How To Listen To Music Part 15

[Sidenote: _Comic opera and operetta._]

[Sidenote: _Opera bouffe._]

[Sidenote: _Romantic operas._]

Of course the _Grosse Oper_ of the Germans is the French _Grand Opera_ and the English grand opera--but all the English terms are ambiguous, and everything that is done in Covent Garden in London or the Metropolitan Opera House in New York is set down as "grand opera,"

just as the vilest imitations of the French _vaudevilles_ or English farces with music are called "comic operas." In its best estate, say in the delightful works of Gilbert and Sullivan, what is designated as comic opera ought to be called operetta, which is a piece in which the forms of grand opera are imitated, or travestied, the dialogue is spoken, and the purpose of the play is to satirize a popular folly.

Only in method, agencies, and scope does such an operetta (the examples of Gilbert and Sullivan are in mind) differ from comedy in its best conception, as a dramatic composition which aims to "chastise manners with a smile" ("_Ridendo castigat mores_"). Its present degeneracy, as ill.u.s.trated in the _Opera bouffe_ of the French and the concoctions of the would-be imitators of Gilbert and Sullivan, exemplifies little else than a pursuit far into the depths of the method suggested by a friend to one of Lully's imitators who had expressed a fear that a ballet written, but not yet performed, would fail. "You must lengthen the dances and shorten the ladies' skirts,"

he said. The Germans make another distinction based on the subject chosen for the story. Spohr's "Jessonda," Weber's "Freischutz,"

"Oberon," and "Euryanthe," Marschner's "Vampyr," "Templer und Judin,"

and "Hans Heiling" are "Romantic" operas. The significance of this cla.s.sification in operatic literature may be learned from an effort which I have made in another chapter to discuss the terms Cla.s.sic and Romantic as applied to music. Briefly stated, the operas mentioned are put in a cla.s.s by themselves (and their imitations with them) because their plots were drawn from the romantic legends of the Middle Ages, in which the inst.i.tutions of chivalry, fairy lore, and supernaturalism play a large part.

[Sidenote: _Modern designations._]

[Sidenote: _German opera and Wagner._]

These distinctions we meet in reading about music. As I have intimated, we do not concern ourselves much with them now. In New York and London the people speak of Italian, English, and German opera, referring generally to the language employed in the performance. But there is also in the use of the terms an underlying recognition of differences in ideals of performance. As all operas sung in the regular seasons at Covent Garden and the Metropolitan Opera House are popularly spoken of as Italian operas, so German opera popularly means Wagner's lyric dramas, in the first instance, and a style of performance which grew out of Wagner's influence in the second. As compared with Italian opera, in which the princ.i.p.al singers are all and the _ensemble_ nothing, it means, mayhap, inferior vocalists but better actors in the princ.i.p.al parts, a superior orchestra and chorus, and a more conscientious effort on the part of conductor, stage manager, and artists, from first to last, to lift the general effect above the conventional level which has prevailed for centuries in the Italian opera houses.

[Sidenote: _Wagner's "Musikdrama."_]

[Sidenote: _Modern Italian terminology._]

In terminology, as well as in artistic aim, Wagner's lyric dramas round out a cycle that began with the works of the Florentine reformers of the sixteenth century. Wagner called his later operas _Musikdramen_, wherefore he was soundly abused and ridiculed by his critics. When the Italian opera first appeared it was called _Dramma per musica_, or _Melodramma_, or _Tragedia per musica_, all of which terms stand in Italian for the conception that _Musikdrama_ stands for in German. The new thing had been in existence for half a century, and was already on the road to the degraded level on which we shall find it when we come to the subject of operatic singing, before it came to be called _Opera in musica_, of which "opera" is an abbreviation. Now it is to be observed that the composers of all countries, having been taught to believe that the dramatic contents of an opera have some significance, are abandoning the vague term "opera" and following Wagner in his adoption of the principles underlying the original terminology. Verdi called his "Ada" an _Opera in quattro atti_, but his "Otello" he designated a lyric drama (_Dramma lirico_), his "Falstaff" a lyric comedy (_Commedia lirica_), and his example is followed by the younger Italian composers, such as Mascagni, Leoncavallo, and Puccini.

[Sidenote: _Recitative._]

In the majority of the operas of the current list the vocal element ill.u.s.trates an amalgamation of the archaic recitative and aria. The dry form of recitative is met with now only in a few of the operas which date back to the last century or the early years of the present.

"Le Nozze di Figaro," "Don Giovanni," and "Il Barbiere di Siviglia"

are the most familiar works in which it is employed, and in the second of these it is used only by the bearers of the comedy element.

The dissolute _Don_ chatters glibly in it with _Zerlina_, but when _Donna Anna_ and _Don Ottavio_ converse, it is in the _recitativo stromentato_.

[Sidenote: _The object of recitative._]

[Sidenote: _Defects of the recitative._]

[Sidenote: _What it can do._]

In both forms recitative is the vehicle for promoting the action of the play, preparing its incidents, and paving the way for the situations and emotional states which are exploited, promulgated, and dwelt upon in the set music pieces. Its purpose is to maintain the play in an artificial atmosphere, so that the transition from dialogue to song may not be so abrupt as to disturb the mood of the listener.

Of all the factors in an opera, the dry recitative is the most monotonous. It is not music, but speech about to break into music.

Unless one is familiar with Italian and desirous of following the conversation, which we have been often told is not necessary to the enjoyment of an opera, its everlasting use of stereotyped falls and intervallic turns, coupled with the strumming of arpeggioed cadences on the pianoforte (or worse, double-ba.s.s and violoncello), makes it insufferably wearisome to the listener. Its expression is fleeting--only for the moment. It lacks the sustained tones and structural symmetry essential to melody, and therefore it cannot sustain a mood. It makes efficient use of only one of the fundamental factors of vocal music--variety of pitch--and that in a rudimentary way. It is specifically a product of the Italian language, and best adapted to comedy in that language. Spoken with the vivacity native to it in the drama, dry recitative is an impossibility in English. It is only in the more measured and sober gait proper to oratorio that we can listen to it in the vernacular without thought of incongruity. Yet it may be made most admirably to preserve the characteristics of conversation, and even ill.u.s.trate Spencer's theory of the origin of music. Witness the following brief example from "Don Giovanni," in which the vivacity of the master is admirably contrasted with the lumpishness of his servant:

[Sidenote: _An example from Mozart._]

[Music ill.u.s.tration: _Sempre sotto voce._

DON GIOVANNI. LEPORELLO.

_Le-po-rel-lo, o-ve sei? Son qui per_ Le-po-rel-lo, where are you? I'm here and

D.G. LEP.

_dis-gra-zi-a! e vo-i? Son qui. Chi e_ more's the pit-y! and you, Sir? Here too. Who's

D.G.

_mor-to, voi, o il vec-chio? Che do-_ been killed, you or the old one? What a

LEP.

_man-da da bes-tia! il vec-chio. Bra-vo!_ ques-tion, you boo-by! the old one. Bra-vo!]

[Sidenote: _Its characteristics._]

Of course it is left to the intelligence and taste of the singers to bring out the effects in a recitative, but in this specimen it ought to be noted how sluggishly the disgruntled _Leporello_ replies to the brisk question of _Don Giovanni_, how correct is the rhetorical pause in "you, or the old one?" and the greater sobriety which comes over the manner of the _Don_ as he thinks of the murder just committed, and replies, "the old one."

[Sidenote: _Recitative of some sort necessary._]

[Sidenote: _The speaking voice in opera._]

I am strongly inclined to the belief that in one form or the other, preferably the accompanied, recitative is a necessary integer in the operatic sum. That it is possible to accustom one's self to the change alternately from speech to song we know from the experiences made with German, French, and English operas, but these were not true lyric dramas, but dramas with incidental music. To be a real lyric drama an opera ought to be musical throughout, the voice being maintained from beginning to end on an exalted plane. The tendency to drop into the speaking voice for the sake of dramatic effect shown by some tragic singers does not seem to me commendable. Wagner relates with enthusiasm how Madame Schroeder-Devrient in "Fidelio" was wont to give supreme emphasis to the phrase immediately preceding the trumpet signal in the dungeon scene ("Another step, and you are _dead_!") by speaking the last word "with an awful accent of despair." He then comments:

"The indescribable effect of this manifested itself to all like an agonizing plunge from one sphere into another, and its sublimity consisted in this, that with lightning quickness a glimpse was given to us of the nature of both spheres, of which one was the ideal, the other the real."

[Sidenote: _Wagner and Schroeder-Devrient._]

I have heard a similar effect produced by Herr Niemann and Madame Lehmann, but could not convince myself that it was not an extremely venturesome experiment. Madame Schroeder-Devrient saw the beginning of the modern methods of dramatic expression, and it is easy to believe that a sudden change like that so well defined by Wagner, made with her sweeping voice and accompanied by her plastic and powerful acting, was really thrilling; but, I fancy, nevertheless, that only Beethoven and the intensity of feeling which pervades the scene saved the audience from a disturbing sense of the incongruity of the performance.

[Sidenote: _Early forms._]

[Sidenote: _The dialogue of the Florentines._]

The development which has taken place in the recitative has not only a.s.sisted in elevating opera to the dignity of a lyric drama by saving us from alternate contemplation of the two spheres of ideality and reality, but has also made the factor itself an eloquent vehicle of dramatic expression. Save that it had to forego the help of the instruments beyond a mere harmonic support, the _stilo rappresentativo_, or _musica parlante_, as the Florentines called their musical dialogue, approached the sustained recitative which we hear in the oratorio and grand opera more closely than it did the _recitative secco_. Ever and anon, already in the earliest works (the "Eurydice" of Rinuccini as composed by both Peri and Caccini) there are pa.s.sages which sound like rudimentary melodies, but are charged with vital dramatic expression. Note the following phrase from _Orpheus's_ monologue on being left in the infernal regions by _Venus_, from Peri's opera, performed A.D. 1600, in honor of the marriage of Maria de' Medici to Henry IV. of France:

[Sidenote: _An example from Peri._]

[Music ill.u.s.tration:

_E voi, deh per pie-ta, del mio mar-ti-re Che nel mi-se-ro cor di-mo-ra e-ter-no, La-cri-ma-te al mio pian-to om-bre d'in-fer-no!_]

[Sidenote: _Development of the arioso._]

[Sidenote: _The aria supplanted._]

[Sidenote: _Music and action._]

Out of this style there grew within a decade something very near the arioso, and for all the purposes of our argument we may accept the melodic devices by which Wagner carries on the dialogue of his operas as an uncirc.u.mscribed arioso superimposed upon a foundation of orchestral harmony; for example, _Lohengrin's_ address to the swan, _Elsa's_ account of her dream. The greater melodiousness of the _recitativo stromentato_, and the aid of the orchestra when it began to a.s.sert itself as a factor of independent value, soon enabled this form of musical conversation to become a reflector of the changing moods and pa.s.sions of the play, and thus the value of the aria, whether considered as a solo, or in its composite form as duet, trio, quartet, or _ensemble_, was lessened. The growth of the accompanied recitative naturally brought with it emanc.i.p.ation from the tyranny of the cla.s.sical aria. Wagner's reform had nothing to do with that emanc.i.p.ation, which had been accomplished before him, but went, as we shall see presently, to a liberation of the composers from all the formal dams which had clogged the united flow of action and music. We should, however, even while admiring the achievements of modern composers in blending these elements (and I know of no more striking ill.u.s.tration than the scene of the fat knight's discomfiture in _Ford's_ house in Verdi's "Falstaff") bear in mind that while we may dream of perfect union between words and music, it is not always possible that action and music shall go hand in hand. Let me repeat what once I wrote in a review of Cornelius's opera, "Der Barbier von Bagdad:"[F]

[Sidenote: _How music can replace incident._]

"After all, of the const.i.tuents of an opera, action, at least that form of it usually called incident, is most easily spared. Progress in feeling, development of the emotional element, is indeed essential to variety of musical utterance, but nevertheless all great operas have demonstrated that music is more potent and eloquent when proclaiming an emotional state than while seeking to depict progress toward such a state. Even in the dramas of Wagner the culminating musical moments are predominantly lyrical, as witness the love-duet in 'Tristan,' the close of 'Das Rheingold,' _Siegmund's_ song, the love-duet, and _Wotan's_ farewell in 'Die Walkure,' the forest scene and final duet in 'Siegfried,' and the death of _Siegfried_ in 'Die Gotterdammerung.' It is in the nature of music that this should be so. For the drama which plays on the stage of the heart, music is a more truthful language than speech; but it can stimulate movement and prepare the mind for an incident better than it can accompany movement and incident. Yet music that has a high degree of emotional expressiveness, by diverting attention from externals to the play of pa.s.sion within the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of the persons can sometimes make us forget the paucity of incident in a play. 'Tristan und Isolde' is a case in point. Practically, its outward action is summed up in each of its three acts by the same words: Preparation for a meeting of the ill-starred lovers; the meeting. What is outside of this is mere detail; yet the effect of the tragedy upon a listener is that of a play surcharged with pregnant occurrence. It is the subtle alchemy of music that trans.m.u.tes the psychological action of the tragedy into dramatic incident."

[Sidenote: _Set forms not to be condemned._]