The Life of Rossini

The original Don Basilio was Vitarelli; Bartholo, Botticelli.

The overture, an original work, written expressly for “Il Barbiere,” and not the overture to “Aureliano in Palmira” afterwards substituted for it, was executed in the midst of a general murmuring, “such,” remarks Zanolini, “as is heard on the approach of a procession.” Stendhal says that the Roman public recognised, or thought they recognised, in the overture the grumbling of the old guardian, and the lively remonstrances of his interesting ward. But he also says that the overture performed was that of “Aureliano;” probably he confounds two different representations. M. Azevedo thinks the original overture was lost through the carelessness of a copyist, but it is difficult to understand how, not only the composer’s score, but also the orchestral parts, could have been lost in this manner. One thing is certain that on the opening night the overture met with but little attention.

The introduction, according to Stendhal, was not liked, but this can only mean that it was not heard.

The appearance of Garcia did not change the disposition of the public.

“The composer,” says Madame Giorgi Righetti, “was weak enough to allow Garcia to sing beneath Rosina’s balcony a Spanish melody of his own arrangement.” Garcia maintained, that as the scene was in Spain, the Spanish melody would give the drama an appropriate local colour; but, unfortunately, the artist who reasoned so well, and who was such an excellent singer, forgot to tune his guitar before appearing on the stage as Almaviva. He began the operation in the presence of the public; a string broke; the vocalist proceeded to replace it, but before he could do so laughter and hisses were heard from all parts of the house. The Spanish air, when Garcia was at last ready to sing it, did not please the Italian audience, and the pit listened to it just enough to be able to give an ironical imitation of it afterwards.

The audience could not hiss the introduction to Figaro’s air; but when Zamboni entered, with another guitar in his hand, a loud laugh was set up, and not a phrase of “Largo al fattotum” was heard. When Rosina made her appearance in the balcony the public were quite prepared to applaud Madame Giorgi Righetti in an air which they thought they had a right to expect from her; but only hearing her utter a phrase which led to nothing, the expressions of disapprobation recommenced. The duet between Almaviva and Figaro was accompanied throughout with hissing and shouting. The fate of the work seemed now decided.

At length Rosina reappeared, and sang the cavatina which had so long been desired; for Madame Giorgi Righetti was young, had a fresh, beautiful voice, and was a great favourite with the Roman public. Three long rounds of applause followed the conclusion of her air, and gave some hope that the opera might yet be saved. Rossini, who was at the orchestral piano, bowed to the public, then turned towards the singer, and whispered, “Oh, natura!”

The entry of Don Basilio, now so effective, was worse than a failure the first night. Vitarelli’s make up was admirable; but a small trap had been left open on the stage, at which he stumbled and fell. The singer had bruised his face terribly, and began his admirably dramatic air with his handkerchief to his nose. This in itself must have sufficed to spoil the effect of the music. Some of the audience, with preternatural stupidity, thought the fall and the subsequent, consequent application of the handkerchief to the face, was in the regular “business” of the part, and, not liking it, hissed.

The letter-duet miscarried partly, it appears, through the introduction of some unnecessary incidents, afterwards omitted; but the audience were resolved to ridicule the work, and, as often happens in such cases, various things occurred to favour their pre-determination.

At the beginning of the magnificent finale a cat appeared on the stage, and with the usual effect. Figaro drove it one way, Bartholo another, and in avoiding Basilio it encountered the skirt of Rosina– behaved, in short, as a cat will be sure to behave mixed up in the action of a grand operatic finale. The public were only too glad to have an opportunity of amusing themselves apart from the comedy; and the opening of the finale was not listened to at all.

The noise went on increasing until the curtain fell. Then Rossini turned towards the public, shrugged his shoulders, and began to applaud. The audience were deeply offended by this openly-expressed contempt for their opinion, but they made no reply at the time.

The vengeance was reserved for the second act, of which not a note passed the orchestra. The hubbub was so great, that nothing like it was ever heard at any theatre. Rossini in the meanwhile remained perfectly calm, and afterwards went home as composed as if the work, received in so insulting a manner, had been the production of some other musician. After changing their clothes, Madame Giorgi Righetti, Garcia, Zamboni, and Botticelli went to his house to console him in his misfortune. They found him fast asleep.

The next day he wrote the delightful cavatina, “Ecco ridente il cielo,” to replace Garcia’s unfortunate Spanish air. The melody of the new solo was borrowed from the opening chorus of “Aureliano in Palmira,” written by Rossini, in 1814, for Milan, and produced without success; the said chorus having itself figured before in the same composer’s, “Ciro in Babilonia,” also unfavourably received. Garcia read his cavatina as it was written, and sang it the same evening. Rossini, having now made the only alteration he thought necessary, went back to bed, and pretended to be ill, that he might not have to take his place in the evening at the piano. The charming melody which, in “Il Barbiere,” is sung by Count Almaviva in honour of Rosina, is addressed by the chorus in “Aureliano” to the spouse of the grand Osiris, “Sposa del Grande Osiride,” &c.

At the second performance the Romans seemed disposed to listen to the work of which they had really heard nothing the night before. This was all that was needed to insure the opera’s triumphant success. Many of the pieces were applauded; but still no enthusiasm was exhibited. The music, however, pleased more and more with each succeeding representation, until at last the climax was reached, and “Il Barbiere” produced those transports of admiration among the Romans with which it was afterwards received in every town in Italy, and in due time throughout Europe. It must be added, that a great many connoisseurs at Rome were struck from the first moment with the innumerable beauties of Rossini’s score, and went to his house to congratulate him on its excellence. As for Rossini, he was not at all surprised at the change which took place in public opinion. He was as certain of the success of his work the first night, when it was being hooted, as he was a week afterwards, when every one applauded it to the skies.

The tirana composed by Garcia, “Se il mio nome saper voi bramate,” which he appears to have abandoned after the unfavourable manner in which it was received at Rome, was afterwards reintroduced into the “Barber” by Rubini. It is known that the subject of the charming trio “Zitti, Zitti” does not belong to Rossini – or, at least, did not till he took it. It may be called a reminiscence of Rossini’s youth, being note for note the air sung by Simon in Haydn’s “Seasons,” one of the works directed by Rossini at Bologna when he was still a student at the Lyceum.

Finally, the original idea of the air sung by the duenna Berta is taken from a Russian melody which Rossini had heard from the lips of a Russian lady at Rome, and had introduced into his opera for her sake. It is melodious, and above all, lively – yet occurring at a point in the drama where, for a time, all action ceases, it came to be looked upon as a signal for ordering ices.

Rossini wrote a trio for the scene of the music lesson, which has been either lost or (more probably) set aside by successive Rosinas who have preferred to substitute a violin concerto, or a waltz, or a national ballad, or anything else that the daughter of Bartholo would have been very likely to sing to her music-master. It is a pity that the trio cannot be recovered. Rosina might still sing a favourite air between the acts.

The original Rosina, by the way, Madame Giorgi Righetti, had a mezzo soprano voice; indeed, Rossini in Italy wrote none of his great parts for the soprano. When he first began to compose, the highest parts were taken by the sopranist, while the prima donna was generally a contralto – an arrangement somewhat suggestive of our burlesques, in which male parts are taken by women, female parts by men.

Rossini rose from the contralto (Madame Malanotte in “Tancredi,” Madame Marcolini in “L’Italiana in Algeri”) to the mezzo soprano (Madame Giorgi Righetti and Mademoiselle Colbran); but in his Italian operas, the part of Matilda in “Matilda di Sabran” is the only first part written for the soprano voice. Amenaide, the soprano of “Tancredi,” is a lady of secondary importance, the chief female part being of course that of Tancredi.

M. Castil-Blaze has given an interesting account of the various keys in which the chief solo pieces in “Il Barbiere” have been presented to the public. Of course Madame Giorgi Righetti sang Rosina’s air in its original key, F. Madame Persiani and other sopranos sang it in G.

Figaro’s air, written in C for Zamboni, is generally sung in B flat; Tamburini sang it in B natural. Basilio’s air, “La Calunnia,” generally sung in C, is written in D. Bartholo’s air, written in E flat, used to be sung by Lablache in D flat.

These particulars may be interesting to those who believe in the abstract value of a normal diapason, and in the absolute character of keys. We have all heard the principal airs in “Il Barbiere” sung in the keys in which they were not written. We have seldom heard any of them sung in the keys in which Rossini wrote them; yet who can say that by these frequent, constant transpositions they lose anything of their original character – that Figaro’s air, for instance, sounds mournful when sung in B flat?

CHAPTER VII

OTELLO: FURTHER REFORMS IN OPERA SERIA

WHILE Rossini was still at Rome the San Carlo theatre was destroyed by fire, but Barbaja’s fortune was not invested in one opera-house alone. He had two theatres in hand, and the principal one being burnt down, nothing was easier than for his composer to fulfil the conditions of his engagement by working for the minor establishment.

First, however, Rossini had to write a piece for the Teatro dei Fiorentini – also at Naples – where two celebrated buffo singers, Pellegrini and Cassaccia, were performing with great success. He composed for them an operetta called “La Gazzetta,” which was produced without much result in the summer of 1816.

Rossini now commenced an important work, which he had promised to Barbaja for the winter season of the Teatro del Fondo. The company included all the best of the burnt-out singers from the San Carlo Theatre, Mademoiselle Colbran, Davide and Nozzare, the two tenors, and Benedetti, a newly-engaged bass.

Here the bass again moves a little step forward, but Benedetti was nothing by the side of the two brilliant tenors. Iago, in the operatic version of “Othello,” is only a secondary character. Otello and Roderigo are two leading parts, and we may be sure that Barbaja, as an enterprising manager, having two popular tenors like Davide and Nozzare at his theatre, willing to appear together in the same opera, would have been very much shocked if his composer had objected to turn such a combination of talent to the best possible account.

Davide, as Otello, displayed much power; and his acting, equally with his singing, was praised by all who saw him. A French critic, M. Edouard Bertin, gives the following account of his performance in a letter dated 1823; the celebrated tenor had then been playing the part seven years: —

“Davide excites among the dilettanti of this town an enthusiasm and delight which could scarcely be conceived without having been witnessed. He is a singer of the new school, full of mannerism, affectation, and display, abusing, like Martin, his magnificent voice, with its prodigious compass (three octaves comprised between four B flats). He crushes the principal motive of an air beneath the luxuriance of his ornamentation, and which has no other merit than that of difficulty conquered. But he is also a singer full of warmth, verve, expression, energy, and musical sentiment; alone he can fill up and give life to a scene; it is impossible for another singer to carry away an audience as he does, and when he will only be simple he is admirable; he is the Rossini of song. He is a great singer; the greatest I have ever heard. Doubtless the manner in which Garcia sings and plays the part of Otello is preferable, taking it altogether, to that of Davide. It is purer, more severe, more constantly dramatic; but, with all his faults, Davide produces more effect, a great deal more effect. There is something in him, I cannot say what, which, even when he is ridiculous, commands, entrances attention. He never leaves you cold, and when he does not move you he astonishes you; in a word, before hearing him, I did not know what the power of singing really was. The enthusiasm he excites is without limits. In fact, his faults are not faults for Italians, who, in their opera seria, do not employ what the French call the tragic style, and who scarcely understand us when we tell them that a waltz or quadrille movement is out of place in the mouth of a Cæsar, an Assur, or an Otello. With them the essential thing is to please; they are only difficult on this point, and their indifference as to all the rest is really inconceivable; here is an example of it. Davide, considering apparently that the final duet of “Otello” did not sufficiently show off his voice, determined to substitute for it a duet from “Armida” (“Amor possente nome”), which is very pretty, but anything rather than severe. As it was impossible to kill Desdemona to such a tune, the Moor, after giving way to the most violent jealousy, sheathes his dagger, and begins in the most tender and graceful manner his duet with Desdemona, at the conclusion of which he takes her politely by the hand and retires, amidst the applause and bravos of the public, who seem to think it quite natural that the piece should finish in this manner, or, rather that it should not finish at all; for after this beautiful dénouement the action is about as far advanced as it was in the first scene. We do not in France carry our love of music so far as to tolerate such absurdities as these, and perhaps we are right.”

Lord Byron saw “Otello” at Venice soon after its first production. He speaks of it in one of his letters dated 1818, condemning and ridiculing the libretto, but praising the music and singing.

The chorus gains increased importance in “Otello.” The successive entry of two choruses, each with a fine crescendo effect, in the finale to the first act, is one of the striking features in this magnificent musical scene. But, full of beautiful and very dramatic music as Rossini’s opera decidedly is, it has the great disadvantage of reminding us constantly of what it does not resemble, – the “Othello” of Shakspeare. Roderigo is too much brought forward, Iago too much kept in the background; it is only when the part of Iago is given to such an actor as Ronconi that it regains its true dramatic importance.

However, “Otello” is one of Rossini’s finest works in the serious style. Each dramatic scene is one continuous piece of music, and the recitative, as in “Elisabetta,” is accompanied by the orchestra. “Otello” marks the end of the interminable recitatives with an accompaniment of piano or piano and double bass by which the rare musical pieces were separated in the serious works of Rossini’s predecessors. The Germans had abolished the pianoforte as an orchestral instrument long before, and Gluck had expelled it from the orchestra of the French Opera in the year 1774.

Instrumentation has of late years kept pace closely enough with the invention of new instruments, and orchestras are now similarly composed in Italy, France, Germany, and England – in short, throughout Europe. This was by no means the case when Rossini began to write for the stage, Italian orchestras by their constitution, if not by the skill of the executants, being at that time inferior to those of Germany, and even (in regard to the variety of instruments) to those of France.

The modern orchestra, if we reckon the military band which is often introduced on the stage, and the organ which is sometimes heard at the back of the stage, includes every available instrument that is known except the piano; which is an orchestra on a reduced scale, but ineffective and useless as an orchestral unit in the midst of so many instruments of superior sonority. The piano, employed in France until the time of Gluck, in Italy until that of Rossini, for accompanying recitative, is now banished generally from the orchestra, though it occasionally figures as a sort of non-combatant at the conductor’s desk, where it may serve at need to bring back an erring vocalist to the sense of musical propriety. Even in the “Barber of Seville” the piano to which Rosina sings her music lesson is dumb. Almaviva goes through the pantomime of a pianist, but the sound is the sound of the orchestra.

The history of some individual instruments has been written, notably that of the violin. But I know of no history of the orchestra, – say from the day of Nebuchadnezzar to that of Nabuchodonosore,[21 - One of the worst puns ever made was made in verse on the production of Verdi’s highly instrumental “Nabuchodonosore” at Paris in 1845. It is contained in the following quatrain: —Vraiment l’affiche est dans son tort,En faux on devrait la poursuivre:Pourquoi nous annoncer Nabuchodonos—orQuand c’est Nabuchodonos—cuivre?]– from sackbuts and psalteries to trombones and opheicleides, cornets, saxhorns, saxotubas, and all kinds of saxophonous instruments.

However, up to about the middle of the eighteenth century the Italian orchestra, to judge by Pergolese’s “Serva Padrona,” as executed in 1862 in Paris, consisted entirely of stringed instruments. Few of the wind instruments now used in orchestras were known, and of those that were known fewer still had been sufficiently perfected for artistic purposes. Hautboys and bassoons were the first wind instruments admitted into Italian orchestras to vary the monotony inseparable from the use of stringed instruments alone.

The clarinet was not invented until the end of the seventeenth century, and was not recognised until long afterwards, even in Germany, as an orchestral instrument. It was introduced into French orchestras towards the end of the eighteenth century. In Italy it was sparingly used, and never as a solo instrument until Rossini’s time.

With the exception of hautboys and bassoons, no wind instrument seems to have come from the Italians. The so-called “German flute,” as distinguished from the old flute with a mouth-piece, a sort of large flageolet, was perfected by the celebrated Quantz, the friend and music-master of Frederick the Great; and, like all wind instruments, it has been much improved during the present century.

The horn, known in England as the “French horn,” in France, as the cor de chasse, was at first looked upon as an instrument to be sounded only in the woods and plains among dogs and horses. The Germans, not the French, made it available for orchestral purposes; but in Italy brass instruments of every description were long regarded as fit only for the use of sportsmen and soldiers. Wind instruments in wood were thought more tolerable, and after hautboys and bassoons, flutes and clarinets crept in, – the flute to be in time followed by its direct descendant, the piccolo.

Gluck invaded the orchestra of the French Opera with trombones, cymbals, and the big drum in the year 1774, when he at the same time ejected the harpsichord, the piano of the period. Thirteen years later Mozart’s trombones in “Don Giovanni” were considered a novelty at the Italian Opera of Vienna.

With the exception of opheicleides, cornets-à-piston, and the large and constantly increasing family of saxhorns, Rossini, in his latest Italian Operas, used all the instruments that are known in the present day, and used them freely with all sorts of new combinations. It was not for nothing that he and his father had played the horn together when the young Rossini was gaining his earliest experience of orchestral effects. He was always faithful to his first instrument. “The art,” says M. Fétis, “of writing parts for the horn, with the development of all its resources, is quite a new art, which Rossini, in some sort, created.”

In looking over the score of “Otello,” with Donizetti, ‘Sigismondi,’ the librarian of the Conservatory at Naples, is said to have complained of the prominence given to the clarinets, and to have exclaimed with horror at the employment of horns and trombones without number. “Third and fourth horns!” he cried; “what does the man want? The greatest of our composers have always been content with two. Shades of Pergolese, of Leo, of Jomelli! How they must shudder at the bare mention of such a thing! Four horns! Are we at a hunting party? Four horns! Enough to blow us to perdition!” The old professor was still more shocked by “1º, 2º, 3º tromboni,” which, according to an anecdote, the authenticity of which can scarcely be guaranteed, he mistook for “123” trombones.

The instrumentation of “Otello” is far more sonorous than that of “Tancredi;” but Rossini made a still more liberal use of the brass instruments in the “Gazza Ladra” overture, which again is surpassed by the march and chorus (with the military band on the stage) in the first act of “Semiramide.”

Rossini must have been on the watch for new instruments, whereas, if his predecessors in Italy looked out for them, it was only with the view of keeping them out of the orchestra.

In “Semiramide,” under the auspices of the composer, the key-bugle made its début at the Fenice of Venice in 1823. In 1829, in “Guillaume Tell,” the same composer brought out the cornet-à-piston at the French Opera.

Since “Guillaume Tell,” there has been no progress in dramatic music, but there has been further progress in instrumentation. At one moment the continued invasion of “the brass” seems to have startled Rossini himself. In 1834, when his young friend Bellini had just produced “I Puritani,” Rossini, writing an account of the first performance to a friend at Milan, said of the celebrated duet for Tamburini and Lablache, with its highly military accompaniments, “I need not describe the duet for the two basses. You must have heard it at Milan.” But neither Bellini nor Donizetti brought forward any new instruments.

In “Robert le Diable,” Meyerbeer introduced a melody for four kettledrums. Kettledrums were never so treated before! In “Le Juif Errant,” Halévy employed saxhorns to announce the Day of Judgment.

Nevertheless, the saxhorn turned out not to be the last trump. The ingenious inventor had saxophones, saxotubes, and other instruments of sounding brass, with names beginning in Sax, to offer to Meyerbeer, the Belgian Guides, and the musical and military world in general. Perhaps there is no more splendid example of modern instrumentation than the march in the “Prophète,” wherein every possible brass instrument is employed. If the benign Pergolese could hear it as executed by Mr. Costa’s band or bands (for one is not enough), he would fancy himself in Jericho, with the walls coming down.

CHAPTER VIII