Opera dancer

“ Habits.—The habits of the opera-dancer vary according as we see him in public or in private life. On the stage he is all spangles and activity; off the stage, seediness and decrepitude are his chief characteristics. It is usual for him to enter upon his public career with a tremendous bound and a hat and feathers. After standing upon one toe, he raises its fellow up to a line with his nose, and turns round until the applause comes, even if that be delayed for several minutes. ”

“ In the present day of subordination of the dancer to the singer, it is almost incredible that opera of seventy years ago assigned to the dancer the relative importance that the singer enjoys now; especially difficult is this conception to any one whose acquaintance with opera is confined to its production in America. General indifference has reduced operatic ballet in this land to a level compared to which its condition in continental Europe is enviable. Though reduced from past importance, in countries that support academies it has at least retained standards of execution. ”

“ Perhaps as you have such a very delicate ear," he added, "and nature has refused you the slightest grace, you would like to take my place in the orchestra?"
LA CAMARGO.
"Your awkwardness with the bow makes me doubt whether your most useful limbs may not be your legs," replied the dancer. "You will never do any good where you are. Why do you not try your fortune in the ballet? Give me your violin," he continued, "and come up on to the stage. I know the scale already. You can teach me to play minuets, and I will show you how to dance them." ”

“ The geographical distribution of opera-dancers is extremely well defined, as their names implies; for they most do congregate wherever an opera-house exists. Some, however, descend to the non-lyric drama, and condescend to “illustrate” the plays of Shakespeare. ”

“ There were dancers engaged at the French Opera from its very commencement, but it was difficult to obtain them in any numbers, and, worst of all, there were no female dancers to be found. The company of vocalists could easily be recruited from the numerous cathedral choirs; for the Ballet there were only the dancing-masters of the capital to select from, the profession of dancing-mistress not having yet been invented. Nymphs, dryads, and shepherdesses were for some time represented by young boys, who, like the fauns, satyrs, and all the rest of the dancing troop wore masks. ”

“ What, at the present day, proves the greatest attraction to the opera, is the dancing. How bad soever may be a piece, when it is interspersed with fine ballets, it is sure of having a certain run. Of these I shall say no more till I come to speak of that department.
The weakest part of the performances at the opera is the singing. All are agreed as to the mediocrity of the singers at this theatre, called lyric. No one can say that, within the last ten or twelve years, they are improved. ”

“ For the sake of enjoying the pleasures of music and of the drama in combination, we must adopt certain conventions, and must assume that song is the natural language of the men and women that we propose to show in our operas; as we assume in tragedy that they all talk in verse, in comedy that they are all witty and yet are perpetually giving one another opportunities for repartee; in the ballet that they all dance and are unable to speak at all. ”

“ Dancing is there the fourth of the fine arts constituting the lyrical scene. The three others are imitative; but what does this imitate? Nothing. It is then quite extraneous when employed in this manner, for what have minuets and rigadoons to do in a tragedy? I will say more. It would not be less misplaced, even if it imitated something, because of all the unities that of language is the most indispensable; and an action or an opera performed, half in singing and half in dancing, would be even more ridiculous than one written half in French and half in Italian. ”

“ This in itself is not much to boast of, for the entertainment of the ballet is independent of language to a still greater extent; and La Gitana or Esmeralda can be as well understood by an Englishman at the Opera House of Berlin or of Moscow as at Her Majesty's Theatre in London; while perhaps the most universally intelligible drama ever performed is that of Punch, even when the brief dialogue which adorns its pantomime is inaudible.
Opera is music in a dramatic form; and people go to the theatre and listen to it as if it were so much prose. ”

“ After all, in an opera, the poetry must be the handmaid of the music. Why do Italian comic operas always please, in spite of their wretched librettos—even in Paris, as I was witness myself? Because the music is supreme, and everything else is forgotten. All the more then will an opera be likely to please in which the plan of the piece is well carried out, and the words are written simply to suit the music; not turned and twisted so as to ruin the composition for the sake of a miserable rhyme, which God knows does far more harm than good in a dramatic representation. ”

“ There was an unconscionable confusion in the darkened opera house as the audience rattled down the aisles, chattering, greeting friends, and shattering the spell of the Prologue, disturbing those who had taken the trouble to arrive on time as much as they did the artists on the stage. My concern on this point is as much for the audience as for the dancers. A ballet, being a work of art, is conceived as an entity, from beginning to end, from the first notes of the overture, till the last one of the coda. ”

“ Under the accepted operatic form, however, it has relative truth, as the main musical purpose of opera seems, hitherto, to have been less to furnish expression for exalted emotions and thoughts, or exquisite sentiments, than to grant the vocal virtuoso opportunity to display phenomenal qualities of voice and execution. But all opera, however it may stray from the fundamental idea, suggests this dramatic element in music, just as mere lyricism in the poetic art is the blossom from which is unfolded the full-blown perfection of the word-drama, the highest form of all poetry. ”

“ While men are dining where there are mahogany and silver and the gloss of women's shoulders, are men with kick-marks on their shins, ice gluing shut their eyes, and lashed with gale to some ship-or-other's crow's-nest. Women at the opera, so fragrant that the senses swim, sit with consciousness partitioned against a sweating, shuddering woman in some forbidding, forbidden room, hacking open a wall to conceal something red-stained. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Hence the origin of airs, choruses, symphonies, and of that enchanting melody which often embellishes modern music at the expense of its poetic accompaniment.
"At the birth of the Opera, its inventors, to elude that which seemed unnatural, as an imitation of human life, in the union of music with speech, transferred their scenes from earth to heaven, and to hell. Not knowing how to make men speak, they made gods and devils, instead of heroes and shepherds, sing. Thus magic and marvels became speedily the stock in trade of the lyrical theatre. ”

“ One is that the operatic singer who has a chance to study naturally enough seeks first of all to improve the voice on which he is so dependent. Acting he regards as something that can be quickly acquired from the ubiquitous stage manager. The second reason is that, even in the case of singers who can act, the artificiality of the operatic scheme—drama united with music—is bound to affect the player's art. The player in opera acts, not as men and women act, but as operatic tenors or sopranos or bassos have acted ever since opera came into being. ”

“ This anarchy of the arts, where music, dancing, and decoration endeavour to surpass each other by the most profuse display of dazzling charms, constitutes the very essence of the Opera. What sort of opera music would it be, where the words should receive a mere rhythmical accompaniment of the simplest modulations? The fantastic magic of the Opera consists altogether in the luxurious competition of the different means, and in the perplexity of an overflowing superfluity. ”

“ At the point where the minuet, which was the dance of people of quality, is played, he remarked, "Don Ottavio dances the minuet with Donna Anna"; at the contra-dance in 2-4 time, "Don Giovanni begins to dance a contra-dance with Zerlina"; at the entrance of the waltz, "Leporello dances a 'Teitsch' with Masetto." The proper execution of Mozart's elaborate scheme puts the resources of an opera-house to a pretty severe test, but there is ample reward in the result. Pity that, as a rule, so little intelligence is shown by the ballet master in arranging the dances! ”

“ I seem always to get down to the bedrock of the æsthetic impulse at the opera. We are deluded by a tragedy of Æschylus into supposing that art is something greater than it is, something more than a sublimation of childhood’s games, something comparable in its importance to science. In opera we see what a joke art really is. We know that in the scroll of eternity the bottle-washer of a great chemist is a more conspicuous minuscule than the greatest artist who ever shall be.”
“I think I’m too tired to listen to you any longer,” Nancy said. ”

“ 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. ”

“ However, there is the charm of aversion, and that piques the curious. Music in opera is prodigal, never generous. It is the too-much that appalls. It is as reticent as a female politician and a hundredfold more attractive. Flying fish, these singing-actors. They needs must swim and fly. Winged fish, birds with fins. It is an ambiguous art, the operatic, and it is devised to tickle the ears, dazzle the eyes, of the unmusical and myopic. It breeds personal gossip, never thought. For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of Mary Garden’s celebrated eyebrows! ”

“ From the inimitably gay and dramatic laughing chorus and waltz of the first scene to the divine melody in which the heroine expresses her unshaken faith in Heaven, immediately before her lover's triumph closes the piece, the whole opera is a series of exquisite conceptions, hardly one of which does not contain some theme or passage calculated to catch the dullest and slowest ear and fix itself on the least retentive memory ”

“ The words of an opera ought to be good, and yet need not of necessity be heard. They should be poetical that they may inspire first the composer and afterwards the singer; and they should be ryhthmical and sonorous in order that the latter may be able to sing them with due effect. Above all they ought not to be ridiculous, lest the public should hear them and laugh at the music, just where it was intended that it should affect them to tears. Everything ought to be good at the opera down to the rosin of the fiddlers, and including the words of the libretto. ”

“ The dancing is an essential part of the entertainment at the opera here, as well as at London. There is certainly a much greater proportion of mankind deaf to the delights of music, than blind to the beauties of fine dancing. During the singing, and recitativo part of the performance, the singers are often allowed to warble for a considerable time, without any body’s minding them; but the moment the ballet begins, private conversation, though pretty universal before, is immediately at an end, and the eyes of all the spectators are fixed on the stage. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I have always had a certain amount of hope that the opera, like the choruses of the old hymns to Bacchus, would be the means of developing a nobler conception of tragedy. In the opera, a mere servile following of nature is forsaken, and the ideal, disguised as indulgence, is allowed to creep on the stage. The opera, by the power of music and by its harmonious appeal to the senses, attunes the mind to a higher receptivity; it allows of a freer play of pathos, because it is accompanied by music ”

“ In saying this we do not mean that the operas of this school are not in harmony with the views that have of late prevailed regarding the absurdity of this form or the propriety of that form of opera: in other words, that Italian opera, with its cabballettas, duets, quartets, and its scenas, consisting of a recitative, an andante, and a brilliant allegro, its adherence to flowing melody and to tunefulness generally is wrong in principle, as opposed to that form of opera or music-drama advocated by Wagner and his followers, which, it is claimed, is more natural and more logical. ”