The Life of Rossini

One can guess what Rossini’s own politics must have been, from his temperament. Plots and stratagems were not to his taste. He had “music in his soul,” and a horror of discord.

Nevertheless, overtaken by a revolutionary movement just as he was about to leave Bologna to enter upon his new duties at Naples, he could not refuse to compose a hymn in honour of Italian liberty. Indeed, without having the least affection for brawlers and Red Republicans, Rossini may all the same have felt an antipathy for the Austrian domination in Italy. Without entering too far into this profound and really inscrutable question, it may be enough to mention that Rossini’s cantata, or hymn, of the year 1815, gained for its composer some reputation as an Italian patriot.

But this was nothing to the fame he derived from a little transaction he was reported to have had with the Austrian governor of Bologna, to whom he had to apply for permission to leave the town.

The patriotic hymn had been sung day and night at Bologna until the arrival of the Austrians, without its being generally known as the work of Rossini. The Austrian governor was a great dilettante, and rather piqued himself on his musical knowledge; so, on going to him for a passport, Rossini, with whose name the general was, of course, familiar, presented to him a piece of music set to verses full of enthusiasm on behalf of the Austrians.

The governor read the words, and approved. He looked at the music with the eye of a connoisseur, and approved more than ever. He called to one of his secretaries to make out Rossini’s passport forthwith, thanked the composer cordially for his attention, and in wishing him farewell, informed him that the music should be executed that very afternoon by the military band.

Rossini’s anthem in praise of Austria and paternal government was soon arranged for the regimental orchestra, and the same evening was played in the market-place before a large concourse of curious amateurs.

The townspeople knew that they were about to hear their patriotic hymn. Its performance was decidedly effective; but Rossini had started some hours before, and the musical governor had no opportunity of renewing to him the expression of his thanks.

If any one doubts the truth of this story, let him refer to the list of Rossini’s works, from which he will see that Rossini did really write a patriotic cantata in the year 1815.

CHAPTER II

ELISABETTA – ROSSINI’S DÉBUT AT NAPLES

IN Elisabetta Mademoiselle Colbran obtained the first of the numerous triumphs for which she was to be indebted to Rossini. The work was founded on the subject of “Kenilworth,” and it is satisfactory to know that the libretto was from the pen of Signor Smith, a gentleman of unmistakable origin settled at Naples. Amy Robsart loses her beautiful name in the opera and is called Matilda; but then Signor Smith had not taken his story direct from Sir Walter’s novel. He had adapted it from a French melodrama.

The cast of the opera was admirable, the principal parts being assigned to Mademoiselle Colbran, Mademoiselle Dardanelli, Nozzari, and Garcia. An English dilettante, a great admirer of Mademoiselle Colbran, obtained correct copies from London for the costume of Queen Elizabeth; and the success of the prima donna, both as an actress and as a singer, was most remarkable.

The Neapolitans had not heard a note of Rossini’s music. The stories of his great success in the north of Italy had reached them from time to time; but there was nothing to prove that this success was deserved. The composer, of whose merits the Milanese and the Venetians were so full, had not been tested at Naples, and the composer who has not been tested at Naples has yet to make a name. If the Neapolitan public was not prepared to applaud Rossini merely on the recommendation of the Milanese, the professors of the Conservatories, where he had never studied, were quite ready to criticise him very severely, and had made up their minds beforehand that he was not a musician of any learning.

Rossini treated the Neapolitan audience to the overture he had written the year before at Milan for “Aureliano in Palmira,” and which was to be presented to the public of Rome the year afterwards as fit preface to “Il Barbiere.” The brilliant symphony was naturally liked, though if the Neapolitans had known that it was originally written for “Aureliano in Palmira,” they, perhaps, would not have applauded it quite so much.

The first piece in the opera was a duet for Leicester and his young wife in the minor, described by Stendhal as “very original.” The effect of the duet was to confirm the audience in the good opinion they had already formed of the composer, who, so far as Naples was concerned, was now only making his début. The finale to the first act, in which the principal motives of the overture occur, raised the enthusiasm of the audience to the highest pitch. “All the emotions of serious opera with no tedious interval between,” such was the phrase in which the general verdict of the Neapolitan public was expressed.

Mademoiselle Colbran’s great success, however, was yet to come. It was achieved in the first scene of the second act, when an interview between Elizabeth (in her historical costume from London) and Matilda is made the subject of a grand scene and duet; and again in the finale to the second, described by the critics of the period as one of the finest Rossini ever wrote.

Mademoiselle Colbran’s solo, “Bell’ alme generose,” in which she forgives and unites the lovers, is a brilliant show-piece, written for the display of all the best points in the prima donna’s singing. “A catalogue of the qualities of a fine voice” it was called, and Mademoiselle Colbran’s voice was at that time magnificent.

It was objected to the solo that it was not in keeping with the situation, being very grand, but entirely devoid of pathos. Such remarks, however, as these were not made until after the performance. Rossini had aimed at success through a very successful prima donna, and he had attained it.

“Elisabetta,” though it contained much beautiful music, was not one of Rossini’s best operas, and owing perhaps to the distribution of parts it has not been much played out of Italy, nor elsewhere than at Naples. For instance, the parts of Leicester and Norfolk are both given to tenors. If Rossini had been distributing the characters according to his own ideas, as he was afterwards able to carry them out, he would certainly have made the treacherous Norfolk a baritone or a bass; the position of the lover, Leicester, as tenor being of course quite unassailable. But Rossini had to write for a particular company, and there was no bass singer at the San Carlo capable of taking first parts.

Indeed it was still a conventional rule that in opera seria leading personages should not be represented by the bass, who was kept systematically in the background. Rossini was the basso’s friend, not only in regard to opera seria, but also as to operas of mezzo carattere, such as “La Cenerentola,” “La Gazza Ladra,” and “Torvaldo e Dorliska.” It is entirely to Rossini and his music that Galli, Lablache, and so many distinguished baritones and basses, owe their reputation.

The company at the San Carlo, though without a leading basso, included at this time three admirable tenors – Davide, Nozzari, and Garcia; and the two latter appeared together in “Elisabetta.” This opera is the first in which Rossini accompanies recitative with the stringed quartet in lieu of the piano and double bass of former Italian composers. The score of “Otello” is the one usually cited (by M. Fétis, M. Castil Blaze, among other writers) as first exhibiting this important substitution.

CHAPTER III

ROSSINI VISITS ROME – TORVALDO E DORLISKA

AFTER the success of “Elisabetta,” Rossini went to Rome, where he was engaged to write two works for the carnival of 1816. On the 26th of December, 1815, he produced at the Teatro Valle, “Torvaldo e Dorliska;” composed for Remorini and Galli, the two best bass singers of the day, Donzelli, the celebrated tenor, and Madame Sala, a prima donna of great reputation, who, it is interesting to know, was the mother of our distinguished author and journalist, Mr. George Augustus Sala.

But though the singers were excellent, the orchestra was composed of very indifferent musicians, most of whom were workmen and petty shopkeepers engaged during the day in the pursuit of their trade. The first clarinet was a barber, who habitually shaved Rossini. In proof of the composer’s admirable presence of mind, it is narrated that, annoyed and irritated as he was at the rehearsals by the inability of the band to execute his music correctly, he never once said a severe thing to the first clarinet. He remonstrated with him very gently the next morning after the operation of shaving had been safely performed.

Altogether it is not astonishing that the opera was received rather coldly, or at least not with sufficient warmth to satisfy Rossini. On “Sigismondo” being hissed at Venice, Rossini had sent his mother a drawing of a fiasco; this time he forwarded her a sketch of a little bottle or fiaschetto.

“Torvaldo e Dorliska,” however, must have been an opera of some mark even among the operas of Rossini. It was received at Paris, in 1825, for the début of Mademoiselle Marietta Garcia, the future Malibran, and the composer borrowed from it the motive of the magnificent letter duet in “Otello.” The moderate success of the work is partly to be explained by the poorness of the libretto – the production, however, of a man who, immediately afterwards, furnished Rossini with one of the best opera books ever written.

“Torvaldo e Dorliska” and “Il Barbiere di Siviglia” were produced simultaneously; and the little attention paid to the former, may partly no doubt be explained by the immense, though not in the first instance uncontested, success of the latter.

CHAPTER IV

BEAUMARCHAIS, PAISIELLO, AND ROSSINI

AT Rome, where no opera reflecting directly or indirectly on the Roman Catholic religion and the rights of princes, or inculcating patriotism, or trifling with morality, or touching in any way upon anything that concerns the Papal Court, is permitted; where, consequently, neither “Les Huguenots,” nor “Guillaume Tell,” nor “Lucrezia Borgia,” nor “La Traviata,” can be played in the dramatic shape naturally belonging to them; the authorities were as scrupulous with regard to the choice of subjects in Rossini’s time as they are now.

If the natural instincts of despotic governments have always led them to favour operatic performances, they have done so on the very reasonable condition that nothing against themselves or their allies, the priesthood, should be introduced into the works represented. Thus “Le Prophète” becomes “L’Assedio di Gand” at St. Petersburgh, “Lucrezia Borgia” “La Rinegata” at Rome, where the Italians at the Court of Pope Alexander the Sixth are metamorphosed into Turks.

Auber’s “Muette de Portici” and Donizetti’s “Martiri” were both proscribed at Naples (the “Muette” above all!). Even at Paris the performances of “Gustave,” after the first production of the work, were suddenly stopped; and Verdi, treating the same subject for the San Carlo, was forced by the Neapolitan censorship to make the action of the piece take place at Boston in the United States.

Several dramas had been suggested to the Roman censorship, when at last the unpolitical plot of the “Barber of Seville” was proposed and accepted. The censor (who could have known little of Beaumarchais) thought it impossible such a subject could be made a vehicle for the introduction of political allusions.

All, however, that Rossini wanted was a well-planned “book” for musical purposes, and he found precisely what suited his genius in the “Barber of Seville.”

In a literary point of view, the “Marriage of Figaro” is no doubt superior to its predecessor the “Barber;” but notwithstanding the eminently lyrical character of the page in the former work, the “Barber of Seville” is the best adapted for musical setting. It was as a pamphlet, rather than as a comedy, that “Le Mariage de Figaro” obtained its immense success in Paris, and Figaro’s wit cannot be reproduced in music. Gaiety, however, is as much a musical as a literary quality, and the gaiety of Beaumarchais’ versatile irrepressible hero is admirably expressed, with even increased effect, in Rossini’s “Barbiere.”

It would be rendering no service to Rossini to compare him with Mozart, whom he himself regarded as the greatest of dramatic composers.[12 - See Ferdinand Hiller’s Conversations with Rossini.] But Rossini’s genius is very much akin to that of Beaumarchais; whereas that of Mozart (to the disadvantage certainly of Beaumarchais) was not. Rossini is Beaumarchais in music; Beaumarchais is not Mozart in literature.

No wonder that “Le Barbier de Séville” has been found so eminently suitable for musical treatment. Beaumarchais, who had strong views on the subject of the musical drama, and who was himself a good musician,[13 - Beaumarchais gave music lessons to Louis XV.’s daughters. To put forward a more positive proof of his acquirements in this art, he composed the incidental music of his own dramas.] had in the first instance designed it as a libretto.

The subject of “Le Barbier de Séville” is manifestly taken from Molière’s “Sicilien;” but the bare skeleton of the drama, as Beaumarchais himself points out, is common to innumerable works.

“An old man[14 - Préface du “Barbier de Seville,” 1775.] is in love with his ward, and proposes to marry her; a young man succeeds in forestalling him, and the same day makes her his wife under the very nose and in the house of the guardian.” That is the subject of the “Barber of Seville,” capable of being made with equal success into a tragedy, a comedy, a drama, an opera, &c. What but that is Molière’s “Avare”? – what but that is “Mithridates”? The genus to which a piece belongs depends less upon the fundamental nature of the subject than upon the details and the manner in which it is presented.

Beaumarchais goes on to say what his original intention had been in regard to the simple subject of a ward carried away by her lover from beneath the nose of her guardian. “How polite of you,” a lady had said to him, “to take your piece to the Théâtre Français, when I have no box except at the Italian Theatre! Why did you not make an opera of it? They say it was your first idea. The piece is well suited to music.”

The author of “Le Barbier de Séville” explains why he abandoned his original intention. He had doubts on the subject of the form and general treatment of opera which, to the neglect of the melodic portion of the work, ought, he considered, to be assimilated to the spoken drama of real life; (the end of which theory, carried out to its extreme consequences, would be to substitute recitative for singing, speaking for recitative – annihilation of the musical drama, in short).

Five years afterwards, in the year 1780, Paisiello proved practically how well Beaumarchais’ “Barbier de Séville” was adapted to musical setting. Beaumarchais heard it, and was much pleased. What would his delight have been could he have listened to the “Barbiere” of Rossini – and with Adelina Patti in the part of Rosina!

Rossini was not one of those unconscious men of genius who are unable to judge of the merit of their own works. He Certainly never expressed too high an opinion of them, and latterly used to say that his music had grown old – as if the “Barber of Seville” could grow old. But he knew the “Barber” to be one of his happiest, as it certainly was one of his most spontaneous, productions; and whichever of his works he may have considered the best, he thought the “Barber” the most likely to endure.

“The third act of ‘Otello,’” he once said, “the second act of ‘Guillaume Tell,’ and the whole of ‘Il Barbiere,’ will perhaps live;”[15 - Words quoted by M. de St. Georges in his speech at Rossini’s funeral.] and there are reasons why, independently of its musical worth, the “Barber” will in all probability still be played when the few other operas of Rossini which still keep the stage are no longer represented. It is composed on a firm scaffolding, unlike that of “Guillaume Tell,” which very soon broke down, and has never been put together again in a durable dramatic form. The libretto has not to contend with the impression left by an unapproachable masterpiece on the same subject, as in the case of “Otello.” Finally, the comedy on which it is founded is not only a masterpiece in a purely dramatic sense, it is moreover essentially a drama for music, and for just such music as Rossini loved to write, and wrote to perfection. There is nothing more felicitous in all operatic setting than Basilio’s air, the crescendo of which exists as much in Beaumarchais’s prose as in Rossini’s music.

Indeed, Don Basile’s little essay on the efficacy of calumny, read for the first time by any one already acquainted with Rossini’s musical version, would seem to have been directly suggested by the music. The elegance and distinction of Almaviva are the same in the opera as in the comedy; and all the gaiety of Beaumarchais’s “Figaro” lives again in Rossini’s music, in a sublimated form.

Rossini was not so fond of writing prefaces as Beaumarchais; but he departed from his ordinary rule in the case of “The Barber,” and has told us the exact circumstances under which it occurred to him to take for his subject an admirable comedy which Paisiello had already made into an opera thirty-five years before.

Paisiello’s opera had been played all over Europe, and it has been mentioned that the curious in musical antiquities may from time to time hear it even now at the Fantaisies Parisiennes. It is not nearly so full of music as Rossini’s work, but it contains seven very interesting pieces, —Almaviva’s solo; Don Basile’s air – a setting of the passage on calumny, as in the modern “Barbiere;” an air for Bartholo; a comic trio, in which two fantastic and episodical characters (wisely omitted by Rossini), La Jeunesse and L’Eveillé, respectively sneeze and yawn in presence of Rosina’s guardian; a very ingenious trio, based on the incidents of the letter; a duet, in which the disguised Almaviva, on arriving to give his music lesson, is received by Don Bartholo; and a quintet, in which Don Basilio, accused of fever, is sent hastily to bed – the buona sera scene, which Rossini took good care to preserve.

Rossini is said to have felt rather embarrassed when the impresario of the Argentina opera told him that the governor of Rome saw no objection to his setting “The Barber of Seville” to music. Not that any rule of etiquette forbade him to take a subject already treated by another composer; Metastasio’s best libretti have been set over and over again by innumerable composers. From the very beginning of opera, the legend of Orpheus, the story of Dido’s abandonment, have been treated by almost all composers, including Rossini himself, who composed cantatas on both these subjects. Piccinni and Sacchini had both composed music twice to the “Olimpiade;” and Paisiello did not enjoy, probably did not claim, any special right of property in Beaumarchais’ “Barbier de Séville.”

Nevertheless, Paisiello had put his mark on the work. His “Barbiere” was celebrated throughout Italy, and Rossini thought it only polite on his part as a young beginner (he was then twenty-three years of age) to write to the venerable maestro (Paisiello was seventy-four years of age), to ask his permission to re-set “The Barber.”