History of the Opera from its Origin in Italy to the present Time. Edwards Henry Sutherland
Hogarth, in his interesting "Memoirs of the Opera," remarks that "though Arsinoe is utterly unworthy of criticism, yet there is something amusing in the folly of the composer. The very first song may be taken as a specimen. The words are —
Queen of Darkness, sable night,
Ease a wandering lover's pain;
Guide me, lead me
Where the nymph whom I adore,
Sleeping, dreaming,
Thinks of love and me no more.
The first two lines are spoken in a meagre sort of recitative. Then there is a miserable air, the first part of which consists of the next two lines, and concludes with a perfect close. The second part of the air is on the last two lines; after which, there is, as usual, a da capo, and the first part is repeated; the song finishing in the middle of a sentence, —
"Guide me, lead me
Where the nymph whom I adore" —
which, I venture to say, has not been beaten by Bunn, or Fitzball, or any of our worst librettists at their worst moments.
The music of Camilla, the second opera in the Italian style, performed in England, was by Marco Antonio Buononcini, the brother of Handel's future rival. The work was produced at the original Opera House, erected by Sir John Vanburgh, on the site of the present building, in 1705.13 It was sung half in English and half in Italian. Mrs. Tofts played the part of "Camilla," and kept to her mother tongue. Valentini played that of the hero, and kept to his. Both the Buononcinis were composers of high ability and the music of Camilla is said to have been very beautiful. The melodies given to the two principal singers were original, expressive, and well harmonized. Mrs. Tofts' impersonation of the Amazonian lady was much admired by persons of taste, and there was a part for a pig which threw the vulgar into ecstacies.
"Mr. Spectator," wrote a correspondent, "your having been so humble as to take notice of the epistles of the animal, embolden me, who am the wild boar that was killed by Mrs. Tofts, to represent to you that I think I was hardly used in not having the part of the lion in Hydaspes given to me. It would have been but a natural step for me to have personated that noble creature, after having behaved myself to satisfaction in the part above mentioned; but that of a lion is too great a character for one that never trode the stage before but upon two legs. As for the little resistance I made, I hope it may be excused when it is considered that the dart was thrown at me by so fair a hand. I must confess I had but just put on my brutality; and Camilla's charms were such, that beholding her erect mien, hearing her charming voice, and astonished with her graceful motion, I could not keep up to my assumed fierceness, but died like a man."
Mrs. Tofts quitted the stage in 1709, in consequence of mental derangement. We have seen Mademoiselle Desmâtins, half fancying in her excessive, vanity that she was really the queen or princess she had been representing the same night on the stage, and ordering the servants, on her return home, to prepare her throne and serve her on their bended knees. Poor Mrs. Tofts laboured under a similar delusion; only, in her case, it was not a moral malady, but the hallucination of a diseased intellect. "In the meridian of her beauty," says Hawkins, in his History of Music, "and possessed of a large sum of money, which she had acquired by singing, Mrs. Tofts quitted the stage, and was married to Mr. Joseph Smith, a gentleman, who being appointed consul for the English nation, at Venice, she went thither with him. Mr. Smith was a great collector of books, and patron of the arts. He lived in great state and magnificence; but the disorder of his wife returning, she dwelt sequestered from the world, in a remote part of the house, and had a large garden to range in, in which she would frequently walk, singing and giving way to that innocent frenzy which had seized her in the early part of her life."
The terrible affliction, which had fallen upon the favourite operatic vocalist, is touched upon by Steele, with singular want of feeling, of taste, and even of common decency, in No. 20 of the Tatler. "The theatre," he says, "is breaking, and there is a great desolation among the gentlemen and ladies who were the ornaments of the town, and used to shine in plumes and diadems, the heroes being most of them pressed, and the queens beating hemp." Then with more brutality than humour he adds, "The great revolutions of this nature bring to my mind the distress of the unfortunate 'Camilla,' who has had the ill luck to break before her voice, and to disappear at a time when her beauty was in the height of its bloom. This lady entered so thoroughly into the great characters she acted, that when she had finished her part she could not think of retrenching her equipage, but would appear in her own lodgings with the same magnificence as she did upon the stage. This greatness of soul has reduced that unhappy princess to a voluntary retirement, where she now passes her time among the woods and forests, thinking on the crowns and sceptres she has lost, and often humming over in her solitude: —
'I was born of royal race,
Yet must wander in disgrace, &c.'
"But for fear of being overheard, and her quality known, she usually sings it in Italian: —
'Nacqui al regno, nacqui al trono,
E pur sono,
Sventatura pastorella.'"
It is "the Christian soldier" who wrote this; who rejoiced in this anti-christian and cowardly spirit at the dark calamity which had befallen an amiable and charming vocalist, whose only fault was that she had aided the fortunes of a theatre abhorred by Steele. And what cause had Steele for detesting the Italian Opera with the unreasonable and really stupid hatred which he displayed towards it? Addison, as it seems to me, has been most unfairly attacked for his strictures on the operatic performances of his day. They were often just, they were never ill-natured, and they were always enveloped in such a delightful garb of humour, that there is not a sentence, certainly not a whole paper, and scarcely even a phrase,14 in all he has published about the Opera, that a musician, unless already "enraged," would wish unwritten. It is unreasonable and unworthy to connect Addison's pleasantries on the subject of Arsinoe, Camilla, Hydaspes, and Rinaldo, with the failure of his Rosamond, which, as the reader is aware, was set to music by the ignorant impostor called Clayton. Addison, it is true, did not write any of his admirably humorous papers about the Italian Opera until after the production of Rosamond, but it was not until some time afterwards that the Spectator first appeared. St. Evrémond, who was a great lover of the Opera, wrote much more against it than Addison. In fact, the new entertainment was the subject of the day. It was full of incongruities, and naturally recommended itself to the attention of wits; and we all know that, as a rule, wits do not deal in praise. All that Rosamond proves is, that Addison liked the Opera or he would never have written it.
But about this Christian Soldier who endeavours to convince his readers that music is a thing to be despised because it does not appeal to the understanding, and who laughs at the misfortunes of a poor lunatic because she is no longer able to attract the public by her singing from the dramatic theatre in which he took so deep an interest, and of which he afterwards became patentee?15
Of course, if music appealed only to the understanding, mad Saul would have found no solace in the tones of David's harp, and it would be hideously irreverent to imagine the angels of heaven singing hymns to their Creator. Steele, of course, knew this, and also that the pleasure given by music is not a mere physical sensation, to be enjoyed as an Angora cat enjoys the smell of flowers, but he seems to have thought it was his duty (as it afterwards became his interest) to write up the drama and write down the Opera at all hazards. Powerful penmanship it must have been, however, that would have put down Handel, or that would have kept up Mr. Ambrose Phillips. It would have been easier, at least it would have been more successful, to have gone upon the other tack. We all know Handel, and (if the expression be permitted) he becomes more immortal every day. Steele, it is true, did not hold his music in any esteem, but Mozart, a competent judge in such matters, did, and reckoned it an honour to write additional accompaniments to the elder master's greatest
Burnt down in 1789. The present edifice was erected from designs by Michael Novosielski, (who, to judge from his name, must have been a Russian or a Pole), in 1790. Altered and enlarged by Nash and Repton, in 1816 – 18.
It is to be regretted, however, that in sneering at an Italian librettist who called Handel "The Orpheus of our age," Addison thought fit to speak of the great composer with neither politeness, nor wit, nor even accuracy, as "Mynheer." —
The same trenchant critics who attribute Addison's satire of the Opera to the failure of his