Royal Italian Opera

“ For my own part, I cannot think it would be any loss to real lovers of music, if all those false friends who have made pretensions to it only in compliance with the fashion, would separate themselves from them; provided our Italian Opera could be brought under such regulations as to go on without them. We might then be able to sit and enjoy an entertainment of this sort, free from those disturbances which are frequent in English theatres, without any regard, not only to performers, but even to the presence of Majesty itself. ”

“ Dingy scenery, shabby and anachronistic costumes, an inefficient chorus, and a scanty orchestra had aided a small constellation of eminent singers to maintain Italian Opera at the King’s Theatre for the entertainment of a clique, not for the pleasure of a public. This was to be changed. The new undertaking promised perfection in every thing. Art was to be considered as well as the artist—the composer as well as the singer. ”

“ In opera, willy-nilly, poetry must be the obedient daughter of music. Why do Italian operas please everywhere, even in Paris, as I have been a witness, despite the wretchedness of their librettos? Because in them music rules and compels us to forget everything else. All the more must an opera please in which the plot is well carried out, and the words are written simply for the sake of the music and not here and there to please some miserable rhyme, which, God knows, adds nothing to a theatrical representation but more often harms it. ”

“ If the music of our country does indeed possess the excellence, so fondly asserted by its numerous admirers, we might naturally expect, amid the general demand in Europe for musical entertainments, that its beauties should not be entirely neglected and unknown. But while the Italian opera has found its way over nearly the whole of Europe, and is absolutely naturalized in England, France, and Spain, our musical productions are unknown beyond the limits of their native shores. ”

“ But how comes it that audiences, whose ear is severely fastidious to instrumental music, relax and lower their standard of requirement for the Song? Whatever other reasons may be adduced for this inequality of taste, it can at all events be explained in a large degree by the action of the Italian Opera on the English vocal school. From Handel's time until a very recent date, Italian operas and Italian songs reigned supreme in England; Italian singers and Italian teachers were masters of the situation to the exclusion of all others. ”

“ For some years I have been interested in the new musical development that is going on in Italy. There had been a period when her church music led the world in the variety and beauty of its form. Later on, especially in the eighteenth century, she had produced many composers of distinction in instrumental music, but from then on and until very recent times, opera had almost completely monopolized her writers. The splendid opera-houses which are to be found in her smallest towns are eloquent testimony to the important place which that form of art occupies in the hearts of the Italian people. ”

“ No one will dispute but that understanding Italian would render our entertainment at an opera more rational and more complete; but without that advantage, let it be remembered by the lovers of Music, that an opera is the completest concert to which they can go; with this advantage over those in still life, that to the most perfect singing, and effects of a powerful and well-disciplined band, are frequently added excellent acting, splendid scenes and decorations, with such dancing as a playhouse, from its inferior prices, is seldom able to furnish. ”

“ The earliest Italian plays of a mixed character, not being constructed according to the ancient rules of tragedy and comedy, were called by the general name of "Opera," the nature of the "work" being more particularly indicated by some such epithet or epithets as regia, comica, tragica, scenica, sacra, esemplare, regia ed esemplare, &c.; and in the case of a lyrical drama, the words per musica, scenica per musica, regia ed esemplare per musica, were added, or the production was styled opera musicale alone. ”

“ Throughout the eighteenth century, we find the great Italian singers travelling to all parts of Europe and carrying with them the operas of the best Italian masters. In each of the countries where the opera has been cultivated, it has had a different history, but from the beginning until the end of the eighteenth century, the Italian Opera flourished in Italy, and also in Germany and in England ”

“ English Opera has no history, no unbroken line of traditions; it has no regular sequence of operatic weeks by native composers; but at our Italian Opera Houses, the whole history of dramatic music has been exemplified, and from Gluck to Verdi is still exemplified in the present day. ”

“ The charge most frequently laid against Italian opera is that its composers have been too subservient to the singers, and have sacrificed dramatic truth and depth of expression, as well as the musicianship which is required of a well-written and well-balanced score, as between the vocal and instrumental portions, to the vanity of those upon the stage—in brief, that Italian opera consists too much of show-pieces for its interpreters. ”

“ Doubtless ninety-nine out of every hundred musicians and music-lovers still believe that Italy has no art-song, that her composers are still devoting their energies to turning out those delectable morceaux in ballad-style which Italian opera singers have sung in the past, and still do, to an extent, when they are called upon to take part in a concert. ”

“ His music occupies a middle ground between the melodiousness of the Italian composers of the early part of the century and the seriousness of later German opera.
In spite of the few examples reaching foreign countries, there is a continuous and rather abundant production of light and serious operas in Italy, every principal theater making it a point to bring out one or more new works every season. ”

“ The introduction of base voices into the serious opera, the execution of the bold and brilliant passages, written for them in comic parts, has regenerated the Italian Opera, which was simply a concert dramatized; while the Italian singers, feeling how much the effect of music may be aided by scenic illusion, have, for the most part, become excellent actors. In short, we may say, that to hear such an opera as La Gazza Ladra performed by such singers as Rubini, Tamburini, Lablache, Graziani, Malibran, and Mariano, is the perfection of dramatic music. ”

“ Were Opera an organized home industry among us, as much as other forms of music,—were there some meaning in the name "Academy of Music" worn by operatic theatres, it would be more useful to our artistic progress. But Italian Opera, as managed, and "star" concerts generally, are no part of the healthy, permanent development of our own musical resources. They are speculations; they attack us from without, exploiting a factitious enthusiasm, and exhausting the soil in one short season, so they may only carry off the present fatness of the land. ”

“ Let the Opera be of either the French or Italian School, so that it be of one, alone. There is sufficient love for music with us, to make us liberal to either school, so that it be well represented. So far as our own taste is concerned, the Italian school is the more pleasing. The French vocalization is too exaggerated, we think. It is a mere matter of taste, however, and we will be content to listen to either, so that we have an Opera.
In the early part of the summer of ’47, an Italian Opera Troupe, from Havana, tarried a few weeks in Philadelphia. ”

“ What must those Strangers say, when they see that we leave so reasonable and so instructive an Entertainment as Tragedy, for one so pernicious and so extremely absurd; for there is something in the Italian Opera, which is Barbarous and Gothick, and so contrary to a true Taste, that an Opera in any Country can be only advanc’d by the same Degrees that the Taste of Men is debauch’d for more generous Arts. Thus in Italy, where an Opera is most advanc’d, there is no one who can write either Verse or Prose, nor any one who can judge of them. ”

“ In the meantime, I cannot forbear thinking how naturally an historian who writes two or three hundred years hence, and does not know the taste of his wise forefathers, will make the following reflection:—In the beginning of the 18th century, the Italian tongue was so well understood in England, that operas were acted on the public stage in that language.
"One scarce knows how to be serious in the confutation of an absurdity that shows itself at the first sight. ”

“ But henceforward we have art for its own sake; the truthfulness of the subject-matter is of no account; the sole canon of art is beauty of form; its purpose not instruction but pleasure.
I know no episode in the history of art that is more instructive than the birth of the Italian opera. It was typically a product of the Renaissance, but it came at the very end of that movement, when the freshness of its early vigour was past, when learning had declined into pedantry, and its graceful art was lost in barocco. ”

“ My evening closed with the Italian Opera. Here you find the most select audience; it is the fashionable house. The theatre is prettily decorated, the lighting brilliant, and the singing exceeds expectation. Still it is curious, that even with a company composed entirely of Italians the singing is never the same,—there is never that complete and inimitable whole, which you find in Italy: their fire seems chilled in these colder regions,—their humour dried up; they know that they shall be applauded, but that they no longer form one family with the audience ”

“ In studying the development of a secular lyric drama, it is essential that we keep in mind the nature of the music employed in the dramatic ceremonials, and later in the frankly theatrical representations of the church. The opera is a child of Italy and its direct ancestors must be sought there. The first secular musical plays of France far antedated the birth of the primitive lyric drama of Italy, and it requires something more than scientific devotion to establish a close connection between the two. ”

“ Remarks a young lady near us, who is dressed with much wealth of contrasting colors:—"This isn't half so nice as the Italian opera. Miss RICHINGS can't dress half so nicely as Miss KELLOGG, and then you don't see any fashionable people here. The DAVIDS, the ABRAHAMS, the AARONS, the NOAHS, that handsome Mr. JACOBS, and that delightful Mr. MOSES,—all these elegant young men with beautiful eyes and curly hair that dress in velvet coats and diamond studs—there isn't one of them here. Our best society never goes to any opera but the real Italian opera." ”

“ When I affirm that an Opera after the Italian Manner is monstrous, I cannot think that I deal too severely with it; no not tho’ I add, that it is so prodigiously unnatural, that it could take its beginning from no Country, but that which is renowned throughout the World, for preferring monstrous abominable Pleasures to those which are according to Nature. ”

“ Thus, if the splendour of the French opera, and the harmony of the Italian, were so skilfully interwoven with the charms of poetry, upon a regular dramatic bottom, as to introduce as well as delight, to improve the mind, as well as ravish the sense, there can be no doubt but such an addition would entitle our English opera to the preference of all others. The third part of the encouragement, of which we have been so liberal to foreigners for a concert of music only, miscalled an opera, would more than effect it. ”

“ In Italy, judges of operas are so far from thinking the drama or poetical part of their operas nonsense, as the unskilled in Italian rashly conclude in England, that if the Libretto, as they call it, is not approved, the opera, notwithstanding the excellence of the music, will be condemned. ”

“ At length, the audience got tired of understanding half the opera, and, therefore, to ease themselves entirely of the fatigue of thinking, have so ordered it at present, that the whole opera is performed in an unknown tongue. We no longer understand the language of our own stage, insomuch, that I have often been afraid, when I have seen our Italian performers chattering in the vehemence of action, that they have been calling us names and abusing us among themselves ”

“ At not infrequent intervals, however, when a strongly emotional situation demands sustained expression, the restless play of orchestral depiction and the brief exchange of vocal phrases merge into eloquent melody for voice with significant instrumental accompaniment. Thus beautiful vocal melody, fluently sung, remains, in spite of all tendency toward the much vaunted effect of verismo, the heart and soul, as ever, of Italian opera. ”

“ That sacred plays were seldom written by men of literary rank and ability we have already noted. That they were long drawn out, cumbersome, disjointed and quite without dramatic design has also been indicated. Their real significance as forerunners of opera lies in their insistent employment of certain materials, such as verse, music and spectacular action, which afterwards became essential parts of the machinery of the lyric drama. ”

“ The Italian refers everything to himself. It is neither the action nor the characters that interest him. It is the passions; he embraces them all; he experiences them all in his own person. Hence the frenzied exaltation into which the opera throws him at certain moments. In no other country has the love of the opera this passionate quality, because no other nation displays this personal and egoistical character. The Italian does not go to the opera-house to see the heroes of opera, but to see himself, to hear himself, to caress and inflame his passions. All else is indifferent to him. ”