Chapter XX Italian Opera to Verdi Cimarosa, Rossini, Donizetti, and Bellini--The last writers of the Neapolitan school--Tune for tune's sake--Rossini's improvements in methods of opera writing--Verdi and his three styles--"AIda," and "Otello," "Falstaff," and the new school of Italian opera.

DOMENICO CIMAROSA (Naples, Dec. 17, 1749—Venice, Jan. 11, 1801) wrote seventy-six operas, none of which are heard today outside of Italy, where recently there has been a movement to revive some of the operas of the end of the last century. Cimarosa's masterpiece is "Il Matrimonia Segreto," a genuinely fine work in the department of Italian opera buffa. The music is distinguished for its flow of genuine and spirited humor and its constant melody. The ensembles are excellently made and have served as models to later masters.

The most celebrated, original, and influential of Italian masters of the present century before Verdi was Gioachino Antonio Rossini, born at Pesaro, Feb. 29, 1792. His principal works are: "Tancred" (1813), "Otello" (1816), "Il Barbiere di Siviglia" (1816), "Semiramide" (1823), and "Gillaume Tell" (1829). The last named opera was written for Paris and it was not warmly received. Rossini appears to have taken its failure greatly to heart, and finding himself independent he wrote no more for the stage. He died in Paris, Nov. 13, 1868. "William Tell" is usually classed by historians among French operas, because it was written for the French stage and was a deliberate attempt to follow the French style. But it was its pure Italianism that prevented it from winning immediate success in Paris. Nevertheless it is Rossini's masterpiece.

Rossini was not a man of musical genius, nor was he one of profound musical learning. As soon as he had enough musical science to write a score, he dropped study once and for all and embarked upon his career as a composer. He had a keen perception of the nature of those musical means which could be employed to produce a stage effect, and wrote always with these in his mind. There is no depth, no sincerity, in the music of Rossini. It is always theatrical and full of imposition. Perhaps the most heartless music ever written for an opera by a man of real talent is that of "Semiramide." Hardly an air in it will stand the test of comparison with its own text, and the manner in which a plotting priest, supposed to be a dark and mysterious villain, goes about expressing his desperate soul through trills and scales is almost ridiculous. Yet "Semiramide" is full of melody, and it contains musical effects which were new and striking at the time of its production. The employment of four horns together with clarinets in the finale, for instance, was an innovation.

Rossini must be credited with several improvements, although he wrote for the singer, and his "Semiramide" is a survival of the style of opera produced in Handel's day. In his "Otello" he abandoned the old recitativo secco and produced an opera with recitativo stromentato throughout. He enriched the instrumentation greatly, largely through his employment of the horns. He was a fine horn-player himself. He introduced the use of long crescendi and also introduced the cabaletta, a quick movement to follow a slow cantabile aria, as the "Dolce pensiero" after "Bel raggio" in "Semiramide," or the "Semper libera" after "Ah, fors e lui" in Verdi's "La Traviata." Rossini also tried to abolish the custom of permitting singers to make their own ornamental cadenzas, insisting that he could write good ones and that singers must use them. The most important of all these improvements was the abandonment of recitativo secco. While all other composers did not at once follow his lead, the superiority of operas containing only recitativo stromentato gradually became clear, and recitativo secco almost disappeared. It is written by composers of today only in very brief passages.

Rossini's "Barber of Seville" is a genuinely good example of opera buffa. It is full of melody and it sparkles with vivacity. When well performed it must always give pleasure to intelligent hearers. "William Tell" is a melodious, fluent, and in places really eloquent piece of dramatic composition. It is fine enough to make one regret that Rossini, who finished his life under the influence of French dramatic theories, did not again write for the stage. The popularity of Rossini's operas in the first three quarters of the present century was enormous. At one time it seemed as if all the bands and half the pianos in Europe were playing "Di tanti regi." His works preserved all the essential elements of the Neapolitan school founded by Alessandro Scarlatti, of whom Rossini and his immediate Italian successors were artistic descendants.

Gaetano Donizetti was born at Bergamo, Nov. 29, 1797. His first successes were achieved after Rossini had retired. His most important works are: "Elisir d'Amore" (1832), "Lucrezia Borgia" (1834), "Lucia di Lammermoor" (1835), "La Favorita" (1840), "Linda di Chamounix" (1842), and "Don Pasquale" (1842). Donizetti cannot be said to have contributed anything to the development of Italian opera except a simpler and less pretentious style than that of Rossini. Weak and watery as his grand operas appear to us now, they had a good influence at the time of their production. His opera buffa "Elisir d'Amore" is, when well performed, a very pleasing trifle. Donizetti had an excellent flow of melody, but he sacrificed dramatic truth to musical effectiveness at all times in his operas.

Vincenzo Bellini (1802-1835) wrote also in a sweet, melodious, and generally sentimental style, except in "Norma" (1832), in which one of the most dramatic librettos in the whole field of opera inspired the composer to the production of some really admirable music. Bellini's "Norma" went far toward showing how a pure Italian style and a powerful dramatic utterance might be reconciled. His "La Sonnambula" (1831) is occasionally performed, for the glory of some light soprano. Bellini might have achieved much if he had not died so young.

Saverio Mercadante (1795-1870) wrote sixty operas. His most important works are: "Elisa e Claudio" (1822), and "Il Guiramento" (1837). The latter work not only contains powerful ensembles and solos, but differs from the style of Rossini more than any other of Mercadante's works. It contains passages which are original, yet remind us of the style of Meyerbeer and of Wagner in his "Rienzi."

We come now to the greatest opera composer that Italy has produced,—a composer who ranks with the representative masters of other schools and whose career is an epitome of the history of Italian opera in his time. Giuseppe Verdi was born at Roncole, near Busseto, Oct. 9, 1813. He took his first lessons from a local organist, but in 1833 was sent to Milan to study. His first opera, "Oberto, Conte di San Bonifazio," was produced at Milan in 1839. His principal works since have been: "Ernani" (1844), "Rigoletto" (1851), "Il Trovatore" (1853), "La Traviata" (1853), "AÏda" (1871), "Otello" (1887), and "Falstaff" (1893).

Verdi's music has been divided into three styles. It will, perhaps, be somewhat difficult for the average listener to distinguish more than two, yet there are musical grounds for the statement. His earliest operas are in the old Neapolitan style as it had come to exist in Verdi's time. They consist of series of tunes, strung on threads of recitative, without any consideration of dramatic fidelity except a vague, general fitness of color. Their music is designed strictly to tickle the ear. In "Ernani" we meet with Verdi's second style, which is characterized by immense vigor, boisterous instrumentation, and contrasts of tremendous dramatic power with cheap dance music. "Rigoletto" is the best and most familiar specimen of this period. "Il Trovatore," though of later date than "Rigoletto," is rather in the style of the first period. The third period began with "AÏda," in which Verdi parted company forever with elementary rhythms and harmonies, common dance tunes, coarse instrumentation, and operatic claptrap in general. "AÏda" is a grand and inspiring masterpiece in which the Verdian stream of melody is quite as rich as in the earlier works, but is guided in artistic channels. The music is intense in its dramatic passion, and by the use of rich harmony and changeful melody Verdi creates an atmosphere full of local color. In "AÏda," however, Verdi preserved all the familiar forms of the older Italian operas. He uses even the aria da capo in its modern shape. But into everything is infused a true dramatic spirit. It is in characterization that the greatest shortcoming of the "AÏda" music is to be found. Nevertheless, "AÏda" is the best opera written by an Italian up to its date of production.

In his next opera, "Otello," written at a time when most composers would have retired to rest on their laurels, Verdi made another tremendous stride upward, and stamped himself as one of the world's genuine masters. In "Otello" he abandoned all the old forms. There are no set instrumental introductions to arias, not set arias, no cabaletti. The only lyrics are Desdemona's "Ave Maria" and "Willow" song, which are introduced as songs might be in a spoken drama. Verdi named "Otello" a lyric drama, and that is precisely what it is. The single speeches are treated as speeches, not as songs, and the dialogue is pure dialogue, not as duets or trios. Much of the score is in the modern style of arioso, a species of recitative in which the phrases are highly melodic in style without forming a complete tune, and yet preserve their dramatic truthfulness. The orchestration is immensely rich and expressive, and is quite independent of the voices. One or two leading motives of the Wagnerian kind are employed with much judgment and moderation. The libretto, a remarkably fine adaptation of the Shakespearian play, is by Arrigo Boito (born 1842), himself the composer of a very fine opera, "Mefistofele," intensely modern in style.

Verdi was accused of imitating Wagner in both "AÏda" and "Otello," chiefly because he modified and afterward abandoned the recognized forms of the Italian school. The charge cannot be sustained. Verdi has never for an instant sacrificed his individuality, and his music is as purely and intensely Italian as Wagner's is German. The same charge was made against Gounod when he wrote "Romeo et Juliette," a thoroughly French work. Verdi in these operas was simply following the dictates of his mature genius, which was leading him toward one of the most significant developments of our time. He was struggling to adapt to the fundamental theories of opera, as expounded by its founders, Rinuccini and Peri, the vast and complicated materials of modern musical expression. In "AÏda" he endeavored to reconcile the formulÆ of the Neapolitan school with the esthetic principles of the Greek drama and approached as closely to complete success as the opposing nature of the two chief elements would permit. In "Otello" he confessed the unsuitability of the Neapolitan forms to the full and detailed union of text and music. He preserved the Italian beauty of the vocal part of opera, constructed it with a consistent, determined, and generally successful attempt at organic union with the text, and so produced an opera which will, I believe, live. That he was wholly uninfluenced by Wagner's style, though he was attentive to Wagner's proclamations of the true theory of dramatic composition, is demonstrated by "Otello," and still more conclusively by his last work, "Falstaff," which is as far away from Wagner's style as is Mozart's "Nozze di Figaro," and yet which is built on precisely the same dramatic principles as Wagner's "Die Meistersinger."

In "Falstaff" we hear the voice of Mozart. If Mozart had lived in the latter part of this century he might have written this noble work. In "Falstaff" Verdi has, as in "Otello," declined to use any of the Neapolitan paraphernalia. There is not a single number that approaches the old aria form except two small lyrics in the last scene. There are quartets, but they are in disguise. They are dialogues for four persons, written with profound musical learning, and with the unaffected freedom of the most playful fancy. But the great bulk of the dialogue is in the true Verdian arioso style, that glowing recitation which is the chief means of expression in this master's last works. There are no Wagnerian leading motives in the orchestration, but the orchestra independently accompanies and explicates the drama in a series of picturesque phrases whose beauties and significance will not be exhausted in many hearings. But what will most delight and amaze every hearer of this music is its youthful vigor. It is as fresh and spontaneous as the work of a young man in the blush of his first love, yet it is full of the wisdom and experience of him who is the epitome of more than half a century of Italian opera. It bustles, it glows, it inspires, yet it never transcends the modesty of art. Rich, complex, brilliant, and eloquent as the orchestration is, it never strains for effects and it is never blatant. Subtle, varied, polished as the recitation is, it has not a measure that cannot be sung, and neither the voice of the singer nor the ear of the hearer is ever outraged. In short, "Falstaff" is the work of a man whose genius is inexhaustible, whose natural fire burned in his eightieth year with all the glow of that dawn when "Ernani" was the morning star.

The latest development of Italian opera is the short work as seen in the "Cavalleria Rusticana" and "Pagliacci,—" probably a passing fashion. It shows no evidences of permanency, for its composers have produced no new style. They have employed the whole material of Verdi's later operas, and the only new feature is the condensation, which does not always give good musical results, because the emotions shift too constantly to permit a complete and influential musical embodiment of any one state. These young composers have tried to advance beyond Verdi in complexity of rhythm and boldness of modulation. Some of their modulations are made obviously for the sake of oddity. The aria da capo has disappeared entirely from the modern Italian opera. But the greatest achievement of the latest writers, chiefly Verdi, is the development, to what seems to be the highest possible point, of the beautiful arioso style of Italy,—the style which combines most of the power of German declamation with all the elegance and singable quality of the Neapolitan manner.

Arrigo Boito, born at Padua, Feb. 24, 1842, and still living, produced one remarkable opera, "Mefistofele," first performed on March 5, 1868, at La Scala Theatre, Milan. The work, in its original form, was so subtle, so philosophical, so undramatic, so thoroughly in sympathy with the spirit of Goethe's "Faust," and withal such a radical departure from everything recognized as opera by the Italians, that it caused the most heated controversy. In 1875 a revised version, that now known to the public, was put forward, and this has pleased the majority of opera-goers. The work is episodic and disjointed, but its characterization is most graphic, and the dramatic force of some of its scenes, notably that in the prison, is enormous. "Mefistofele" shares with "AÏda" the honor of having restored dramatic truth to the Italian lyric stage, but it lacks the skill in theatrical construction shown in Verdi's work. Boito has contented himself in later years with writing Verdi's libretti, but Verdi himself is authority for the statement that Boito has written an opera called "Nerone," which is a masterpiece. The opera music of the Italian school, in its entirety, is marked by greater floridity than that of other schools. The superficial, sensuous charms of the human voice have always appealed powerfully to the Italian race, and its composers have catered to this taste. An honorable ambition for a fame wider than the limits of their own country has led Italian composers to select from other schools their most immediately popular elements. The present Italian opera is eclectic. Its excellence lies largely in the fact that it does not run to extremes in any direction.

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