Gioachino Rossini

“ It is the fashion nowadays, by the admirers of the modern school of opera, to deride the works of Rossini and the Italian school. They point out his lack of dramatic truth, his sacrifice of the sense to the music. Still there has perhaps never lived a man who could excel him as a writer of bel canto.
The faults of Rossini's music were faults not of the man, but of the time. Rossini was, in his way, a reformer. Prior to his time the composer had been at the mercy of the singer, but with Rossini a new era dawned. ”

“ We hear a great deal of the decay of singing as an art; but that art was thought so much of when Rossini began to write that more important things—dramatic propriety and music itself—were sacrificed to it. What would Italian singers of the year 1813 have thought of “William Tell?” and how would their highly-decorative style have suited that simple, energetic, thoroughly dramatic music? The development of Rossini’s dramatic faculty was, no doubt, delayed by his having often to write for singers so accomplished, that they could think of nothing but the exhibition of their own voice. ”

“ Rossini took a boyish delight in showing it and making it play, and one day he did so while in a café.
A stranger who sat near was attracted by the music, and just as Rossini was going to put it back in his pocket, he stepped up to him and said: “You have a very valuable watch there, [99] sir, but I’ll wager that you do not know all its capabilities.”
Rossini, much surprised said: “I have carried it now for six years, in honor of my king. ”

“ Like these two despots of their instrument, he manages as he wishes a voice which is not perfect, but of great extent, and what he obtains from it is astonishing.”
At the conclusion of the Vienna season, Rossini returned to Bologna, where, soon after his arrival, he received a letter from Prince Metternich, inviting him to come to Verona during the Congress. The minister pointed out that the object of the gathering being the re-establishment of general harmony, the presence of Rossini was indispensable. ”

“ He had conquered the hearts of the Venetians and the Milanese. But he was unknown at Naples; and not to have earned the applause of the Neapolitan public was not to have achieved an Italian reputation. The connoisseurs of Naples were by no means disposed to accept Rossini on the strength of the success he had achieved at Milan and Venice; while the professors of the famous Conservatorio, whose classes he had not followed, were incredulous as to his being a composer of any sound musical learning, and were quite prepared to find him a much overrated man. ”

“ Taking his arm the King walked with him to the concert-room to hear his band, which in compliment to Rossini had been ordered to play "The Barber" overture. The next piece his Majesty left to Rossini's selection, to which he replied with his natural good breeding, "If I might take the liberty of selecting the next piece, it must be 'God save the King.'"
Rossini was a guest at the most fashionable houses, where his talents as a singer and performer on the pianoforte were always called into action. He had a fine tenor voice and sang with much taste, and was also a remarkable pianist. ”

“ Indeed, “Guillaume Tell” is full of melody, in the simplest solos as in the most massive choral writing. Rossini said of the compositions of his old professor, Mattei, that “the solo passages were not prominent, but that the pleni were admirable.” In “Guillaume Tell” the solo passages and the pleni are admirable alike. The music, whatever it may have to express, never ceases to be beautiful, and there is in every piece a clear current of melody, which the richest and most varied harmony never obscures.
“Guillaume Tell,” Rossini’s latest, is also his finest opera. ”

“ Even il maestro Cappeletti, il professore di timpani, she said, speaking of him with the greatest respect, came in for his share, when, in a rehearsal under Rossini, he made some blunder. "Asino," cried Rossini, "That sort of thing was not unusual," added my informant; "one always expected something hot from him." "Do I remember Madame Rossini, la Pelissier? Ma che! I see her now in her red corsage and many-coloured petticoat, leading her dog by a string. ”

“ During nearly half a century Rossini has reigned supreme on all the stages of the world. Wherever there existed an Italian theatre, there were played and sung the works of Rossini: Otello, Semiramide, Mosé, il Barbiere, la Gazza ladra, Cenerentola, l'Italiana in Algeri, la Donna del Lago, Maometto. If all his serious works are not complete and perfect, at least all of them contain superb parts. ”

“ The master of this vehement orchestral purist warned Rossini that he meant mischief; but Rossini was so much amused at the idea of any one wishing to assassinate him because in an overture of a military character he had introduced a couple of drums, that he got Rolla to bring him and the young man together. ”

“ Such is the system in which he composed Demetrio e Polibio, L'Inganno felice, La Pietra del Paragone, Tancredi, &c. Rossini had found La Marcolini, La Malanotte, La Manfredini, the Mombelli family, why should he not endeavour to give prominence to the singing—he who is such a good singer, and who when he sits down to the piano to sing one of his own airs, seems to transform the genius we know him to possess as a composer into that of a singer? The fact is, a little event took place which at once changed the composer's views.... Rossini arrived at Milan in 1814, to write Aureliano in Palmira. ”

“ An ardent disciple of Wagner sums up his ideas of the mania for the Rossini music, which possessed Europe for fifteen years, in the following: "Rossini, the most gifted and spoiled of her sons [speaking of Italy] sallied forth with an innumerable army of Bacchantic melodies to conquer the world, the Messiah of joy, the breaker of thought and sorrow. Europe, by this time, had tired of the empty pomp of French declamation. It lent but too willing an ear to the new gospel, and eagerly quaffed the intoxicating potion, which Rossini poured out in inexhaustible streams." ”

“ A CONTEMPORARY of Cimarosa and of Paisiello, his predecessors, but not, except at the very outset of his career, his models, and of Donizetti, Bellini, and Verdi, his successors, and in an artistic sense his followers, Rossini is a central figure in the nineteenth-century history of Italian music.
Lives of Rossini have been published freely enough during the last fifty or sixty years. It but rarely happens, even to the greatest man, to have his biography written or his statue erected during his lifetime. ”

“ It contains enough to furnish not one, but four operas. In this work Rossini, by the new riches which he draws from his prodigious imagination, is no longer the author of ‘Otello,’ ‘Tancredi,’ ‘Zoraide,’ and all his preceding works; he is another composer—new, agreeable, and fertile, as much as the first, but with more command of himself, more pure, more masterly, and, above all, more faithful to the interpretation of the words. The forms of style employed in this opera, according to circumstances, are so varied, that now we seem to hear Gluck, now Traetta, now Sacchini, now Mozart, now Handel ”

“ The life of Rossini divides itself, more naturally than most things to which this favourite mode of division is applied, into three parts. During the first period of his existence, extending from his birth to the year 1823 when Semiramide was brought out, he made his reputation. From 1823 when he visited London and Paris, until 1829 when he produced his great masterpiece in the serious style, and afterwards threw down his pen for ever, he made his fortune. Finally, from 1829, the year of William Tell, until 1869, the year of his death, he enjoyed his fortune and his reputation ”

“ NO composer has written more lively, more graceful comedy music than Rossini. But, except Il Figlio per Azzardo, with its high notes for low voices, its low voices for high notes, its ludicrous accompaniments, and its grotesque instruments of percussion in the shape of metal lamp-shades tapped with violin bows, Rossini never wrote music which, comic or serious, was not charming; and Il Figlio per Azzardo was nothing but a practical joke played for the benefit of an unreasonable and impolite manager. It may be interesting to consider in what the musical comic really consists. ”

“ It may be safely asserted that no composer ever enjoyed in his lifetime such a degree of popularity as did Rossini. At one time his music solely occupied nearly all the operatic stages of Europe, and none other would be listened to. His music appeals to the million, not alone to the educated class. It is perfectly natural, and in keeping with Rossini's character. Full of melody, sweet and beautiful, it never fails in its purpose of captivating. ”

“ It is always somewhat dangerous to try new effects on the stage, and the magnificent finale of “La Donna del Lago,” the finest musical scene the composer had produced, imperilled the success of the whole work.
Rossini was much distressed by the reception his opera encountered, and instead of going quietly to bed, as after the first tempestuous representation of “Il Barbiere di Siviglia,” started the same night for{218} Milan. He does not seem, however, to have lost his spirits. ”

“ One young man in the pit—a student of music, and a pupil of Rolla, the leader of the orchestra—went almost into convulsions on hearing the drums, and wished to take summary vengeance on the composer who had ventured to introduce such instruments into an operatic orchestra. The youthful conservative, with all the ardour of an Italian revolutionist, swore that he would have Rossini’s blood, and went about with a stiletto in the hope of meeting him. ”

“ When the curtain fell, Rossini turned toward the public, shrugged his shoulders, and clapped his hands. The audience were deeply offended by this open contempt for their opinion, but they made no reply at the time; the vengeance was reserved for the second act, of which not a note passed the orchestra. The hubbub was so great that nothing like it had ever been heard at any theater. Rossini meanwhile remained perfectly calm, and afterward went home as composed as if the work, received in so insulting a manner, had been the production of some other musician. ”

“ His neighbours asked him how he came to have heard the new music.
“New music?” replied the merchant; “it is a mixture of ‘Ricciardo e Zoraide’ and ‘Ermione,’ produced at Naples six months ago. The only thing new is the title. Rossini has taken the most beautiful phrase from the duet in ‘Ricciardo,’ and turned it into a cavatina for your new opera. Even the words are the same. ‘Ah nati in ver noi siamo.’”
During the entre-acte, and while the ballet was going on, the story of the Neapolitan merchant, after being told in the theatrical café, soon spread in the theatre itself. ”

“ Nevertheless, he made no undue concessions to the public taste, and he was a great innovator. In the course of ten years’ very hard work he completely changed the system of Italian opera. Into opera seria he introduced the most valuable reforms; while for the farce of the old opera buffa he substituted the comedy style in which “Il Barbiere” and “La Cenerentola” are written.
It is a pity no musician has thought it worth while to write the artistic life of Rossini, showing fully and explicitly what modifications, developments, and new combinations in opera are due to him. ”

“ Nothing more need be said in this volume of Rossini considered as a composer of comic opera. He cultivated every style, including the ancient style of La Cenerentola which contains much comic with some serious music, and of La Gazza Ladra, which might well have been treated seriously throughout, though in some of the gravest situations of this work he is gay, in some of the severest, lively. ”

“ The main incidents of Rossini’s life are all connected directly or indirectly with music. As a youth, when Prince Eugene was Viceroy of Italy, he would have fallen a victim to the conscription but for the proofs he had already given of rare musical genius. When, at the age of 30, he took a wife, he married a singer for whom he had written some of his greatest parts. As a young man he was constantly travelling from one Italian city to another to superintend the production of his works. ”

“ They do not seem to have the least idea that it is Rossini who has emancipated musical art as applied to the theatre; that it is Rossini who has given freedom to melodic form; that it is Rossini who has substituted for the majestic and uniform solemnity of the ancient lyric declamation, a rational diction, with an expression more vivacious, more intense and more vigorous; that it is Rossini who, by the movement and variety communicated to the rhythm, has given to the musical phrase the natural sentiment and warmth of action which it too often lacked ”

“ A taste, moreover, for simple,{294} expressive music seems to have grown upon him, and he held, justly no doubt, that with advancing years this taste generally manifested itself.
But wherever we have seen Rossini at work he has always adopted a compromise; he subjects circumstances to himself, but he is also obliged to subject himself a little to circumstances. At many of the Italian theatres he had an indifferent orchestra and chorus—sometimes, as at the San Mosè, no chorus at all; and his only means of success lay in writing attractive airs for the principal singers. ”