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The Mentor, No. 47, Makers of Modern Opera




MAKERS OF MODERN OPERA

_By_ H. E. KREHBIEL

_Author and Music Critic_

[Illustration: WAGNER]

[Illustration: VERDI]

THE MENTOR

SERIAL No. 47

[Illustration]

DEPARTMENT OF FINE ARTS

    MENTOR GRAVURES

    VERDI · MASSENET · PUCCINI · STRAUSS · GOUNOD · HUMPERDINCK


The form of entertainment called opera had its origin a little more
than three centuries ago in an effort made by a company of scholars and
musical amateurs in Florence to rescue music from the artificiality
into which the composers, who were all churchmen, had forced it.

The Florentine group had convinced themselves by study that music
had been effectively linked with poetry and action in the Greek
stage-plays, and in striving to imitate these they created the art-form
which in time came to be called “opera”--though at first it was known
by names all more or less closely connected with the terms which the
composers of today use to describe their dramatic works,--lyric dramas,
musical dramas, and so forth. The new style quickly spread over Europe,
and inasmuch as Italy was the home of music, it retained for a time
the Italian language and the style of musical composition evolved
by its creators. Soon other nations, impelled by a desire to hear
the new lyric plays, began to translate the Italian books into their
own languages. This brought with it a recognition of the incongruity
between Italian music and the French, German, and English languages,
and the dramatic poets and musicians of these countries began to seek
more satisfactory idioms in which to express their ideals. Thus there
came into existence the three great schools of operatic composers whose
latterday representatives are here considered.

[Illustration: GAETANO DONIZETTI]

Two men mark the point of departure of the lyric drama of today from
the general style which characterized opera all the world over during
the first two centuries following its invention. They are Verdi
(vair-dee), the Italian, and Wagner (vahg´-ner), the German; and,
strangely enough, they were both born in 1813. The latter exercised an
influence which was universal, and Verdi fell under it.

[Illustration: GIOACHINO ROSSINI]


THE GLORY OF VERDI

But neither in precept nor in practice was the great Italian brought
to disavow the native genius of his people. That is the great glory of
Verdi. For decade after decade he kept pace with his German rival in
the march toward truthfulness and variety of expression in the lyric
drama; but never did he forget that the first, the elemental, appeal
which music makes is through melody. His conception of melody changed
as his artistic nature grew and ripened; but song, vocal melody, is as
dominant a factor in his first successful opera, “Nabuco,” performed
in 1842, as it is in “Falstaff,” which he gave to the world fifty-one
years later. Verdi’s music illustrates every step of progress which
Italian opera has taken, from the time when Rossini overcame the
taste formed by the last masters of the eighteenth century till the
advent of the impetuous champions of realism who disputed popularity
with him in the closing years of the nineteenth. His ideals when he
wrote “Oberto” in 1839 were those of his immediate predecessors,
Bellini (bel-lee´-nee) and Donizetti (don-nee-dzet´-tee); but his
voice was ruder,--so rude, indeed, as to lead Rossini (ros-see´-nee)
to describe him as a “musician with a helmet.” This rudeness was the
first expression of his desire for passionate and truthful expression,
a desire which at the height of his spontaneous creative powers reached
its finest flower in the final trio of “Il Trovatore” and final quartet
of “Rigoletto,” two examples of operatic writing which are as good in
their way as any that French or German opera has to show.

[Illustration: VERDI’S BIRTHPLACE AND HIS HOME]

It is no depreciation of the mature and perfect Verdi of “Otello”
and “Falstaff” to say that he reached the climax of his melodic
inventiveness in “Il Trovatore” (tro-vah-to´-re), “Traviata”
(trah-vee-ah´-tah), and “Rigoletto” (ree-go-let´-to), and that “Aïda”
(ah-ee´-dah), which is now his most universally admired work, is
such because it is a product of his combined melodic inspiration
and his marvelous judgment, skill, and taste, developed by study
and reflection. The greater charm which “Aïda” exerts now is due as
much to the advanced ideals of the public, which Wagner was largely
instrumental in creating, as to the refined and deepened sense of
dramatic propriety and beauty which Verdi discloses in its melody,
harmony, and instrumentation.

[Illustration: GIUSEPPE VERDI

From a painting by Millicovitz.]

[Illustration: LA SCALA OPERA HOUSE

Where many of Verdi’s works had their first performance.]

If his mind was more impetuous in the sixth decade of the last century
than in the tenth, it was of infinitely finer fiber at the last. When
his creative impulses came to wait upon reflection his music showed
much nicer adjustment of the poetical and musical elements than had
prevailed in his works thitherto, his harmonies became richer, the
blatancy of his orchestration disappeared, and his instruments became
more beautiful and truthful associates in expression with the singers
of the drama than they had ever been. When he reached “Falstaff” and
“Otello” the last bit of slag which had vulgarized his earlier works
was cast aside, and he stepped forth as full an exemplar of national
art as Wagner. In this last incarnation of the Italian spirit he
was helped by his collaborator Boito (bo-ee´-to), a poet as well
as a composer, and therefore a type of the true dramatic artist as
he existed in ancient Greece, and as Wagner conceived him when he
projected his Artwork of the Future. It was Verdi’s association with
Boito which was largely responsible for the fact that he became the
successor as he had been the predecessor of Mascagni (mahs-kahn´-yee).

After the death of Verdi nobody was readier to concede how much he
had meant to Italian art than Mascagni, who had been the first to
profit by the revolt against Verdi which came with the advent of
Wagner’s art in Italy. When “Lohengrin” (lo´-en-grin) made its way into
Florence and other places many pupils at the conservatories forsook
Verdi and followed Wagner. The effect may have been a good one. There
can scarcely be a doubt but that it was to turn his hotheaded young
countrymen back to the path which he knew to be the only correct one
for them that Verdi made his supreme effort in his last two works.
Under the new influence the young Italians had plunged headforemost
into realism of the crassest sort, and that they might follow a vulgar
bent for lurid expression they went to the Neapolitan slums for their
subjects.

[Illustration: PIETRO MASCAGNI

Composer of Cavalleria Rusticana.]

[Illustration: RUGGIERO LEONCAVALLO

Composer of Pagliacci.]


REALISM IN OPERA

[Illustration: Copyright, A. Dupont.

GIACOMO PUCCINI]

Some of the first fruits of the tendency toward realism are
plays whose plots