The scythe of time: Why some operas endure and others are forgotten

“ There is only one road for a composer who desires to make a real name—the operatic stage. The stage is the one place where a musician can find constant opportunity and means of communicating with the public. It is a sort of daily and permanent exhibition where his works can be perpetually on view.
Religious and symphonic music no doubt rank higher, in the strictest sense, than dramatic composition; but opportunities for distinction in that highest sphere are very rare, and can only affect an occasional audience, not a regular and systematic one like the opera-going public. ”

“ It is the hour of the theatre—the Theatre, the sole great passion of the nation, the one rallying point for every grade and class. Thither, now, all repair; and for a brief interval the silent streets of the city bustle with the life and movement of the inhabitants, as, on foot or in carriages, they hasten past.
The “business of the scène” is the very least among the attractions of a theatre in Italy. The opera-box is the drawing-room, the only one of an Italian lady; it is the club-room of the men. ”

“ But, on the other hand, the public has a distinct right to expect and demand that a play or opera should satisfy those particular instincts the satisfaction and gratification of which it seeks within the playhouse walls. The success of a dramatic work then does not depend solely on the quality of its form and style. Both are no doubt essential—nay, indispensable—to save it from the rapid ravages of Time, whose scythe spares naught that is not essentially true and beautiful. But form and style are not its only, nor even, in a sense, its strongest support. ”

“ When I add that the dramatic author is always to a certain extent a slave to the public, and must ever seek to please the passing taste of his time, it will be recognized that he is often, alas! compelled to sacrifice his artistic leanings to popular caprice-that is, if he has the natural desire that his generation should applaud him.
As a rule, with the theatre-going masses, one person follows the fads or fancies of others, and individual judgments are too apt to be irresistibly swayed by current opinion. ”

“ Staging, ballet, scenery, dresses, book, fifty things go to make or mar an opera. The public, if its interest is to be kept alive, demands constant "variety." Many works of the very highest merit in some respects, have failed, not in rousing the admiration of true artists, but in winning popular favour, simply through their lack of this "spice," so indispensable to that class of the public which is not content with the simple charm of intellectual beauty.
I do not for a moment desire to claim the benefit of this excuse for my "Sappho." ”

“ Madame Viardot's engagement was almost over, and her place in the opera was taken by Mdlle. Masson, who only sang the part three times.
I think it may safely be laid down as a general principle, that a theatrical work always, or almost always, has the public reception it really deserves. Theatrical success so inevitably depends on a variety of small details, that the failure of any one—of the merest accessories even—may (as has frequently happened) counterbalance, and perhaps utterly compromise, the effect of the finest qualities of conception and performance. ”

“ If Time have any wrinkle graven there;
If any, be a satire to decay,
And make time's spoils despised every where.
Give my love fame faster than Time wastes life,
So thou prevent'st his scythe and crooked knife. ”

“ An Opera may be allowed to be extravagantly lavish in its Decorations, as its only Design is to gratify the Senses, and keep up an indolent Attention in the Audience. ”

“ Of course, we need not be surprised if artistic excellence goes unrecognized on account of being unknown; but there should be the greatest indignation when, as often, good judges are flattered by the charm of social entertainments into an approbation which is a mere pretence. ”

“ Oh, what superb evocations, feudal pomp, military mysticism, the thrill of fantastic legend, the cries of passion traversing history. And what skill the personality of the instruments, dramatic recitative symphonically accompanied by the orchestra, the typical phrase upon which an entire work is built.... An ingenious fellow, a most ingenious fellow!’
The French grand opera of Rossini and Meyerbeer was the musical expression of dramatic passionate sentiments, affording scope to every excellence of vocal and orchestral technique and even to every device of stage setting. ”

“ M. Harel gave me a week.
"There are two ways of working at literary work as a whole and dramatic work in particular: one is conscientious, the other pecuniary; the first artistic, the second bourgeois. In the first method, one works thinking only of oneself; in the second, thinking only of the public, and the great evil of our profession is that it is very often the pecuniary work which prevails over the conscientious, and the bourgeois upholding itself over the artistic scheme. ”

“ The artist who gives himself up too much to social intercourse runs yet another risk, concerning which it may not be amiss to say a word or two.
By dint of living in the buzz of so many varied opinions, and admirations, and criticisms, and infatuations for some one or other of the fashionable art productions of the moment, he gradually comes to lose confidence in himself, in his own artistic nature, in those dictates of his personal feeling which at one time led him onward, and he ends by finding himself in a hopeless maze. ”

“ It is unhappily true that much insincere Literature and Art, executed solely with a view to effect, does succeed by deceiving the public. ”

“ Its sole duty is to gauge what constitutes the true essence of every dramatic work—the strength of passion and the degree of emotion it expresses; its rendering, in fact, of the feelings which sway all human souls, individually and collectively. The consequence is, that author and audience become unconscious instruments in their mutual artistic education. The public is the author's criterion and measure of truth; the author serves his public as an exhibitor of the elements and conditions of the beautiful. ”

“ The fact is, the public make use of the classics of a country as a means of checking the progress of Art. They degrade the classics into authorities. They use them as bludgeons for preventing the free expression of Beauty in new forms. They are always asking a writer why he does not write like somebody else, or a painter why he does not paint like somebody else, quite oblivious of the fact that if either of them did anything of the kind he would cease to be an artist. A fresh mode of Beauty is absolutely distasteful to them, and whenever it appears p. ”

“ Faust is without doubt the most popular French opera of the second half of the 19th century. Its success has been universal, and nowhere has it achieved greater vogue than in the land of Goethe. For years it remained the recognized type of modern French opera. At the time of its production in Paris it was scarcely appreciated according to its merits. Its style was too novel, and its luscious harmonies did not altogether suit the palates of those dilettanti who still looked upon Rossini as the incarnation of music. ”

“ Petersburg, and London, with an enthusiasm not less than that which greeted its Parisian début. The clamour of dispute between the different schools was for the moment hushed in the delight with which the musical critics and public of universal Europe listened to the magical measures of an opera which to classical chasteness and severity of form and elevation of motive united such dramatic passion, richness of melody, and warmth of orchestral colour. From that day to the present “Faust” has retained its place as not only the greatest but the most popular of modern operas. ”

“ 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 sin [Pg 388] cerity, 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Gounod himself is stated to have expressed his opinion of the relative value of the two operas enigmatically by saying, “Faust is the oldest, but I was younger; Roméo is the youngest, but I was older.” The luscious strains wedded to the love scenes, if at times somewhat cloying, are generally in accord with the situations, often irresistibly fascinating, while always absolutely individual. The success of Roméo in Paris was great from the outset, and eventually this work was transferred to the Grand Opéra, after having for some time formed part of the répertoire of the Opéra Comique. ”

“ All of Massenet’s operas are essentially illustrative of the sentimental spirit of French art. Whether Gounod attempts to write an oratorio on so sublime a subject as the fall and redemption of man, or Massenet tries to picture the touching faith and piety of an honest mountebank, it is all one: the music is bound to run out into a strain of religious balladry. ”

“ What we require for the pictures of dramatic music is larger frames, including more figures, more passionate and moving song, more sharply marked rhythms, greater fulness in the vocal masses, and more sonorous brilliancy in the instrumentation. All these qualities are to be found in ‘Lodoïska’ and ‘Les Deux Journées;’ and Cherubini may not only be regarded as the founder of the modern French opera, but also as that musician who, after Mozart, has exerted the greatest general influence on the tendency of the art. ”

“ In our general survey of opera in America we have touched on the comic opera activities which went on more or less in association with grand opera, and it only remains for us to refer briefly to the activities of such companies as devoted themselves exclusively to the lighter form of entertainment. The first of these, of course, were the French companies from New Orleans who familiarized the country with Pergolesi, Rousseau, Piccini, Cimarosa, Méhul, Grétry, Dalayrac, Boieldieu, Auber, and other masters of the light opera. ”

“ How many artists have revolutionised their times while they were merely looked upon as people who amused! Frescobaldi and Philipp Emanuel Bach brought fresh life to art, but were scorned by the so-called representatives of fine art; Mozart's opere buffe have more of truth and life in them than his opere serie; and there is as much dramatic power in an opéra-comique like Carmen as in all the repertory of grand Opera to-day. And so the Opéra-Comique theatre has become the home of the boldest experiments in musical drama. ”

“ There are delightful examples of instrumentation in “The Fair Maid of Perth”: the opera as a whole is conventional, and the solo passages and the ensemble are often reminiscent: there is continual homage to famous men: Gounod, Halévy, Verdi, Thomas, et al. Bizet had not yet found the use of his own voice.
Nor would “Djamileh,” the satisfaction of the longing of Camille du Locle for ideal musical revery, the sounding of the revolt against the school of Scribe, carry the name of Bizet to after years. Its perfume is subtle and penetrating; its colors delight trained eyes. It is a tour de force. ”

“ The operas described here are not all great compositions: Some of them are hopelessly poor. Those of Balfe and Flotow are included because they were expressions of popular taste when our grandfathers enjoyed going to the opera.
The Nibelung Ring is used in preference to several other compositions of Wagner because the four operas included in it are the fullest both of musical and story wonders, and are at the same time the least understood.
"Aïda" and "Carmen" belong here—as do many which are left out—because of their beauty and musical splendour. ”

“ The book of an opera must be a good play; and more than once have we seen a libretto deprived of its music and written out again in prose for production in non-musical theaters. 'Carmen' is one example of this transformation. The late Sir Henry Irving was so taken with Wagner's 'Flying Dutchman' that he had it made over into a play for his own acting—'Vanderdecken.'
The book of an opera must be a good play, and therefore not a few successful operas have been composed on plots which had already won approval as plays on the stage. ”