Characteristics of Famous Operatic Composers

Perhaps one of the gratifying reflections of the non professional music lover, often forced to listen to the irritating raptures of hero worshippers, is to realize that the great opera composers were first of all men, often more daubed with human clay than many of their biographers like to admit. Some of them were woefully mercenary and "practical" enough when it came to the exploitation of their own works. However lofty they may have been at the moment of divine inspiration, in the serious matter of promoting their material interests they were not very distant from the very aggressive merchants of their day.

In the case of Meyerbeer, for instance, we find a man who, according to Mme. Viardot, would sit next to the chief of the Claque at a performance of so beautiful a work as La Prophete, and actually alter the score so that applause might come in at the right time under the marshal-ship of the professional applauder and his gang of hand-clapping hirelings.

Rossini, like Mozart, was clearly inspired in his best works, for they were written "like lightening". One of the best mots attributed to Donizetti was that uttered when he heard that The Barber of Seville was written by Rossini in forty-eight hours. Donizetti's reply was, "It is not surprising, as Rossini is so lazy".

Sir Charles Villiers Stanford draws attention to the "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" character of Richard Wagner. Here was a man with a mind and soul hobnobbing with the gods and a body often rolling "in the kennel". Indeed, his physical condition was often so exhausted by bodily weaknesses that in his letters he repeatedly tells in his own words of the terrifically severe routine and privations he underwent in order to get himself ready for one sublime hour of composition.

One of the most interesting instances was that of Hector Berlioz. Possibly fearing that some unkind writer might deal with him harshly, Berlioz took the precaution of writing his own biography. This is done in a grandiloquent and immensely readable style, which leaves one with the impression of heroic dimensions of Berlioz's own effigy of himself. Unfortunately, the composer very humanly tells only those things which look well in print.

The Etude Magazine March 1921