History of the Opera from its Origin in Italy to the present Time

"Rue des Tuileries," replied the Chevalier, "and my horses with me. The poor beasts have shared all my misfortunes."

"Give me the whip and reins, and get inside," cried de Lauragais.

"What for?" inquired the Chevalier.

"To drive you home. It is an act which, as a gentleman, I insist on performing; a duty I owe to my old companion and friend. Your day's work is over. To-morrow morning we will go to Sophie's, who expects me to breakfast."

"Where?"

"At the Hotel d'Angivillier, a caravansary of painters and musicians, where Fouché has granted her, on the part of the Republic, an apartment and a pension of two thousand four hundred francs – we should have said a hundred louis formerly. This is called a national reward for the eminent services rendered by the citoyenne Arnould to the country, and to the sovereign people at the Opera. The poor girl was greatly in need of it."

SOPHIE ARNOULD AGAIN

Fouché had once been desperately in love with Sophie Arnould, and now pitied her in her distress. Thanks to her influence with the minister, the Chevalier Ferrière obtained an order, authorizing him to return to France, though he had never left Paris, except occasionally to drive a fare to one of the suburbs.

The natural effect of Napoleon's campaigns in Italy was to create among the French army a taste for Italian music. The First Consul and many of his generals were passionately fond of it; and a hint from the Tuileries in 1801 was sufficient to induce Mademoiselle Montansier to engage an Italian company, which performed for the first time in Paris on the 1st of May in the same year. The enterprise, however, was not successful; and in 1803 the directress, who had been arrested before because money was owing to her, was put in prison for owing money.

If, by taking his troops to Italy, Napoleon was the means of introducing a taste for Italian music among the French, he provided his country with Italian singers in a far more direct manner. At Dresden, in 1806, he was delighted with the performance of Brizzi and Madame Paer in the opera of Achille, composed by the prima donna's husband.

"You sing divinely, Madame Paer," said the emperor. What do they give you at this theatre?"

"Fifteen thousand francs, Sire."

"You shall receive thirty. M. Brizzi, you shall follow me on the same terms."

"But we are engaged."

"With me. You see the affair is quite settled. The Prince of Benevento will attend to the diplomatic part of it."

NAPOLEON AND PAER

Napoleon took away Achille, and everything belonging to it; music, composer, and the two principal singers. The engagement by which the emperor engaged Paer as composer of his chamber music, was drawn up by Talleyrand, and bore his signature, approved by Napoleon, and attested by Maret, the secretary of state. Paer, who had been four years at Dresden, and who, independently of his contract, was personally much attached to the king of Saxony, did all in his power to avoid entering into Napoleon's service. Perhaps, too, he was not pleased at the prospect of having to follow the emperor about from one battle-field to another, though by a special article in the engagement offered to him, he was guaranteed ten francs a post, and thirty-four francs a day for his travelling expenses. As Paer, in spite of the compliments, and the liberal terms[72 - Twenty-eight thousand francs a year, to which Napoleon always added twelve thousand in presents, with an annual congé of four months.] offered to him by Napoleon, continued to object, General Clarke told the emperor that he had an excellent plan for getting over all difficulties, and saving the maestro from any reproaches of ingratitude which the king of Saxony might otherwise address to him. This plan consisted in placing Paer in the hands of gens d'armes, and having him conducted from camp to camp wherever the emperor went. No violence, however, was done to the composer. The king of Saxony liberated him from his engagement at the Dresden opera, and, moreover, signified to him that he must either follow Napoleon, or quit Saxony immediately. It is said that Paer was ceded by a secret treaty between the two sovereigns, like a fortress, or rather like a province, as provinces were transferred before the idea of nationality was invented; that is to say, without the wishes of the inhabitants being in any way taken into account. The king of Saxony was only too glad that Napoleon took nothing from him but his singers and musicians.

Brizzi, the tenor, Madame Paer, the prima donna, and her husband, the composer, were ordered to start at once for Warsaw. In the morning, the emperor would attend to military and state affairs, and perhaps preside at a battle, for fighting was now going on in the neighbourhood of the Polish capital. In the evening, he had a concert at head quarters, the programme of which generally included several pieces by Paisiello. Napoleon was particularly fond of Paisiello's music, and Paer, who, besides being a composer, was a singer of high merit, knew a great deal of it by heart.

Paisiello had been Napoleon's chapel-master since 1801, the emperor having sent for him to Naples after signing the Concordat with the Pope. On arriving in Paris, the cunning Italian, like an experienced courtier, was no sooner introduced to Napoleon than he addressed him as 'sire!'

"'Sire,' what do you mean?" replied the first consul; "I am a general, and nothing more."

"Well, General," continued the composer, "I have come to place myself at your majesty's orders."

"I must really beg you," continued Napoleon, "not to address me in this manner."

"Forgive me, General," answered Paisiello, "but I cannot give up the habit I have contracted in addressing sovereigns who, compared with you, seem but pigmies. However, I will not forget your commands, sire; and if I have been unfortunate enough to offend, I must throw myself upon your Majesty's indulgence."

EXPRESSION IN MUSIC

Paisiello received ten thousand francs for the mass he wrote for Napoleon's coronation. Each of the masses for the imperial chapel brought him one thousand francs. Not much, certainly; but then it must be remembered that he produced as many as fourteen in two years. They were for the most part made up of pieces of church music, which the maestro had written for Italy, and when this fruitful source failed him, he had recourse to his numerous serious and comic operas. Thus, an air from the Nittetti was made to do duty as a Gloria, another from the Scuffiera as an Agnus Dei. Music depends so much upon association that, doubtless, only those persons who had already heard these melodies on the stage, found them at all inappropriate in a church. Figaro's air in the Barber of Seville would certainly not sound well in a mass; but there are plenty of love songs, songs expressive of despair (if not of too violent a kind), songs, in short, of a sentimental and slightly passionate cast, which only require to be united to religious words to be at once and thereby endowed with a religious character. Gluck, himself, who is supposed by many to have believed that music was capable of conveying absolute, definite ideas, borrowed pieces from his old Italian operas to introduce into the scores he was writing, on entirely different subjects, for the Académie Royale of Paris. Thus, he has employed an air from his Telemacco in the introduction to the overture of Iphigénie en Aulide. The chorus in the latter work, Que d'attraits que de majesté, is founded on the air, Al mio spirto, in the same composer's Clemenza di Tito. The overture to Gluck's Telemacco became that of his Armide. Music serves admirably to heighten the effect of a dramatic situation, or to give force and intensity to the expression of words; but the same music may often be allied with equal advantage to words of very different shades of meaning. Thus, the same melody will depict equally well the rage of a baffled conspirator, the jealousy of an injured and most respectable husband, and various other kinds of agitation; the grief of lovers about to part, the joy of lovers at meeting again, and other emotions of a tender nature; the despondency of a man firmly bent on suicide, the calm devotion of a pious woman entering a convent, and other feelings of a solemn class. The signification we discover in music also depends much upon the circumstances under which it is heard, and to some extent also on the mood we are in when hearing it.

TWO PASTICCIOS

Under the republic, consulate, and empire, music did not flourish in France, and not even the imperial Spontini and Cherubini, in spite of the almost European reputation they for some time enjoyed, produced any works which will bear comparison with the masterpieces of their successors, Rossini, Auber, and Meyerbeer. During the dark artistic period which separates the fall of the monarchy from the restoration, a few interesting works were produced at the Opera Comique; but until Napoleon's advent to power, France neglected more than ever the music of Italy, and did worse than neglect that of Germany, for, in 1793, the directors of the Academy brought out a version of Mozart's Marriage of Figaro, in five acts, without recitative and with all the prose dialogue of Beaumarchais introduced. In 1806, too, a pasticcio by Kalkbrenner, formed out of the music of Mozart's Don Juan, with improvements and additions by Kalkbrenner himself, was performed at the same theatre. Both these medleys met with the fate which might have been anticipated for them.

CHAPTER XIV.

OPERA IN ITALY, GERMANY AND RUSSIA, DURING AND IN CONNECTION WITH THE REPUBLICAN AND NAPOLEONIC WARS. PAISIELLO, PAER, CIMAROSA, MOZART. THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO. DON GIOVANNI

NOTHING shows better the effect on art of the long continental wars at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century than the fact that Mozart's two greatest works, written for Vienna and Prague immediately before the French Revolution, did not become known in England and France until about a quarter of a century after their production. Fortunate Austria, before the great break up of European territories and dynasties, possessed the two first musical capitals in Europe. Opera had already declined in Berlin, and its history, even under the direction of the flute-playing Frederic, possesses little interest for English readers after the departure or rather flight of Madame Mara. Italy was still the great nursery of music, but her maestri composed their greatest works for foreign theatres, and many of them were attached to foreign courts. Thus, Paisiello wrote his Barbiere di Siviglia for St. Petersburgh, whither he had been invited by the Empress Catherine, and where he was succeeded by Cimarosa. Cimarosa, again, on his return from St. Petersburgh, wrote his masterpiece, Il Matrimonio Segretto, for the Emperor Leopold II., at Vienna. Of the Opera at Stockholm, we have heard nothing since the time of Queen Christina. The Dresden Opera, which, in the days of Handel, was the first in Europe, still maintained its pre-eminence at the beginning of the second half of the eighteenth century, when Rousseau published his "Musical Dictionary," and described at length the composition of its admirable orchestra. But the state and the resources of the kings of Saxony declined with the power of Poland, and the Dresden Opera, though, thanks to the taste which presided at the court, its performances were still excellent, had quite lost its peculiar celebrity long before Napoleon came, and carried away its last remaining glories in the shape of the composer, Paer, and Madame Paer and Brizzi, its two principal singers.

PAISIELLO IN RUSSIA

The first great musical work produced in Russia, Paisiello's Barbiere di Siviglia, was performed for the first time at St. Petersburgh, in 1780. In this opera work, of which the success soon became European, the composer entered thoroughly into the spirit of all Beaumarchais's best scenes, so admirably adapted for musical illustration. Of the solos, the three most admired were Almaviva's opening romance, Don Basil's La Calomnia, and the air for Don Bartholo; the other favourite pieces being a comic trio, in which La Jeunesse sneezes, and L'Eveillé yawns in the presence of the tutor (I need scarcely remark that the personages just named belong to Beaumarchais's comedy, and that they are not introduced in Rossini's opera), another trio, in which Rosina gives the letter to Figaro, a duet for the entry of the tenor in the assumed character of Don Alonzo, and a quintett, in which Don Basil is sent to bed, and in which the phrase buona sera is treated with great felicity.

Pergolese rendered a still greater service to Russia than did Paisiello by writing one of his masterpieces for its capital, when he took the young Bortnianski with him from St. Petersburgh to Italy, and there educated the greatest religious composer that Russia, not by any means deficient in composers, has yet known.

A SINGER'S INDISPOSITION

We have seen that Paisiello, some years after his return to Italy, was engaged by Napoleon as chapel-master, and that the services of Paer were soon afterwards claimed and secured by the emperor as composer of his chamber music. This was not the first time that Paer had been forced to alter his own private arrangements in consequence of the very despotic patronage accorded to music by the victorious leaders of the French army. In 1799 he was at Udine, where his wife was engaged as prima donna. Portogallo's la Donna di genio volubile was about to be represented before a large number of the officers under the command of Bernadotte, when suddenly it appeared impossible to continue the performance owing to the very determined indisposition of the primo basso. This gentleman had gone to bed in the middle of the day disguised as an invalid. He declared himself seriously unwell in the afternoon, and in the evening sent a message to the theatre to excuse himself from appearing in Portogallo's opera. Paer and his wife understood what this meant. The performance was for Madame Paer's benefit; and Olivieri, the perfidious basso, from private pique, had determined, if possible, to prevent it taking place. Paer's spirit was roused by the attitude of the primo buffo, which was still that of a man confined to his bed; and he resolved to frustrate his infamous scheme, which, though simple, appeared certain of success, inasmuch as no other comic basso was to be found anywhere near Udine. The audience was impatient, Madame Paer in tears, the manager in despair, when Paer desired that the performance might begin; saying, that Providence would send them a basso who would at least know his part, and that in any case Madame Paer must get ready for the first scene. Madame Paer obeyed the marital injunction, but in a state of great trepidation; for she had no confidence in the capabilities of the promised basso, and was not by any means sure that he even existed. The curtain was about to rise, when the singer who was to have fallen from the clouds walked quietly on to the stage, perfectly dressed for the part he was about to undertake, and without any sign of hesitation on his countenance. The prima donna uttered a cry of surprise, burst into a fit of laughter, and then rushed weeping into the arms of her husband, – for it was Paer himself who had undertaken to replace the treacherous Olivieri.

"No," said Madame Paer; "this is impossible! It shall never be said that I allowed you, a great composer, who will one day be known throughout Europe, to act the buffoon. No! the performance must be stopped!"

At this moment the final chords of the overture were heard. Poor Madame Paer resigned herself to her fate, and went weeping on to the stage to begin a comic duet with her husband, who seemed in excellent spirits, and commenced his part with so much verve and humour, that the audience rewarded his exertions with a storm of applause. Paer's gaiety soon communicated itself to his wife. If Paer was to perform at all, it was necessary that his performance should outshine that of all possible rivals, and especially that of the miscreant Olivieri, who was now laughing between his sheets at the success which he fancied must have already attended his masterly device. The prima donna had never sung so charmingly before, but the greatest triumph of the evening was gained by the new basso. Olivieri, who previously had been pronounced unapproachable in Portogallo's opera, was now looked upon as quite an inferior singer compared to the buffo caricato who had so unexpectedly presented himself before the Udine public. Paer, in addition to his great, natural histrionic ability, knew every note of la Donna. Olivieri had studied only his own part. Paer, in directing the rehearsals, had made himself thoroughly acquainted with all of them, and gave a significance to some portions of the music which had never been expressed or apprehended by his now defeated, routed, utterly confounded rival.

A SINGER'S INDISPOSITION

At present comes the dark side of the picture. Olivieri, dangerously ill the night before, was perfectly well the next morning, and quite ready to resume his part in la Donna di genio volubile. Paer, on the other hand, was quite willing to give it up to him; but both reckoned without the military connoisseurs of Udine, and above all without Bernadotte, who arrived the day after Paer's great success, when all the officers of the staff were talking of nothing else. Olivieri was announced to appear in his old character; but when the bill was shown to the General, he declared that the original representative might go back to bed, for that the only buffo he would listen to was the illustrious Paer. In vain the director explained that the composer was not engaged as a singer, and that nothing but the sudden indisposition of Olivieri would have induced him to appear on the stage at all. Bernadotte swore he would have Paer, and no one else; and as the unfortunate impresario continued his objections, he was ordered into arrest, and informed that he should remain in prison until the maestro Paer undertook once more the part of "Pippo" in Portogallo's opera.

The General then sent a company of grenadiers to surround Paer's house; but the composer had heard of what had befallen the manager, and, foreseeing his own probable fate, if he remained openly in Udine, had concealed himself, and spread a report that he was in the country. Lancers and hussars were dispatched in search of him, but naturally without effect. In the supposed absence of Paer, the army was obliged to accept Olivieri; and when six or seven representations of the popular opera had taken place and the military public had become accustomed to Olivieri's performance of the part of "Pippo," Paer came forth from his hiding place and suffered no more from the warlike dilettanti-ism of Bernadotte.

MADAME FODOR AND THE COW

There would be no end to my anecdotes if I were to attempt to give a complete list of all those in which musicians and singers have been made to figure in connection with all sorts of events during the last great continental war. The great vocalists, and many of the great composers of the day, continued to travel about from city to city, and from court to court, as though Europe were still in a state of profound peace. Sometimes, as happened once to Paer, and was nearly happening to him a second time, they were taken prisoners; or they found themselves shut up in a besieged town; and a great cantatrice, Madame Fodor, who chanced to be engaged at the Hamburg opera when Hamburg was invested, was actually the cause of a sortie being made in her favour. On one occasion, while she was singing, the audience was disturbed by a cannon ball coming through the roof of the theatre and taking its place in the gallery; but the performances continued nevertheless, and the officers and soldiers of the garrison continued to be delighted with their favourite vocalist. Madame Fodor, however, on her side, was beginning to get tired of her position; not that she cared much about the bombardment which was renewed from time to time, but because the supply of milk had failed, cows and oxen having been alike slaughtered for the sustenance of the beleaguered garrison. Without milk, Madame Fodor was scarcely able to sing; at least, she had so accustomed herself to drink it every evening during the intervals of performance, that she found it inconvenient and painful to do without it. Hearing in what a painful situation their beloved vocalist found herself, the French army gallantly resolved to remedy it without delay. The next evening a sortie was effected, and a cow brought back in triumph. This cow was kept in the property and painting room in the theatre, above the stage, and was lowered like a drop scene, to be milked whenever Madame Fodor was thirsty. So, at least, says the operatic anecdote on the subject, though it would perhaps have been a more convenient proceeding to have sent some trustworthy person to perform the milking operation up stairs. In any case, the cow was kept carefully shut up and under guard. Otherwise the animal's life would not have been safe, so great was the scarcity of provision in Hamburg at the time, and so great the general hunger for beef of any kind.

THE D'ENTRAIGUES' MURDER

Madame Huberti, after flying from Paris during the Reign of Terror, married the Count d'Entraigues, and would seem to have terminated her operatic career happily and honourably; but she was destined some years afterwards to die a horrible death. The countess always wore the order of St. Michael, which had been given to her by the then unacknowledged Louis XVIII., in token of the services she had rendered to the royalist party, by enabling her husband to escape from prison and preserving his portfolio which contained a number of political papers of great importance. The Count afterwards entered the service of Russia, and was entrusted by the government with several confidential missions. Hitherto he had been working in the interest of the Bourbons against Napoleon; but when the French emperor and the emperor Alexander formed an alliance, after the battles of Eylau and Friedland, he seems to have thought that his connexion with Russia ought to terminate. However this may have been, he found means to obtain a copy of the secret articles contained in the treaty of Tilsit[73 - According to M. Thiers, the pretended copies of the secret articles, sold to the English Government, were not genuine, and the money paid for them was "mal gagné."] and hastened to London to communicate them to the English government. For this service he is said to have received a pension, and he now established himself in England, where he appears to have had continual relations with the foreign office. The French police heard how the Count d'Entraigues was employed in London, and Fouché sent over two agents to watch him and intercept his letters. These emissaries employed an Italian refugee, to get acquainted with and bribe Lorenzo, the Count's servant, who allowed his compatriot to read and even to take copies of the despatches frequently entrusted to him by his master to take to Mr. Canning. He, moreover, gave him a number of the Count's letters to and from other persons. One evening a letter was brought to M. d'Entraigues which obliged him to go early the next morning from his residence at Barnes to London. Lorenzo had observed the seal of the foreign office on the envelope, and saw that his treachery would soon be discovered. Everything was ready for the journey, when he stabbed his master, who fell to the ground mortally wounded. The Countess was getting into the carriage. To prevent her charging him with her husband's death, the servant also stabbed her, and a few moments afterwards, in confusion and despair, blew his own brains out with a pistol which he in the first instance appears to have intended for M. d'Entraigues. This horrible affair occurred on the 22nd of July, 1812.

Nothing fatal happened to Madame Colbran, though she was deeply mixed up with politics, her name being at one time quite a party word among the royalists at Naples. Those who admired the king made a point of admiring his favourite singer. A gentleman from England asked a friend one night at the Naples theatre how he liked the vocalist in question.

"Like her? I am a royalist," was the reply.

When the revolutionists gained the upper hand, Madame Colbran was hissed; but the discomfiture of the popular party was always followed by renewed triumphs for the singer.

Madame Colbran must not lead us on to her future husband, Rossini, whose epoch has not yet arrived. The mention of Paer's wife has already taken us far away from the composers in vogue at the end of the eighteenth century.

IL MATRIMONIO SEGRETTO

Two of the three best comic operas ever produced, Le Nozze di Figaro and Il Matrimonio Segretto (I need scarcely name Rossini's Il Barbiere di Siviglia as the third), were written for Vienna within six years (1786-1792), and at the special request of emperors of Germany. Cimarosa was returning from St. Petersburgh when Leopold II., Joseph the Second's successor, detained him at Vienna, and invited him to compose something for his theatre. The maestro had not much time, but he did his best, and the result was, Il Matrimonio Segretto. The Emperor was delighted with the work, which seemed almost to have been improvised, and gave the composer twelve thousand francs, or, as some say, twelve thousand florins; in either case, a very liberal sum for the period when Cimarosa, Paisiello and Gughelmi had mutually agreed, whatever more they might receive for their operas, never to take less than two thousand four hundred francs.