A Book of Operas: Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music. Henry Edward Krehbiel

list of pieces ready at hand to satisfy the rapacious public. She was wont at first to sing Proch's Air and Variations, but that always led to a demand for more, and whether she supplemented it with "Ah! non giunge," from "La Sonnambula," the bolero from "The Sicilian Vespers," "O luce di quest anima," from "Linda," or the vocalized waltz by Strauss, the applause always was riotous, and so remained until she sat down to the pianoforte and sang Chopin's "Maiden's Wish," in Polish, to her own accompaniment. As for Mme. Melba, not to be set in the shade simply because Mme. Sembrich is almost as good a pianist as she is a singer, she supplements Arditi's waltz or Massenet's "Sevillana" with Tosti's "Mattinata," to which she also plays an exquisite accompaniment.

      But this is a long digression; I must back to my intriguing lovers, who have made good use of the lesson scene to repeat their protestations of affection and lay plots for attaining their happiness. In this they are helped by Figaro, who comes to shave Dr. Bartolo in spite of his protests, and, contriving to get hold of the latter's keys, "conveys" the one which opens the balcony lock, and thus makes possible a plan for a midnight elopement. In the midst of the lesson the real Basilio comes to meet his appointment, and there is a moment of confusion for the plotters, out of which Figaro extricates them by persuading Basilio that he is sick of a raging fever, and must go instantly home, Almaviva adding a convincing argument in the shape of a generously lined purse. Nevertheless, Basilio afterwards betrays the Count to Bartolo, who commands him to bring a notary to the house that very night so that he may sign the marriage contract with Rosina. In the midst of a tempest Figaro and the Count let themselves into the house at midnight to carry off Rosina, but find her in a whimsy, her mind having been poisoned against her lover by Bartolo with the aid of the unfortunate letter. Out of this dilemma Almaviva extricates himself by confessing his identity, and the pair are about to steal away when the discovery is made that the ladder to the balcony has been carried away. As they are tiptoeing toward the window, the three sing a trio in which there is such obvious use of a melodic phrase which belongs to Haydn that every writer on "Il Barbiere" seems to have thought it his duty to point out an instance of "plagiarism" on the part of Rossini. It is a trifling matter. The trio begins thus:—

      [Musical excerpt—"Ziti, ziti, piano, piano, non facciamo confusionne"]

      which is a slightly varied form of four measures from Simon's song in the first part of "The Seasons":—

      [Musical excerpt—"With eagerness the husbandman his tilling work begins."]

      With these four measures the likeness begins and ends. A venial offence, if it be an offence at all. Composers were not held to so strict and scrupulous an accountability touching melodic meum and tuum a century ago as they are now; yet there was then a thousand-fold more melodic inventiveness. Another case of "conveyance" by Rossini has also been pointed out; the air of the duenna in the third act beginning "Il vecchiotto cerca moglie" is said to be that of a song which Rossini heard a Russian lady sing in Rome. I have searched much in Russian song literature and failed to find the alleged original. To finish the story: the notary summoned by Bartolo arrives on the scene, but is persuaded by Figaro to draw up an attestation of a marriage agreement between Count Almaviva and Rosina, and Bartolo, finding at the last that all his precautions have been in vain, comforted not a little by the gift of his ward's dower, which the Count relinquishes, gives his blessing to the lovers.

      I have told the story of "Il Barbiere di Siviglia" as it appears in the book. It has grown to be the custom to omit in performance several of the incidents which are essential to the development and understanding of the plot. Some day—soon, it is to be hoped—managers, singers, and public will awake to a realization that, even in the old operas in which beautiful singing is supposed to be the be-all and end-all, the action ought to be kept coherent. In that happy day Rossini's effervescent lyrical arrangement of Beaumarchais's vivacious comedy will be restored to its rights.

CHAPTER II

       Table of Contents

      "LE NOZZE DI FIGARO"

      Beaumarchais wrote a trilogy of Figaro comedies, and if the tastes and methods of a century or so ago had been like those of the present, we might have had also a trilogy of Figaro operas—"Le Barbier de Seville," "Le Mariage de Figaro," and "La Mère coupable." As it is, we have operatic versions of the first two of the comedies, Mozart's "Nozze di Figaro" being a sequel to Rossini's "Il Barbiere," its action beginning at a period not long after the precautions of Dr. Bartolo had been rendered inutile by Figaro's cunning schemes and Almaviva had installed Rosina as his countess. "Le Nozze" was composed a whole generation before Rossini's opera. Mozart and his public could keep the sequence of incidents in view, however, from the fact that Paisiello had acquainted them with the beginning of the story. Paisiello's opera is dead, but Rossini's is very much alive, and it might prove interesting, some day, to have the two living operas brought together in performance in order to note the effect produced upon each other by comparison of their scores. One effect, I fancy, would be to make the elder of the operas sound younger than its companion, because of the greater variety and freshness, as well as dramatic vigor, of its music. But though the names of many of the characters would be the same, we should scarcely recognize their musical physiognomies. We should find the sprightly Rosina of "Il Barbiere" changed into a mature lady with a countenance sicklied o'er with the pale cast of a gentle melancholy; the Count's tenor would, in the short interval, have changed into barytone; Figaro's barytone into a bass, while the buffo-bass of Don Basilio would have reversed the process with age and gone upward into the tenor region. We should meet with some new characters, of which two at least would supply the element of dramatic freshness and vivacity which we should miss from the company of the first opera—Susanna and Cherubino.

      We should also, in all likelihood, be struck by the difference in the moral atmosphere of the two works. It took Beaumarchais three years to secure a public performance of his "Mariage de Figaro" because of the opposition of the French court, with Louis XVI at its head, to its too frank libertinism. This opposition spread also to other royal and imperial personages, who did not relish the manner in which the poet had castigated the nobility, exalted the intellectuality of menials, and satirized the social and political conditions which were generally prevalent a short time before the French Revolution. Neither of the operas, however, met the obstacles which blocked the progress of the comedies on which they are founded, because Da Ponte, who wrote the book for Mozart, and Sterbini, who was Rossini's librettist, judiciously and deftly elided the objectionable political element. "Le Nozze" is by far the more ingeniously constructed play of the two (though a trifle too involved for popular comprehension in the original language), but "Il Barbiere" has the advantage of freedom from the moral grossness which pollutes its companion. For the unspoiled taste of the better class of opera patrons, there is a livelier as well as a lovelier charm in the story of Almaviva's adventures while outwitting Dr. Bartolo and carrying off the winsome Rosina to be his countess than in the depiction of his amatory intrigues after marriage. In fact, there is something especially repellent in the Count's lustful pursuit of the bride of the man to whose intellectual resourcefulness he owed the successful outcome of his own wooing.

      It is, indeed, a fortunate thing for Mozart's music that so few opera-goers understand Italian nowadays. The play is a moral blister, and the less intelligible it is made by excisions in its dialogue, the better, in one respect, for the virtuous sensibilities of its auditors. One point which can be sacrificed without detriment to the music and at only a trifling cost to the comedy (even when it is looked upon from the viewpoint which prevailed in Europe at the period of its creation) is that which Beaumarchais relied on chiefly to add piquancy to the conduct of the Count. Almaviva, we are given to understand, on his marriage with Rosina had voluntarily abandoned an ancient seignorial right, described by Susanna as "certe mezz' ore che il diritto feudale," but is desirous of reviving the practice in the case of the Countess's bewitching maid on the eve of her marriage to his valet. It is this discovery which induces Figaro to invent his scheme for expediting the wedding, and lends a touch of humor to the scene in which Figaro asks that he and his bride enjoy the first-fruits of the reform while the villagers lustily hymn the merits of their "virtuous" lord; but the too frank discussion of the subject