old Berton even made verses on me, and called me ‘Signor Crescendo’ in them. But it all blew over without injury to life or limb.”

Rossini was too philosophical, and, without being in the least vain, was sufficiently conscious, no doubt, of his own talent to care much what was thought of his music either by ordinary critics or by the general public. At the first performance of the “Barber,” when everyone was hissing, he turned round and applauded.

He himself said that he was tolerably calm at a success as well as at a failure; “and for this,” he added, “I have to thank an impression I received in my earliest youth, and which I shall never forget. Before my first operetta was brought out I was present at the performance of a one-act opera by Simon Mayer. Mayer was then the hero of the day, and had produced in Venice perhaps twenty operas with the greatest success. In spite of this, however, the public treated him on the evening to which I refer as if he had been some ignorant young vagabond; you cannot form an idea of such a piece of grossness. I was really astounded. Is it thus that you recompense a man who for so many years has produced you enjoyment? Dare you take such a liberty because you have paid two or three paoli for admittance? If such is the case, it is not worth while to take your judgment to heart, I thought; and I have always acted as much as possible in conformity with that opinion.”

In regard to printed criticism, he showed himself more considerate to critics than critics sometimes showed themselves to him. When Weber was passing through Paris, in 1826, on his way to London, he called on Rossini, but hesitated before doing so on the ground that a dozen years before he had published a hostile criticism on “Tancredi.”

Instead of feeling any resentment, Rossini said that if he had only known when he was twenty-one that a foreign composer had taken any notice of “Tancredi” he should certainly have felt very much flattered by the attention.

But the malicious Berton did not confine himself to criticising Rossini’s music, he attempted to cast ridicule on Rossini personally, whom he called, among other facetious nicknames, “Signor Vacarmini,” and “Signor Crescendo.” This could not please Rossini, but he did not mind the impertinence very much.

Rossini had, of course, been preceded in Paris by his reputation, and his reputation by his music. But it was not until the public had learned its true superiority from the very manoeuvre which Paer had adopted in order to demonstrate its worthlessness that Rossini’s music was accepted by the Parisians at anything like its value.

“L’Italiana in Algeri” had already been played in Paris, in the year 1817, when Garcia, the original Almaviva, proposed that the “Barber” should be produced for his benefit.

Publishers were not so expeditious then as they are now in getting out the scores of new operas, and the music of the “Barber” had not at that time been engraved, or at least not in a complete form. Garcia, however, had provided himself with a manuscript copy, and in spite of repeated objections from Paer and others, continued to request that the work might be put into rehearsal.

The first reply with which Garcia was met is worth recording. The directors of the Italian Opera of Paris informed him that “only masterpieces could be performed at their theatre, and that “Il Barbiere,” a work of secondary merit, by an author almost unknown, was not worthy of being presented to the Parisian public.”

Garcia, however, was of a different opinion; and in renewing his engagement for the year following, made it a special condition that the “Barber” should be brought out. Accordingly in the autumn of the following year, 1819, this “work of secondary merit” was actually represented.

The audience must have been delighted; but several critics were not. One thought that Figaro’s cavatina was “wanting in character!” and added, with super-journalistic absurdity, that “the composer might have made much more out of the air of “La Calunnia.” Another said of it that “its success would serve to enhance that of “Agnese,” a very celebrated opera of that day by Paer; a third, that Paisiello’s “Barber” ought to be given, and with particular care, so that the triumph of the old master over his competitor “might be rendered not more sure, but more striking.”

The hint was meant to be acted upon, and Paisiello’s veteran “Barber,” supported only by stringed instruments, was brought out to crush the vigorous young “Barber” of Rossini, full of life, and with musical instruments of all kinds to depend upon. Paisiello had been the favourite Italian composer of the Empire (the Emperor, according to Paisiello’s own naive observation, liked his music “because it did not prevent his thinking of other things);” but his “Barber” had grown old and feeble apparently, without anyone suspecting the change.

Three times this respectable but unattractive musical invalid was brought forth; the third time there was scarcely anyone to meet him; and Paisiello’s “Barber” was not heard of again, until, only a few years ago, he was introduced to the public of “Les Fantaisies Parisiennes,” not as the possible competitor of anyone, but merely as an interesting relic of a past age.

In the meanwhile Rossini’s “Barber” had been reproduced, to be followed by “Il Turco in Italia,” “La Pietra del Paragone,” and “La Gazza Ladra.” With the general public Rossini’s music was now in the highest favour, and “La Gazza Ladra,” like “Il Barbiere,” drew crowded audiences.

The late M. Berlioz, whose antipathy to Rossini’s music was so great as to be absolutely unintelligible to those who have not heard M. Berlioz’s music, had not at that time the ear—I mean, of course, the literary ear—of the French public. Otherwise, without delaying Rossini’s triumph, he certainly would have increased the number of Rossini’s enemies.

“If,” he afterwards said, “it had been in my power to place a barrel of powder under the Salle Louvois and blow it up, during the representation of “La Gazza Ladra” or “Il Barbiere,” with all that it contained, I certainly should not have failed to do so.”

This was worse than the young Milanese drumhater, who wished to murder Rossini, but Rossini only, for his overture to “La Gazza Ladra.”

Rossini insisted on being introduced to the eccentric student of Milan. Had he known of Berlioz’s existence he would have wanted to cultivate his intimate acquaintance.

CHAPTER V.
ROSSINI AT THE ITALIAN OPERA OF PARIS.

THE ingenious Berton, in his anti-Rossinian pamphlet entitled “De la Musique mÉcanique et de la Musique philosophique,” relates how he once asked Maelzel, the metronomist, whether he could construct a machine to compose music; to which Maelzel replied that he could, but that the music so composed would be like that of Rossini, and not up to the mark of Sacchini, Cimarosa and Mozart.

Somehow Maelzel abstained from proving his terrible power; but Berton boasted that his friend possessed it, and argued therefrom that Rossini’s music could not be anything very sublime, but on the contrary, must be essentially mechanical.

But Berton ceased this folly when Rossini arrived in Paris, and even showed a disposition to treat him with civility and respect. He is said to have secretly endeavoured to keep up the national cry against the composer; but the verses about “Signor Vacarmini” and “Signor Crescendo” were written while Rossini was still in Italy.

Paer, too, saw that the time had gone by for describing Rossini’s operas as “works of secondary importance.” He was accused long afterwards of doing his best to undermine Rossini’s reputation as a great musician, but, as it seems to me, without sufficient proof. In these musical feuds, in which perhaps the opposing parties are irreconcileable in proportion as the ground of difference between them is incapable of being defined, every sort of meanness is attributed by one side to the other as a matter of course.

Rossini made Berton’s acquaintance in Paris, and must have had frequent relations with Paer at the Italian Opera, of which he at last assumed the direction.

In this matter Rossini behaved with great consideration towards his jealous rival. He positively declined to displace Paer, and on being pressed to accept the post of director, consented to do so only on condition of Paer’s remaining at the theatre without a diminution of salary, but, on the contrary, with a slight increase.

The salary payable to Rossini from the Civil List, in virtue of his office as Director of the Italian Theatre, was twenty thousand francs a year. The engagement was for eighteen months.

Rossini not only knew his work well and practically as director of an orchestra, but was also thoroughly versed in all the duties of manager. He began his artistic life as conductor. When he was a boy at the Lyceum of Bologna, he got up a quartet of stringed instruments, and superintended the production of some important orchestral pieces.

“You should have been present,” he once said, “when I directed the performance of the ‘Creation’ at the Liceo; I did not let the executants miss a single point, for I knew every note by heart.”

As for the details of management, though M. FÉtis thinks Rossini must have been incapable of descending to such things, he assured Hiller that when he was at the San Carlo he attended to all Barbaja’s affairs, great and small, so that not a bill was paid until he had countersigned it.

In Paris so much could scarcely have been required of him. But it seems so improbable that a composer like Rossini should also be a good manager, that many persons, with that comprehensively inaccurate writer, M. FÉtis, among the number, have at once concluded that he must have neglected his work.

He was, of course, not expected to wait “in the front of the house” to see that the public were provided with proper accommodation. His business was to bring out new singers, to produce new operas, and especially his own; and there was, naturally, no one in Europe who could discharge these duties in so advantageous a manner as Rossini.

In fact, he engaged his old friend, Esther Mombelli, the first of his prima donnas, for “La Cenerentola,” in which her success surpassed that of the original heroine, Madame Giorgi-Righetti; he brought over from Italy two of the most celebrated tenors of the day, Donzelli and Rubini; he appointed Herold maestro al piano; he produced Meyerbeer’s “Crociato,” his own “Otello,” and “Donna del Lago;” and finally he composed specially for the theatre “Il Viaggio a Reims,” the chief portion of which was afterwards reproduced in that charming work, “Le Comte Ory.”

“Il Viaggio a Reims,” an occasional piece composed in honour of Charles X.’s coronation, was, nominally, in only one act, but the act was a long one. It lasted three hours; it contained fifteen or sixteen pieces, including a ballet; and it was divided into three parts. The execution must have been admirable, the characters being assigned to Mesdames Pasta, Esther Mombelli and Cinti; MM. Donzelli, Zuchelli, Levasseur, Bordogni, Pellegrini, and Graziani.

The music of “Il Viaggio a Reims,” if we except the numerous important pieces transferred to “Le Comte Ory,” is now only known by report. In the ballet music a duet for two clarinets was particularly remarked. There were two elaborate finales (for a piece in one act a fair supply!), and in the second finale the national airs of nearly all the countries in Europe were introduced. Prominent among them was, of course, the French royalist air, “Vive Henri Quatre,” which was harmonised in the most varied manner, and presented finally with an elaborate and quasi-religious accompaniment for the harp.

“Il Viaggio a Reims,” having been written for the coronation of a king in 1825, was revived, with some necessary alterations in the libretto, to celebrate the proclamation of a republic in 1848. It was a droll idea, but it seems to have been adopted and carried out without the slightest satirical intention. “Andiamo a Parigi” the piece was called.

In “Il Viaggio a Reims,” some people in an inn are talking about the coronation, and arrange to make a journey to Reims to see the ceremony.

In “Andiamo a Parigi” some people in an inn are talking about the Revolution, and arrange to make a journey to Paris to see the barricades.

The Viscount de la Rochefoucauld, as director of the “Civil List,” offered Rossini the present of a large sum of money; but the composer, considering himself already sufficiently well paid, and wishing perhaps that the opera should be looked upon as a homage from him to the French nation and sovereign, declined to accept it. Thereupon a service of SÈvres china was sent to him on the part of the king.

Rossini, too, caused Malibran to be re-engaged (she had appeared at Paris some years previously, before the full development of her talent, in “Torwaldo e Dorliska”), and introduced to the French public Sontag and Pisaroni, who appeared together in “Tancredi;” Galli, Lablache, and Tamburini. It was Rossini, too, who discovered and brought out Giulia Grisi.

In fact, he raised the ThÉÂtre Italien of Paris to the position of the first Italian Opera in Europe.

Soon after the production of “Il Viaggio,” Rossini brought out “Semiramide” and “Zelmira.” Indeed, during the eighteen months over which his contract extended, he made the French acquainted with all his greatest works. Add to this that he wrote an entirely new opera for Paris, and that he was the means of introducing Meyerbeer, both through his works and in person, and the sum total of Rossini’s doings at the ThÉÂtre Italien will not seem insignificant.

The French public knew nothing of Meyerbeer’s music; it is true he had not written much besides “Emma di Rosburgo” and “Il Crociato,” when Rossini undertook the production of the latter work at the ThÉÂtre Italien. As soon as the opera was nearly ready, he asked the Viscount de la Rochefoucauld to invite the composer to attend the last rehearsals; and it was really in consequence of Rossini’s express recommendation that Meyerbeer came to Paris.

Rossini was equally the means of bringing Bellini, Donizetti and Mercadante to France. To Bellini in particular he was the kindest possible friend, as may be judged from the following letter, addressed to Rossini by Bellini’s father, just after the young man’s death.

“You always encouraged the object of my eternal regret in his labours,” wrote the unhappy father; “you took him under your protection; you neglected nothing that could increase his glory and his welfare. After my son’s death, what have you not done to honour his memory and render it dear to posterity! I learnt this from the newspapers; and I am penetrated with gratitude for your excessive kindness, as well as for that of a number of distinguished artistes, which also I shall never forget. Pray, sir, be my interpreter, and tell these artistes, that the father and family of Bellini, as well as our compatriots of Catania, will cherish an imperishable recollection of this generous conduct. I shall never cease to remember how much you did for my son; I shall make known everywhere in the midst of my tears what an affectionate heart belongs to the great Rossini; and how kind, hospitable, full of feeling are the artistes of France.”

CHAPTER VI.
ROSSINI AT THE ACADÉMIE.

ROSSINI’S engagement as director of the ThÉÂtre Italien came to an end in 1826; but he continued to take part in its management, and rendered great services by his recommendations of singers and composers.

He continued, also, to receive twenty thousand francs a year from the Civil List; and as it was necessary this pension, for such it really was, should be assigned to him in consideration of certain official duties, he was named “Inspector of Singing.”

One would have thought “auditor” a better word; but the appointment was chiefly a pretext for keeping Rossini in France, where it was understood that he was to compose a series of works for the French Opera.

Looking back, it is from the date of this new contract that Rossini’s French career would seem to commence. As director of the ThÉÂtre Italien, he had already produced one work; but all the principal pieces in that opera were afterwards transferred to the “Comte Ory” composed for the AcadÉmie.

Without thoroughly changing his style, Rossini certainly modified it in writing for the French stage. He became more simple in his musical phrases, which he presented entirely without ornament, and more complex in his vocal and instrumental combinations. M. Azevedo points to Rossini’s unsuccessful opera of “Ermione” as an example of what in Rossini’s notion, conceived some years before he wrote anything for the French theatre, a dramatic opera should be. But Rossini himself did not entertain any high opinion of that work, and told Ferdinand Hiller that in his endeavour to be exceedingly dramatic, he had only succeeded in being dull—a common result when the composer neglects or is unable to cultivate with felicity the essential lyrical element in opera.

“And your opera, ‘Ermione,’ which one of your biographers informs us you preserve mysteriously to bequeath to posterity—what has become of that?” asked Hiller; to which Rossini replied, that it was with his other scores, lost or left at some theatre, he knew not where. To the question whether Rossini had not once said that he had treated “Ermione” too dramatically, and that it was in consequence damned, the maestro replied that the public had judged his work fairly enough, and that it was in truth very tedious. “There was really nothing,” he continued; “it was all recitative and declamation.”

In fact, so-called dramatic operas, in which the characters, instead of comporting themselves lyrically, instead of singing melodies, declaim recitative in alleged imitation of the language of real life, are about as interesting as tragedies without poetry, or comedies without wit.

In composing for the French stage, Rossini adopted no new theory of the lyric drama. He made his style less ornate, more expressive, and, in doing so, probably did not forget that his ordinary Italian manner would suit neither French singers nor French audiences. A taste, moreover, for simple, expressive music seems to have grown upon him, and he held, justly no doubt, that with advancing years this taste generally manifested itself.

But wherever we have seen Rossini at work he has always adopted a compromise; he subjects circumstances to himself, but he is also obliged to subject himself a little to circumstances. At many of the Italian theatres he had an indifferent orchestra and chorus—sometimes, as at the San MosÈ, no chorus at all; and his only means of success lay in writing attractive airs for the principal singers.

At the San Carlo, where he found the finest orchestra in Italy, he paid particular attention to the instrumentation of his operas.

At the AcadÉmie, where the superiority of the orchestra and chorus was still more remarkable, he thought more than ever of orchestral and choral writing, and was not tempted by special excellence on the part of his singers to sacrifice anything to the vocal solos.

At the same time the AcadÉmie was really the first theatre at which Rossini found himself free to pursue his ideal of an opera, if any such ideal possessed him. There, too, he could work at his leisure, and instead of scrambling through the rehearsals, have just as many as he required. That is one of the numerous advantages presented by a State theatre. A private speculator cannot afford to delay very long the production of a new piece, for by doing so he delays the return of the money he has invested. Such considerations are not important at a Government institution, where singers and instrumentalists are all engaged for a long period and permanently. Besides, at a theatre supported by the Government, the reputation of the establishment is the first thing to be considered.

At Rossini’s recommendation, two French artistes, Levasseur and Mademoiselle Cinti, of the ThÉÂtre Italien, were now engaged at the AcadÉmie, where the principal tenor was the great dramatic singer, Adolphe Nourrit. Here, then, already was the nucleus of an admirable company. Levasseur and Mademoiselle Cinti were accustomed to the Italian school of vocalisation. Nourrit was less Italianised, but he is said to have profited greatly by the counsels of the great Italian maestro during the production of the works which Rossini now composed or arranged for the French stage.

The first of this series was “Le SiÈge de Corinthe,” based on “Maometto Secondo.” Soumet, the French dramatic poet, and Balocchi, the author of “Il Viaggio a Reims,” arranged the libretto of the new work, Soumet occupying himself with the dramatic, Balocchi with the lyrical portion.

Although Rossini borrowed for the “SiÈge de Corinthe” a number of pieces which had already figured in “Maometto,” he remodelled many of them. He moreover altered some of the principal airs in a very significant manner, cutting out his Italian fioriture, either because he thought them unsuited to the French taste, or to the capacity of the French singers, or because he considered them absolutely undramatic; perhaps for all these reasons.

Although “Le SiÈge de Corinthe” is often spoken of as a mere French adaptation of “Maometto Secondo,” it does not include more than half the pieces contained in the latter work; while, on the other hand, Rossini composed specially for it the magnificent overture, the recitative, “Nous avons triomphÉ,” the allegro of the finale to the first act, the ballad “L’Hymen lui donne,” the recitative “Que vais-je devenir?” the allegro of the duet in the second act, “La FÊte d’HymÉnÉe,” the whole of the ballet music, the chorus “Divin ProphÈte,” the trio “Il est son FrÈre,” the finale to the second act “Corinthe nous dÉfie,” the entre-acte preceding the third act, the recitative “AvanÇons!” the air “Grand Dieu,” the recitative of the trio “Cher ClÉomÈne,” the scene of the Blessing of the Standards, and the finale to the third act.

The scene of the Blessing of the Standards is conceived in Rossini’s grandest and broadest dramatic style,—a style which he did not adopt absolutely for the first time in writing for the French stage, since we had already an example of it in the magnificent finale to the first act of “La Donna del Lago,” but which he nevertheless carried out more consistently and with more success in France than he could possibly have done in Italy, where it will be remembered “La Donna del Lago” was not by any means appreciated.

The production of “Le SiÈge de Corinthe” was accompanied by one rather important incident in Rossini’s life, in which, indeed, it may be said to form an epoch. It was the first opera that he sold to a music publisher. His thirty-four Italian works had been left absolutely at the disposition of every publisher or manager who chose to take them, to engrave or represent, with or without additions, in no matter what form; the one thing clear and certain in the matter being that no profit from the sale or representation of his works could by any possibility reach the composer.

The composer received from twenty to one hundred pounds for writing an opera, and was allowed the privilege of keeping a copy of his work, which, if he could manage it, he might sell to a publisher not less than one year after its first performance. Only, as the copyright expired altogether two years after the first performance, the privilege granted by the managers was practically of no value. In short, he received nothing for the right of engraving his works, and only one very moderate payment for the right of representing them.

The one Italian opera for which Rossini obtained two hundred pounds was thought to be shamefully overpaid. It was “Semiramide,” and Rossini himself said that he was looked upon as little better than a pickpocket when he asked and obtained five thousand francs for it. The admirable legislation on behalf of dramatists and their works, introduced in France by the author of “Le Barbier de SÉville,” was of no profit to the composer of “Il Barbiere.” The representation of that work alone, if the French system of securing to writers and composers for the stage a certain fixed proportion of the receipts derived from the performance of their pieces had been adopted throughout Europe, would have given Rossini at least one hundred thousand pounds. As it was, it never brought him a farthing beyond the eighty pounds paid to him by the manager of the Argentina theatre for writing it and superintending the rehearsals.[33] In France alone, if “Il Barbiere” had been originally brought out in that country, Rossini’s profits must have amounted to something like one million francs.

Certainly, if it was in Italy that Rossini the composer made his reputation, it was in France that he made his fortune. In England it was not so much Rossini the composer, as Rossini the singer, Rossini the accompanyist, Rossini the man of European reputation, and the friend of George IV., who in four months, aided by his wife, made seven thousand pounds. Two hundred and forty pounds was all the manager of the Italian Opera of London had offered Rossini for the work he never completed. Indeed, if a composer in England is to make money at all—as a composer—it must be through music publishers, not managers, who, as a rule, pay no more for the right of representation than Rossini received in Italy for copyright.

For although we have not many composers in England, the number is at least much greater than that of our opera managers; so that, when by some rare accident a new opera is produced in this country, it is the manager who seems to benefit, and who really does benefit, the composer. Naturally then he does not give him a sum of money into the bargain. Sometimes quite the contrary.

But the whole of our operatic system is absurd. In fact, at this moment we have no operatic system, the custom still prevalent in other countries of producing original operas having in England died out.

The sum received by Rossini for the copyright of “Le SiÈge de Corinthe” was not a large one. At least in these days of international treaties, when, moreover, the sale of music has everywhere increased, it would not be so considered. Troupenas, the afterwards well-known publisher, had then just gone into business, and thought with reason that he could not make a better beginning than by bringing out Rossini’s new work, the first of the series of operas which he was to compose for the French stage.

Injudicious friends advised him not to invest his money in an opera only half new; but he was not to be dissuaded from his intention, and ended by purchasing the copyright of “Le SiÈge de Corinthe” for six thousand francs. If this opera had been produced thirty years later, the music would have been worth to a publisher at least sixty, eighty, perhaps one hundred thousand francs.

But Rossini was never exorbitant in his demands, and seems to have been quite contented with the comparatively moderate payment made to him by M. Troupenas, remembering, no doubt, that in Italy he would have received nothing.

The next of his Italian works which Rossini proposed to arrange for the French stage was “MosÈ.” M. Balocchi and M. de Jouy, one of the future librettists of “Guillaume Tell,” prepared the “book,” and added to the original opera several scenes and one or two personages of their own invention. The pieces composed specially by Rossini for the French version of “MosÈ,” are the introduction to the first act, the quartet with chorus, “Dieu de la Paix,” “Dieu de la Guerre,” the chorus “La douce Aurore,” the march with chorus and recitations in the third act, “Reine des Cieux,” a portion of the ballet music, the finale “Je rÉclame la foi promise,” and the air of the fourth act, “Quelle horrible destinÉe.”

The finale, however, is said to be that of “Ciro in Babilonia,” remodelled, while most of the dance music came from “Armida.”

“MoÏse,” highly successful on its first production, was revived in 1852, and again in 1863. An Italian version of the work was produced in London some twenty years ago at the Royal Italian Opera. It was, of course, found necessary to reconstruct the drama, which in England became “Zora,” as the Italian “MosÈ,” five-and-twenty years before, had become “Pietro l’Eremita.” Notwithstanding the magnificence of the music, the piece, as adapted to the requirements of the English stage and English society, did not prove generally successful. It was admirably represented, like the rest of the later works by Rossini, which but for the Royal Italian Opera would never have been heard in this country at all.

Having now produced two serious operas at the AcadÉmie, Rossini proposed to write for the same theatre a comic opera, or opera “di mezzo carattere,” for which the music of “Il Viaggio a Reims,” or a good portion of it, was found serviceable. The libretto of “Le Comte Ory,” the third work contributed by Rossini to the repertory of the French opera, is founded on a vaudeville of the same name, of which the original subject is taken from an old French song. This time, Rossini had a librettist of some brains. It was M. Scribe, the future author of all Auber’s best libretti, and the inventor of several universally known operatic subjects (those, for instance, of “La Sonnambula” and “L’Elisir d’Amore”). Certainly nothing more ingenious, or more perfectly suited in the half character style to musical purposes has ever been produced than Scribe’s “book” of “Le Comte Ory,” in which Nourrit, who afterwards gave some valuable hints for “Les Huguenots,” is said to have assisted him.

The librettist, or librettists, for there were two, M. Scribe and M. Poirson, had rather arduous labours to perform; for contrary to the usual practice, they had to supply words to music already composed. The writer of a criticism on “Le Comte Ory,” published just after its production, says that Messieurs Scribe and Poirson were two months fitting French words to the pieces which Rossini borrowed from “Il Viaggio,” while Rossini set the whole of the second act to original music in a fortnight.

Rossini is said not to have been over-pleased with Scribe, whose business-like manner of apportioning his time did not leave him enough to devote to the composer of “Le Comte Ory.” It is to be regretted all the same, that Rossini did not apply to Scribe when he was meditating his opera of “Guillaume Tell,” which though it contains Rossini’s grandest music, is, through the poorness of the libretto, by no means the most perfect work that bears Rossini’s name.

“Le Comte Ory,” like “Le SiÈge de Corinthe,” “MoÏse,” and “Guillaume Tell,” belongs to the repertory of the Royal Italian Opera, the only theatre in Europe which includes all the great works written for the AcadÉmie. In “Le Comte Ory,” as in all Rossini’s French operas, considerable prominence is given to the orchestral parts. “There is not only much harmony, there is also much melody in the accompaniment,” wrote a critic of the period. “The composer,” he ingeniously but absurdly adds, “has put the pedestal on the stage and the statue in the orchestra, so that there is more singing in the latter than on the former.”

In transferring to “Le Comte Ory” the best things he could find in “Il Viaggio a Reims,” Rossini did not forget the piece for fourteen voices, which constitutes one of the great features in the latter, as it did in the former work. Another important piece in “Il Viaggio,” which was originally set to a narrative of the battle of Trocadero, became in “Le Comte Ory” a description of the riches contained in the cellars of the Sire de Formoutiers. For the names of the different corps which took part in the battle, names of celebrated wines have been substituted, and the adaptation has been so well managed, and the intrinsic significance of music is really so very small, that the piece seems to have been originally conceived for the situation which it now occupies in “Le Comte Ory.”

This opera, the last but one that Rossini composed, contains the first example of a brief instrumental introduction in lieu of a regular overture. The introduction to “Le Comte Ory” is based on the melody of the old French song from which the subject of the piece is taken.

CHAPTER VII.
“GUILLAUME TELL.”

BEFORE attacking “Guillaume Tell,” Rossini retired into the country; and this time devoted, not thirteen days to the production of the entire work, as in the case of that comic masterpiece “Il Barbiere,” but six months to the pianoforte score alone. It was at the chÂteau of M. Aguado, the well-known banker, that Rossini wrote the whole of “Guillaume Tell,” with the exception of the orchestral parts. These he added after his return to Paris, where he completed the work among visitors and friends, talking and laughing with them the whole time, as if engaged in some ordinary and not very important pursuit.

Different versions have been given of the engagement which bound Rossini to write so many operas for the AcadÉmie. Rossini’s salary, as Inspector of Singing, was, according to M. Azevedo, twenty thousand francs a year. M. Azevedo, in stating this amount, says nothing about any additional engagement in direct connection with the AcadÉmie.

M. Castil Blaze, on the other hand, without saying anything about the inspectorship of singing, speaks of a contract, by which Rossini was to write three operas for the AcadÉmie in the course of six years, during which period he was to receive ten thousand francs a year in addition to his composer’s fees.

M. Guizot, who, as Minister of the Interior in the year 1830, was brought officially into communication with Rossini, tells us in his “Memoirs” that Rossini’s salary as Inspector-General of Singing was seven thousand francs a year; and that after the success of “Guillaume Tell” he signed a new contract with the Civil List, by which he engaged to compose two more operas for the AcadÉmie—conditions not stated.

However, in the first instance, all Rossini had to go to work upon was the libretto of “Guillaume Tell,” as prepared by M. de Jouy. He was accustomed to bad librettos; but the badness of M. de Jouy’s book seems to have been something exceptional.

The preparation of the libretto must have occupied a considerable time, and caused the author or authors infinite trouble. M. de Jouy had, in the first instance, brought Rossini a poem of seven hundred verses, written without any particular view to the one purpose for which librettos should exist. It being impossible for Rossini to do anything with M. de Jouy’s libretto as it stood, M. Bis was called in; and to him the whole of the second act, by far the best of the five, is said to be due.

M. Bis, however, found himself placed in rather a delicate position. The composer wished him to turn and return the libretto until he got it into something like shape for the music. M. de Jouy, on the other hand, desired above all to save the honour of his too academical verses; and the result, as usual in such cases, was a compromise which satisfied no one—not even the public.

The authors having at last finished the libretto, but not until they had nobly sacrificed their poetry to the wants of the composer, printed it with a sort of apology in the form of a preface.

“We might have offered,” they said, “a more regular work to the reader; it would have been only necessary to publish it as it was first conceived; but then we should have had to restore several scenes which have been suppressed; to put in their original place others, the order of which has been inverted; and to cut out some passages which owe their existence to the requirements of the music alone. Thus the printed piece would have been quite different from the piece performed; and as the spectators desire above all to find in the libretto what the instrumentation does not permit them distinctly to hear, the words, for the first time, perhaps, have been sent to press in exact conformity with those of the score. If, on the one hand, the natural result of this step is to offer a larger field to criticism, on the other, the public will no doubt be grateful to us for a slight sacrifice of self-love made in the interest of its pleasures. We also, it must be confessed, wished to pay an indirect homage to our illustrious associate. It would have been repugnant to our feelings to strike out even the defective verses which the musical rhythm—sometimes fixed upon beforehand—obliged us to arrange as they are; there are some chords, too, so powerful that they seem to consecrate the words to which they lend their magic. In the midst of this immense and completely new creation which makes Rossini a French composer, ‘Guillaume Tell’ seems to be the work of one alone—of Rossini.”

From this preface it must be concluded, not that Rossini is answerable for the badness of the “Guillaume Tell” libretto as it now stands, but that it would have been much worse if he had not caused numerous alterations to be made. In fact, the preface clearly shows, that in its original form it must have been altogether useless for musical purposes.

Much has been said about the failure, or incomplete success, of Rossini’s masterpiece in the serious style; and Rossini’s long silence is often attributed to the coldness with which it was received. It was at once appreciated, however, by the critical public, and the applause at the first representation was most enthusiastic. But an opera cannot live by its music alone, and the drama of “Guillaume Tell” is very imperfect. After the first few weeks, in spite of the well-merited eulogiums of the critical press, the opera ceased, in theatrical parlance, to draw. It was represented fifty-six times in its original form, and was then cut down to three acts; the original third act being entirely omitted, and the fourth and fifth acts compressed into one.

At last the second act was given alone—often as a mere lever de rideau, with inferior performers; and it was not until Duprez made his dÉbut in the part of Arnold that the success of the opera was renewed. For three years before the arrival of Duprez the public heard nothing of “Guillaume Tell” but the celebrated second act.

One day Rossini met the director of the Opera on the boulevard, who said to him,—

“Well, Maestro, you are in the bills again to-night. We play the second act of “Guillaume Tell.”

“What! the whole of it?” inquired Rossini, who was naturally much hurt by the mutilation of his work. That alone did not cause him to lay down his pen; but it did not prevent his doing so.

It is to be eternally regretted that Rossini, in composing his last and greatest work for the stage, did not select some drama better suited for musical treatment than “William Tell.” Nevertheless, Schiller’s play contains fine situations, and Rossini was never more nobly inspired than in writing the duet for Tell and Arnold; the trio of the Oath, and the scene of the meeting of the Cantons; all of which owe a great portion of their effect to their position in the drama. The charming air of Mathilde, “Sombre forÊt,” would be equally charming for Lucia, or any other sentimental light soprano, waiting for her lover in a wood, or elsewhere; the passionate duet for Mathilde and Arnold might be sung by any pair of lovers; the enchanting ballet music would make the fortune of any opera. But the pieces first named are of those which belong to “Guillaume Tell,” and “Guillaume Tell” alone, and which would, by comparison, fall flat if dissociated from the words, and above all, the dramatic situations to which the composer has attached them.

Whatever we may think of the drama itself, the music which Rossini has composed for it is the most dramatic that has come from his pen; and while thoroughly dramatic, it is at the same time thoroughly melodious—a combination not to be met with except in the works of the very greatest masters. Indeed, “Guillaume Tell” is full of melody, in the simplest solos as in the most massive choral writing. Rossini said of the compositions of his old professor, Mattei, that “the solo passages were not prominent, but that the pleni were admirable.” In “Guillaume Tell” the solo passages and the pleni are admirable alike. The music, whatever it may have to express, never ceases to be beautiful, and there is in every piece a clear current of melody, which the richest and most varied harmony never obscures.

“Guillaume Tell,” Rossini’s latest, is also his finest opera. It is written throughout in a higher and more dramatic style than any of his previous works. It exhibits more sustained power, and is the only one of his operas for the French stage in which every piece of music is new and written specially for the situation. The distinctive feature in “Guillaume Tell,” as regards form, is the avoidance of the conventional cavatina. It is right and necessary that a libretto should be constructed with a view to musical as well as dramatic effect; but it is not necessary that each principal singer, on coming before the public, should sing a “cavatina;” nor is it desirable, when a cavatina does happen to fall in with the situation (the opera has its soliloquies as well as the spoken drama), that it should be of a certain recognised pattern, with a few bars of recitative, or slow movement and a cabaletta.

We feel in “Guillaume Tell” that the characters do not appear on the stage merely to sing airs, duets, &c., but as personages in a musical drama. The custom in Italian opera was that each character should sing an air, and sing it as soon as possible after entering. Hence, indeed, the very word “cavatina,” from cavare, to issue forth. This custom has shown itself far more tenacious than all the others which Rossini broke through. It, indeed, seems to bear the force of an irremissible law; and we find that Rossini’s successors, who follow his example as well as they can in all other respects, avoid doing so in this particular one. Donizetti, Bellini, Verdi have all accepted the inevitable cavatina; and Rossini himself, if he had returned to Italy, would doubtless have returned to the cavatina at the same time,—in which there can be nothing to object to, provided only that it be not dragged in, as is often the case, without the least reference to dramatic propriety.

Of the grand vocal and instrumental combinations, so admirably treated in “Guillaume Tell,” Rossini had previously given an example in “La Donna del Lago.” But the scene of the meeting of the Cantons in “Guillaume Tell” is far grander. It may, indeed, be cited as the grandest operatic scene that exists—and, moreover, the grandest of all dramatic scenes in regard to the treatment of masses, which in the spoken drama can only be employed as a means of spectacular effect. The opera is the only form of drama in which a crowd, an army, a deliberative assembly, can effectually join with voice as well as with gesture in the action of the piece, as it is the only form of drama in which three or four persons, uttering similar or diverse sentiments, can be made to give expression to them at the same time.

The scene of Vasco di Gama before the Inquisition, in Meyerbeer’s “Africaine,” would have a very poor effect in ordinary drama. The prelates and other members of the tribunal, instead of singing, would of course have to speak; and as they could not speak all at once, they would have to address the unhappy Vasco through a single representative instead of crushing him, as in the opera, beneath the weight of their unanimous condemnation. Such a scene, again, as the Market-scene in “Masaniello,” in which the chattering of the dealers and the hurry and bustle of the crowd are made, through beautiful and appropriate music, to form one harmonious whole, could only be faintly and imperfectly imitated on the non-operatic stage by a representation in dumb-show, for spoken words would be worse than useless. Similarly, the meeting of the Cantons, in “Guillaume Tell,” is a magnificent subject for an operatic scene, which, treated otherwise than operatically, would be as flat and dull as a procession of the Reform League.

How, indeed, could the descent of the various bands from the mountains, and their gathering together in one vast agitated flood, be suggested and impressed upon the mind so forcibly as through music? Here the operatic composer had an opportunity, turned by Rossini to magnificent advantage, of going to the heart of a grand dramatic situation, and bringing out its full significance.

The trio, independently of its wonderful melodic and harmonic beauty, is a fine example of the power of music to give a simultaneous presentation of various and conflicting emotions. But on the mere beauty of the “Guillaume Tell” music, whether for the solo voices or for the orchestra, for the chorus or for the ballet, it would be vain to dwell. It would be useless to speak of it to those who have heard it—impossible to give any idea of it to those who have not.

CHAPTER VIII.
ROSSINI AFTER “WILLIAM TELL.”

THE reason why Rossini, after producing “Guillaume Tell,” ceased finally to write for the stage is still a mystery, which has been rendered only more mysterious by the various and often contradictory explanations given of the composer’s silence.

In the first place, the coldness with which “Guillaume Tell” was received, and the successive mutilations to which that work was subjected, are said to have checked Rossini’s ardour.

Secondly, Rossini himself is reported to have declared that a new work, if successful, would not add to his reputation; while, unsuccessful, it might injure it.

Thirdly, Rossini has been accused of feeling annoyed at the success of Meyerbeer.

Fourthly, Rossini’s forty years’ abstinence from dramatic writing is explained by “laziness,” as though he had not written in the most industrious manner for the stage from the age of seventeen to that of thirty-seven, when, after taking six months to compose an opera (an age for Rossini), we suddenly find him abandoning dramatic composition for ever.

Some of these pretended explanations may be disposed of at once. As for Rossini’s alleged jealousy of Meyerbeer, it must be remembered that Rossini was the means of bringing Meyerbeer to Paris; that the two composers were always excellent friends; and that one of Rossini’s last productions, probably the very last composition he ever put to paper, was a pianoforte fantasia it pleased him to write on motives from “L’Africaine,” after attending the last rehearsal of that work.

As to the laziness with which Rossini is so often charged, it is curious to remark that this habit of mind or body, or both, was somehow compatible with the production of the thirty-four operas which Rossini wrote between the years 1810 and 1823. After he had settled in Paris, from 1824 to 1829, he still worked with prodigious activity, and did not produce less than one opera every year,—“Il Viaggio a Reims” in 1825, “Le SiÈge de Corinthe” in 1826, “MoÏse” in 1827, “Le Comte Ory” in 1828, and “Guillaume Tell” in 1829.

Rossini must at this time have been richer by some two or three thousand a year than when he was working in Italy, and that without counting his “author’s rights” from the Opera, and reckoning only the capital of seven thousand pounds which he had brought back from London, the four hundred a year from his wife’s dowry, the eight hundred a year which he received from the Civil List and the sums for which he sold his scores year by year to Troupenas, the publisher. One reason, then, for Rossini’s inactivity may have been that one great stimulus to activity, poverty, urged him no longer.

But as Heine says of a composer whose friends had boasted that he was “not obliged to write,”—a windmill might as well say that it is not obliged to turn. If there is wind, it must turn; and when it ceases to turn, we know that the wind has gone down.

What makes the puzzle of Rossini’s silence puzzling indeed, is, that he does not seem quite to have known why he was silent himself. It is astonishing how many persons had the coolness, not to say impertinence, to ask Rossini why he never composed anything for the stage after “Guillaume Tell;” and it is amusing, though also provoking, to find that to most of these inquisitive persons he returned very evasive answers.

But, from Rossini’s recorded conversations with his friend Ferdinand Hiller, it is evident that it was not one cause alone which made him determine to produce no more operas. It struck Hiller, with reference to the maestro’s physical condition in the year 1854, that, “when a man has composed operas during twenty entire years, and been worshipped during five-and-forty, it is really not surprising that he should feel somewhat worn out.” “But a nabob is a nabob,” he continues, “even after losing two or three thousand thalers, and in the same manner Rossini’s mind is still what it always was; his wit, his memory, his lively powers of narration, are undiminished. And as he has written nothing for twenty years, he has at least not given any one the right of asserting that his musical genius has deteriorated,—the last work he wrote was ‘Guillaume Tell.’”

It was just at this time that Rossini exchanged some remarks with the Chevalier Neukomm on the subject of industry and idleness, which again throw a little light on the much vexed and certainly most interesting question of Rossini’s prolonged silence. “You are still indefatigable,” he observed to Neukomm.

“Whenever I am no longer able to work,” replied the latter, “you may place me between six planks and nail me down, for I shall not desire to have anything more to do with life.”

“You have a passion for industry; I always had a passion for idleness,” exclaimed Rossini.

“The forty operas you have composed are not a proof of that,” answered Neukomm.

“That was a long time ago. We ought to come into the world with packthread instead of nerves,” said the maestro, somewhat seriously; “but let us drop the subject.”

On several occasions Ferdinand Hiller seems to have asked Rossini point blank the great question—why, after “William Tell,” he ceased to write.

“Is it not one of the greatest of all wonders that you have not written anything for twenty-two years—what do you do with all the musical ideas which must be welling about in your brain?” asked Hiller, who was thinking perhaps of Heine’s windmill.

“You are joking,” replied the maestro, laughing.

“I am not joking in the least,” returned Hiller; “how can you exist without composing?”

“What!” said Rossini, “would you have me without motive, without excitement, without a definite intention, write a definite work? I do not require much to be excited into composition, as my opera texts prove, but still, I do require something.”

At another time Ferdinand Hiller succeeded in obtaining far more explicit reasons for Rossini’s premature retirement, which neither the want of a libretto, nor the plea of constitutional idleness, nor shaken nerves, sufficed to explain.

“Had you not the intention,” Hiller asked, “of composing an opera on the text of ‘Faust?’”

“Yes,” answered Rossini, “it was for a long period a favourite notion of mine, and I had already planned the whole scenarium with Jouy; it was naturally based upon Goethe’s poem. At this time, however, there arose in Paris a regular “Faust” mania; every theatre had a particular “Faust” of its own, and this somewhat damped my ardour. Meanwhile, the Revolution of July had taken place; the Grand-Opera, previously a royal institution, passed into hands of a private person; my mother was dead, and my father found a residence in Paris unbearable, because he did not understand French—so I cancelled the agreement, which bound me by rights to send in four other grand operas, preferring to remain quietly in my native land, and enliven the last years of my old father’s existence. I had been far away from my poor mother when she expired; this was an endless source of regret to me, and I was most apprehensive that the same thing might occur again in my father’s case.”

The choice of a subject afterwards looked upon as unsuitable, the Revolution of July, the appointment of a private person to the direction of the Opera, the desire of Rossini not to be separated from his father in Italy during the last years of the old man’s life—here is a whole catalogue of reasons given by Rossini himself for producing no more operas, in which we find no mention of the mutilation of “Guillaume Tell,” nor of the composer’s determination to rest on his laurels—a piece of conceit by no means in keeping with the character of Rossini, who, if he had had anything more to say would certainly not have been prevented from saying it by his own admiration for “Guillaume Tell.”

Nor was there anything in the fate of “Guillaume Tell” to frighten him, and we have seen that his supposed laziness did not prevent his setting to work on a new opera, which he must have commenced immediately after “Guillaume Tell” had been produced.

Rossini went to live with his father in Bologna, it is true; but he did not go there until 1836, so that this could have had little influence in making him determine to send back his librettos six years before.

Rossini is neither a greater nor a smaller man, because, having produced thirty-nine operas when he was thirty-seven years of age, it did not, for no matter what reason, suit him to complete the fortieth. He was destined to write thirty-nine operas, of which he wrote thirty-four during the first thirteen years of his career. Ferdinand Hiller was no doubt right in saying that a man cannot go on perpetually writing operas with impunity for twenty years—and such operas as Rossini’s, and at such a rate of production! Even when he had become comparatively inactive, Rossini produced four operas at the AcadÉmie in four successive years. Meyerbeer, his immediate successor at the AcadÉmie, brought out no more than three works at that establishment, and one at the Opera Comique, in twenty years: (“Robert le Diable,” 1831, “Les Huguenots,” 1836, “Le ProphÈte,” 1849, “L’Etoile du Nord,” 1851).

Of course, a composer is finally to be judged by his works, and not by the time it takes him to produce them. I am only considering whether the excessive labours of Rossini in the midst of his alleged idleness may not, after twenty years’ continuance, have thoroughly fatigued him.

No one seems to know what Rossini’s precise agreement with the AcadÉmie was. M. Castil-Blaze states that Rossini had engaged to write three operas, of which “Guillaume Tell” was the first. According to Ferdinand Hiller, he had undertaken to write four operas in addition to “Guillaume Tell;” and it is certain that immediately after “Guillaume Tell,” he seriously meditated a “Faust.” M. Castil-Blaze says positively that M. Scribe had, in execution of a contract, furnished to Rossini, and received back from him, the libretto of “Gustave III.,” the foundation of one of Auber’s greatest works, and the “Duc d’Albe,” on which Donizetti was engaged when he was attacked by the terrible malady to which he succumbed.

Whatever influence the Revolution of 1830 may have exercised on Rossini’s productive powers, it had a certain effect upon his pecuniary position. The Civil List of the dethroned king was abolished, and with it the pension of eight hundred a year, payable to Rossini. After going to law, the composer succeeded in getting a retiring pension of six thousand francs a year allowed him; and if one more reason for Rossini’s abandoning dramatic composition be required, it may be looked for in the litigation to which he was now obliged to have recourse.

About this time, and in reference to the subject of this very lawsuit, Rossini had occasion to see M. Guizot, who, in his Memoirs has left a very interesting account of the interview. M. Guizot was not a dilettante, and judged Rossini as a man of the world. His general estimate of his visitor is perhaps for that reason all the more valuable; and the minister’s statement as to Rossini’s position with regard to the Civil List in the year 1830, must be accepted as unimpeachable.

“The same day,” writes M. Guizot,[34] “M. Lenormant brought to breakfast with me M. Rossini, to whom the revolution of July had caused some annoyances, which I wished to make him forget. King Charles X. had treated him with well-merited favour; he was inspector-general of singing, and received, in addition to his author’s rights, a salary of seven thousand francs; and some months previously, after the brilliant success of “Guillaume Tell,” the Civil List had signed a treaty with him, by which he undertook to write two more great works for the French stage. I wished the new government to show him the same good will, and that he in return should give us the promised masterpieces. We talked freely, and I was struck by the animation and variety of his wit, open to all subjects, gay without vulgarity, and satirical without bitterness. He left me after half-an-hour’s agreeable conversation, but which led to nothing; for it was not long before I resigned. I remained with my wife, whom M. Rossini’s person and conversation had much interested. My little girl Henrietta, who was just beginning to walk and to chatter, was brought into the room. My wife went to the piano and played some passages from the master who had just left us, from ‘Tancredi’ among other works. We were alone; I passed I cannot say how long in this manner, forgetting all external occupations, listening to the piano, watching my little girl, who was trying to walk, perfectly tranquil and absorbed in contemplation of these objects of my affection. It is nearly thirty years since,—it seems as though it were yesterday. I am not of Dante’s opinion,

“A great happiness is, on the contrary, in my opinion, a light, the reflection of which extends to spaces which are no longer brightened by it. When God and time have appeased the violent uprisings of the soul against misfortune, it can still contemplate with pleasure in the past the charming things which it has lost.”

CHAPTER IX.
THE “STABAT MATER.”

ROSSINI, though he wrote no more for the stage, did not all at once cease to write. In 1832, a distinguished Spaniard, Don Varela, prevailed upon him to compose a “Stabat Mater,” which was not intended to be made public. Rossini fell ill, and being unable to complete the work himself, got Tadolini to finish three of the pieces. Nine years afterwards, Don Varela being dead, his heirs sold the “Stabat” to a music publisher, when Rossini claimed at law the copyright of the work, and gained his action. He now composed three pieces to replace those of Tadolini, and sold his “Stabat” thus complete to Troupenas.

Rossini had previously retired to Bologna, where he discovered the talent of Alboni, then a young girl, and taught her, very carefully, all the great contralto parts in his operas. He also allowed himself to be appointed honorary director of the Lyceum of Bologna, where the duties he assumed were by no means nominal. He took a great interest in the institution, as the school in which he had received his own education, and did all he could to improve it during a residence at Bologna of some dozen years. It amused him, he said, to hear the pupils, who formed a complete orchestra, play all possible kinds of orchestral works.

In the summer of 1836, Rossini paid a short visit to Frankfort, where he met Mendelssohn, and passed several days in his society.

“I had the pleasure,” says Ferdinand Hiller, “of seeing almost daily in my father’s house the two men, one of whom had written his last, the other, his first great work. The winning manners of the celebrated maestro captivated Mendelssohn, as they did everyone else; and Mendelssohn played for him as long, and as much as he wished, both his own compositions and those of others. Rossini thought of those days with great interest, and often turned the conversation to the master who was so soon torn from us. He informed us that he had heard his ‘Ottetto’ very well executed in Florence, and I was obliged to play for him, four-handed, the symphony in A minor with Madame Pfeiffer, a very excellent pianist from Paris, who was then stopping at Trouville.”

Between Rossini’s visit to Frankfort and visit to Trouville, an interval of eighteen years had elapsed, during which Rossini lost his first wife (1845) and married again (Madame Olympe Pelissier, 1847).

Duprez had now appeared with the most brilliant success in “Guillaume Tell;” but the enthusiastic admiration which Rossini’s admirable dramatic music at last elicited, in no way shook his determination never to write again for the stage.

The “Stabat Mater” too, performed in public for the first time in 1842, had increased the composer’s reputation by exhibiting his genius in a new light. Some critics, it is true, complained that the music was not sufficiently devotional, that it was terrestrial, theatrical, essentially operatic in its character.

Rossini told Ferdinand Hiller, that he had written the “Stabat Mater” mezzo serio; but perhaps Rossini was only mezzo serio himself in saying so.

Much nonsense has been written about this very beautiful work, which, on its first production, was severely though clumsily handled in several quarters, from a parochial point of view. Its lovely melodies are indeed admirably unlike the music of the psalms sung in our churches; there is also a little more naivetÉ, a little more inspiration, in the poetry of the “Stabat Mater” than in the tortured prose, measured into lengths, after the fashion of Procrustes, which certain poetical firms have arranged, in pretended imitation of David, for the use of our Protestant congregations. The poem of the “Stabat Mater” is full of beauty and tenderness; and even in the passages most terrible by their subject, the versification never loses its melody and its grace. Whatever else may be said of Rossini’s “Stabat,” it cannot be maintained that it is not in harmony with the stanzas to which it is set.

Besides the “Stabat Mater” was composed, as Raphael’s Virgins were painted, for the Roman Catholic Church, which at once accepted it, without ever suspecting that Rossini’s music was not religious in character.

Doubtless the music of the “Stabat” bears a certain resemblance to Rossini’s operatic music; but that only means that the composer, in whatever style he may write, still preserves something of his individuality. The resemblance between Handel’s opera music and oratorio music is far greater, and, indeed, in the case of some airs, amounts, as nearly as possible, to identity. At least, in Rossini’s “Stabat Mater,” there are no bravura airs. The style throughout is simple, fervent, sincere.

“The ‘Stabat’ of Rossini,” wrote Heine to the Allgemeine Zeitung, in 1842, “has been the great event of the season. The discussion of this masterpiece is still the order of the day, and the very reproaches which, from the North German point of view, are directed against the great maestro, attest in a striking manner the originality and depth of his genius; ‘the execution is too mundane, too sensual, too gay for this ideal subject. It is too light, too agreeable, too amusing.’ Such are the grievous complaints of some dull and tedious critics who, if they do not designedly affect an outrageous spiritualism, have at least appropriated to themselves by barren studies very circumscribed and very erroneous notions on the subject of sacred music. As among the painters, so among the musicians, there is an entirely false idea as to the proper manner of treating religious subjects. Painters think, that in truly Christian subjects, the figures must be represented with cramped, narrow contours, and in forms as bleached and colourless as possible; the drawings of Overbeck are their prototype in this respect. To contradict this infatuation by a fact, I bring forward the religious pictures of the Spanish school, remarkable for the fulness of the contours, the brightness of the colouring, and yet no one will deny that these Spanish paintings breathe the most spiritualised, the most ideal Christianity; and that their authors were not less imbued with faith than the celebrated masters of our days, who have embraced Catholicism at Rome in order to be able to paint its sacred symbols with a fervour and ingenuous spontaneity which, according to their idea, only the ecstasy of faith can give. The true character of Christian art does not reside in thinness and paleness of the body, but in a certain effervescence of the soul, which neither the musician nor the painter can appropriate to himself either by baptism or by study; and in this respect I find in the ‘Stabat’ of Rossini a more truly Christian character than in the ‘Paulus’ of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, an oratorio which the adversaries of Rossini point to as a model of the Christian style. Heaven preserve me from wishing to express by that the least blame against a master so full of merits as the composer of ‘Paulus;’ and the author of these letters is less likely than any one to wish to criticise the Christian character of the oratorio in question from clerical, or, so to say, pharisaical reasons. I cannot, however, avoid pointing out, that at the age when Mendelssohn commenced Christianity at Berlin (he was only baptised in his thirteenth year), Rossini had already deserted it a little, and had lost himself entirely in the mundane music of operas. Now he has again abandoned the latter, to carry himself back in dreams to the Catholic recollections of his first youth—to the days when he sang as a child in the choir of the Pesaro cathedral, and took part as an acolyte in the service of the holy mass.”

Heine, in his brilliant article, goes on to exalt Rossini (according to his invariable method) by depreciating Mendelssohn; a proceeding for which Rossini would not have thanked him. Nor would Heine himself have been pleased to see the criticism in which he expresses so poetically, and in such an admirable form, the true character of the “Stabat” music, represented by a mere fragment. Still the fragments of some writers are better than the complete articles of others; and the passages in which Heine, as a poetical appreciator, not as a musical critic, points out the error of condemning Rossini’s entrancing music from the gloomy churchwarden point of view, are admirable.

The “Stabat Mater,” was, at one time, regarded as Rossini’s final utterance; but a mass, the production of the last few years of his life, has just been made public, and bids fair to eclipse the fame of the earlier religious work. However, of the “Stabat” it may already be said that the music, as music, whatever significance may be attached to it, will certainly live. It gains every year in popularity, and is at this moment better known than any of Rossini’s operas, except “William Tell” and the “Barber.”

The “Messe Solennelle” (or “Petite Messe Solennelle,” its original title) was performed for the first time in presence of Meyerbeer, Auber, and a certain number of private friends at Paris, in the year 1864. The composer had not at that time arranged it for the orchestra, and the instrumentation of the mass occupied him at intervals almost until the autumn of last year, when, at the age of seventy-seven, he was attacked by the illness which carried him off.

Rossini had the happiness not to survive his capacity for production,—far less his reputation, which the performance throughout Europe of his last work cannot fail to enhance. He was surrounded to the last by admiring and affectionate friends; and if it be true that, like so many other Italians, he regarded Friday as an unlucky day, and thirteen as an unlucky number, it is remarkable that on Friday, the 13th of November, he died.

Incomparably the greatest Italian composer of the century, and the greatest of all Italian composers for the stage, he will be known until some very great change takes place in our artistic civilisation by at least three great works in three very different styles—“Il Barbiere di Siviglia,” a comic opera of the year 1813, “Guillaume Tell,” a serious opera of the year 1829, and the “Stabat Mater,” a religious poem of the year 1841.

LIST OF ROSSINI’S WORKS,
WITH THE DATE OF THEIR PRODUCTION IN PUBLIC.

• 1. Il Pianto d’Armonia. Cantata, 1808.
• 2. Orchestral Symphony, 1809.
• 3. Quartet for Stringed Instruments, 1809.
• 4. La Cambiale di Matrimonio. Opera, 1810.
• 5. L’Equivoco Stravagante. Opera, 1811.
• 6. Didone Abbandonata. Cantata, 1811.
• 7. Demetrio e Polibio. Opera, 1811.
• 8. L’Inganno Felice. Opera, 1812.
• 9. Ciro in Babilonia. Opera, 1812.
• 10. La Scala di Seta. Opera, 1812.
• 11. La Pietra del Paragone. Opera, 1812.
• 12. L’Occasione fa il Ladro. Opera, 1812.
• 13. Il Figlio per Azzardo. Opera, 1813.
• 14. Tancredi. Opera, 1813.
• 15. L’Italiana in Algeri. Opera, 1813.
• 16. L’Aureliano in Palmira. Opera, 1814.
• 17. Egle e Irene. Cantata (unpublished), 1814.
• 18. Il Turco in Italia. Opera, 1814.
• 19. Elisabetta. Opera, 1815.
• 20. Torvaldo e Dorliska. Opera, 1816.
• 21. Il Barbiere di Siviglia. Opera, 1816.
• 22. La Gazetta. Opera, 1816.
• 23. Otello. Opera, 1816.
• 24. Teti e Peleo. Cantata, 1816.
• 25. Cenerentola. Opera, 1817.
• 26. La Gazza Ladra. Opera, 1817.
• 27. Armide. Opera, 1817.
• 28. Adelaide di Borgogna. Opera, 1818.
• 29. MosÈ. Opera, 1818.
• 30. Adina. Opera (written for Lisbon), 1818.{344}
• 31. Ricciardo e ZoraÏde. Opera, 1818.
• 32. Ermione. Opera, 1819.
• 33. Eduardo e Cristina. Opera, 1819.
• 34. La Donna del Lago. Opera, 1819.
• 35. Cantata in honour of the King of Naples. 1819.
• 36. Bianca e Faliero. Opera, 1820.
• 37. Maometto II. Opera, 1820.
• 38. Cantata in honour of the Emperor of Austria. 1820.
• 39. Matilda di Sabran. Opera, 1821.
• 40. La Riconoscenza. Cantata, 1821.
• 41. Zelmira. Opera, 1822.
• 42. Il Vero Omaggio. Cantata, 1822.
• 43. Semiramide. Opera, 1823.
• 44. Il Viaggio a Reims. Opera, 1825.
• 45. Le SiÈge de Corinthe. Opera, 1826.
• 46. MoÏse. Opera, 1827.
• 47. Le Comte Ory. Opera, 1828.
• 48. Guillaume Tell. Opera, 1829.
• 49. Les SoirÉes Musicales. Douze morceaux de chant, 1840.
• 50. Quatre Ariettes Italiennes, 1841.
• 51. Stabat Mater. 1842.
• 52. La Foi, l’EspÉrance et la CharitÉ. Trois choeurs, 1843.
• 53. Stances À Pie IX., 1847.
• 54. Messe Solennelle, 1869.

THE END.