SPECIAL EDITORIAL NOTICE

This article is the continuation of a series of important studies of the History of Operatic Art which commenced in the Opera Issue of the etude (January) and continued through the supplementary issue (February), and which will conclude in the April issue. No similar series of articles is in existence, and we strongly recommend the permanent preservation of these issues for reference purposes. The other articles in the series were:

THE BEGINNINGS OF OPERA

BY HENRY T. FINCK

This article appeared in the first of our two opera issues, published January. It discussed the development of the opera down to Lully and Gluck.

THE CONFLICT OF SPEECH AND SONG

BY FREDERICK CORDER

The foremost English authority upon the subject of opera and the Professor of Composition at the Royal Academy. Mr. Corder is one of the ablest and at the same time one of the most brilliant writers upon musical subjects. He presented the second phase of the subject (Gluck to Wagner) in the February issue.

MODERN FRENCH AND GERMAN OPERA

BY ARTHUR ELSON

Author of "A Critical History of Opera," and other works, will furnish the fourth article of the series which will appear in April, and complete the historical and critical discussion of a subject about which many of our readers have been writing us for years.

In this essay it is not my intention to give the biographies of the modern Italian composers, but rather to speak of their aims and school in the present epoch. Opera has undergone many transitions since its beginning in 1594. The '"Camerati" who founded opera followed the lines of the Greek tragedy as they understood them, and combined music and poetry in a melodic recitative. At first only amateurs were concerned in the new school. Soon eminent contrapuntists joined them and even Scarlatti aided the new music.

The new school spread like wildfire, .and Germany and England soon came under its spell, although France held aloof because of Louis XIV, Moliere, and the ballets in which Lully shone. The old composers soon came to believe that the music was almost everything and the words almost nothing, a decided change from the first vein of opera. Gluck reformed this error with the earliest dramatic operas. Beethoven and Weber followed the Gluck lead and went beyond their predecessor, but the melodic Rossini set back the hands of progress by his mellifluous powers and singable measures. But with Rossini the absolute reign of Italian opera came to an end. It had ruled Europe for over two centuries.

SENSELESS LIBRETTOS

Following the lead of Rossini, who had caused poetry to be the slave of music, there came Bellini, Donizetti and the young Verdi. In the works of these four composers the most startling violations of dramatic unity may at times be found.

Crazy heroines whose insanity went hand in hand with vocal technique, as in Lucia, Linda, etc; moments of grief which found their expression in the most brilliant display of trills and runs; concerted pieces in which the most diverse sentiments, ranging from remorse to revenge, as in the sextette of Lucia, in which one style of most attractive melody was made to do service for all; these were some of the blemishes of the musical art-form in which the opera was now cast.

The librettos were thought of merely as pegs whereon to hang pretty and singable music. In one of Verdi's operas the Governor of Boston. Mass., was assassinated at a masked ball, presumably given by John Endicott, Cotton Mather, or a few other Puritan worthies. In Verdi's Macbeth a chorus of murderers was introduced and Macduff was allowed to sing a liberty song to appeal to the Venetians under Austrian tyranny. Such were the chief epochs of Italian opera preceding the change which I am now to describe.

THE DAWN OF A NEW ERA

Two men seemed to point to a more dramatic school, but one of them was very indecisive and feeble in his advance and the other shot a single bolt and then ceased firing. I refer to Ponchielli and Boito, La Gioconda and Mefistofele. It was not to these that the advance was due, but rather to one of the composers mentioned as working in the meretricious school described above. Verdi, who began in the vein of Donizetti and Bellini, overlapped the transition period and practically brought the best of the modern operatic school into existence. In his early days he had maltreated Shakespeare, in his old age he glorified him. In his first operas he had made a slave of his librettist, in his latest ones he had made him a companion, a co-worker. His Aida is the best opera of the modern Italian school.

That there was an influence outside of Italy which aided such an advance, may be suspected by the reader. Wagner was the thunder-storm that cleared the atmosphere. No one would dare to set a libretto such as Ballo in Maschero, or Linda di Chamounix, after Tristan and Isolde and The Mastersingers of Nuremberg had appeared. Yet Verdi was always furious if anyone suggested that there had been even the least Wagnerian influence exerted in his case. He studiously avoided the Leitmotiv simply because it might be taken as a Wagnerian trade-mark. But the relegation of mere time to the background, the continuity of the music, the care in choosing and arranging the libretto, the union of Poetry and Music, these are also Wagnerian ideals, and these Verdi, nolens volens was obliged to follow.

Two other foreign composers also exerted a marked influence upon the modern Italian opera. Bizet, with Carmen, and Gounod, with Faust. In fact, the first success that Faust attained was in Italy, and the reflection of the Italian furore caused the Parisians to begin to appreciate the opera. In the Paris rehearsals preceding the first performance of Faust, there was great managerial doubt as to whether the opera would win success, and it was suggested that the entire Garden scene should be cut out as retarding the action.

But, while Faust did not lead Italy very far on a new path, Carmen was a decided impetus towards that most modern Italian school of realism which is graphically called "verismo" the school of realism in operatic music.

The strength of the French and German librettos were appreciated in Italy, but Italy had no Nibelungenlied and no Master- or Minnesingers to draw from. Dante was impossible to use as operatic material as Goethe had been used. There were no musical legends to build grand opera upon. Goldoni, to be sure, might lead to a charming school of light opera, with his comedies, but in the field of light opera Italy was always unparalleled, as witness Don Pasquale, the Barber of Seville, and many other operas.

I have intimated that Verdi sought vainly to escape the Wagner influence. The later composers were in the same boat. They would not acknowledge the Wagnerian leadership, yet could not quite escape it. Had Verdi gone a trifle further in the Otello vein he would have found himself clearly in the Wagnerian domain. The influence of the great German is to be found more clearly marked in the works of Puccini, Wolf-Ferrari, Bossi, and others.

"VERISMO"

What is "Verismo?" Practically, it is blood-and-thunder in opera. It is murder, misery and melody, with but little of the last. It is modern orchestration picturing all deeds of violence. Just as the older opera had its insane heroine, the modern Italian opera has its murderer hero. No conservative insurance company would accept any risks upon the life of hero or heroine in the "verismo" school. They must die to very loud and brassy music.

In spite of the outside influences sketched above, it was an Italian who thoroughly launched this school. In Italy the influence of the music publisher is far greater than in America. The great firm of Ricordi can often make or crush out a composer and his work. Satirists say that two-thirds of the merit of Puccini is Ricordi! The far-reaching character of these methods is being too much debated on both sides of the Atlantic to need description here. In the case of the "verismo" school the pioneer work was created through the beneficence of another large publishing house, the Sonzognos.

In 1890 they offered a large prize for an opera in one act. The result was—Cavalleria Rusticana. An unknown composer, Mascagni, was at once transferred from obscurity to fame, from poverty to comfort, by the overwhelming success of this one-act opera. The libretto, as is well known, was a tale of seduction, jealousy, betrayal and murder, and the work was an unvarnished picture of peasant life, taken from a novel by Giovanni Verga, who afterwards received 100,000 lire for his share in the new departure, after instituting legal proceedings.

Having made such a success in picturing the life of the lowly, Mascagni tested the simple life further in librettos by Erckmann-Chatrian, and in other works, but his bolt was shot, he won no further triumph. In 1755 there was an Irish chancellor of the exchequer who burst upon the world with a most brilliant oration. All Great Britain awaited with expectancy his next great effort. All the subsequent speeches were failures! Mascagni was also a "Single-speech Hamilton !"

THE TURNING TIDE

But even if the originator of the "verismo" could not duplicate his success, the school was now in being and imitators were sure to spring up. A flood of one-act operas, all more or less sanguinary, followed. Even in France Massenet tried his hand at it with La Navarraise. Franchetti, having failed in an attempt to restore the tragic five-act opera a la Meyerbeer, plunged into the stream with his Signor di Pourceaugnac, which failed. Smareglia tried the school with Il Vassallo di Szigeth but, although the libretto had horrors enough for the "verismo" school, the composer could not catch the bold strokes which should characterize the music of this vein. Catalani, among the moderns, did not attempt it, for his La Wally leans rather towards the German school.

Leoncavallo, however, achieved success in this criminal line, and in his Pagliacci introduces a realism which is more poetic than that of any other Italian composer. He has mingled his comic and tragic touches in a manner which no other Italian has approached in this school, and with all its realism, I Pagliacci has a vein of romantic effect that causes it to be a monolith in the Italian modern repertoire. Again, however, we find a man of a single success, for none of Leoncavallo's other operas have won a triumph, and his other attempt to write the life of the people, in tones. La Boheme, has been justly overshadowed by Puccini's setting of the same subject.

PUCCINI'S IMMENSE SUCCESS

And this introduces the chief figure of Italian opera of the present. If there is a successor to Verdi in the present generation, it is certainly Puccini. And here we do not find a man of a single triumph, but a composer who has won success after success. His very first opera, Le Villi, was successful. A single failure, Edgar, must be acknowledged, but all his other operas have made their way. Manon Lescaut is a worthy rival of Massenet's Manon, and it must be somewhat mortifying to Massenet to see what a graphic success Puccini has made with the scene of the deportation of the heroine, a scene which the Frenchman omitted altogether. Manon Lescaut is in the "verismo" school, because of its graphic touches of realism in portraying criminal life, and its constant excursions into the life of the people. The lamplighter and his song, the curious crowd who watch the Unfortunates put on board the vessel, the scenes in the courtyard at the arrival of the stage, all these are touches which illustrate the new school.

After this came the greatest triumph, La Boheme, in which Murger's novel is well sketched in music. Again the realistic touches abound, and Paris life, the life of the students and of the people, is very successfully drawn. La Tosca pushes "verismo" even to the torture-chamber, and revels in blood as the school has done from its beginning, but Puccini has had the skill to make good contrasts, and the work contains some good light touches.

There was a recession from the blood-and-thunder school in Madam Butterfly, and the change was so unexpected by the public that the work was hissed in Milan at its first performance, but it has conquered almost everywhere since then. In The Girl of the Golden West Puccini brings the realism across the Atlantic Ocean (he had already crossed the Pacific with the preceding opera), and attempts to give the effects of "verismo" in California. Giacomo Puccini is a master of orchestration, and is of most dramatic instinct in choosing his librettos, but he has not yet arrived at the position of Verdi, and we may still consider that Aida over-tops each and all of the operas just described.

There are a few critics who hold that Puccini is not to be classed with the school which comprises Cavalleria Rusticana or I Pagliacci, but I have given the reasons which cause me to believe that he has built upon the same foundation, but has somewhat refined the style. On the other hand, there are many lesser ones who have taken up the criminal, brassy, blood-and-thunder vein with avidity, and have been content to win a little temporary applause thereby. Giordano, Tasca, Spinelli, Cilea, have all entered into the field. A Santa Lucia, A Basso Porto, or Mala Vita are specimens of a school which seeks to get lower and lower, and which considers pictures of the gutter to be fitting art-works. The Sonzogno prize of 1890 was a more far-reaching event in musical history than anyone could have dreamed of. Whether it has been an unmixed benefaction to Art may well be doubted. It has sent Italy through a transition which is not ended yet.

But the finer touches which exist in the works of Mascagni, of Leoncavallo, of Wolf-Ferrari, and of Puccini, lead me to think that Italy will come into her own again after a little while. When she has quite passed through the epoch of vulgarity, murder, torture and low life in opera, she will assimilate what is best in Wagner and Richard Strauss, and add to this her own glorious gift of melody, with a result that will restore her vocal sceptre again.