The rise of German opera; Weber and the romantic opera; Weber’s followers—Berlioz as opera composer—The drame lyrique from Gounod to Bizet—Opéra comique in the romantic period; the opéra bouffe—Choral and sacred music of the romantic period.
If vivid imagery was one of the chief lusts of the romantic school it would seem that opera should have proved one of its most typical and effective art forms. And, throughout the time, opera flourished in the theatres of Germany, and in Paris as a matter of course. Yet we cannot say that the artistic output was as excellent as we might expect. Of the works to be described in this chapter not more than eight are to-day thoroughly alive, and two of these are overestimated choral works. Yet in the most real sense the opera of the romantic period prepared the way for Wagner, who would no doubt be called a romanticist if he were not too great for any labels. And much of the music of the period, though it has been displaced by modern works (styles change more quickly in opera than in any other form) has a decided interest and value if we do not take too high an attitude toward it.
Modern opera can be dated from Der Freischütz. Yet it goes without saying (since nothing is quite new under the sun) that the work was not as novel in its day as it seems to us after the lapse of nearly a century. The elements of romanticism had existed in opera long before Weber’s time. In Gluck’s ‘Armide’ the voluptuous adventures of Rinaldo in the enchantress’s garden had breathed the spirit of the German folk-lore awakening, though treated in Gluck’s style of classical purity. Mozart, especially, must be counted among the romanticists of opera. The final scene of Don Giovanni, with its imaginative playing with the supernatural, to the accompaniment of most impressive music, seems to be a sketch in preparation for Freischütz. And the spirit of German song had already entered into opera in ‘The Magic Flute,’ which is in great part as truly German as Weber, except for its Italian grace and delicacy of treatment. Moreover, ‘The Magic Flute’ was a singspiel, or dramatic work with music interspersed with spoken text—the form in which Der Freischütz was written. Mozart’s opera might have founded the German school, had conditions been different, but beyond the fact that the story is obscure and distinctly not national, the German national movement had not yet begun. We have seen in a previous chapter how it took repeated invasions and insults from Napoleon to arouse patriotism throughout the disjointed German lands, and how the patriotic spirit had to fight the repression of the courts at every turn. We have seen how it was hounded from the streets to the cellars and how from beneath ground it cried for some work of art which should symbolize and express its aspiration while it was in hiding. It was this conjunction of conditions which gave Freischütz such peculiar popularity at the time—a popularity, however, which was fully justified by its artistic value and could not have been achieved in such overwhelming degree without it.
The Italian opera, before Weber’s time, had carried everything its own way. Those patriots who longed for the creation of a German operatic art had no sort of tradition to turn to except the singspiel. This was never regarded highly, and was considered quite beneath the dignity of the aristocracy and of those who prided themselves on being artistically comme il faut. And it was frequently as cheap and thin (not to say coarse) as a second-rate vaudeville ‘skit’ to-day. But it had in it elements of good old German humor, together with occasional doses of German pathos, and cultivated a German type of song, such as then existed. At any rate, it was all there was. Weber had no turn for the Italian ways of doing things, and little knowledge of them. So when he sought to write serious German opera that should appeal to a great mass of the people—the desire for national popularity had already been stirred in him by the success of his Leyer und Schwert songs—he was obliged to write in a tongue that was understood by his fellow men. It is doubtful whether Der Freischütz could have gained its wide popularity had its few pages of spoken dialogue been replaced by musical recitative in the Italian style. Such is the influence of tradition.
But he had no need to be ashamed of the true German tradition to which he attached himself. The singspiel, which represented all there was of German opera, frequently cultivated a style of music which, if simple, was genuinely musical and highly refined. Reichardt’s singspiel, Erwin und Elmire, to Goethe’s text, has been mentioned in the chapter on Romantic Song, and its Mozart-like charm of melody referred to. The singspiel was a repository for German song, and frequently drew upon German folk-lore or ‘house’ lore for its subject matter. It needed only the right genius at the right time to raise it into a supreme art form.
As early as 1810, when Weber was still sowing his wild oats and flirting with a literary career, he had run across the story of the Freischütz in Apel’s newly published book of German ‘ghost-tales.’ The subject stirred his imagination and he planned to make an opera of it. But he found other things to turn his hand to, and was unable to hit upon a satisfactory librettist until in 1817 he met Friedrich Kind, who had already become popular with his play, Das Nachtlager von Granada. Kind took up with the idea, and in ten days completed his libretto. Weber worked at it slowly, but with great zest. Four years later, on the anniversary of the battle of Waterloo, it was performed for the first time, at the opening of the new Royal Theatre in Berlin. Its electric success, as it went through the length and breadth of Germany, has been described in a previous chapter.
Kind deserves a large share of the credit for the success of the work, though it must be confessed that he did not wear his laurels with much dignity. He protested rather childishly against the excision of two superfluous scenes from his libretto, and was forever trying to exaggerate his share in the artistic partnership. It seems to have been pique which prevented him from writing more librettos for Weber—and what a series of operas might have come out of that union! In 1843, long after Weber’s death, he published a book, Das Freischützbuch, in which he aired his griefs. The volume would have little significance except for one or two remarkable statements in it. ‘Every opera,’ he says, ‘must be a complete whole, not only from the musical, but also from the poetical point of view.’ And again: ‘I convinced myself that through the union of all arts, as poetry, music, action, painting, and dance, a great whole could be formed.’ How striking these statements sound in view of the art theories which Wagner was evolving for himself five and ten years later! And it must be said, to Kind’s justice, that he had worked consistently on this theory in the writing of the Freischütz libretto. He had insisted that Weber set his work as he had written it, and his insistence seems to have been due to more than a petty pride.
The opera tells a story which had long been told, in one form or another, in German homes. Max, a young hunter, aspires to the position of chief huntsman on Prince Ottokar’s domains. If he gains it he will have the hand of the retiring chief huntsman’s daughter, Agathe, whom he loves. His success depends upon overcoming all rivals in a shooting contest. In the preliminary contest he has made a poor showing. In fear of failure he listens to the temptation of one Caspar, and sells his soul to the devil, Samiel, in return for six magic bullets, guaranteed by infernal charms to hit their mark. A seventh, in Max’s possession, Samiel retains for his own use. The bullets are charmed and the price of the soul stipulated upon in dark Wolf’s Glen at midnight. In this transaction Caspar acts as middleman in the affair in order to induce Samiel to extend the earthly life of his soul, which has similarly been sold. On the day of the shooting match Agathe experiences evil omens; instead of a bridal wreath a funeral wreath has been prepared for her. She decides to wear sacred roses instead. Max enters the contest and his six bullets hit the mark. Then, at the prince’s commands, he shoots at a passing dove—with the seventh bullet. Agathe falls with a shriek, but she is protected by her sacred wreath and the bullet pierces Caspar’s heart. Overcome with remorse Max confesses his sin. He is about to be banished in disgrace when a passing hermit pleads for him, urging his extreme temptation in extenuation, and he is restored by the prince to all his happiness, on condition that he pass successfully through a year’s probation.
This story may stand as a type of the romantic opera plots of the time. Of first importance was its use of purely German materials—the national element which gave it its political significance. Only second in importance was the fact that it was drawn from folk-lore and hence was material intelligible and interesting to everybody, as contrasted with the classic stories of the operas and plays of eighteenth century France, which were intelligible only to the upper class educated in the classics, and which was specifically intended to exclude the vulgar rabble from participation and so serve as a sort of test of gentility. Third was the incidental fact of the form which this democratic and national spirit took—an interest in the element of the bizarre, the fanciful, and the supernatural. It was wholly suited to the tastes of the romantic age that the devil Samiel should come upon the stage in person and charm the seven bullets before the gaping eyes of the audience.
The music shows Weber supreme in two important qualities, the folk sense and the dramatic sense. No one before him had been able to put into opera so well the very spirit of German folk-song, as he did in Agathe’s famous moonlight scene, or in the impressive male chorus, accompanied by the brass, in the first act. In power of characterization Weber is second only to Mozart. The opening duet of the second act, sung by the dreamy Agathe and the sprightly Ännchen, gives to each character a melody which expresses her state of soul, yet the two combine with utmost grace. In his characterization of the supernatural Weber had no adequate prototype save the Mozart of the cemetery and supper scenes in Don Giovanni, for Spohr’s operatic setting of the Faust legend was classic in tone and method. The verve of the music of Wolf’s Glen is exhilarating to the imagination. Samiel, whose speeches are accompanied by rolls or taps on the kettle-drums, seems to live to our ears and eyes, and as the bullets, one after another, are charmed, the music rises until it bursts in a stormy fury. Many of the tunes of Der Freischütz have become folk-songs among the German people, and the bridal chorus and Agathe’s scene may be heard among the very children on their way home from school, while the vigorous huntsmen’s chorus is a staple of German singing societies wherever the German language is spoken.
From the earliest years of his creative activity Weber had been composing operas. And they grew steadily better. The one just preceding Freischütz was Abu Hassan, a comic opera in one act telling the difficulties of Hassan and his wife Fatima to escape their debts. The dainty and bustling music has helped to keep the piece alive. But the piece which Weber intended should be his magnum opus was Euryanthe, which followed Freischütz. The critics, differing with the public in their opinion concerning the latter work, admitted Weber’s power of writing in simple style, but asserted that he could not master longer concerted forms. Weber accepted the challenge and wrote Euryanthe as a work of pure romanticism, separated from the national element, conceived on the broadest musical scale. It is a true opera, without spoken dialogue. The music is in parts the finest Weber ever wrote, and in more than one way suggests Lohengrin, which seems to have germinated in Wagner’s mind in part from the study of Euryanthe. Weber’s last opera, written on commission from Covent Garden, London, and completed only a few months before his death, was ‘Oberon,’ a return to the singspiel type, with much of the other-worldly in its story. Euryanthe had failed of popular success, chiefly through its impossibly crude and involved libretto. ‘Oberon’ was better, but far from ideal. It has, like ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream,’ Oberon, Titania, Puck, and the host of fairies, together with mortal lovers whose destinies become involved with those of the elves. The music is often charming, revealing a delicacy of imagination not found in Freischütz, but it is lacking in characterizing power, and reveals its composer’s lessening bodily and mental vigor.
Weber had established German opera on a par with Italian, and there stood men ready to take up his mantle. Chief of these was Heinrich Marschner.[100] He is best known by his opera Hans Heiling, which tells the adventurer of the king of the elves who takes human form as the schoolmaster, Hans Heiling, in order to win a mortal maiden. The music is full of romantic imagination and is generally supposed to have influenced Wagner in the writing of ‘The Flying Dutchman.’ Marschner’s other important operas are Templer und Jüdin, founded upon ‘Ivanhoe,’ and ‘The Vampire.’
Conradin Kreutzer (1780-1849) was a prolific contemporary of Marschner’s, but little of his music has remained to our time outside of Das Nachtlager von Granada and a few songs. The music of the opera is often thin, but now and then Kreutzer could catch the German folk-spirit as scarcely any others could save Weber. Lortzing (1801-1851) was a more gifted musician, and several of his operas are occasionally performed now. Chief of these is Czar und Zimmermann, which tells the adventures of Peter the Great of Russia working among his shipbuilders. In more farcical vein is Der Wildschütz. The music admirably suits the bustling comedy of peasant intrigue. E. T. A. Hoffmann, who so deeply influenced Schumann, was a talented composer, and a number of his operas, thoroughly in the romantic spirit, were popular at the time. Nicolai’s[101] setting of Shakespeare’s ‘Merry Wives of Windsor,’ dating from about this time, is a comic opera classic, and Friedrich von Flotow’s ‘Martha’ is everywhere known. Its composer (1812-1883) wrote numerous operas, German and French, and at least one besides ‘Martha’ is still popular in Germany—‘Stradella.’ His music is, however, more French than German, though its rhythmic grace and piquancy, its easy, simple melody are universal in their appeal.
Two more important figures, musically considered, are Schumann, with his one opera, ‘Genoveva,’ and Peter Cornelius, with several works which deserve more frequent performance than they receive. Schumann had well-defined longings toward dramatic activity, but had the customary difficulties of discriminating musicians in finding a libretto. He hit upon an adaptation of Hebbel’s Genoveva, a play drawn from a mediæval legend, rather diffuse and uneven in workmanship, but suffused with a noble poetic spirit that is only beginning to be appreciated. The play lacks the dramatic elements necessary for successful operas, and Schumann’s music, though filled with beauties, is not fully successful in characterization, and hence tends to become monotonous. The overture, however, is a permanent part of our concert programs. We feel about Schumann as about Schubert (whose several operas, Fierrabras, Alfonso und Estrella and others, need be no more than mentioned), that they might have produced great dramatic works had they been permitted to live a little longer.
A man of ample musical stature and far too little reputation is Cornelius.[102] He was an actor and painter before turning to music. For some years he served Liszt as secretary and confidant at Weimar, working hard at music while acting as a sort of literary press agent for the more radical tendencies in music. He was one of the earliest to understand and believe in Wagner’s music and theories (see Chapter XI). As early as 1855 he was attempting to apply them to comic opera. The result was the two-act opera ‘The Barber of Bagdad,’ which Liszt thought highly of and brought to performance under his own direction at the Weimar Court Theatre. But the denizens of Weimar were by this time tired of the fad of being radical, and laughed the piece off the stage. It was in disgust at this fiasco that Liszt decided to give up his directorship in Weimar, and, after a few more months of gradually slipping away from his duties, he left the town for Italy, returning thereafter only for occasional visits. ‘The Barber of Bagdad’ (the libretto by Cornelius himself) carries out Wagner’s theories concerning the close union of text and music, the dramatic and meaty character of the libretto, the fusion of recitative and cantilena style, and the use of the leit-motif. It is full-bodied music, excellent in technique and, moreover, filled with delightful musical humor and beautiful melodies. But it insists on treating its sparkling plot with high artistic seriousness, and this mystified the Weimar audience, who, no doubt, failed to see why one should take a comic opera so in earnest. Cornelius’ later opera, ‘The Cid,’ was a serious work in the Wagnerian style and necessarily was overshadowed by Wagner’s great works, then just becoming known. It is diffuse and uneven. But the last opera, Gunlöd, left unfinished at the composer’s death and completed by friends, contains much to justify frequent revival.
The movement which we have just discussed had its parallel in France, though there the nationalistic element was lacking—conditions did not call for it; the fight had long since been fought (cf. Chapter I). But in France, like in Germany, the romantic opera, the drame lyrique, was to grow out of the lighter type, the opéra comique, the French equivalent of the singspiel. Before discussing that development, however, we must consider for a moment the work of a composer who has already engaged our attention and who cannot be classed with any of his compatriots.
Hector Berlioz stood apart from the course of French opera. Fashionable people in his day applauded the pomposity of Meyerbeer and Halévy, the facility of Auber, but made short work of Berlioz’s operas, when these were fortunate enough to reach performance. Berlioz might conceivably have adapted himself to the popular taste, but he was too sincere an artist and too impetuous an egotist. He continued to the end of his life writing the best he was capable of—and contracting debts. His operas were much in advance of his day, and are in many respects in advance of ours. They continue to be appreciated by connoisseurs, but the public has little use for the high seriousness of their music. A daring French impresario recently brought himself to a huge financial failure by attempting a series of excellent operas on the best possible scale, and in his list was Benvenuto Cellini, which had no small part in swinging the scale of fortune against him. The second part of Les Troyens was performed near the end of Berlioz’s life, and was a flat failure; it did not even succeed in stirring up discussion; the public was simply indifferent. The first part of ‘The Capture of Troy’ did not reach the stage until Felix Mottl organized his Berlioz cycle at Carlsruhe in 1893. Doubtless the chief factor which led to the failure of these excellent works was their lack of balanced and readily intelligible melody. Berlioz’s melodic writing was always a little dry, and one must be something of a gourmet to get beneath the surface to the rare beauty within. But on the whole it is fair to say that the music fails of its effect simply because opera publics are too superficial and stupid. Yet it is possible to see signs of improvement in this respect, and we may hope for the day when Berlioz’s operas will have some established place on the lyric stage.
‘Beatrice and Benedict,’ the libretto adapted by Berlioz from Shakespeare’s ‘Much Ado about Nothing,’ is a work filled to the brim with romantic loveliness and animal life. It is one of that small class of comic operas (of which ‘The Barber of Bagdad’ is a distinguished member), which are of the finest musical quality throughout, yet thoroughly in accord with the gaiety of their subjects. The thrice lovely scene and duet which opens the opera has a pervading perfume of romanticism not often equalled in opera, and the rollicking chorus of drunken servants in the second act is that rarest of musical achievements, solid and scholarly counterpoint used to express boisterous humor. Shakespeare has rarely had the collaboration of a better poet-musician.
Benvenuto Cellini takes an episode in the artist’s life and narrates it against the brilliant background of fashionable Rome in carnival time. The music is picturesque and the carnival scenes are brilliant and effective. But a far greater interest attaches to Berlioz’s double opera ‘The Trojans.’ It was the work on which Berlioz lavished the affection and inspiration of his last years, the failure of which broke his heart. In it a remarkable change has come over the frenzied revolutionist of the thirties. It is a work of the utmost restraint, of the finest sense of form and proportion, of truly classical purity. Romain Rolland has pointed out the classical nature of Berlioz’s personality, and the paradox is amply justified by this last opera. In Rolland’s view Berlioz was a Mozart born out of his time. His sensitive soul, ‘eternally in need of loving or being loved,’ was seared by the noise and bustle of the age, and reflected it in his music until disappointment and failure had forced him to withdraw into his own personality and write for himself and the muses. Berlioz’s admiration for Gluck’s theories, music, and artistic personality is vividly recorded in the earlier pages of the Memoirs. But in his student days there was no opportunity for such an influence to show itself. In his last years it came back—all Gluck’s refinement, high artistic aim and classic self-control, but deepened by a wealth of technical mastery that Gluck knew nothing of. We are amazed, as we look over the choruses of ‘The Trojans,’ to see the utter simplicity of the writing, which is never for a moment routine or commonplace—the simplicity of high and rigid selection. The first division of the opera tells the story told in the Iliad, of the finding of the wooden horse, the entrance into Troy, the night sally, and the sack of the city. Cassandra, priestess of woe, warns her people, but is received with deaf ears. Over the work there hangs the tragic earnestness of the Iliad, which Berlioz loved and studied. In the second division the Trojans are at Carthage, and, instead of war we have the voluptuous lovemakings of Dido and Æneas, and the final tragedy of the Trojan queen, all told with such emotional intensity that the music is almost worthy to stand beside that of Wagner.
‘The Damnation of Faust,’ which follows the course of Goethe’s play with special emphasis on the supernatural elements (freely interpolated), is best known as a concert work, being hardly fitted for the stage at all. It is picturesque in the highest degree. Berlioz’s mastery of counterpoint and orchestration is here at its highest. The interpolated ‘Rackozcy March’ is universally known, and the ‘Dance of the Sylphs’ is one of the stock examples of Berlioz’s use of the orchestra for eerie effects. The chorus of demons is sung, for the sake of linguistic accuracy, to the words which Swedenborg gives as the authentic language of Hell.
Berlioz’s music admits of no compromise. Either it must come to us or we must come to it. We have been trying ever since his death to patch up some kind of middle course.
H. K. M.
As we have seen in an earlier chapter, the opéra comique had developed after Boildieu into a new type, of which Auber, Hérold, Halévy, and Adam were the principal exponents. These were the men who prepared the way for the new lyric drama which grew out of the opéra comique—for the romantic opera of Gounod and Thomas. The romantic movement in French literature had, we may recall, received its impulse by Victor Hugo, whose Hernani appeared in 1829. Its influence on French music was most powerful from 1840 on. Composers of all schools yielded to it in one way or another, from Berlioz, who followed the ideals of Gluck, to Halévy, whose Jaguarita l’Indienne pictures romance in the tropics.
The direct result of this influence of literary romanticism was the creation of the drame lyrique. Yet it must not be thought that Thomas and Gounod deliberately created the drame lyrique as a distinct operatic form. Auber and others of his school had already produced operas which may justly lay claim to the titles of lyric dramas. And the earlier works of both Thomas and Gounod themselves were light in character. In fact, Thomas’ La double échelle and Le Perruquier de la Régence are opéras comique of the accepted type; and Le Caïd has received the somewhat doubtful compliment of being considered ‘a precursor of the Offenbach torrent of opéra bouffe.’ In Gounod’s Médecin malgré lui, wherein he anticipated Richard Strauss and Wolf-Ferrari in choosing a Molière comedy for operatic treatment, the composer achieved a success. Yet this opera, as well as that charming modernization of a classic legend, Philemon et Baucis, both adhere strictly to the conventional lines of opéra comique.
Gounod’s Faust remains the epochal work of his career. His Sapho (1851) never achieved popularity, but is of interest because it foreshadows his later style in its departure from tradition; in the final scene he ‘struck a note of sensuous melancholy new to French opera.’ Adam (in his capacity as a music critic) even claimed that in Sapho Gounod was trying to revive Gluck’s system of musical declamation.
In March, 1859, the first performance of Faust took place at the Théâtre Lyrique in Paris. In a manner it represents the ideal combination of the brilliant fancy, dreamy mysticism, and picturesque description that is the stuff of which romanticism is made. Goethe’s masterpiece, which had already been used operatically by Spohr, and, to mention a few among many, had also inspired Schumann, Berlioz, Liszt, and Wagner, achieved as great a success in the land of Goethe as it did in France. It was well received at its debut by the critics of the day, but its success in Paris was gradual, notwithstanding the fact that the Révue des Deux Mondes spoke of ‘the sustained distinction of style, the perfect good taste shown in every least detail of the long score, the color, supreme elegance and discreet sobriety of instrumentation which reveal the hand of a master.’ But it must be remembered that at the time of its production Rossini and Meyerbeer were still regarded as the very incarnation of music.
Gounod’s own style was essentially French, yet he had studied Mendelssohn and Schumann, and the charm of the poetic sentimentality that permeated his music was novel in French composition. For several decades Faust remained the recognized type of modern French opera, of the drame lyrique, embodying the poesy of an entire generation. The dictum ‘sensuous but not sensual,’ which applies in general to all Gounod’s work, is especially appropriate to Faust. It shows at its best his lyric genius, his ability to produce powerful effects without effort, and that languorous seduction which has been deprecated as an enervating influence in French dramatic art. In spite of elements unsympathetic to the modern musician, Faust, taken as a whole, is a work of a high order of beauty, shaped by the hand of a master. ‘Every page of the music tells of a striving after a lofty ideal.’
In Faust Gounod’s work as a creator culminates. His remaining operas repeat, more or less, the ideas of his masterpiece. The four-act Reine de Saba, given in England under the name of ‘Irene,’ contains noble pages, but was unsuccessful. Neither did Mireille (1864), founded on a libretto by the Provençal poet Mistral, nor Colombe, a light two-act operetta, win popular favor. Romeo et Juliette (1867) ranks as his second-best opera. The composer himself enigmatically expressed his opinion of the relative values of the two operas in the words: ‘“Faust” is the oldest, but I was younger; “Romeo” is the youngest, but I was older.’ Romeo et Juliette was an instant success in Paris, and was eventually transferred to the repertory of the Grand Opera, after having for some time formed part of that of the Opéra Comique. Gounod’s last operas Cinq Mars and Le Tribut de Zamora, which is in the style of Meyerbeer, were alike unsuccessful.
Gounod struck a strong personal note, and he may well be considered the strongest artistic influence in French music up to the death of César Franck. His art is eclectic, a curious mixture of naïve and refined sincerity, of real and assumed tenderness, of voluptuousness and worldly mysticism, and profound religious sentiment. The influence of ‘Faust’ was at once apparent, and its new and fascinating idiom was soon taken up by other composers, who responded to its romantic appeal.
Among these was Charles-Louis-Ambroise Thomas (1811-1896), who had already produced five ambitious operas with varying success before the appearance of Faust. But Mignon (1866) is the opera in which after Faust the transition from the opéra comique to the romantic poetry of the lyric drama is most marked. Gounod’s influence acted on Thomas like a charm. Mignon is an opera of great dramatic truth and beauty, one which according to Hanslick is ‘the work of a sensitive and refined artist,’ characterized by ‘rare knowledge of stage effects, skill in orchestral treatment, and purity of style and sentiment.’ Like Gounod, Thomas had chosen a subject by Goethe on which to write the opera which was to raise him among the foremost operatic composers of his day. Mme. Galti Marie, the creator of the title rôle, had modelled her conception of the part of the poor orphan girl upon the well-known picture by Ary Scheffer, and Mignon at once captivated the public, and remained one of the most popular operas of the second half of the nineteenth century.[103]
Again, like Gounod, Thomas turned to Shakespeare after having set Goethe. His ‘Hamlet’ (1868) was successful in Paris for a long time. And, though the music cannot match its subject, it contains some of the composer’s best work. The vocal parts are richly ornamented; the poetically conceived part of Ophelia is a coloratura rôle, such as modern opera, with the possible exception of Delibes’ Lakmé, has not produced, and the ballet music is brilliant. Françoise de Rimini (1882) and the ballet La Tempête were his last and least popular dramatic works.
Léo Delibes (1836-1891), a pupil of Adam, is widely known by his charming ballets. The ballet, which had played so important a part in eighteenth century opera, was quite as popular in the nineteenth century. If Vestris, the god of dance, had passed with the passing of the Bourbon monarchy, there were Taglioni (who danced the Tyrolienne in Guillaume Tell and the pas de fascination in Meyerbeer’s Robert le Diable), Fanny Elssler, and Carlotta Grisi, full of grace and gentility, to give lustre to the art of dancing. The ballet as an individual entertainment apart from opera was popular during the greater part of the nineteenth century, and was brought to a high perfection, best typified by the famous Giselle, written for Carlotta Grisi, on subject taken from Heinrich Heine, arranged by Théophile Gautier, and set to music by Adam. To this kind of composition Delibes contributed music of unusual charm and distinction. La Source shows a wealth of ravishing melody and made such an impression that the composer was asked to write a divertissement, the famous Pas des Fleurs to be introduced in the ballet Le Corsaire, by his old master Adam, for its revival in 1867. His ‘Coppelia’ ballet, written to accompany a pretty comedy of the same name, and the grand mythological ballet ‘Sylvia’ are considered his best and established his superiority as a composer of artistic dance music.
The music of Delibes’ operas is unfailingly tender and graceful, and his scores remain charming specimens of the lyric style. Le roi l’a dit (1873) is a dainty little work upon an old French subject, ‘as graceful and fragile as a piece of Sèvres porcelain.’ Jean de Nivelle has passed from the operatic repertory, but Lakmé is a work of exquisite charm, its music dreamy and sensuous as befits its oriental subject, and full of local color. In Lakmé and the unfinished Kassaya[104] Delibes shows an awakening to the possibilities of oriental color. Ernest Reyer’s (1823-1909) Salammbo is in the same direction; but it is Félicien David (1810-1876) who must be credited with first drawing attention to Eastern subjects as being admirably adapted to operatic treatment. He was a pupil of Cherubini, Reber[105] and Fétis, and he was for a time associated with the activity of the Saint-Simonian Socialists. Later he made a tour of the Orient from 1833 to 1835; then, returning to Paris with an imagination powerfully stimulated by his long stay in the East, he set himself to express the spirit of the Orient in music. The first performance of his symphonic ode Le Désert (1844) made him suddenly famous. It was followed by the operas Christophe Colomb, Eden, and La Perle du Brésil, which was brilliantly successful. Another great operatic triumph was the delightful Lalla Roukh which had a run of one hundred nights from May in less than a year (1862-1863). At a time when the works of Berlioz were still unappreciated by the majority of people, David succeeded in making the public take an interest in music of a picturesque and descriptive kind, and in this connection may be considered one of the pioneers of the French drame lyrique. Le Désert founded the school which counts not only Lakmé and Salammbo but also Massenet’s Le Roi de Lahore and many others among its representatives.
No French composer responded more delightfully to the orientalism of David than Georges Bizet (1838-1875) in his earlier works. His Pêcheurs de Perles (1863) tells the loves of two Cingalese pearl fishers for the priestess Leila. It had but a short run, though its dreamy melodies are enchanting. Several of its forceful dramatic scenes foreshadow the power and variety of Carmen. His second opera La jolie fille de Perth (1867), a tuneful and effective work, was based upon one of Sir Walter Scott’s novels; but in Djamileh (1872), his third opera, he returned to an Eastern subject. This was the most original effort he had thus far made, and it was thought so advanced at the time of its production, that accusations of Wagnerism—at that time anything but praise in Paris—were hurled at the composer. He was more fortunate in the incidental music he wrote for Alphonse Daudet’s drama L’Arlésienne, which is still a favorite in the concert hall.
It has been said that the quality of Bizet’s operatic work, like that of Gluck, depended in a measure on the value of his book. He was indeed fortunate in the libretto of Carmen, adapted from Prosper Merimée’s celebrated study of Spanish gypsy character, by Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, the best librettists of their day. The dramatic element in the story as written was hidden by much descriptive analysis, but by discarding this the authors produced one of the most famous libretti in the whole range of opera. Carmen was brought out at the Opéra Comique in 1875. Bizet’s occasional use of the Wagnerian leading motive was perhaps responsible for some of the coldness with which the work was originally received. Its passionate force was dubbed brutality, though we now know that it is a most fine artistic feeling which makes the score of Carmen what it is. Carmen was to Bizet what Der Freischütz was to Weber. It represents the absolute harmony of the composer with his work. In modern opera of real artistic importance it is the perfect model of the lyric song-play type, and as such it has exercised a great influence on dramatic music. It is in every way a masterpiece. The libretto is admirably concise and well balanced, the music full of a lasting vitality, the orchestration brilliant. Unhappily, only three months after its production in Paris the genial composer died suddenly of heart trouble. His early death—he was no more than thirty-seven—robbed the French school of one of its brightest ornaments, one who had infused in the drame lyrique of Gounod and Thomas the vivifying breath of dramatic truth. The later development of French operatic romanticism in Massenet and others, as well as Saint-Saëns’ revival of the classic model, are more fitly reserved for future consideration. Our present object has been to describe the development of the drame lyrique out of the older comic opera, and in a manner this culminates in Carmen.
We have still to give an account of the development of the opéra comique in another direction—that of farcical comedy, a task which falls well within the chronological limits of this chapter. One reason for the gradual approximation of the opéra comique to the drame lyrique and grand opera, quite aside from the influence of romanticism, lay in the appearance of the opéra bouffe, representing parody, not sentiment. For if the opéra comique and drame lyrique of the first three quarters of the nineteenth century represented the advance of artistic taste and the preference of the musically educated for the essentially romantic rather than the merely entertaining; the opéra bouffe or farcical operetta, a small and trivial form, was the delight of the musical groundlings of the second empire, at a time when the pursuit of pleasure and the satisfaction of material wants were the great preoccupations of society; Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880) was in a sense the creator of this Parisian novelty. Though Offenbach was born of German-Jewish parents in Cologne, the greater part of his life was spent in Paris, and his music was more typically French than that of any of his French rivals. The tone of French society during the period of the Second Empire was set by the court. The court organized innumerable entertainments, banquets, reviews, and gorgeous official ceremonies which succeeded one another without interruption. Music hall songs and opéras bouffes, races and public festivals, evening restaurants and the amusements they provided, made the fame of this new Paris. And the music of the music halls and opéras bouffes was the music of Offenbach, the offspring of ‘an eccentric, rather short-kilted and disheveled Muse,’ who later assumed a soberer garb in the hands of Lecocq, Audran, and Hervé.
In conjunction with Offenbach the librettists Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy were the authors of these operettes and farces which made the prosperity of the minor Parisian theatres of the period. The libretto of the opéra bouffe was usually one of intrigue, witty, if coarse, and into the texture of which the representation of contemporary whims and social oddities was cleverly interwoven. Although the opéras bouffes were broad and lively libels of the society of the time, ‘they savored strongly of the vices and the follies they were supposed to satirize.’ Offenbach was peculiarly happy in developing in musical burlesque the extravagant character of his situations. His melodic vein, though often trivial and vulgar, was facile and spontaneous, and he was master of an ironical musical humor.[106] The theatre which he opened as the ‘Bouffes Parisiens’ in 1855 was crowded night after night by those who came to hear his brilliant, humorous trifles. La grande duchesse de Gerolstein, in which the triumph of the Bouffes Parisiens culminated, is perhaps the most popular burlesque operetta ever written, and it marked the acceptance of opéra bouffe as a new form worth cultivating. Offenbach’s works were given all over Europe, were imitated by Lecocq, Audran, Planquette, and others; and, being gay, tuneful, and exhilarating, were not hindered in becoming popular by their want of refinement. But after 1870 the vogue of parody largely declined, and, though Offenbach composed industriously till the time of his death and though his opéras bouffes are still given here and there at intervals, the form he created has practically passed away. As a species akin in verbal texture to the comédie grivoise of Collet, adapted to the idiom of a later generation, and as a return of the opéra comique to the burlesque and extravagance of the old vaudeville, the opéra bouffe has a genuine historic interest.
But it must not be forgotten that Offenbach created at least one work which is still a favorite number of the modern grand opera repertory. This is Les Contes d’Hoffmann, a fantastic opera in three acts. It appeared after his death. It is genuine opéra comique of the romantic type, rich in pleasing grace of expression, in variety of melodic development, and grotesque fancy; and, though the music lacks depth, it is descriptive and imaginatively interesting, wonderfully charming and melodious, and has survived when the hundred or more opéras bouffes which Offenbach composed are practically forgotten.
F. H. M.
Having described the trend of operatic development in various directions, there remains only one class of composition which, though partially allied to it in form, is usually so different in spirit as to appear at first sight antagonistic—namely, choral song. Choral song has had, especially in recent times, a distinct development independent of the church, and in this broader field it has assumed a new importance. The Romantic influence made itself felt even in the church, though perhaps secondarily—for, like the Renaissance, it was a purely secular movement. For purposes of convenience, however, the secular and sacred works are here treated together.