History of the Opera from its Origin in Italy to the present Time. H. Sutherland Edwards
ON THE NATURE OF THE OPERA, AND ITS MERITS AS COMPARED WITH OTHER FORMS OF THE DRAMA.
Opera admired for its unintelligibility.—The use of words in opera.—An inquisitive amateur.—New version of a chorus in Robert le Diable.—Strange readings of the Credo by two chapel masters.—Dramatic situations and effects peculiar to the Opera.—Pleasantries directed against the Opera; their antiquity and harmlessness.—Les Opéras by St. Evrémond.—Beaumarchais's mot.—Addison on the Italian Opera in England.—Swift's epigram.—Béranger on the decline of the drama.—What may be seen at the Opera.
UNINTELLIGIBILITY OF OPERA.
WHEN Sir William Davenant obtained permission from Cromwell to open his theatre for the performance of operas, Antony à Wood wrote that, "Though Oliver Cromwell had now prohibited all other theatrical representations, he allowed of this because being in an unknown language it could not corrupt the morals of the people." Thereupon it has been imagined that Antony à Wood must have supposed Sir William Davenant's performances to have been in the Italian tongue, as if he could not have regarded music as an unknown language, and have concluded that a drama conducted in music would for that reason be unintelligible. Nevertheless, in the present day we have a censor who refuses to permit the representation of La Dame aux Camélias in English, or even in French,[8] but who tolerates the performance of La Traviata, (which, I need hardly say, is the Dame aux Camélias set to music) in Italian, and, I believe, even in English; thinking, no doubt, like Antony à Wood, that in an operatic form it cannot be understood, and therefore cannot corrupt the morals of the people. Since Antony à Wood's time a good deal of stupid, unmeaning verse has been written in operas, and sometimes when the words have not been of themselves unintelligible, they have been rendered nearly so by the manner in which they have been set to music, to say nothing of the final obscurity given to them by the imperfect enunciation of the singers. The mere fact, however, of a dramatic piece being performed in music does not make it unintelligible, but, on the contrary, increases the sphere of its intelligibility, giving it a more universal interest and rendering it an entertainment appreciable by persons of all countries. This in itself is not much to boast of, for the entertainment of the ballet is independent of language to a still greater extent; and La Gitana or Esmeralda can be as well understood by an Englishman at the Opera House of Berlin or of Moscow as at Her Majesty's Theatre in London; while perhaps the most universally intelligible drama ever performed is that of Punch, even when the brief dialogue which adorns its pantomime is inaudible.
Opera is music in a dramatic form; and people go to the theatre and listen to it as if it were so much prose. They have even been known to complain during or after the performance that they could not hear the words, as if it were through the mere logical meaning of the words that the composer proposed to excite the emotion of the audience. The only pity is that it is necessary in an opera to have words at all, but it is evident that a singer could not enter into the spirit of a dramatic situation if he had a mere string of meaningless syllables or any sort of inappropriate nonsense to utter. He must first produce an illusion on himself, or he will produce none on the audience, and he must, therefore, fully inspire himself with the sentiment, logical as well as musical, of what he has to sing. Otherwise, all we want to know about the words of Casta diva (to take examples from the most popular, as also one of the very finest of Italian operas) is that it is a prayer to a goddess; of the Druids' chorus, that it is chorus of Druids; of the trio, that "Norma" having confronted "Pollio" with "Adalgisa," is reproaching him indignantly and passionately with his perfidy; of the duet that "Norma" is confiding her children to "Adalgisa's" care; of the scene with "Pollio," that "Norma" is again reproaching him, but in a different spirit, with sadness and bitterness, and with the compressed sorrow of a woman who is wounded to the heart and must soon die. I may be in error, however, for though I have seen Norma fifty times, I have never examined the libretto, and of the whole piece know scarcely more than the two words which I have already paraded before the public—"Casta Diva."
WONDERFUL INSTANCE OF CURIOSITY.
One night, at the Royal Italian Opera, when Mario was playing the part of the "Duke of Mantua" in Rigoletto, and was singing the commencement of the duet with "Gilda," a man dressed in black and white like every one else, said to me gravely, "I do not understand Italian. Can you tell me what he is saying to her?"
"He is telling her that he loves her," I answered briefly.
"What is he saying now?" asked this inquisitive amateur two minutes afterwards.
"He is telling her that he loves her," I repeated.
"Why, he said that before!" objected this person who had apparently come to the opera with the view of gaining some kind of valuable information from the performers. Poor Bosio was the "Gilda," but my horny-eared neighbour wondered none the less that the Duke could not say "I love you," in three words.
"He will say it again," I answered, "and then she will say it, and then they will say it together; indeed, they will say nothing else for the next five minutes, and when you hear them exclaim 'addio' with one voice, and go on repeating it, it will still mean the same thing."
What benighted amateur was this who wanted to know the words of a beautiful duet; and is there much difference between such a one and the man who would look at the texture of a canvas to see what the painting on it was worth?
Let it be admitted that as a rule no opera is intelligible without a libretto; but is a drama always intelligible without a play-bill? A libretto, for general use, need really be no larger than an ordinary programme; and it would be a positive advantage if it contained merely a sketch of the plot with the subject, and perhaps the first line of all the principal songs.
IMITATIVE MUSIC.
Then the foolish amateur would not run the risk of having his attention diverted from the music by the words, and would be more likely to give himself up to the enjoyment of the opera in a rational and legitimate manner. Another advantage of keeping the words from the public would be, that composers, full of the grossest prose, but priding themselves on their fancy, would at last see the inutility as well as the pettiness of picking out one particular word in a line, and "illustrating" it: thus imitating a sound when their aim should be to depict a sentiment. Even the illustrious Purcell has sinned in this respect, and Meyerbeer, innumerable times, though always displaying remarkable ingenuity, and as much good taste as is compatible with an error against both taste and reason. It is a pity that great musicians should descend to such anti-poetical, and, indeed, nonsensical trivialities; but when inferior ones are unable to let a singer wish she were a bird, without imitating a bird's chirruping on the piccolo, or allude in the most distant manner to the trumpet's sound, without taking it as a hint to introduce a short flourish on that instrument, I cannot help thinking of those literal-minded pictorial illustrators who follow a precisely analogous process, and who, for example, in picturing the scene in which "Macbeth" exclaims—"Throw physic to the dogs," would represent a man throwing bottles of medicine to a pack of hounds. What a treat, by the way, it would be to hear a setting of Othello's farewell to war by a determined composer of imitative picturesque music! How "ear-piercing" would be his fifes! How "spirit-stirring" his drums.
The words of an opera ought to be good, and yet need not of necessity be heard. They should be poetical that they may inspire first the composer and afterwards the singer; and they should be ryhthmical and sonorous in order that the latter may be able to sing them with due effect. Above all they ought not to be ridiculous, lest the public should hear them and laugh at the music, just where it was intended that it should affect them to tears. Everything ought to be good at the opera down to the rosin of the fiddlers, and including the words of the libretto. Even the chorus should have tolerable verses to sing, though no one would be likely ever to hear them. Indeed, it is said that at the Grand Opera of Paris, by a tradition now thirty years old, the opening chorus in Robert le Diable is always sung to those touching lines—which I confess I never heard on the other side of the orchestra:—
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