Opera Books
A
BOOK OF OPERAS
THEIR
HISTORIES, THEIR PLOTS
AND THEIR MUSIC
BY
HENRY EDWARD KREHBIEL
CHAPTER I
“IL BARBIERE DI SIVIGLIA”
THE
history of what is popularly called Italian opera begins in the United
States with a performance of Rossini’s lyrical comedy “Il Barbiere di
Siviglia”; it may, therefore, fittingly take the first place in these
operatic studies. The place was the Park Theatre, then situated in
Chambers Street, east of Broadway, and the date November 29, 1825. It
was not the first performance of Italian opera music in America,
however, nor yet of Rossini’s merry work. In the early years of the
nineteenth century New York was almost as fully abreast of the times in
the matter of dramatic entertainments as London. New works produced in
the English capital were heard in New York as soon as the ships of that
day could bring over the books and the actors. Especially was this true
of English ballad operas and English transcriptions, or adaptations, of
French, German, and Italian operas. New York was five months ahead of
Paris in making the acquaintance of the operatic version of
Beaumarchais’s “Barbier de Séville.” The first performance of Rossini’s
opera took place in Rome on February 5, 1816. London heard it in its
original form at the King’s Theatre on March 10, 1818, with Garcia, the
first Count Almaviva, in that part. The opera “went off with
unbounded applause,” says Parke (an oboe player, who has left us two
volumes of entertaining and instructive memoirs), but it did not win the
degree of favor enjoyed by the other operas of Rossini then current on
the English stage. It dropped out of the repertory of the King’s Theatre
and was not revived until 1822 — a year in which the popularity of
Rossini in the British metropolis may be measured by the fact that all
but four of the operas brought forward that year were composed by him.
The first Parisian representation of the opera took place on October 26,
1819. Garcia was again in the cast. By that time, in all likelihood, all
of musical New York that could muster up a pucker was already whistling
“Largo al facto-turn” and the beginning of “Una voce poco fà,” for, on
May 17, 1819, Thomas Phillipps had brought an English “Barber of
Seville” forward at a benefit performance for himself at the same Park
Theatre at which more than six years later the Garcia company, the
first Italian opera troupe to visit the New World, performed it in
Italian on the date already mentioned. At Mr. Phillipps’s performance
the beneficiary sang the part of Almaviva, and Miss Leesugg, who
afterward became the wife of the comedian Hackett, was the Rosina.
On November 21, 1821, there was another performance for Mr.
Phillipps’s benefit, and this time Mrs. Holman took the part of
Rosina. Phillipps and Holman — brave names these in the dramatic
annals of New York and London a little less than a century ago! When
will European writers on music begin to realize that musical culture in
America is not just now in its beginnings?
It was Manuel Garcia’s troupe that first per-formed “Il Barbiere di
Siviglia” in New York, and four of the parts in the opera were played by
members of his family. Manuel, the father, was the Count, as he
had been at the premières in Rome, London, and Paris; Manuel, son, was
the Figaro (he lived to read about eighty-one years of operatic
enterprise in New York, and died at the age of 101 years in London in
1906); Signora Garcia, mère, was the Berta, and Rosina
was sung and played by that “cunning pattern of excellent nature,”
as a writer of the day called her, Signorina Garcia, afterward the
famous Malibran. The other performers at this representation of the
Italian “Barber” were Signor Rosich (Dr. Bartolo), Signor
Angrisani (Don Basilio), and Signor Crivelli, the younger (Fiorello).
The opera was given twenty-three times in a season of seventy-nine
nights, and the receipts ranged from $1843 on the opening ~ night and
$1834 on the closing, down to $356 on the twenty-ninth night.
But neither Phillipps nor Garcia was the first to present an
operatic version of Beaumarchais’s comedy to the American people: French
operas by Rousseau, Monsigny, Dalayrac, and Grétry, which may be said to
have composed the staple of the opera-houses of Europe in the last
decades of the eighteenth century, were known also in the
contemporaneous theatres of Charleston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New
York. In 1794 the last three of these cities enjoyed “an opera in 3
acts,” the text by Colman, entitled, “The Spanish Barber; or, The Futile
Precaution.” Nothing is said in the announcements of this opera touching
the authorship of the music, but it seems to be an inevitable
conclusion that it was Paisiello’s, composed for St. Petersburg about i
780. There were German ,,Barbers’s in existence at the time composed by
Benda (Friedrich Ludwig), Elsperger, and Schulz, but they did not enjoy
large popularity in their own country, and Isouard’s “Barbier” was not
yet written. Paisiello’s opera, on the contrary, was extremely popular,
throughout Europe. True, he called it ,,The Barber of Seville,” not “The
Spanish Barber,” but Colman’s subtitle, “The Futile Precaution,” came
from the original French title. Rossini also adopted it and purposely
avoided the chief title set by Beaumarchais and used by Paisiello; but
he was not long permitted to have his way. Thereby hangs a tale of the
composition and first failure of his opera which I must now relate.
On December 26, 1815, the first day of the carnival season, Rossini
produced his opera, “Torvaldo e Dorliska,” at the Teatro Argentina, in
Rome, and at the same time signed a contract with Cesarini, the
impresario of the theatre, to have the first act t of a second opera
ready on the twentieth day of the following January. For this opera
Rossini was to receive 400 Roman scudi (the equivalent of about $400)
after the first three performances, which he was to conduct seated at
the pianoforte in the orchestra, as was then the custom. He seems to
have agreed to take any libretto submitted by the impres5io and approved
by the public censor; but there are indications that Sterbini, who was
to write the libretto, had already suggested a remodelling of
Paisiello’s “Barber.” In order to expedite the work of composition it
was provided in the contract that Rossini was to take lodgings with a
singer named Zamboni, to whom the honor fell of being the original of
the town factotum in Rossini’s opera. Some say that Rossini completed
the score in thirteen days; some in fifteen. Castil-Blaze says it was a
month, but the truth is that the work consumed less than half that
period. Donizetti, asked if he believed that Rossini had really written
the score in thirteen days, is reported to have replied, no doubt with a
malicious twinkle in his eyes : “It is very possible; he is so lazy.”
Paisiello was still alive, and so was at least the memory of his opera,
so Rossini, as a precautionary measure, thought it wise to spike, if
possible, the guns of an apprehended opposition. So he addressed a
letter to the venerable composer, asking leave to make use of the
subject. He got permission and then wrote a preface to his libretto (or
had Serbini write it for him), in which, while flattering his
predecessor, he nevertheless contrived to indicate that lie considered
the opera of that venerable musician old-fashioned, undramatic, and
outdated. ,,Beaumarchais’s comedy, entitled ‘The Barber of Seville, or
the Useless Precaution,”’ he wrote, “is presented at Rome in the form of
a comic drama under the title of ‘Almaviva, ossia l’inutile Precauzione,’
in order that the public may be fully convinced of the sentiments of
respect and veneration by which the author of the music of this drama
is animated with regard to the celebrated Paisiello, who has already
treated the subject under its primitive title. Himself invited to
undertake this difficult task, the maestro Gioachino Rossini, in order
to avoid the reproach of entering rashly into rivalry with the immortal
author who preceded him, expressly required that ‘The Barber of Seville’
should be entirely versified anew, and also that new situations should
be added for the musical pieces which, moreover, are required by the
modern theatrical taste, entirely changed since the time when the
renowned Paisiello wrote his work.”
I have told the story of the fiasco made by Rossini’s opera on its
first production at the Argentine Theatre on February 5, 1816, in an
extended preface to the vocal score of “Il Barbiere,” published in 1900
by G. Schirmer, and a quotation from that preface will serve here quite
as well as a paraphrase; so I quote (with an avowal of gratitude for the
privilege to the publishers) : —
Paisiello gave his consent to the use of the subject, believing
that the opera of his young rival would assured1y fail. At the same time
he wrote to a friend in Rome, asking him to do all in his power to
compass a fiasco for the opera. The young composer’s enemies were not
sluggish. All the whistlers of Italy, says Castil-Blaze, seemed to have
made a rendezvous at the Teatro Argentina on the night set down for the
first production. Their malicious intentions were helped along by
accidents at the outset of the performance. Details of the story have
been preserved for us in an account written by Signora Giorgi-Righetti,
who sang the part of Rosina on the memorable occasion. Garcia had
persuaded Rossini to permit him to sing a Spanish song to his own
accompaniment on a guitar under Rosina’s balcony in the first
act. It would provide the needed local color, he urged. When about to
start his song, Garcia found that he had forgotten to tune his guitar.
He began to set the pegs in the face of the waiting public. A string
broke, and a new one was drawn up amid the titters of the spectators.
The song did not please the auditors, who mocked at the singer by
humming Spanish fiorituri after him. Boisterous laughter broke out when
Figaro came on the stage also with a guitar, and “Largo al
factotum” was lost in the din. Another howl of delighted derision went
up when Rosina’s voice was heard singing within : “Segui o caro,
deh segui cosii” (“Continue, my dear, continue thus”). The audience
continued ,,thus.” The representative of Rosina was popular, but
the fact that she was first heard in a trifling phrase instead of an
aria caused disappointment. The duet, between Almaviva and
Figaro, was sung amid hisses, shrieks, and shouts. The cavatina “Una
voce poco fà” got a triple round of applause, however, and Rossini,
interpreting the fact as a compliment to the personality of the singer
rather than to the music, after bowing to the public, exclaimed : “Oh
natura!” “Thank her,” retorted Giorgi-Righetti; “but for her you would
not have had occasion to rise from your choir.” The turmoil began again
with the next duet, and the finale was mere dumb show.
When the curtain fell, Rossini faced the mob, shrugged his shoulders,
and clapped his hands to show his contempt. Only the musicians and
singers heard the second act, the din being incessant from beginning to
end. Rossini remained imperturbable, and when Giorgi-Rhigetti, Garcia,
and Zamboni hastened to his lodgings to offer their condolences as soon
as they could don street attire, they found him asleep. The next day he
wrote the cavatina “Ecco ridente in cielo” to take the place of Garcia’s
unlucky Spanish song, borrowing the air from his own “Aureliano,”
composed two years before, into which it had been incorporated from “Ciro,”
a still earlier work. When night came, he feigned illness so as to
escape the task of conducting. By that time his enemies had worn
themselves out. The music was heard amid loud plaudits, and in a week
the opera had scored a tremendous success.
And now for the dramatic and musical contents of “Il Barbiere.” At
the very outset Rossini opens the door for us to take a glimpse at the
changes in musical manner which were wrought by time. He had faulted
Paisiello’s opera because in parts it had become antiquated, for which
reason he had had new situations introduced to meet the “modern
theatrical taste”; but he lived fifty years after “Il Barbiere” had
conquered the world, and never took the trouble to write an overture for
it, the one originally composed for the opera having been lost soon
after the first production. The overture which leads us into the opera
nowadays is all very well in its way and a striking example of how a
piece of music may benefit from fortuitous circumstances. Persons with
fantastic imaginations have rhapsodized on its appositeness, and
professed to hear in it the whispered plottings of the lovers and the
merry raillery of Rosina, contrasted with the futile ragings of
her grouty guardian; but when Rossini composed this piece of music, its
mission was to introduce an adventure of the Emperor Aurelian in Palmyra
in the third century of the Christian era. Having served that purpose,
it became the prelude to another opera which dealt with Queen Elizabeth
of England, a monarch who reigned some twelve hundred years after
Aurelian. Again, before the melody now known as that of Almaviva’s
cavatina (which supplanted Garcia’s unlucky Spanish song) had burst
into the effiorescence which now distinguishes it, it came as a chorus
from the mouths of Cyrus and his Persians in ancient Babylon. Truly, the
verities of time and place sat lightly on the Italian opera composers of
a hundred years ago. But the serenade which follows the rising of the
curtain preserves a custom more general at the time of Beaumarchais than
now, though it is not yet obsolete. Dr. Bartolo, who is guardian
of the fascinating Rosina, is in love with her, or at least
wishes for reasons not entirely dissociated from her money bags to make
her his wife, and therefore keeps her most of the time behind bolts and
bars. The Count Almaviva, however, has seen her on a visit from
his estates to Seville, becomes enamoured of her, and she has felt her
heart warmed toward him, though she is ignorant of his rank and knows
him only under the name of Lindoro. Hoping that it may bring him
an opportunity for a glance, mayhap a word with his inamorata,
Amaviva follows the advice given by Sir Proteus to Thurio
in “The Two Gentlemen of Verona”; he visits his lady’s chamber
window, not at night, but at early dawn, with a “sweet concert,” and to
the instruments of Fiorello’s musicians tunes “a deploring dump.”
It is the cavatina “Ecco ridente in cielo.” The musicians, rewarded by
Almaviva beyond expectations, are profuse and long-winded in
their expression of gratitude, and are gotten rid of with difficulty.
The Count has not yet had a glimpse of Rosina, who is in
the habit of breathing the morning air from the balcony of her prison
house, and is about to despair when Figaro, barber and Seville’s
factotum, appears trolling a song in which he recites his
accomplishments, the universality of his employments, and the great
demand for his services. (“Largo al factotum dello città.”) The Count
recognizes him, tells of his vain vigils in front of Rosina’s
balcony, and, so soon as he learns that Figaro is a sort of man
of all work to Bartolo, employs him as his go-between. Rosina
now appears on the balcony. Almaviva is about to engage her
in conversation when Bartolo appears and discovers a billet-doux
which Rosina had intended to drop into the hand of her Lindoro.
He demands to see it, but she explains that it is but a copy of the
words of an aria from an opera entitled “The Futile Precaution,” and
drops it from the balcony, as if by accident. She sends Bartolo
to recover it, but Almaviva, who had observed the device, secures
it, and Bartolo is told by his crafty ward that the wind must
have carried it away. Growing suspicious, he commands her into the
house and goes away to hasten the preparations for his wedding, after
giving orders that no one is to be admitted to the house save Don
Basilio, Rosina’s singing-master, and Bartolo’s messenger and
general mischief-maker.
The letter which Rosina had thus slyly conveyed to her
unknown lover begged him to contrive means to let her know his name,
condition, and intentions respecting herself. Figaro, taking the
case in hand at once, suggests that Almaviva publish his answer
in a ballad. This the Count does (“Se il mio nome saper”),
protesting the honesty and ardor of his passion, but still concealing
his name and station. He is delighted to hear his lady-love’s voice
bidding him to continue his song. (It is the phrase, “Segui, o caro, deh
segui cosii,” which sounded so monstrously diverting at the first
representation of the opera in Rome.) After the second stanza Rosina
essays a longer response, but is interrupted by some of the inmates
of the house. Figaro now confides to the Count a scheme by
which he is to meet his fair enslaver face to face : he is to assume the
rôle of a drunken soldier who has been billeted upon Dr. Bartolo,
a plan that is favored by the fact that a company of soldiers has come
to Seville that very day which is under the command of the Count’s
cousin. The plan is promptly put into execution. Not long after,
Rosina enters Dr. Bartolo’s library singing the famous
cavatina, “Una voce poco fà,” in which she tells of her love for
Lindoro and proclaims her determination to have her own way in the
matter of her heart, in spite of all that her tyrannical guardian or
anybody else can do. This cavatina has been the show piece of hundreds
of singers ever since it was written. Signora Giorgi-Righetti, the first
Rosina, was a contralto, and sang the music in the key of E, in
which it was written. When it became one of Jenny Lind’s display airs,
it was transposed to F and tricked out with a great abundance of
fiorituri. Adelina Patti in her youth used so to overburden its already
florid measures with ornament that the story goes that once when she
sang it for Rossini, the old master dryly remarked : “A very pretty air;
who composed it?” Figaro enters at the conclusion of Rosina’s
song, and the two are about to exchange confidences when Bartolo
enters with Basilio, who confides to the old doctor his
suspicion that the unknown lover of Rosina is the Count
Almaviva, and suggests that the latter’s presence in Seville be made
irksome by a few adroitly spread innuendoes against his character. How a
calumny, ingeniously published, may grow from a whispered zephyr to a
crashing, detonating tempest, Basilio describes in the buffo air
“La calunnia” — a marvellous example of the device of crescendo which in
this form is one of Rossini s inventions. Bartolo prefers his own
plan of compelling his ward to marry him at once. He goes with
Basilio to draw up a marriage agreement, and Figaro, who has
overheard their talk, acquaints Rosina with its purport. He also
tells her that she shall soon see her lover face to face if she will but
send him a line by his hands. Thus he secures a letter from her, but
learns that the artful minx had written it before he entered. Her
ink-stained fingers, the disappearance of a sheet of paper from his
writing desk, and the condition of his quill pen convince Bartolo
on his return that he is being deceived, and he resolves that henceforth
his ward shall be more closely confined than ever. And so he informs
her, while she mimics his angry gestures behind his back. In another
moment there is a boisterous knocking and shouting at the door, and in
comes Almaviva, disguised as a cavalry soldier most obviously in
his cups. He manages to make himself known to Rosina, and
exchanges letters with her under the very nose of her jailer, affects a
fury toward Dr. Bartolo when the latter claims exemption from the
billet, and escapes arrest only by secretly making himself known to the
officer commanding the soldiers who had been drawn into the house by the
disturbance. The sudden and inexplicable change of conduct on the part
of the soldiers petrifies Bartolo; he is literally ,,astonied,”
and Figaro makes him the victim of several laughable pranks
before he recovers his wits.
Dr. Bartolo’s suspicions have been aroused about the
soldier, concerning whose identity he makes vain inquiries, but he does
not hesitate to admit to his library a seeming music-master who
announces himself as Don Alonzo, come to act as substitute for
Don Basilio, who, he says, is ill. Of course it is Almaviva.
Soon the ill-natured guardian grows impatient of his garrulity, and
Almaviva, to allay his suspicions and gain a sight of his inamorata,
gives him a letter written by Rosina to Lindoro, which he
says he had found in the Count’s lodgings. If he can but see the
lady, he hopes by means of the letter to convince her of Lindoro’s
faithlessness. This device, though it disturbs its inventor, is
successful, and Bartolo brings in his ward to receive her music
lesson. Here, according to tradition, there .stood in the original score
a trio which was lost with the overture. Very welcome has this loss
appeared to the Rosinas of a later day, for it has enabled them
to introduce into the “lesson scene” music of their own choice, and, of
course, such as showed their voices and art to the best advantage. Very
amusing have been the anachronisms which have resulted from these
illustrations of artistic vanity, and diverting are the glimpses which
they give of the tastes and sensibilities of great prime donne. Grisi
and Alboni, stimulated by the example of Catalani (though not in this
opera), could think of nothing nobler than to display their skill by
singing Rode’s Air and Variations, a violin piece. This grew hackneyed,
but, nevertheless, survived till a comparatively late day. Bosio,
feeling that variations were necessary, threw Rode’s over in favor of
those on “Gia della mente involarmi” —a polka tune from Alary’s “A Tre
Nozze.” Then Mine. Gassier ushered in the day of the vocal waltz —
Venzano’s, of amiable memory. Her followers have not yet died out,
though Patti substituted Arditi’s “Il Bacio” for Venzano’s; Mine.
Sembrich, Strauss’s “Voce di Primavera,” and Mine. Melba, Arditi’s “Se
saran rose.” Mine. Viardot, with a finer sense of the fitness of things,
but either forgetful or not apprehensive of the fate which befell her
father at the first performance of the opera in Rome, introduced a
Spanish song. Mine. Patti always kept a ready repertory for the scene,
with a song in the vernacular of the people for whom she was singing to
bring the enthusiasm to a climax and a finish : “Home, Sweet Home” in
New York and London, “Solovei” in St. Petersburg. Usually she began with
the bolero from “Les Vêpres Siciliennes,” or the shadow dance from “Dinorah.”
Mine. Seinbrich, living in a period when the style of song of which she
and Mine. Melba are still the brightest exemplars, is not as familiar as
it used to be when they were children, also found it necessary to have
an extended 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 aniina,” 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 Mine.
Melba, not to be set in the shade simply because Mine. 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 : —
which is a slightly varied form of four measures from Simon’s
song in the first part of “The Seasons” : —
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.
Last updated October 22, 2006