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History of the Opera from its Origin in Italy to the present Time

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Title: History of the Opera from its Origin in Italy to the present Time

Author: H. Sutherland Edwards


        
Release date: July 8, 2012 [eBook #40164]

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF THE OPERA FROM ITS ORIGIN IN ITALY TO THE PRESENT TIME ***




Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was
produced from scanned images of public domain material
from the Google Print project.)








HISTORY

OF

THE OPERA,

from its Origin in Italy to the present Time.

WITH ANECDOTES

OF THE MOST CELEBRATED COMPOSERS AND VOCALISTS OF EUROPE.

BY

SUTHERLAND EDWARDS,

AUTHOR OF "RUSSIANS AT HOME," ETC.

"QUIS TAM DULCIS SONUS QUI MEAS COMPLET AURES?"
     "WHAT IS ALL THIS NOISE ABOUT?"

VOL. I. & VOL. II.

LONDON: WM. H. ALLEN & CO., 13, WATERLOO PLACE.

1862.

[_The right of translation and reproduction is reserved._]

LONDON: LEWIS AND SON, PRINTERS, SWAN BUILDINGS, (49) MOORGATE STREET.




CONTENTS VOLUME I.


CHAPTER I.

                                                                    PAGE

Preface, Prelude, Prologue, Introduction, Overture, &c.--The
Origin of the Opera in Italy, and its introduction into Germany.--Its
History in Europe; Division of the subject                             1


CHAPTER II.

Introduction of the Opera into France and England                     12


CHAPTER III.

On the Nature of the Opera, and its Merits as compared with
other forms of the Drama                                              36


CHAPTER IV.

Introduction and progress of the Ballet                               70


CHAPTER V.

Introduction of the Italian Opera into England                       104

CHAPTER VI.

The Italian Opera under Handel                                       140


CHAPTER VII.

General view of the Opera in Europe in the Eighteenth Century,
until the appearance of Gluck                                        172


CHAPTER VIII.

French Opera from Lulli to the Death of Rameau                       217


CHAPTER IX.

Rousseau as a Critic and as a Composer of Music                      238


CHAPTER X.

Gluck and Piccinni in Paris                                          267




HISTORY OF THE OPERA.




CHAPTER I.

     PREFACE, PRELUDE, PROLOGUE, INTRODUCTION, OVERTURE, ETC.--THE
     ORIGIN OF THE OPERA IN ITALY, AND ITS INTRODUCTION INTO
     GERMANY.--ITS HISTORY IN EUROPE; DIVISION OF THE SUBJECT.


It has often been said, and notably, by J. J. Rousseau, and after him,
with characteristic exaggeration, by R. Wagner, that "Opera" does not
mean so much a musical work, as a musical, poetical, and spectacular
work all at once; that "Opera" in fact, is "the work," _par excellence_,
to the production of which all the arts are necessary.[1] The very
titles of the earliest operas prove this notion to be incorrect. 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. In time the
mixed plays (which were imitated from the Spanish) fell into disrepute
in Italy, while the title of "Opera" was still applied to lyrical
dramas, but not without "musicale," or "in musica" after it. This was
sufficiently vague, but people soon found it troublesome, or thought it
useless, to say _opera musicale_, when opera by itself conveyed, if it
did not express, their meaning, and thus dramatic works in music came to
be called "Operas." Algarotte's work on the Opera (translated into
French, and entitled _Essai sur l'Opéra_) is called in the original
_Saggio sopra l'Opera in musica_. "Opera in music" would in the present
day sound like a pleonasm, but it is as well to consider the true
meaning of words, when we find them not merely perverted, but in their
perverted sense made the foundation of ridiculous theories.

[Sidenote: THE FIRST OPERA]

The Opera proceeds from the sacred musical plays of the 15th century as
the modern drama proceeds from the mediæval mysteries. Ménestrier,
however, the Jesuit father, assigns to it a far greater antiquity, and
considers the Song of Solomon to be the earliest Opera on record,
founding his opinion on these words of St. Jérôme, translated from
Origen:--_Epithalamium, libellus, id est nuptiale carmen, in modum mihi
videtur dramatis a Solomone conscriptus quem cecinit instar nubentis
sponsæ_.[2]

Others see the first specimens of opera in the Greek plays; but the
earliest musical dramas of modern Italy, from which the Opera of the
present day is descended directly, and in an unbroken line, are
"mysteries" differing only from the dramatic mysteries in so far that
the dialogue in them was sung instead of being spoken. "The Conversion
of St. Paul" was played in music, at Rome, in 1440. The first profane
subject treated operatically, was the descent of Orpheus into hell; the
music of this _Orfeo_, which was produced also at Rome, in 1480, was by
Angelo Poliziano, the libretto by Cardinal Riario, nephew of Sixtus IV.
The popes kept up an excellent theatre, and Clement IX. was himself the
author of seven _libretti_.

At this time the great attraction in operatic representations was the
scenery--a sign of infancy then, as it is a sign of decadence now. At
the very beginning of the sixteenth century, Balthazar Peruzzi, the
decorator of the papal theatre, had carried his art to such perfection,
that the greatest painters of the day were astonished at his
performances. His representations of architecture and the illusions of
height and distance which his knowledge of perspective enabled him to
produce, were especially admired. Vasari has told us how Titian, at the
Palace of la Farnesina, was so struck by the appearance of solidity
given by Peruzzi to his designs in profile, that he was not satisfied,
until he had ascended a ladder and touched them, that they were not
actually in relief. "One can scarcely conceive," says the historian of
the painters, in speaking of Peruzzi's scenic decorations, "with what
ability, in so limited a space, he represented such a number of houses,
palaces, porticoes, entablatures, profiles, and all with such an aspect
of reality that the spectator fancied himself transported into the
middle of a public square, to such a point was the illusion carried.
Moreover, Balthazar, the better to produce these results, understood, in
an admirable manner the disposition of light as well as all the
machinery connected with theatrical changes and effects."

[Sidenote: DAFNE.]

In 1574, Claudio Merulo, organist at St. Mark's, of Venice, composed the
music of a drama by Cornelio Frangipani, which was performed in the
Venetian Council Chamber in presence of Henry III. of France. The music
of the operatic works of this period appears to have possessed but
little if any dramatic character, and to have consisted almost
exclusively of choruses in the madrigal style, which was so
successfully cultivated about the same time in England. Emilio del
Cavaliere, a celebrated musician of Rome, made an attempt to introduce
appropriateness of expression into these choruses, and his reform,
however incomplete, attracted the attention of Giovanni Bardi, Count of
Vernio. This nobleman used to assemble in his palace all the most
distinguished musicians of Florence, among whom were Mei, Caccini, and
Vincent Galileo, the father of the astronomer. Vincent Galileo was
himself a discoverer, and helped, at the Count of Vernio's musical
meetings, to invent recitative--an invention of comparative
insignificance, but which in the system of modern opera plays as
important a part, perhaps, as the rotation of the earth does in that of
the celestial spheres.

Two other Florentine noblemen, Pietro Strozzi and Giacomo Corsi,
encouraged by the example of Bardi, and determined to give the musical
drama its fullest development in the new form that it had assumed,
engaged Ottavio Rinuccini, one of the first poets of the period, with
Peri and Caccini, two of the best musicians, to compose an opera which
was entitled _Dafne_, and was performed for the first time in the Corsi
Palace, at Florence, in 1597.

_Dafne_ appears to have been the first complete opera. It was considered
a masterpiece both from the beauty of the music and from the interest of
the drama; and on its model the same authors composed their opera of
_Euridice_, which was represented publicly at Florence on the occasion
of the marriage of Henry IV. of France, with Marie de Medicis, in 1600.
Each of the five acts of _Euridice_ concludes with a chorus, the
dialogue is in recitative, and one of the characters, "Tircis," sings an
air which is introduced by an instrumental prelude.

New music was composed to the libretto of _Dafne_ by Gagliano in 1608,
when the opera thus rearranged was performed at Mantua; and in 1627 the
same piece was translated by Opitz, "the father of the lyric stage in
Germany," as he is called, set to music by Schutz, and represented at
Dresden on the occasion of the marriage of the Landgrave of Hesse with
the sister of John-George I., Elector of Saxony. It was not, however,
until 1692 that Keiser appeared and perfected the forms of the German
Opera. Keiser was scarcely nineteen years of age when he produced at the
Court of Wolfenbüttel, _Ismene_ and _Basilius_, the former styled a
Pastoral, the latter an opera. It is said reproachfully, and as if
facetiously, of a common-place German musician in the present day, that
he is "of the Wolfenbüttel school," just as it is considered comic in
France to taunt a singer or player with having come from Carpentras. It
is curious that Wolfenbüttel in Germany, and Carpentras in France (as I
shall show in the next chapter), were the cradles of Opera in their
respective countries.

[Sidenote: MONTEVERDE, AND HIS ORCHESTRA.]

To return to the Opera in Italy. The earliest musical drama, then, with
choruses, recitatives, airs, and instrumental preludes was _Dafne_, by
Rinuccini as librettist, and Caccini and Peri as composers; but the
orchestra which accompanied this work consisted only of a harpsichord, a
species of guitar called a chitarone, a lyre, and a lute. When
Monteverde appeared, he introduced the modern scale, and changed the
whole harmonic system of his predecessors. He at the same time gave far
greater importance in his operas to the accompaniments, and increased to
a remarkable extent the number of musicians in the orchestra, which
under his arrangement included every kind of instrument known at the
time. Many of Monteverde's instruments are now obsolete. This composer,
the unacknowledged prototype of our modern cultivators of orchestral
effects, made use of a separate combination of instruments to announce
the entry and return of each personage in his operas; a dramatic means
employed afterwards by Hoffmann in his _Undine_,[3] and in the present
day with pretended novelty by Richard Wagner. This newest orchestral
device is also the oldest. The score of Monteverde's _Orfeo_, produced
in 1608, contains parts for two harpsichords, two lyres or violas with
thirteen strings, ten violas, three bass violas, two double basses, a
double harp (with two rows of strings), two French violins, besides
guitars, organs, a flute, clarions, and even trombones. The bass violas
accompanied Orpheus, the violas Eurydice, the trombones Pluto, the small
organ Apollo; Charon, strangely enough, sang to the music of the
guitar.

Monteverde, having become chapel master at the church of St. Mark,
produced at Venice _Arianna_, of which _Rinuccini_ had written the
libretto. This was followed by other works of the same kind, which were
produced with great magnificence, until the fame of the Venetian operas
spread throughout Italy, and by the middle of the seventeenth century
the new entertainment was established at Venice, Bologna, Rome, Turin,
Naples, and Messina. Popes, cardinals and the most illustrious nobles
took the Opera under their protection, and the dukes of Mantua and
Modena distinguished themselves by the munificence of their patronage.

Among the most celebrated of the female singers of this period were
Catarina Martinella of Rome, Archilei, Francesca Caccini (daughter of
the composer of that name and herself the author of an operatic score),
Adriana Baroni, of Mantua, and her daughter Leonora Baroni, whose
praises have been sung by Milton in his three Latin poems "Ad Leonoram
Romæ canentem."

[Sidenote: THE ITALIAN OPERA ABROAD.]

The Italian opera, as we shall afterwards see, was introduced into
France under the auspices of Cardinal Mazarin, who as the Abbé Mazarini,
had visited all the principal theatres of Italy by the express command
of Richelieu, and had studied their system with a view to the more
perfect representation of the cardinal-minister's tragedies. The
Italian Opera he introduced on his own account, and it was, on the
whole, very inhospitably received. Indeed, from the establishment of the
French Opera under Cambert and his successor Lulli, in the latter half
of the seventeenth century, until the end of the eighteenth, the French
were unable to understand or unwilling to acknowledge the immense
superiority of the Italians in everything pertaining to music. In 1752
Pergolese's _Serva Padrona_ was the cause of the celebrated dispute
between the partisans of French and Italian Opera, and the end of it was
that _La Serva Padrona_ was hissed, and the two singers who appeared in
it driven from Paris.

In England the Italian Opera was introduced in the first years of the
eighteenth century, and under Handel, who arrived in London in 1710,
attained the greatest perfection. Since the production of Handel's last
dramatic work, in 1740, the Italian Opera has continued to be
represented in London with scarcely noticeable intervals until the
present day, and, on the whole, with remarkable excellence.

Of English Opera a far less satisfactory account can be given. Its
traditions exist by no means in an unbroken line. Purcell wrote English
operas, and was far in advance of all the composers of his time, except,
no doubt, those of Italy, who, we must remember were his masters, though
he did not slavishly copy them. Since then, we have had composers (for
the stage, I mean) who have utterly failed; composers, like Dr. Arne,
who have written Anglo-Italian operas; composers of "ballad operas,"
which are not operas at all; composers of imitation-operas of all kinds;
and lastly, the composers of the present day, by whom the long
wished-for English Opera will perhaps at last be established.

In Germany, which, since the time of Handel and Hasse, has produced an
abundance of great composers for the stage, the national opera until
Gluck (including Gluck's earlier works), was imitated almost entirely
from that of Italy; and the Italian method of singing being the true and
only method has always prevailed.

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; whereas France persisted in
rejecting the musical teaching of a foreign land until the utter
insufficiency of her own operatic system became too evident to be any
longer denied. She remained separated from the rest of Europe in a
musical sense until the time of the Revolution, as she has since and
from very different reasons been separated from it politically.

[Sidenote: OPERA IN FRANCE.]

Nevertheless, the history of the Opera in France is of great interest,
like the history of every other art in that country which has engaged
the attention of its ingenious amateurs and critics. Only, for a
considerable period it must be treated apart.

In the course of this narrative sketch, which does not claim to be a
scientific history, I shall pursue, as far as possible, the
chronological method; but it is one which the necessities of the subject
will often cause me to depart from.




CHAPTER II.

INTRODUCTION OF THE OPERA INTO FRANCE AND ENGLAND.

     French Opera not founded by Lulli.--Lulli's elevation from the
     kitchen to the orchestra.--Lulli, M. de Pourceaugnac, and Louis
     XIV.--Buffoonery rewarded.--A disreputable tenor.--Virtuous
     precaution of a _prima donna_.--Orthography of a stage Queen.--A
     cure for love.--Mademoiselle de Maupin.--A composer of sacred
     music.--Food for cattle.--Cambert in England.--The first English
     Opera.--Music under Cromwell.--Music under Charles II.--Grabut and
     Dryden.--Purcell.


[Sidenote: ORFEO AND DON GIOVANNI.]

In a general view of the history of the Opera, the central figures would
be Gluck and Mozart. Before Gluck's time the operatic art was in its
infancy, and since the death of Mozart, no operas have been produced
equal to that composer's masterpieces. Mozart must have commenced his
_Idomeneo_, the first of his celebrated works, the very year that Gluck
retired to Vienna, after giving to the Parisians his _Iphigénie en
Tauride_; but, though contemporaries in the strict sense of the word,
Gluck and Mozart can scarcely be looked upon as belonging to the same
musical epoch. The compositions of the former, however immortal, have at
least an antique cast. Those of the latter have quite a modern air; and
it must appear to the audiences of the present day that far more than
twenty-three years separate _Orfeo_ from _Don Giovanni_, though that is
the precise interval which elapsed between the production of the opera
by which Gluck, and of the one by which Mozart, is best known in this
country. Gluck, after a century and a half of opera, so far surpassed
all his predecessors that no work by a composer anterior to him is ever
performed. Lulli wrote an _Armide_, which was followed by Rameau's
_Armide_, which was followed by Gluck's _Armide_; and Monteverde wrote
an _Orfeo_ a hundred and fifty years before Gluck produced the _Orfeo_
which was played only the other night at the Royal Italian Opera. The
_Orfeo_, then, of our existing operatic repertory takes us back through
its subject to the earliest of regular Italian operas, and similarly
Gluck, through his _Armide_ appears as the successor of Rameau, who was
the successor of Lulli, who usually passes for the founder of the Opera
in France, a country where it is particularly interesting to trace the
progress of that entertainment, inasmuch as it can be observed at one
establishment, which has existed continuously for two hundred years, and
which, under the title of Académie Royale, Académie Nationale, and
Académie Impériale (it has now gone by each of those names twice), has
witnessed the production of more operatic masterpieces than any other
theatre in any city in the world. To convince the reader of the truth of
this latter assertion I need only remind him of the works produced at
the Académie Royale by Gluck and Piccinni immediately before the
Revolution; and of the _Masaniello_ of Auber, the _William Tell_ of
Rossini, and the _Robert the Devil_ of Meyerbeer,--all written for the
said Académie within sixteen years of the termination of the Napoleonic
wars. Neither Naples, nor Milan, nor Prague, nor Vienna, nor Munich, nor
Dresden, nor Berlin, has individually seen the birth of so many great
operatic works by different masters, though, of course, if judged by the
number of great composers to whom they have given birth, both Germany
and Italy must be ranked infinitely higher than France. Indeed, if we
compare France with our own country, we find, it is true, that an opera
in the national language was established there earlier than here, though
in the first instance only as a private entertainment; but, on the other
hand, the French, until Gluck's time, had never any composers, native or
adopted, at all comparable to our Purcell, who produced his _King
Arthur_ as far back as 1691.

Lulli is generally said to have introduced Opera into France, and,
indeed, is represented in a picture, well known to Parisian opera-goers,
receiving a privilege from the hands of Louis XIV. as a reward and
encouragement for his services in that respect. This privilege, however,
was neither deserved nor obtained in the manner supposed. Cardinal
Mazarin introduced Italian Opera into Paris in 1645, when Lulli was only
twelve years of age; and the first French Opera, entitled Akébar, Roi de
Mogol, words and music by the Abbé Mailly, was brought out the year
following in the Episcopal Palace of Carpentras, under the direction of
Cardinal Bichi, Urban the Eighth's legate. Clement VII. had already
appeared as a librettist, and it has been said that Urban VIII. himself
recommended the importation of the Opera into France; so that the real
father of the lyric stage in that country was certainly not a scullion,
and may have been a Pope.

[Sidenote: THE ACADEMY OF MUSIC.]

The second French Opera was _La Pastorale en musique_, words by Perrin,
music by Cambert, which was privately represented at Issy; and the third
_Pomone_, also by Perrin and Cambert, which was publicly performed in
Paris in 1671--the year in which was produced, at the same theatre,
_Psyché_, a _tragédie-ballet_, by the two greatest dramatic poets France
has ever produced, Molière and Corneille. _Pomone_ was the first French
Opera heard by the Parisian public, and it was to the Abbé Perrin, its
author, and not to Lulli, that the patent of the Royal Academy of Music
was granted. A privilege for establishing an Academy of Music had been
conceded a hundred years before by Charles IX. to Antoine de Baif,--the
word "_Académie_" being used as an equivalent for "_Accademia_," the
Italian for concert. Perrin's license appears to have been a renewal, as
to form, of de Baif's, and thus originated the eminently absurd title
which the chief operatic theatre of Paris has retained ever since. The
Academy of Music is of course an academy in the sense in which the
Théâtre Français is a college of declamation, and the Palais Royal
Theatre a school of morality; but no one need seek to justify its title
because it is known to owe its existence to a confusion of terms.

Six French operas had been performed before Lulli, supported by Madame
de Montespan, succeeded in depriving Perrin of his "privilege," and
securing it for himself--at the very moment when Perrin and Cambert were
about to bring out their _Ariane_, of which the representation was
stopped. The success of Lulli's intrigue drove Cambert to London, where
he was received with much favour by Charles II., and appointed director
of the Court music, an office which he retained until his death. Lulli's
first opera, written in conjunction with Quinault, being the seventh
produced on the French stage, was _Cadmus and Hermione_ (1673).

[Sidenote: LULLI'S DISGRACE.]

The life of the fortunate, unscrupulous, but really talented scullion,
to whom is falsely attributed the honour of having founded the Opera in
France, has often been narrated, and for the most part very
inaccurately. Every one knows that he arrived from Italy to enter the
service of Mademoiselle de Montpensier as page, and that he was degraded
by that lady to the back kitchen: but it is not so generally known that
he was only saved through the influence of Madame de Montespan from a
shameful and horrible death on the Place de Grève, where his accomplice
was actually burned and his ashes thrown to the winds. Mademoiselle de
Montpensier, in one of her letters, speaks of Lulli asking for his
congé; but it is quite certain that he was dismissed, though it would be
as impossible to give a complete account of the causes of his dismissal
as to publish the original of the needlessly elaborate reply attributed
to a certain French general at Waterloo.[4] We may mention, however,
that Lulli had composed a song which was a good deal sung at the court,
and at which the Princess had every right to be offended. A French
dramatist has made this affair of the song the subject of a very
ingenious little piece, which was represented in English some years
since at the Adelphi Theatre, but in which the exact nature of the
objectionable composition is of course not indicated. Suffice it to say,
that Lulli was discharged, and that Louis XIV., hearing the libellous
air, and finding it to his taste, showed so little regard for
Mademoiselle de Montpensier's feelings, as to take the young musician
into his own service. There were no vacancies in the king's band, and it
was, moreover, a point of etiquette that the court-fiddlers should buy
their places; so to save trouble, and, perhaps, from a suspicion that
his ordinary players were a set of impostors, his majesty commissioned
Lulli to form a band of his own, to which the name of "_Les petits
violons du roi_" was given. The little fiddles soon became more expert
musicians than the big ones, and Louis was so pleased with the little
fiddle-in-chief, that he entrusted him with the superintendence of the
music of his ballets. These ballets, which corresponded closely enough
to our English masques, were entertainments not of dancing only, but
also of vocal and instrumental music; the name was apparently derived
from the Italian _ballata_, the parent of our own "ballad."

Lulli also composed music for the interludes and songs in Molière's
comedies, in which he sometimes appeared himself as a singer, and even
as a burlesque actor. Once, when the musical arrangements were not quite
ready for a ballet, in which the king was to play four parts--the House
of France, Pluto, Mars and the Sun--he replied, on receiving a command
to proceed with the piece--"_Le roi est le maitre; il peut attendre tant
qu'il lui plaira._" His majesty did not, as I have seen it stated, laugh
at the facetious impertinence of his musician. On the contrary, he was
seriously offended; and great was Lulli's alarm when he found that
neither the House of France, nor Pluto, nor Mars, nor the Sun, would
smile at the pleasantries with which, as the performance went on, he
endeavoured to atone for his unbecoming speech. The wrath of the Great
Monarch was not to be appeased, and Lulli's enemies already began to
rejoice at his threatened downfall.

[Sidenote: LULLI A BUFFOON.]

Fortunately, Molière was at Versailles. Lulli asked him at the
conclusion of the ballet to announce a performance of _M. de
Pourceaugnac_, a piece which never failed to divert Louis; and it was
arranged that just before the rise of the curtain Molière should excuse
himself, on the score of a sudden indisposition, from appearing in the
principal character. When there seemed to be no chance of _M. de
Pourceaugnac_ being played, Lulli, that the king might not be
disappointed, nobly volunteered to undertake the part of the hero, and
exerted himself in an unprecedented manner to do it justice. But his
majesty, who generally found the troubles of the Limousin gentleman so
amusing, on this occasion did not even smile. The great scene was about
to begin; the scene in which the apothecaries, armed with their terrible
weapons, attack M. de Pourceaugnac and chase him round the stage. Louis
looked graver than ever. Then the comedian, as a last hope, rushed from
the back of the stage to the foot lights, sprang into the orchestra,
alighted on the harpsichord, and smashed it into a thousand pieces. "By
this fall he rose." Probably he hurt himself, but no matter; on looking
round he saw the Great Monarch in convulsions of laughter. Encouraged by
his success, he climbed back through the prompter's box on to the stage;
the royal mirth increased, and Lulli was now once more reinstated in the
good graces of his sovereign.

Molière had a high opinion of Lulli's facetious powers. "_Fais nous
rire, Baptiste_," he would say, and it cannot have been any sort of joke
that would have excited the laughter of the greatest of comic writers.
Nevertheless, he fell out with Lulli when the latter attained the
"privilege" of the Opera, and, profiting by the monopoly which it
secured to him, forbade the author of _Tartuffe_ to introduce more than
two singers in his interludes, or to employ more than six violins in his
orchestra. Accordingly, Molière entrusted the composition of the music
for the _Malade Imaginaire_, to Charpentier. The songs and symphonies of
all his other pieces, with the exception of _Mélicerte_, were composed
by Lulli.

The story of Lulli's obtaining letters of nobility through the
excellence of his buffoonery in the part of the Muphti, in the
_Bourgeois Gentilhomme_ has often been told. This was in 1670, but once
a noble, and director of the Royal Academy of Music, he showed but
little disposition to contribute to the diversion of others, even by the
exercise of his legitimate art. Not only did he refuse to play the
violin, but he would not even have one in his house. To overcome Lulli's
repugnance in this respect, Marshal de Gramont hit upon a very ingenious
plan. He used to make one of his servants who possessed the gift of
converting music into noise, play the violin in Lulli's presence. Upon
this, the highly susceptible musician would snatch the instrument from
the valet's hands, and restore the murdered melody to life and beauty;
then, excited by the pleasure of producing music, he forgot all around
him, and continued to play to the great delight of the marshal.

Many curious stories are told of Lafontaine's want of success as a
librettist; Lulli refused three of his operas, one after the other,
_Daphné_, _Astrée_, and _Acis et Galathée_--the _Acis et Galathée_ set
to music by Lulli being the work of Campistron. At the first
representation of _Astrée_, of which the music had been written by
Colasse (a composer who imitated and often plagiarised from Lulli),
Lafontaine was present in a box behind some ladies who did not know him.
He kept exclaiming every moment, "Detestable! detestable!"

[Sidenote: LAFONTAINE'S IMPARTIALITY.]

Tired of hearing the same thing repeated so many times, the ladies at
last turned round and said, "It is really not so bad. The author is a
man of considerable wit; it is written by M. de la Fontaine."

"_Cela ne vaut pas le diable_," replied the _librettist_, "and this
Lafontaine of whom you speak is an ass. I am Lafontaine, and ought to
know."

After the first act he left the theatre and went into the Café Marion,
where he fell asleep. One of his friends came in, and surprised to see
him, said--"M. de la Fontaine! How is this? Ought you not to be at the
first performance of your opera?"

The author awoke, and said, with a yawn--"I've been; and the first act
was so dull that I had not the courage to wait for the other. I admire
the patience of these Parisians!"

       *       *       *       *       *

Compare this with the similar conduct of an English humourist, Charles
Lamb, who, meeting with no greater success as a dramatist than
Lafontaine, was equally astonished at the patience of the public, and
remained in the pit to hiss his own farce.

       *       *       *       *       *

Colasse, Lafontaine's composer, and Campistron, one of Lulli's
librettists--when Quinault was not in the way--occasionally worked
together, and with no very favourable result. Hence, mutual reproaches,
each attributing the failure of the opera to the stupidity of the other.
This suggested the following epigram, which, under similar
circumstances, has been often imitated:--

        "Entre Campistron et Colasse,
        Grand débat s'émeut au Parnasse,
    Sur ce que l'opéra n'a pas un sort heureux.
    De son mauvais succès nul ne se croit coupable.
    L'un dit que la musique est plate et misérable,
    L'autre que la conduite et les vers sont affreux;
    Et le grand Apollon, toujours juge équitable,
        Trouve qu'ils ont raison tous deux."

Quinault was by far the most successful of Lulli's librettists, in spite
of the contempt with which his verses were always treated by Boileau.
Boileau liked Lulli's music, but when he entered the Opera, and was
asked where he would sit, he used to reply, "Put me in some place where
I shall not be able to hear the words."

[Sidenote: THE FIDDLE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.]

Lulli must have had sad trouble with his orchestra, for in his time a
violinist was looked upon as merely an adjunct to a dancing-master.
There was a king of the fiddles, without whose permission no cat-gut
could be scraped; and in selling his licenses to dancing-masters and the
musicians of ball-rooms, the ruler of the bows does not appear to have
required any proof of capacity from his clients. Even the simple
expedient of shifting was unknown to Lulli's violinists, and for years
after his death, to reach the C above the line was a notable feat. The
pit quite understood the difficulty, and when the dreaded _démanchement_
had to be accomplished, would indulge in sarcastic shouts of "_gare
l'ut! gare l'ut!_"

The violin was not in much repute in the 17th, and still less in the
16th, century. The lute was a classical instrument; the harp was the
instrument of the Troubadours; but the fiddle was fit only for servants,
and fiddlers and servants were classed together.

"Such a one," says Malherbe, "who seeks for his ancestors among heroes
is the son of a lacquey or a fiddler."

Brantôme, relating the death of Mademoiselle de Limeuil, one of the
Queen's maids of honour, who expired, poor girl, to a violin
accompaniment, expresses himself as follows:--

"When the hour of her death had arrived, she sent for her valet, such as
all the maids of honour have; and he was called Julien, and played very
well on the violin. 'Julien,' said she, 'take your violin and play to me
continually, until you see me dead, the _Defeat of the Swiss_,[5] as
well as you are able; and when you are at the passage _All is lost_,
sound it four or five times as piteously as you can; which the other
did, while she herself assisted him with her voice. She recited it
twice, and then turning on the other side of her pillow said to her
companions, 'All is lost this time, as well I know,' and thus died."

These musical valets were as much slaves as the ancient flute players of
the Roman nobles, and were bought, sold, and exchanged like horses and
dogs. When their services were not required at home, masters and
mistresses who were generously inclined would allow their fiddlers to go
out and play in the streets on their own account.

       *       *       *       *       *

Strange tales are told of the members of Lulli's company. Duménil, the
tenor, used to steal jewellery from the soprano and contralto of the
troop, and get intoxicated with the baritone. This eccentric virtuoso is
said to have drunk six bottles of champagne every night he performed,
and to have improved gradually until about the fifth. Duménil, after one
of his voyages to England, which he visited several times, lost his
voice. Then, seeing no reason why he should moderate his intemperance at
all, he gave himself up unrestrainedly to drinking, and died.

[Sidenote: OPERATIC ORTHOGRAPHY.]

Mdlle. Desmâtins, the original representative of _Armide_ was chiefly
celebrated for her beauty, her love of good living, her corpulence, and
her bad grammar. She it was who wrote the celebrated letter
communicating to a friend the death of her child, "_Notre anfan ai
maure, vien de boneure, le mien ai de te voire._" Mlle. Desmâtins took
so much pleasure in representing royal personages that she assumed the
(theatrical) costume and demeanour of a queen in her own household, sat
on a throne, and made her attendants serve her on their knees. Another
vocalist, Marthe le Rochois, accused of grave flirtation with a bassoon,
justified herself by showing a promise of marriage, which the gallant
instrumentalist had written on the back of an ace of spades.

The Opera singers of this period were not particularly well paid, and
history relates that Mlles. Aubry and Verdier, being engaged for the
same line of business, had to live in the same room and sleep in the
same bed.

Marthe Le Rochois was fond of giving advice to her companions. "Inspire
yourself with the situation," she said to Desmâtins, who had to
represent Medea abandoned by Jason; "fancy yourself in the poor woman's
place. If you were deserted by a lover, whom you adored," added Marthe,
thinking, no doubt, of the bassoon, "what should you do?" "I should look
out for another," replied the ingenuous girl.

But by far the most distinguished operatic actress of this period was
Mlle. de Maupin, now better known through Théophile Gauthier's
scandalous, but brilliant and vigorously written romance, than by her
actual adventures and exploits, which, however, were sufficiently
remarkable. Among the most amusing of her escapades, were her assaults
upon Duménil and Thévenard, the before-mentioned tenor and baritone of
the Academie. Dressed in male attire she went up to the former one night
in the Place des Victoires, caned him, deprived him of his watch and
snuff-box, and the next day produced the trophies at the theatre just as
the plundered vocalist was boasting that he had been attacked by three
robbers, and had put them all to flight. She is said to have terrified
the latter to such a degree that he remained three weeks hiding from her
in the Palais Royal.

Mlle. de Maupin was in many respects the Lola Montes of her day, but
with more beauty, more talent, more power, and more daring. When she
appeared as Minerva, in Lulli's _Cadmus_, and taking off her helmet to
the public, showed all her beautiful light brown hair, which hung in
luxuriant tresses over her shoulders, the audience were in ecstacies of
delight. With less talent, and less powers of fascination, she would
infallibly have been executed for the numerous fatal duels in which she
was engaged, and might even have been burnt alive for invading the
sanctity of a convent at Avignon, to say nothing of her attempting to
set fire to it. Perhaps it would be more correct to say that Lola Montes
was the Mlle. Maupin of _her_ day; a Maupin of a century which is
moderate in its passions and its vices as in other things.

[Sidenote: A COMPOSER OF SACRED MUSIC.]

Moreau, the successor of Lulli, is chiefly known as having written the
music for the choruses of Racine's _Esther_, (1689). These choruses,
re-arranged by Perne, were performed in 1821, at the Conservatoire of
Paris, and were much applauded. Racine, in his preface to _Esther_,
says, "I cannot finish this preface without rendering justice to the
author of the music, and confessing frankly that his (choral) songs
formed one of the greatest attractions of the piece. All connoisseurs
are agreed that for a long time no airs have been heard more touching,
or more suitable to the words." Nevertheless, Madame de Maintenon's
special composer was not eminently religious in his habits. The musician
whose hymns were sung by the daughters of Sion and of St. Cyr sought his
inspiration at a tavern in the Rue St. Jacques, in company with the poet
Lainez and with most of the singers and dancers of the period. No member
of the Opera rode past the Cabaret de la Barre Royale without tying his
horse up in the yard and going in for a moment to have a word and a
glass with Moreau. Sometimes the moment became an hour, sometimes
several. The horses of Létang and Favier, dancers at the Académie, after
being left eight hours in the court-yard without food, gnawed through
their bridles, and, looking no doubt for the stable, found their way
into a bed-room, where they devoured the contents of a dilapidated straw
mattrass. "We must all live," said Lainez, when he saw a mattrass
charged for among the items of the repast, and he hastened to offer the
unfortunate animals a ration of wine.

       *       *       *       *       *

[Sidenote: FRENCH MUSIC IN ENGLAND.]

When Cambert arrived in London he found Charles II. and his Court fully
disposed to patronise any sort of importation from France. Naturally,
then, the founder of French Opera was well received. Even Lock, in many
of his pieces, had imitated the French style; and though he had been
employed to compose the music for the public entry of Charles II., at
the Restoration, and was afterwards appointed composer in ordinary to
His Majesty, Cambert, immediately on his arrival, was made master of the
king's band; and two years afterwards an English version of his
_Ariadne_ was produced. "You knew Cambert," says de Vizé, in _Le Mercure
Galant_; "he has just died in London (1677), where he received many
favours from the King of England and from the greatest noblemen of his
Court, who had a high opinion of his genius. What they have seen of his
works has not belied the reputation he had acquired in France. It is to
him we owe the establishment of the operas that are now represented. The
music of those of _Pomona_, and of the _Pains and Pleasures of Love_, is
by him, and since that time we have had no recitative in France that has
appeared new." In several English books, Grabut, who accompanied
Cambert to England, is said to have arranged the music of _Ariadne_, and
even to have composed it; but this is manifestly an error. This same
Grabut wrote the music to Dryden's celebrated political opera _Albion
and Albanius_, which was performed at the Duke's Theatre in 1685, and of
which the representations were stopped by the news of Monmouth's
invasion. Purcell, who was only fifteen years of age when _Ariadne_ was
produced, was now twenty-six, and had written a great deal of admirable
dramatic music. Probably the public thought that to him, and not to the
Frenchman, might have been confided the task of setting _Albion and
Albanius_, for in the preface to that work Dryden says, as if
apologetically, that "during the rehearsal the king had publicly
declared more than once, that the composition and choruses were more
just and more beautiful than any he had heard in England." Then after a
warm commendation of Grabut Dryden adds, "This I say, not to flatter
him, but to do him right; because among some English musicians, and
their scholars, who are sure to judge after them, the imputation of
being a Frenchman is enough to make a party who maliciously endeavour to
decry him. But the knowledge of Latin and Italian poets, both of which
he possesses, besides his skill in music, and his being acquainted with
all the performances of the French operas, adding to these the good
sense to which he is born, have raised him to a degree above any man who
shall pretend to be his rival on our stage. When any of our countrymen
excel him, I shall be glad, for the sake of Old England, to be shown my
error: in the meantime, let virtue be commended, though in the person of
a stranger."

Neither Grabut nor Cambert was the first composer who produced a
complete opera in England. During the Commonwealth, in 1656, Sir William
Davenant had obtained permission to open a theatre for the performance
of operas, in a large room, at the back of Rutland House, in the upper
end of Aldersgate Street; and, long before, the splendid court masques
of James I. and Charles I. had given opportunities for the development
of recitative, which was first composed in England by an Italian, named
Laniere, an eminent musician, painter and engraver. The Opera had been
established in Italy since the beginning of the century, and we have
seen that in 1607, Monteverde wrote his _Orfeo_ for the court of Mantua.
But it was still known in England and France only through the accounts,
respectively, of Evelyn and of St. Evrémond.

[Sidenote: THE FIRST ENGLISH OPERA.]

The first English opera produced at Sir William Davenant's theatre, the
year of its opening, was _The Siege of Rhodes_, "made a representation
by the art of perspective in scenes, and the story sung in recitative
music." There were five changes of scene, according to the ancient
dramatic distinctions made for time, and there were seven performers.
The part of "Solyman" was taken by Captain Henry Cook, that of "Ianthe"
by Mrs. Coleman, who appears to have been the first actress on the
English stage--in the sense in which Heine was the first poet of his
century (having been born on the 1st of January, 1800)[6] and
Beaumarchais the first poet in Paris (to a person entering the city from
the Porte St. Antoine).[7] The remaining five parts were "doubled." That
of the "Admiral" was taken by Mr. Peter Rymon, and Matthew Lock, the
future composer of the music to _Macbeth_; that of "Mustapha," by Mr.
Thomas Blagrave, and Henry Purcell, the father of the composer of _King
Arthur_, and himself an accomplished musician. The vocal music of the
first and fifth "entries" or acts, was composed by Henry Lawes; that of
the second and third, by Captain Henry Cook, afterwards master of the
children of the Chapel Royal; that of the fourth, by Lock. The
instrumental music was by Dr. Charles Coleman and George Hudson, and was
performed by an orchestra of six musicians.

The first English opera then was produced, ten years later than the
first French opera; but the _Siege of Rhodes_ was performed publicly,
whereas, it was not until fifteen years afterwards (1671) that the first
public performance of a French opera (Cambert's _Pomone_) took place.
Ordinances for the suppression of stage plays had been in force in
England since 1642, and in 1643, a tract was printed under the title of
_The Actor's Remonstrance_, showing to what distress the musicians of
the theatre had been already reduced. The writer says, "But musike that
was held so delectable and precious that they scorned to come to a
tavern under twenty shillings salary for two hours, now wander with
their instruments under their cloaks (I mean such as have any) to all
houses of good fellowship, saluting every room where there is company
with 'will you have any musike, gentlemen.'" In 1648, moreover, a
provost-marshal was appointed with power to seize upon all ballad
singers, and to suppress stage plays.

Nevertheless, Oliver Cromwell was a great lover of music. He is said to
have "entertained the most skilful in that science in his pay and
family;" and it is known that he engaged Hingston, a celebrated
musician, formerly in the service of Charles, at a salary of one hundred
a-year--the Hingston, at whose house Sir Roger l'Estrange was playing,
and continued to play when Oliver entered the room, which gained for
this _virtuoso_ the title of "Oliver's fiddler." Antony à Wood, also
tells a story of Cromwell's love of music. James Quin, one of the senior
students of Christ Church, with a bass voice, "very strong and exceeding
trouling," had been turned out of his place by the visitors, but, "being
well acquainted with some great men of those times that loved music,
they introduced him into the company of Oliver Cromwell, the Protector,
who loved a good voice and instrumental music well. He heard him sing
with great delight, liquored him with sack, and in conclusion, said,
'Mr. Quin, you have done well, what shall I do for you?' To which Quin
made answer, 'That your highness would be pleased to restore me to my
student's place,' which he did accordingly." But the best proof that can
be given of Oliver Cromwell's love for music is the simple fact that,
under his government, and with his special permission, the Opera was
founded in this country.

[Sidenote: CROMWELL'S LOVE OF MUSIC.]

We have seen that in Charles II's reign, the court reserved its
patronage almost exclusively for French music, or music in the French
style. When Cambert arrived in London, our Great Purcell (born, 1659)
was still a child. He produced his first opera, _Dido and Æneas_, the
year of Cambert's death (1677); but, although, in the meanwhile, he
wrote a quantity of vocal and instrumental music of all kinds, and
especially for the stage, it was not until after the death of Charles
that he associated himself with Dryden in the production of those
musical dramas (not operas in the proper sense of the word) by which he
is chiefly known.

In 1690, Purcell composed music for _The Tempest_, altered and
shamefully disfigured by Dryden and Davenant.

[Sidenote: PURCELL.]

In 1691, _King Arthur_, which contains Purcell's finest music, was
produced with immense success. The war-song of the Britons, _Come if you
Dare_, and the concluding duet and chorus, _Britons strike Home_, have
survived the rest of the work. The former piece in particular is well
known to concert-goers of the present day, from the excellent singing
of Mr. Sims Reeves. Purcell died at the age of thirty-six, the age at
which Mozart and Raphael were lost to the world, and has not yet found a
successor. He was not only the most original, and the most dramatic, but
also the most thoroughly English of our native composers. In the
dedication of the music of the _Prophetess_ to the Duke of Somerset,
Purcell himself says, "Music is yet but in its nonage, a forward child,
which gives hope of what it may be hereafter in England, when the
masters of it shall find more encouragement. 'Tis now learning Italian,
which is its best master, and studying a little of the French air to
give it somewhat more of gaiety and fashion." Here Purcell spoke in all
modesty, for though his style may have been formed in some measure on
French models, "there is," says Dr. Burney, "a latent power and force in
his expression of English words, whatever be the subject, that will make
an unprejudiced native of this island feel more than all the elegance,
grace and refinement of modern music, less happily applied, can do; and
this pleasure is communicated to us, not by the symmetry or rhythm of
modern melody, but by his having tuned to the true accents of our mother
tongue, those notes of passion which an inhabitant of this island would
breathe in such situations as the words describe. And these indigenous
expressions of passion Purcell had the power to enforce by the energy of
modulation, which, on some occasions, was bold, affecting and sublime.
Handel," he adds, "who flourished in a less barbarous age for his art,
has been acknowledged Purcell's superior in many particulars; but in
none more than the art and grandeur of his choruses, the harmony and
texture of his organ fugues, as well as his great style of concertos;
the ingenuity of his accompaniments to his songs and choruses; and even
in the general melody of the airs themselves; yet, in the accent,
passion and expression of _English words_, the vocal music of Purcell
is, sometimes, to my feelings, as superior to Handel's as an original
poem to a translation."




CHAPTER III.

ON THE NATURE OF THE OPERA, AND ITS MERITS AS COMPARED WITH OTHER FORMS
OF THE DRAMA.

     Opera admired for its unintelligibility.--The use of words in
     opera.--An inquisitive amateur.--New version of a chorus in Robert
     le Diable.--Strange readings of the _Credo_ by two chapel
     masters.--Dramatic situations and effects peculiar to the
     Opera.--Pleasantries directed against the Opera; their antiquity
     and harmlessness.--_Les Opéras_ by St. Evrémond.--Beaumarchais's
     _mot_.--Addison on the Italian Opera in England.--Swift's
     epigram.--Béranger on the decline of the drama.--What may be seen
     at the Opera.


[Sidenote: UNINTELLIGIBILITY OF OPERA.]

When Sir William Davenant obtained permission from Cromwell to open his
theatre for the performance of operas, Antony à Wood wrote that, "Though
Oliver Cromwell had now prohibited all other theatrical representations,
he allowed of this because being in an unknown language it could not
corrupt the morals of the people." Thereupon it has been imagined that
Antony à Wood must have supposed Sir William Davenant's performances to
have been in the Italian tongue, as if he could not have regarded music
as an unknown language, and have concluded that a drama conducted in
music would for that reason be unintelligible. Nevertheless, in the
present day we have a censor who refuses to permit the representation
of _La Dame aux Camélias_ in English, or even in French,[8] but who
tolerates the performance of _La Traviata_, (which, I need hardly say,
is the _Dame aux Camélias_ set to music) in Italian, and, I believe,
even in English; thinking, no doubt, like Antony à Wood, that in an
operatic form it cannot be understood, and therefore cannot corrupt the
morals of the people. Since Antony à Wood's time a good deal of stupid,
unmeaning verse has been written in operas, and sometimes when the words
have not been of themselves unintelligible, they have been rendered
nearly so by the manner in which they have been set to music, to say
nothing of the final obscurity given to them by the imperfect
enunciation of the singers. The mere fact, however, of a dramatic piece
being performed in music does not make it unintelligible, but, on the
contrary, increases the sphere of its intelligibility, giving it a more
universal interest and rendering it an entertainment appreciable by
persons of all countries. 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. They have even been known to
complain during or after the performance that they could not hear the
words, as if it were through the mere logical meaning of the words that
the composer proposed to excite the emotion of the audience. The only
pity is that it is necessary in an opera to have words at all, but it is
evident that a singer could not enter into the spirit of a dramatic
situation if he had a mere string of meaningless syllables or any sort
of inappropriate nonsense to utter. He must first produce an illusion on
himself, or he will produce none on the audience, and he must,
therefore, fully inspire himself with the sentiment, logical as well as
musical, of what he has to sing. Otherwise, all we want to know about
the words of _Casta diva_ (to take examples from the most popular, as
also one of the very finest of Italian operas) is that it is a prayer to
a goddess; of the Druids' chorus, that it is chorus of Druids; of the
trio, that "Norma" having confronted "Pollio" with "Adalgisa," is
reproaching him indignantly and passionately with his perfidy; of the
duet that "Norma" is confiding her children to "Adalgisa's" care; of the
scene with "Pollio," that "Norma" is again reproaching him, but in a
different spirit, with sadness and bitterness, and with the compressed
sorrow of a woman who is wounded to the heart and must soon die. I may
be in error, however, for though I have seen _Norma_ fifty times, I have
never examined the _libretto_, and of the whole piece know scarcely more
than the two words which I have already paraded before the
public--"_Casta Diva._"

[Sidenote: WONDERFUL INSTANCE OF CURIOSITY.]

One night, at the Royal Italian Opera, when Mario was playing the part
of the "Duke of Mantua" in _Rigoletto_, and was singing the commencement
of the duet with "Gilda," a man dressed in black and white like every
one else, said to me gravely, "I do not understand Italian. Can you tell
me what he is saying to her?"

"He is telling her that he loves her," I answered briefly.

"What is he saying now?" asked this inquisitive amateur two minutes
afterwards.

"He is telling her that he loves her," I repeated.

"Why, he said that before!" objected this person who had apparently come
to the opera with the view of gaining some kind of valuable information
from the performers. Poor Bosio was the "Gilda," but my horny-eared
neighbour wondered none the less that the Duke could not say "I love
you," in three words.

"He will say it again," I answered, "and then she will say it, and then
they will say it together; indeed, they will say nothing else for the
next five minutes, and when you hear them exclaim 'addio' with one
voice, and go on repeating it, it will still mean the same thing."

What benighted amateur was this who wanted to know the words of a
beautiful duet; and is there much difference between such a one and the
man who would look at the texture of a canvas to see what the painting
on it was worth?

Let it be admitted that as a rule no opera is intelligible without a
libretto; but is a drama always intelligible without a play-bill? A
libretto, for general use, need really be no larger than an ordinary
programme; and it would be a positive advantage if it contained merely a
sketch of the plot with the subject, and perhaps the first line of all
the principal songs.

[Sidenote: IMITATIVE MUSIC.]

Then the foolish amateur would not run the risk of having his attention
diverted from the music by the words, and would be more likely to give
himself up to the enjoyment of the opera in a rational and legitimate
manner. Another advantage of keeping the words from the public would be,
that composers, full of the grossest prose, but priding themselves on
their fancy, would at last see the inutility as well as the pettiness of
picking out one particular word in a line, and "illustrating" it: thus
imitating a sound when their aim should be to depict a sentiment. Even
the illustrious Purcell has sinned in this respect, and Meyerbeer,
innumerable times, though always displaying remarkable ingenuity, and as
much good taste as is compatible with an error against both taste and
reason. It is a pity that great musicians should descend to such
anti-poetical, and, indeed, nonsensical trivialities; but when inferior
ones are unable to let a singer wish she were a bird, without imitating
a bird's chirruping on the piccolo, or allude in the most distant manner
to the trumpet's sound, without taking it as a hint to introduce a short
flourish on that instrument, I cannot help thinking of those
literal-minded pictorial illustrators who follow a precisely analogous
process, and who, for example, in picturing the scene in which "Macbeth"
exclaims--"Throw physic to the dogs," would represent a man throwing
bottles of medicine to a pack of hounds. What a treat, by the way, it
would be to hear a setting of Othello's farewell to war by a determined
composer of imitative picturesque music! How "ear-piercing" would be his
fifes! How "spirit-stirring" his drums.

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. Even the
chorus should have tolerable verses to sing, though no one would be
likely ever to hear them. Indeed, it is said that at the Grand Opera of
Paris, by a tradition now thirty years old, the opening chorus in
_Robert le Diable_ is always sung to those touching lines--which I
confess I never heard on the other side of the orchestra:--

    La sou-| pe aux choux | se fait dans la mar |-mite
    Dans la | marmi-|-te on fait la soupe aux | choux.

I have said nothing about the duty of the composer in selecting his
libretto and setting it to music, but of course if he be a man of taste
he will not willingly accept a collection of nonsense verses. English
composers, however, have not much choice in this respect, and all we can
ask of them is that they will do their best with what they have been
able to obtain; not indulging in too many repetitions, and not tiring
the singer and provoking such of the audience as may wish to "catch" the
words by setting more than half a dozen notes to the same monosyllable
especially if the monosyllable occurs in the middle of a line, and the
vowel e, or worse still, i, in the middle of the monosyllable. One of
our most eminent composers, Mr. Vincent Wallace, has given us a striking
example of the fault I am speaking of in his well-known trio--"Turn on
old Time thy hour-glass" (_Maritana_) in which, according to the music,
the scanning of the first half line is as follows:--

    Tŭrn ōn | ŏld Tī | ĭ-ī || ĭ-ĭ-ĭ--ime | &c.

[Sidenote: WORDS FOR MUSIC.]

To be sure Time is infinite, but seven sounds do not convey the notion
of infinity; and even if they did, it would not be any the more pleasant
for a singer to have to take a five note leap, and then execute five
other notes on a vowel which cannot be uttered without closing the
throat. If I had been in Mr. Vincent Wallace's place, I should, at all
events, have insisted on Mr. Fitzball making one change. Instead of "Old
Time," he should have inserted "Old Parr."

    Tŭrn ōn | ŏld Pā-| ă-ā || ă-ă-ă-arr | &c.,

would not have been more intelligible to the audience than--"Turn on old
Ti-i-i-i-i-i-ime, &c., and it would have been a thousand times easier to
sing. Nor in spite of the little importance I attach to the phraseology
of the libretto when listening to "music in a dramatic form," would I,
if I were a composer, accept such a line as--

    "When the proud land of Poland was ploughed by the hoof,"

with a suspension of sense after the word hoof. No; the librettist might
take his hoof elsewhere. It should not appear in _my_ Opera; at least,
not in lieu of a plough. Mr. Balfe should tell such poets to keep such
ploughs for themselves.

    Sic vos _pro_ vobis fertis aratra boves,

he might say to them.

The singer ought certainly to understand what he is singing, and still
more certainly should the composer understand what he is composing; but
the sight of Latin reminds me that both have sometimes failed to do so,
and from no one's fault but their own. Jomelli used to tell a story of
an Italian chapel-master, who gave to one of his solo singers the phrase
_Genitum non factum_, to which the chorus had to reply _Factum non
genitum_. This transposition seemed ingenious and picturesque to the
composer, and suited a contrast of rhythm which he had taken great pains
to produce. It was probably due only to the bad enunciation of the
choristers that he was not burned alive.

Porpora, too, narrowly escaped the terrors of the inquisition; and but
for his avowed and clearly-proved ignorance of Latin would have made a
bad end of it, for a similar, though not quite so ludicrous a blunder as
the one perpetrated by Jomelli's friend. He had been accustomed to add
_non_ and _si_ to the verses of his libretto when the music required it,
and in setting the creed found it convenient to introduce a _non_. This
novel version of the Belief commenced--_Credo, non credo, non credo in
Deum_, and it was well for Porpora that he was able to convince the
inquisitors of his inability to understand it.

[Sidenote: UNNATURALNESS OF OPERA.]

Another chapel-master of more recent times is said, in composing a mass,
to have given a delightfully pastoral character to his "Agnus Dei." To
him "a little learning" had indeed proved "a dangerous thing." He had,
somehow, ascertained that "agnus" meant "lamb," and had forthwith gone
to work with pipe and cornemuse to give appropriate "picturesqueness" to
his accompaniments.

Besides accusations of unintelligibility and of _contra-sense_ (as for
instance when a girl sentenced to death sings in a lively strain), the
Opera has been attacked as essentially absurd, and it is satisfactory to
know that these attacks date from its first introduction into England
and France. To some it appears monstrous that men and women should be
represented on the stage singing, when it is notorious that in actual
life they communicate in the speaking voice. Opera was declared to be
unnatural as compared with drama. In other words, it was thought natural
that Desdemona should express her grief in melodious verse, but
unnatural that she should do so in pure melody. (For the sake of the
comparison I must suppose Rossini's _Otello_ to have been written long
before its time). Persons, with any pretence to reason, have long ceased
to urge such futile objections against a delightful entertainment which,
as I shall endeavour to show, is in some respects the finest form the
drama has assumed. Gresset answered these music-haters well in his
_Discours sur l'harmonie_.--"After all," he says, "if we study nature do
we not find more fidelity to appropriateness at the Opera than on the
tragic stage where the hero speaks the language of declamatory poetry?
Has not harmony always been much better able than simple declamation to
imitate the true tones of the passions, deep sighs, sobs, bursts of
grief, languishing tenderness, interjections of despair, the inflexions
of pathos, and all the energy of the heart?"

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. The form is nothing. Give us the true
expression of natural emotion and all the rest will seem natural enough.
Only it would be as well to introduce as many dancing characters and
dancing situations as possible in the _ballet_--and to remember in
particular that Roman soldiers could not with propriety figure in one;
for a ballet on the subject of "Les Horaces" was once actually produced
in France, in which the Horatii and the Curiatii danced a double _pas de
trois_; and so in the tragedy the chief passages ought not to be London
coal-heavers or Parisian water-carriers; and similarly in the Opera,
scenes and situations should be avoided which in no way suggest singing.

[Sidenote: THE OPERATIC CHORUS.]

And let me now inform the ignorant opponents of the Opera, that there
are certain grand dramatic effects attainable on the lyric stage, which,
without the aid of music, could not possibly be produced. Music has
often been defined; here is a new definition of it. It is _the language
of masses_--the only language that masses can speak and be understood.
On the old stage a crowd could not cry "Down with the tyrant!" or "We
will!" or even "Yes," and "No," with any intelligibility. There is some
distance between this state of things and the "Blessing of the daggers"
in the _Huguenots_, or the prayer of the Israelites in _Moses_. On the
old stage we could neither have had the prayer (unless it were recited
by a single voice, which would be worse than nothing) before the
passage, nor the thanksgiving, which, in the Opera, is sung immediately
after the Red Sea has been crossed; but above all we could not obtain
the sublime effect produced by the contrast between the two songs; the
same song, and yet how different! the difference between minor and
major, between a psalm of humble supplication and a hymn of jubilant
gratitude. This is the change of key at which, according to Stendhal,
the women of Rome fainted in such numbers. It cannot be heard without
emotion, even in England, and we do not think any one, even a professed
enemy of Opera, would ask himself during the performance of the prayer
in _Mosé_, whether it was natural or not that the Israelites should sing
either before or after crossing the Red Sea.

Again, how could the animation of the market scene in _Masaniello_ be
rendered so well as by means of music? In concerted pieces, moreover,
the Opera possesses a means of dramatic effect quite as powerful and as
peculiar to itself as its choruses. The finest situation in _Rigoletto_
(to take an example from one of the best known operas of the day) is
that in which the quartet occurs. Here, three persons express
simultaneously the different feelings which are excited in the breast of
each by the presence of a fourth in the house of an assassin, while the
cause of all this emotion is gracefully making love to one of the three,
who is the assassin's sister. The amorous fervour of the "Duke," the
careless gaiety of "Maddalena," the despair of "Gilda," the vengeful
rage of "Rigoletto," are all told most dramatically in the combined
songs of the four personages named, while the spectator derives an
additional pleasure from the art by which these four different songs are
blended into harmony. A magnificent quartet, of which, however, the
model existed long before in _Don Giovanni_.

All this is, of course, very unnatural. It would be so much more natural
that the "Duke of Mantua" should first make a long speech to
"Maddalena;" that "Maddalena" should then answer him; that afterwards
both should remain silent while "Gilda," of whose presence outside the
tavern they are unaware, sobs forth her lamentations at the perfidy of
her betrayer; and that finally the "Duke," "Maddalena," and "Gilda," by
some inexplicable agreement, should not say a word while "Rigoletto" is
congratulating himself on the prospect of being speedily revenged on the
libertine who has robbed him of his daughter. In the old drama, perfect
sympathy between two lovers can scarcely be expressed (or rather
symbolized) so vividly as through the "_ensemble_" of the duet, where
the two voices are joined so as to form but one harmony. We are
sometimes inclined to think that even the balcony duet between "Romeo"
and "Juliet" ought to be in music; and certainly no living dramatist
could render the duet in music between "Valentine and Raoul" adequately
into either prose or verse. Talk of music destroying the drama,--why it
is from love of the drama that so many persons go to the opera every
night.

[Sidenote: EXPLODED PLEASANTRIES.]

But is it not absurd to hear a man say, "Good morning," "How do you do?"
in music? Most decidedly; and therefore ordinary, common-place, and
trivial remarks should be excluded from operas, as from poetical dramas
and from poetry of all kinds except comic and burlesque verse. It was
not reserved for the unmusical critics of the present day to discover
that it would be grotesque to utter such a phrase as "Give me my boots,"
in recitative, and that such a line as "Waiter, a cutlet nicely
browned," could not be advantageously set to music. All this sort of
humour was exhausted long ago by Hauteroche, in his _Crispin Musicien_,
which was brought out in Paris three years after the establishment of
the Académie Royale de Musique, and revived in the time of Rameau (1735)
by Palaprat, in his _Concert Ridicule_ and _Ballet Extravagant_
(1689-90), of which the author afterwards said that they were "the
source of all the badinage that had since been applauded in more than
twenty comedies; that is to say, the interminable pleasantries on the
subject of the Opera;" and by St. Evrémond, in his comedy entitled _Les
Opéras_, which he wrote during his residence in London.

In St. Evrémond's piece, which was published but not played,
"Chrisotine" is, so to speak, opera-struck. She thinks of nothing but
Lulli, or "Baptiste," as she affectionately calls him, after the manner
of Louis XVI. and his Court; sings all day long, and in fact has
altogether abandoned speech for song. "Perrette," the servant, tells
"Chrisotine" that her father wishes to see her. "Why disturb me at my
songs," replies the young lady, singing all the time. The attendant
complains to the father, that "Chrisotine" will not answer her in
ordinary spoken language, and that she sings about the house all day
long. "Chrisotine" corroborates "Perrette's" statement, by addressing a
little _cavatina_ to her parent, in which she protests against the
harshness of those who would hinder her from singing the tender loves of
"Hermione" and "Cadmus."

"Speak like other people, Chrisotine," exclaims old "Chrisard," or I
will issue such an edict against operas that they shall never be spoken
of again where I have any authority."

"My father, Baptiste; opera, my duty to my parents; how am I to decide
between you?" exclaims the young girl, with a tragic indecision as
painful as that of Arnold, the son of Tell, hesitating between his
Matilda and his native land.

[Sidenote: ST. EVREMOND'S BURLESQUE.]

"You hesitate between Baptiste and your father," cries the old
gentleman. "_O tempora! O mores!_" (only in French).

"Tender mother! Cruel father! and you, O Cadmus! Unhappy Cadmus! I shall
see you no more," sings "Chrisotine;" and soon afterwards she adds,
still singing, that she "would rather die than speak like the vulgar. It
is a new fashion at the court (she continues), and since the last opera
no one speaks otherwise than in song. When one gentleman meets another
in the morning, it would be grossly impolite not to sing to
him:--'_Monsieur comment vous portez vous?_' to which the other would
reply--'_Je me porte à votre service._'

"FIRST GENTLEMAN.--'_Après diner, que ferons nous?_'

"SECOND GENTLEMAN.--'_Allons voir la belle Clarisse._'

"The most ordinary things are sung in this manner, and in polite society
people don't know what it means to speak otherwise than in music."

_Chrisard._--"Do people of quality sing when they are with ladies?"

_Chrisotine._--"Sing! sing! I should like to see a man of the world
endeavour to entertain company with mere talk in the old style. He would
be looked upon as one of a by-gone period. The servants would laugh at
him."

_Chrisard._--"And in the town?"

_Chrisotine._--"All persons of any importance imitate the court. It is
only in the Rue St. Denis and St. Honoré and on the Bridge of Notre
Dame that the old custom is still kept up. There people buy and sell
without singing. But at Gauthier's, at the Orangery; at all the shops
where the ladies of the court buy dresses, ornaments and jewels, all
business is carried on in music, and if the dealers did not sing their
goods would be confiscated. People say that a severe edict has been
issued to that effect. They appoint no Provost of Trade now unless he is
a musician, and until M. Lulli has examined him to see whether he is
capable of understanding and enforcing the rules of harmony."

       *       *       *       *       *

The above scene, be it observed, is not the work of an ignorant
detractor of opera, of a brute insensible to the charms of music, but is
the production of St. Evrémond, one of the very first men, on our side
of the Alps, who called attention to the beauties of the new musical
drama, just established in Italy, and which, when he first wrote on the
subject, had not yet been introduced into France. St. Evrémond had too
much sense to decry the Opera on account of such improbabilities as must
inevitably belong to every form of the drama--which is the expression of
life, but which need not for that reason be restricted exclusively to
the language of speech, any more than tragedy need be confined to the
diction of prose, or comedy to the inane platitudes of ordinary
conversation. At all events, there is no novelty, and above all no wit,
in repeating seriously the pleasantries of St. Evrémond, which, we
repeat, were those of a man who really loved the object of his
good-natured and agreeable raillery.

[Sidenote: ADDISON ON THE OPERA.]

Indeed, most of the men who have written things against the Opera that
are still remembered have liked the Opera, and have even been the
authors of operas themselves. "_Aujourd'hui ce qui ne vaut pas la peine
d'être dit on le chante_," is said by the Figaro of Beaumarchais--of
Beaumarchais, who gave lessons in singing and on the harpsichord to
Louis XV.'s daughters, who was an enthusiastic admirer of Gluck's
operas, and who wrote specially for that composer the libretto of
_Tarare_, which, however, was not set to music by him, but by Salieri,
Gluck's favourite pupil. Beaumarchais knew well enough--and _Tarare_ in
a negative manner proves it--that not only "what is not worth the
trouble of saying" cannot be sung, but that very often such trivialities
as can with propriety be spoken in a drama would, set to music, produce
a ludicrous effect. Witness the lines in St. Evrémond's _Les Opéras_--

    "_Monsieur comment vous portez vous?_"
    "_Je me porte à votre service_"--

which might form part of a comedy, but which in an opera would be
absurd, and would therefore not be introduced into one, except by a
foolish librettist, (who would for a certainty get hissed), or by a wit
like St. Evrémond, wishing to amuse himself by exaggerating to a
ridiculous point the latest fashionable mania of the day.

Addison's admirably humorous articles on Italian Opera in the
_Spectator_ are often spoken of by musicians as ill-natured and unjust,
and are ascribed--unjustly and even meanly, as it seems to me--to the
author's annoyance at the failure of his _Rosamond_, which had been set
to music by an incapable person named Clayton. Addison could afford to
laugh at the ill-success of his _Rosamond_, as La Fontaine laughed at
that of _Astrée_; and to assert that his excellent pleasantries on the
subject of Italian Opera, then newly established in London, had for
their origin the base motives usually imputed to him by musicians, is to
give any one the right to say of _them_ that this one abuses modern
Italian music, which the public applaud, because his own English music
has never been tolerated or that that one expresses the highest opinion
of English composers because he himself composes and is an Englishman.
To impute such motives would be to assume, as is assumed in the case of
Addison, that no one blames except in revenge for some personal loss, or
praises except in the hope of some personal gain. And after all, what
_has_ Addison said against the Opera, an entertainment which he
certainly enjoyed, or he would not have attended it so often or have
devoted so many excellent papers to it? Let us turn to the _Spectator_
and see.

[Sidenote: ADDISON ON THE OPERA.]

Italian Opera was introduced into England at the beginning of the 18th
century, the first work performed entirely in the Italian language being
_Almahide_, of which the music is attributed to Buononcini, and which
was produced in 1710, with Valentini, Nicolini, Margarita de l'Epine,
Cassani and "Signora Isabella," in the principal parts. Previously, for
about three years, it had been the custom for Italian and English
vocalists to sing each in their own language. "The king,[9] or hero of
the play," says Addison, "generally spoke in Italian, and his slaves
answered him in English; the lover frequently made his court, and gained
the heart of his princess in a language which she did not understand.
One would have thought it very difficult to have carried on dialogues in
this manner without an interpreter between the persons that conversed
together; but this was the state of the English stage for about three
years.

"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; but I hope, since we
do put such entire confidence in them, they will not talk against us
before our faces, though they may do it with the same safety as if it
were behind our backs. 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. It does not want any great measure
of sense to see the ridicule of this monstrous practice; but what makes
it the more astonishing, it is not the taste of the rabble, but of
persons of the greatest politeness, which has established it.

"If the Italians have a genius for music above the English, the English
have a genius for other performances of a much higher nature, and
capable of giving the mind a much nobler entertainment. Would one think
it was possible (at a time when an author lived that was able to write
the _Phedra and Hippolitus_) for a people to be so stupidly fond of the
Italian opera as scarce to give a third day's hearing to that admirable
tragedy? Music is, certainly, a very agreeable entertainment; but if it
would take entire possession of our ears, if it would make us incapable
of hearing sense, if it would exclude arts that have much greater
tendency to the refinement of human nature, I must confess I would allow
it no better quarter than Plato has done, who banishes it out of his
commonwealth.

[Sidenote: ADDISON ON THE OPERA.]

"At present, our notions of music are so very uncertain, that we do not
know what it is we like; only, in general, we are transported with
anything that is not English; so it be of foreign growth, let it be
Italian, French, or High Dutch, it is the same thing. In short, our
English music is quite rooted out, and nothing yet planted in its
stead."

The _Spectator_ was written from day to day, and was certainly not
intended for _our_ entertainment; yet, who can fail to be amused at the
description of the stage king "who spoke in Italian and his slaves
answered him in English;" and of the lover who "frequently made his
court and gained the heart of his princess in a language which she did
not understand?" What, too, in this style of humour, can be better than
the notion of the audience getting tired of understanding half the
opera, and, to ease themselves of the trouble of thinking, so ordering
it that the whole opera is performed in an unknown tongue; or of the
performers who, for all the audience knew to the contrary, might be
calling them names and abusing them among themselves; or of the probable
reflection of the future historian, that "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?" On the other hand, we
have not, it is true, heard yet of any historian publishing the remark
suggested by Addison; probably, because those historians who go to the
opera--and who does not?--are quite aware that to understand an Italian
opera, it is not at all necessary to have a knowledge of the Italian
language. The Italian singers might abuse us at their ease, especially
in concerted pieces, and in grand finales; but they might in the same
way, and equally, without fear of detection, abuse their own countrymen.
Our English vocalists, too, might indulge in the same gratification in
England, and have I not mentioned that at the Grand Opera of Paris--

    '_La soupe aux choux se fait dans la marmite._'

has been sung in place of Scribe's words in the opening chorus of
_Robert le Diable_; and if _La soupe_, &c., why not anything else? But
it is a great mistake to inquire too closely into the foundation on
which a joke stands, when the joke itself is good; and I am almost
ashamed, as it is, of having said so much on the subject of Addison's
pleasantries, when the pleasantries spoke so well for themselves. One
might almost as well write an essay to prove seriously that language was
_not_ given to man "to conceal his thoughts."

[Sidenote: MUSIC AS AN ART.]

The only portion of the paper from which I have extracted the above
observations that can be treated in perfect seriousness, is that which
begins--"If the Italians have a genius for music, &c.," and ends--"I
would allow it no better quarter than Plato has done," &c. Now the
recent political condition of Italy sufficiently proves that music could
not save a country from national degradation; but neither could painting
nor an admirable poetic literature. It is also better, no doubt, that a
man should learn his duty to God and to his neighbour, than that he
should cultivate a taste for harmony, but why not do both; and above
all, why compare like with unlike? The "performances of a much higher
nature" than music undeniably exist, but they do not answer the same
end. The more general science on which that of astronomy rests may be a
nobler study than music, but there is nothing consoling or _per se_
elevating in mathematics. Poetry, again, would by most persons be
classed higher than music, though the effect of half poetry, and of
imaginative literature generally, is to place the reader in a state of
reverie such as music induces more immediately and more perfectly. The
enjoyment of art--by which we do not mean its production, or its
critical examination, but the pure enjoyment of the artistic result--has
nothing strictly intellectual in it; no man could grow wise by looking
at Raphael or listening to Mozart. Nor does he derive any important
intellectual ideas from many of our most beautiful poems, but simply
emotion, of an elevated kind, such as is given by fine music. Music is
evidently not didactic, and painting can only teach, in the ordinary
sense of the word, what every one already knows; though, of course, a
painter may depict certain aspects of nature and of the human face,
previously unobserved and unimagined, just as the composer, in giving a
musical expression to certain sentiments and passions, can rouse in us
emotions previously dormant, or never experienced before with so much
intensity. But the fine arts cannot communicate abstract truths--from
which it chiefly follows that no right-minded artist ever uses them with
such an aim; though there is no saying what some wild enthusiasts will
not endeavour to express, and other enthusiasts equally wild pretend to
see, in symphonies and in big symbolical pictures. If Addison meant to
insinuate that _Phædra and Hippolytus_ was a much higher performance
than any possible opera, he was decidedly in error. But he had not heard
_Don Juan_, _William Tell_, and _Der Freischütz_; to which no one in the
present day, unless musically deaf, could prefer an English translation
of _Phèdre_. It would be unfair to lay too much stress on the fact that
the music of Handel still lives, and with no declining life, whereas the
tragedies of Racine, resuscitated by Mademoiselle Rachel, have not been
heard of since the death of that admirable actress; Addison was only
acquainted with the earliest of Handel's operas, and these _are_
forgotten, as indeed are most of his others, with the exception, here
and there, of a few detached airs.

[Sidenote: OPERA AND DRAMA.]

In the sentence commencing "Music is certainly a very agreeable
entertainment, but," &c., Addison says what every one, who would care to
see one of Shakespeare's plays properly acted (not much cared for,
however, in Addison's time), must feel now. Let us have perfect
representations of Opera by all means; but it is a sad and a disgraceful
thing, that in his own native country the works of the greatest
dramatist who ever lived should be utterly neglected as far as their
stage representation is concerned. It is absurd to pretend that the
Opera is the sole cause of this. Operas, magnificently put upon the
stage, are played in England, at least at one theatre, with remarkable
_completeness_ of excellence, and, at more than one, with admirable
singers in the principal and even in the minor parts. Shakespeare's
dramas, when they are played at all, are thrown on to the stage anyhow.
This would not matter so much, but our players, even in _Hamlet_, where
they are especially cautioned against it, have neither the sense nor the
good taste to avoid exaggeration and rant, to which, they maintain, the
public are now so accustomed, that a tragedian acting naturally would
make no impression. Their conventionality, moreover, makes them keep to
certain stage "traditions," which are frequently absurd, while their
vanity is so egregious that one who imagines himself a first-rate actor
(in a day when there are no first-rate actors) will not take what he is
pleased to consider a second-rate part. Our stage has no tragedian who
could embody the jealousy of "Otello," as Ronconi embodies that of
"Chevreuse" in _Maria di Rohan_, nor could half a dozen actors of equal
reputation be persuaded in any piece to appear in half a dozen parts of
various degrees of prominence, though this is what constantly takes
place at the Opera.

In Addison's time, Nicolini was a far greater actor than any who was in
the habit of appearing on the English stage; indeed, this alone can
account for the success of the ridiculous opera of _Hydaspes_, in which
Nicolini played the principal part, and of which I shall give some
account in the proper place. Doubtless also, it had much to do with the
success of Italian Opera generally, which, when Addison commenced
writing about it in the _Spectator_, was supported by no great composer,
and was constructed on such frameworks as one would imagine could only
have been imagined by a lunatic or by a pantomime writer struck serious.
If Addison had not been fond of music, and moreover a very just critic,
he would have dismissed the Italian Opera, such as it existed during the
first days of the _Spectator_, as a hopeless mass of absurdity.

[Sidenote: STAGE DECORATION.]

Every one must in particular admit the justness of Addison's views
respecting the incongruity of operatic scenery; indeed, his observations
on that subject might with advantage be republished now and then in the
present day. "What a field of raillery," he says, "would they [the wits
of King Charles's time] have been let into had they been entertained
with painted dragons spitting wildfire, enchanted chariots drawn by
Flanders mares, and real cascades in artificial landscapes! A little
skill in criticism would inform us, that shadows and realities ought not
to be mixed together in the same piece; and that the scenes which are
designed as the representations of nature should be filled with
resemblances, and not with the things themselves. If one would represent
a wide champaign country, filled with herds and flocks, it would be
ridiculous to draw the country only upon the scenes, and to crowd
several parts of the stage with sheep and oxen. This is joining together
inconsistencies, and making the decoration partly real and partly
imaginary. I would recommend what I have here said to the directors as
well as the admirers, of our modern opera."

In the matter of stage decoration we have "learned nothing and forgotten
nothing" since the beginning of the 18th century. Servandoni, at the
theatre of the Tuileries, which contained some seven thousand persons,
introduced as elaborate and successful mechanical devices as any that
have been known since his time; but then as now the real and artificial
were mixed together, by which the general picture is necessarily
rendered absurd, or rather no general picture is produced. Independently
of the fact that the reality of the natural objects makes the
artificiality of the manufactured ones unnecessarily evident as when the
branches of real trees are agitated by a gust of wind, while those of
pasteboard trees remain fixed--it is difficult in making use of natural
objects on the stage to observe with any accuracy the laws of proportion
and perspective, so that to the eye the realities of which the manager
is so proud, are, after all, strikingly unreal. The peculiar conditions
too, under which theatrical scenery is viewed, should always be taken
into account. Thus, "real water," which used at one time to be announced
as such a great attraction at some of our minor playhouses, does not
look like water on the stage, but has a dull, black, inky, appearance,
quite sufficient to render it improbable that any despondent heroine,
whatever her misfortune, would consent to drown herself in it.

The most contemptuous thing ever written against the Opera, or rather
against music in general, is Swift's celebrated epigram on the Handel
and Buononcini disputes:--

    "Some say that Signor Buononcini
     Compared to Handel is a ninny;
     While others say that to him, Handel
     Is hardly fit to hold a candle.
     Strange that such difference should be,
     'Twixt Tweedledum and Tweedledee."

Capital, telling lines, no doubt, though is it not equally strange that
there should be such a difference between one piece of painted canvas
and another, or between a statue by Michael Angelo and the figure of a
Scotchman outside a tobacconist's shop? These differences exist, and it
proves nothing against art that savages and certain exceptional natures
among civilized men are unable to perceive them. We wonder how the Dean
of St. Patrick's would have got on with the Abbé Arnauld, who was so
impressed with the sublimity of one of the pieces in Gluck's
_Iphigénie_, that he exclaimed, "With that air one might found a new
religion!"

[Sidenote: BERANGER ON THE DECLINE OF THE DRAMA.]

One of the wittiest poems written against our modern love of music
(cultivated, it must be admitted, to a painful extent by many incapable
amateurs) is the lament by Béranger, in which the poet, after
complaining that the convivial song is despised as not sufficiently
artistic, and that in the presence of the opera the drama itself is fast
disappearing, exclaims:

    Si nous t'enterrons
      Bel art dramatique,
    Pour toi nous dirons
      La messe en musique.

Without falling into the same error as those who have accused Addison of
a selfish and interested animosity towards the Opera, I may remark that
song-writers have often very little sympathy for any kind of music
except that which can be easily subjected to words, as in narrative
ballads, and to a certain extent ballads of all kinds. When a man says
"I don't care much for music, but I like a good song," we may generally
infer that he does not care for music at all. So play-wrights have a
liking for music when it can be introduced as an ornament into their
pieces, but not when it is made the most important element in the
drama--indeed, the drama itself.

Favart, the author of numerous opera-books, has left a good satirical
description in verse of French opera. It ends as follows:--

      Quiconque voudra
      Faire un opéra,
      Emprunte à Pluton,
      Son peuple démon;
      Qu'il tire des cieux
      Un couple de dieux,
      Qu'il y joigne un héros
      Tendre jusqu' aux os.
      Lardez votre sujet,
      D'un éternel ballet.
    Amenez au milieu d'une fête
        La tempête,
        Une bête,
      Que quelqu'un tûra
      Dès qu'il la verra.
      Quiconque voudra faire un opéra
      Fuira de la raison
      Le triste poison.
      Il fera chanter
      Concerter et sauter
      Et puis le reste ira,
      Tout comme il pourra.

[Sidenote: PANARD ON THE OPERA.]

This, from a man whose operas did not fail, but on the contrary, were
highly successful, is rather too bad. But the author of the ill-fated
"Rosamond" himself visited the French Opera, and has left an account of
it, which corresponds closely enough to Favart's poetical description.
"I have seen a couple of rivers," he says, (No. 29 of the _Spectator_)
"appear in red stockings, and Alpheus, instead of having his head
covered with sedge and bulrushes, making love in a fair, full-bottomed,
periwig, and a plume of feathers, but with a voice so full of shakes and
quavers that I should have thought the murmurs of a country brook the
much more agreeable music. I remember the last opera I saw in that merry
nation was the "Rape of Proserpine," where Pluto, to make the more
tempting figure, puts himself in a French equipage, and brings
Ascalaphus along with him as his _valet de chambre_." This is what we
call folly and impertinence, but what the French look upon as gay and
polite."

Addison's account agrees with Favart's song and also with one by Panard,
which contains this stanza:--

    "J'ai vu le soleil et la lune
     Qui faissient des discours en l'air
     _J'ai vu le terrible Neptune_
     _Sortir tout frisé de la mer_."

Panard's song, which occurs at the end of a vaudeville produced in 1733,
entitled _Le départ de l'Opéra_, refers to scenes behind as well as
before the curtain. It could not be translated with any effect, but I
may offer the reader the following modernized imitation of it, and so
conclude the present chapter.

    WHAT MAY BE SEEN AT THE OPERA.

    I've seen Semiramis, the queen;
      I've seen the Mysteries of Isis;
    A lady full of health I've seen
      Die in her dressing-gown, of phthisis.

    I've seen a wretched lover sigh,
      "_Fra poco_" he a corpse would be,
    Transfix himself, and then--not die,
      But coolly sing an air in D.

    I've seen a father lose his child,
      Nor seek the robbers' flight to stay;
    But, in a voice extremely mild,
      Kneel down upon the stage and pray.

    I've seen "Otello" stab his wife;
      The "Count di Luna" fight his brother;
    "Lucrezia" take her own son's life;
      And "John of Leyden" cut his mother.

    I've seen a churchyard yield its dead,
      And lifeless nuns in life rejoice;
    I've seen a statue bow its head,
      And listened to its trombone voice.

    I've seen a herald sound alarms,
      Without evincing any fright:
    Have seen an army cry "To arms"
      For half an hour, and never fight.

    I've seen a naiad drinking beer;
      I've seen a goddess fined a crown;
    And pirate bands, who knew no fear,
      By the stage manager put down;

    Seen angels in an awful rage,
      And slaves receive more court than queens,
    And huntresses upon the stage
      Themselves pursued behind the scenes.

    I've seen a maid despond in A,
      Fly the perfidious one in B,
    Come back to see her wedding day,
      And perish in a minor key.

    I've seen the realm of bliss eternal,
      (The songs accompanied by harps);
    I've seen the land of pains infernal,
      With demons shouting in six sharps!

[Sidenote: PANARD AT THE OPERA.]




CHAPTER IV.

INTRODUCTION AND PROGRESS OF THE BALLET.

     The Ballets of Versailles.--Louis XIV. astonished at his own
     importance.--Louis retires from the stage; congratulations
     addressed to him on the subject; he re-appears.--Privileges of
     Opera dancers and singers.--Manners and customs of the Parisian
     public.--The Opera under the regency.--Four ways of presenting a
     petition.--Law and the financial scheme.--Charon and paper
     money.--The Duke of Orleans as a composer.--An orchestra in a court
     of justice.--Handel in Paris.--Madame Sallé; her reform in the
     Ballet, and her first appearance in London.


[Sidenote: A CORPS OF NOBLES.]

After the Opera comes the Ballet. Indeed, the two are so intimately
mixed together that it would be impossible in giving the history of the
one to omit all mention of the other. The Ballet, as the name
sufficiently denotes, comes to us from the French, and in the sense of
an entertainment exclusively in dancing, dates from the foundation of
the Académie Royale de Musique, or soon afterwards. During the first
half of the 17th century, and even earlier, ballets were performed at
the French court, under the direction of an Italian, who, abandoning his
real name of Baltasarini, had adopted that of Beaujoyeux. He it was who
in 1581 produced the "_Ballet Comique de la Royne_," to celebrate the
marriage of the Duc de Joyeuse. This piece, which was magnificently
appointed, and of which the representation is said to have cost
3,600,000 francs, was an entertainment consisting of songs, dances, and
spoken dialogue, and appears to have been the model of the masques which
were afterwards until the middle of the 17th century represented in
England, and of most of the ballets performed in France until about the
same period. 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. At last, however, in 1681, Terpsichore
was worthily represented by dancers of her own sex, and an aristocratic
corps de ballet was formed, with Madame la Dauphine, the Princess de
Conti, and Mdlle. de Nantes as principal dancers, supported by the
Dauphin, the Prince de Conti and the Duke de Vermandois. They appeared
in the _Triomphe de l'Amour_, and the astounding exhibition was fully
appreciated. Previously, the ladies of the court, when they appeared in
ballets, had confined themselves to reciting verses, which sometimes,
moreover, were said for them by an orator engaged for the purpose. To
see a court lady dancing on the stage was quite a novelty; hence, no
doubt, the success of that spectacle.

[Sidenote: QUADRILLES AND COUNTRY DANCES.]

The first celebrated _ballerina_ at the French Opera was Mademoiselle La
Fontaine, styled _la reine de la danse_--a title of which the value was
somewhat diminished by the fact that there were only three other
professional danseuses in Paris. Lulli, however, paid great attention to
the ballet, and under his direction it soon gained importance. To Lulli,
who occasionally officiated as ballet-master, is due the introduction of
rapid style of dancing, which must have contrasted strongly with the
stately solemn steps that were alone in favour at the Court during the
early days of Louis XIV's reign. The minuet-loving Louis had notoriously
an aversion for gay brilliant music. Thus he failed altogether to
appreciate the talent of "little Baptiste" not Lulli, but Anet, a pupil
of Corelli, who is said to have played the sonatas of his master very
gracefully, and with an "agility" which at that time was considered
prodigious. The Great Monarch preferred the heavy monotonous strains of
his own Baptiste, the director of the Opera. It may here be not out of
place to mention that Lulli's introduction of a lively mode of dancing
into France (it was only in his purely operatic music that he was so
lugubriously serious) took place simultaneously with the importation
from England of the country-dance--and corrupted into _contre-danse_,
which is now the French for quadrille. Moreover, when the French took
our country-dance, a name which some etymologists would curiously enough
derive from its meaningless corruption--we adopted their minuet which
was first executed in England by the Marquis de Flamarens, at the Court
of Charles II. The passion of our English noblemen for country-dances is
recorded as follows in the memoirs of the Count de Grammont:--"Russel
was one of the most vigorous dancers in England, I mean for
country-dances (_contre-danses_). He had a collection of two or three
hundred arranged in tables, which he danced from the book; and to prove
that he was not old, he sometimes danced till he was exhausted. His
dancing was a good deal like his clothes; it had been out of fashion
twenty years."

Every one knows that Louis XIV. was a great actor; and even his mother,
Anne of Austria, appeared on the stage at the Court of Madrid to the
astonishment and indignation of the Spaniards, who said that she was
lost for them, and that it was not as Infanta of Spain, but as Queen of
France, that she had performed.

On the occasion of Louis XIV.'s marriage with Marie Therèse, the
celebrated expression _Il n'y plus de Pyrenées_ was illustrated by a
ballet, in which a French nymph and a Spanish nymph sang a duet while
half the dancers were dressed in the French and half in the Spanish
costume.

Like other illustrious stars, Louis XIV. took his farewell of the stage
more than once before he finally left it. His Histrionic Majesty was in
the habit both of singing and dancing in the court ballets, and took
great pleasure in reciting such graceful compliments to himself as the
following:--

    "Plus brilliant et mieux fait que tous les dieux ensemble
     La terre ni le ciel n'ont rien qui me ressemble."
                          (_Thétis et Pélée._--Benserade. 1654),

       "Il n'est rien de si grand dans toute la nature
        Selon l'âme et le cœur au point où je me vois;
        De la terre et de moi qui prendra la mesure
        Trouvera que la terre est moins grande que moi."
                     (_L'Impatience._--Benserade. 1661).

On the 15th February, 1669, Louis XIV. sustained his favourite character
of the Sun, in _Flora_, the eighteenth ballet in which he had played a
part--and the next day solemnly announced that his dancing days were
over, and that he would exhibit himself no more. The king had not only
given his royal word, but for nine months had kept it, when Racine
produced his _Britannicus_, in which the following lines are spoken by
"Narcisse" in reference to Nero's performances in the amphitheatre.

    Pour toute ambition pour vertu singulière
    Il excelle à conduire un char dans la carrière;
    A disputer des prix indignes des ses mains,
    A se donner lui-même en spectacle aux Romains,
    A venir prodiguer sa voix sur un théâtre
    A réciter des chants qu'il veut qu'on idolâtre;
    Tandis que des soldats, de moments en moments,
    Vont arracher pour lui des applaudissements.

[Sidenote: LOUIS RETURNS TO THE STAGE.]

The above lines have often been quoted as an example of virtuous
audacity on the part of Racine, who, however, did not write them until
the monarch who at one time did not hesitate to "_se donner lui même en
spectacle_, &c.," had confessed his fault and vowed never to repeat it;
so that instead of a lofty rebuke, the verses were in fact an indirect
compliment neatly and skilfully conveyed. So far from profiting by
Racine's condemnation of Nero's frivolity and shamelessness, and
retiring conscience-stricken from the stage (of which he had already
taken a theatrical farewell) Louis XIV. reappeared the year afterwards,
in _Les amants magnifiques_, a _Comédie-ballet_, composed by Molière and
himself, in which the king figured and was applauded as author,
ballet-master, dancer, mime, singer, and performer on the flute and
guitar. He had taken lessons on the latter instrument from the
celebrated Francisco Corbetta, who afterwards made a great sensation in
England at the Court of Charles II.

If Louis XIV. did not scruple to assume the part of an actor himself,
neither did he think it unbecoming that his nobles should do the same,
even in presence of the general public and on the stage of the Grand
Opera. "We wish, and it pleases us," he says in the letters patent
granted to the Abbé Perrin, the first director of the Académie Royale de
Musique (1669) "that all gentlemen (_gentilshommes_) and ladies may sing
in the said pieces and representations of our Royal Academy without
being considered for that reason to derogate from their titles of
nobility, or from their privileges, rights and immunities." Among the
nobles who profited by this permission and appeared either as singers,
or as dancers at the Opera, were the Seigneur du Porceau, and Messieurs
de Chasré and Borel de Miracle; and Mesdemoiselles de Castilly, de Saint
Christophe, and de Camargo. Another privilege accorded to the Opera was
of such an infamous nature that were it not for positive proof we could
scarcely believe it to have existed. It had full control, then, over all
persons whose names were once inscribed on its books; and if a young
girl went of her own accord, or was persuaded into presenting herself at
the Opera, or was led away from her parents and her name entered on the
lists by her seducer--then in neither case had her family any further
power over her. _Lettres de cachet_ even were issued, commanding the
persons named therein to join the Opera; and thus the Count de Melun got
possession of both the Camargos. The Duke de Fronsac was enabled to
perpetrate a similar act of villany. He it is who is alluded to in the
following lines by Gilbert:--

    "Qu'on la séduise! Il dit: ses eunuques discrets,
     Philosophes abbés, philosophes valets,
     Intriguent, sèment l'or, trompent les yeux d'un père,
     Elle cède, on l'enlève; en vain gémit sa mère.
    _Echue à l'Opéra par un rapt solennel,_
    _Sa honte la dérobe au pouvoir paternel._"

[Sidenote: INVENTION OF THE BALLET.]

As for men they were sent to the Opera as they were sent to the
Bastille. Several amateurs, abbés and others, the beauty of whose voices
had been remarked, were arrested by virtue of _lettres de cachet_, and
forced to appear at the Académie Royale de Musique, which had its
conscription like the army and navy. On the other hand, we have seen
that the pupils and associates of the Académie enjoyed certain
privileges, such as freedom from parental restraint and the right of
being immoral; to which was afterwards added that of setting creditors
at defiance. The pensions of singers, dancers, and musicians belonging
to the Opera were exempted from all liability to seizure for debt.

The dramatic ballet, or _ballet d'action_, was invented by the Duchess
du Maine. We soon afterwards imported it into England as, in Opera, we
imported the chorus, which was also a French invention, and one for
which the musical drama can scarcely be too grateful. The dramatic
_ballet_, however, has never been naturalized in this country. It still
crosses over to us occasionally, and when we are tired of it goes back
again to its native land; but even as an exotic, it has never fairly
taken root in English soil.

The Duchess du Maine was celebrated for her _Nuits de Sceaux_, or _Nuits
Blanches_, as they were called, which the nobles of Louis XIV.'s Court
found as delightful as they found Versailles dull. The Duchess used to
get up lotteries among her most favoured guests, in which the prizes
were so many permissions to give a magnificent entertainment. The
letters of the alphabet were placed in a box, and the one who drew O had
to get up an opera; C stood for a comedy; B for a ballet; and so on. The
hostess of Sceaux had not only a passion for theatrical performances,
but also a great love of literature, and the idea occurred to her of
realising on the stage of her own theatre something like one of those
pantomimes of antiquity of which she had read the descriptions with so
much pleasure. Accordingly, she took the fourth act of _Les Horaces_,
had it set to music by Mouret, just as if it were to be sung, and caused
this music to be executed by the orchestra alone, while Balon and
Mademoiselle Prévost, who were celebrated as dancers, but had never
attempted pantomime before, played in dumb show the part of the last
Horatius, and of Camilla, the sister of the Curiatii. The actor and
actress entered completely into the spirit of the new drama, and
performed with such truthfulness and warmth of emotion as to affect the
spectators to tears.

Mouret, the musical director of _Les Nuits Blanches_, composed several
operas and _ballets_ for the Académie; but when the establishment at
Sceaux was broken up, after the discovery of the Spanish conspiracy, in
which the Duchess du Maine was implicated, he considered himself ruined,
went mad and died at Charenton in the lunatic asylum.

       *       *       *       *       *

[Sidenote: THE FREE LIST.]

"Long live the Regent, who would rather go to the Opera than to the
Mass," was the cry when on the death of Louis XIV., the reins of
government were assumed by the Duke of Orleans. At this time the whole
expenses of the Opera, including chorus, ballet, musicians, scene
painters, decorators, &c.--from the prima donna to the
bill-sticker--amounted only to 67,000 francs a year, being considerably
less than half what is given now to a first-rate soprano alone. The
first act of the Regent in connexion with the Opera was to take its
direction out of the hands of musicians, and appoint the Duc d'Antin
manager. The new _impresario_, wishing to reward Thévanard, who was at
that time the best singer in France, offered him the sum of 600 francs.
Thévanard indignantly refused it, saying "that it was a suitable
present, at most, for his valet," upon which d'Antin proposed to
imprison the singer for his insolence, but abstained from doing so, for
fear of irritating the public with whom Thévanard was a prodigious
favourite. He, however, resigned the direction of the Opera, saying that
he "wished to have nothing more to do with such _canaille_."

The next operatic edict of the Regent had reference to the admission of
authors, who hitherto had enjoyed the privilege of free entry to the
pit. In 1718 the Regent raised them to the amphitheatre--not as a mark
of respect, but in order that they might be the more readily detected
and expelled in case of their forming cabals to hiss the productions of
their rivals, which, standing up in the pit in the midst of a dense
crowd, they had been able to do with impunity. Even to the present day,
when authors exchange applause much more freely than hisses, the
regulations of the French theatre do not admit them to the pit, though
they have free access to every other part of the house.

At the commencement of the 18th century, the Opera was the scene of
frequent disturbances. The Count de Talleyrand, MM. de Montmorency,
Gineste, and others, endeavouring to force their way into the theatre
during a rehearsal, were repulsed by the guard, and Gineste killed. The
Abbés Hourlier and Barentin insulted M. Fieubet; they were about to come
to blows when the guard separated them and carried off the obstreperous
ecclesiastics to For l'Evèque, where they were confined for a fortnight.
On their release Hourlier and Barentin, accompanied by a third abbé,
took their places in the balcony over the stage, and began to sing,
louder even than the actors, maintaining, when called to order, that the
Opera was established for no other purpose, and that if they had a right
to sing anywhere, it was at the Académie de Musique.

[Sidenote: PETER THE GREAT AT THE OPERA.]

A balustrade separated the stage balconies from the stage, but continual
attempts were made to get over it, and even to break into the actresses'
dressing rooms, which were guarded by sentinels. At this period about a
third of the _habitués_ used to make their appearance in a state of
intoxication, the example being set by the Regent himself, who could
proceed direct from his residence in the Palais Royal to the Opera,
which adjoined it. To the first of the Regent's masked balls the
Councillor of State, Rouillé, is said to have gone drunk from personal
inclination, and the Duke de Noailles in the same condition, out of
compliment to the administrator of the kingdom.

When Peter the Great visited the French Opera, in 1717, he does not
appear to have been intoxicated, but he went to sleep. When he was asked
whether the performance had wearied him, he is said to have replied,
that on the contrary he liked it to excess, and had gone to sleep from
motives of prudence. This story, however, does not quite accord with the
fact that Peter introduced public theatrical performances into Russia,
and encouraged his nobles to attend them.

Nothing illustrates better the heartless selfishness of Louis XV. than
his conduct, not at the Opera, but at his own theatre in the Louvre,
immediately after the occurrence of a terrible and fatal accident. The
Chevalier de Fénélon, an ensign in the palace guard, in endeavouring to
climb from one box to another, lost his fooling, and fell headlong on to
a spiked balustrade, where he remained transfixed through the neck. The
theatre was stained with blood in a horrible manner, and the unfortunate
chevalier was removed from the balustrade a dead man. Just then, the
Very Christian king made his appearance. He gave the signal for the
performance to commence, and the orchestra struck up as if nothing had
happened.

Some idea of the morality of the French stage during the regency and
the reign of Louis XV., may be formed from the fact that, in spite of
the great license accorded to the members of the Académie, or at least,
tolerated and encouraged by the law, it was found absolutely necessary
in 1734 to expel the _prima donna_ Mademoiselle Pélissier, who had
shocked even the management of the Opera. She was, however, received
with open arms in London. Let us not be too hard on our neighbours.

Soon afterwards, Mademoiselle Petit, a dancer, was exiled for negligence
of attire and indiscretion behind the scenes. I must add that this
negligence was extreme. The most curious part of the affair, was that
the Abbé de la Marre, author of several _libretti_, undertook the young
lady's defence, and published a pamphlet in justification of her
conduct, which is to be found among his _Œuvres diverses_.

Another _danseuse_, however, named Mariette, ruled at the Opera like a
little autocrat. "The Princess," as she was named, from the regard the
Prince de Carignan, titular director of the academy, was known to
entertain for her, applied to the actual managers, Lecomte and
Lebœuf, for a payment of salary which she had already received, and
which they naturally refused to give twice. Upon this they were not only
dismissed from their places (which they had purchased) but were exiled
by _lettres de cachet_.

[Sidenote: PELISSIER AT TABLE.]

The prodigality of favourite and favoured actresses under the regency
was extreme. The before-mentioned Mademoiselle Pélissier and her friend
Mademoiselle Deschamps, both gluttonous to excess, were noted for their
contempt of all ordinary food, and of everything that happened to be
nearly in season, or at all accessible, not merely to vulgar citizens,
but to the generality of opulent sensualists. It is not said that they
aspired to the dissolution of pearls in their sauces, but if green peas
were served to them when the price of the dish was less than sixty
francs, they sent them away in disdain. Mademoiselle Pélissier was in
the receipt of 4,000 francs (£160) a year from the Opera. Mademoiselle
Deschamps, who was only a figurante, contrived to get on with a salary
of only sixteen pounds. And yet we have seen that they were neither of
them economical.

One of the most facetious members of the Académie under the regency, was
Tribou, a performer, who seems to have been qualified for every branch
of the histrionic profession, and to have possessed a certain literary
talent besides. This humourist had some favour to ask of the Duke of
Orleans. He presented a petition to him, and after the regent had read
it, said gravely--

"If your Highness would like to read it again, here is the same thing in
verse."

"Let me see it," said the Duke.

Tribou presented his petition in verse, and afterwards expressed his
readiness to sing it. He sang, and no sooner had he finished, than he
added--

"If _mon Seigneur_ will permit me, I shall be happy to dance it."

"Dance it?" exclaimed the regent; "by all means!"

When Tribou had concluded his _pas_, the duke confessed that he had
never before heard of a petition being either danced or sung, and for
the love of novelty, granted the actor his request.

During the regency, wax was substituted for tallow in the candelabra of
the Opera. This improvement was due to Law, who gave a large sum of
money to the Académie for that special purpose. On the other hand,
Mademoiselle Mazé, one of the prettiest dancers at the Opera, was ruined
three years afterwards by the failure of this operatic benefactor's
financial scheme. The poor girl put on her rouge, her mouches, and her
silk stockings, and in her gayest attire, drowned herself publicly in
the middle of the day at La Grenouillière.

[Sidenote: HOW TO CROSS THE STYX.]

After the break up of Law's system, the regent, terrified by the murmurs
and imprecations of the Parisians, endeavoured to turn the whole current
of popular hatred against the minister, by dismissing him from the
administration of the finances. When Law presented himself at the Palais
Royal, the regent refused to receive him; but the same evening, he
admitted him by a private door, apologized to him, and tried to console
him. Two days afterwards, he accompanied Law to the Opera; but to
preserve him from the fury of the people, he was obliged to have him
conducted home by a party of the Swiss guard.

In the fourth act of Lulli's _Alceste_, Charon admits into his bark
those shades who are able to pay their passage across the Styx, and
sends back those who have no money.

"Give him some bank notes," exclaimed a man in the pit to one of these
penniless shades. The audience took up the cry, and the scene between
Charon and the shades was, at subsequent representations, the cause of
so much tumult, that it was found necessary to withdraw the piece.

The Duke of Orleans appears to have had a sincere love of music, for he
composed an opera himself, entitled _Panthée_, of which the words were
written by the Marquis de La Fare. _Panthée_ was produced at the Duke's
private theatre. After the performance, the musician, Campra, said to
the composer,

"The music, your Highness, is excellent, but the poem is detestable."

The regent called La Fare.

"Ask Campra," he said, "what he thinks of the Opera; I am sure he will
tell you that the poem is admirable, and the music worthless. We must
conclude that the whole affair is as bad as it can be."

The Duke of Orleans had written a motet for five voices, which he wished
to send to the Emperor Leopold, but before doing so, entrusted it for
revision to Bernier, the composer. Bernier handed the manuscript to the
Abbé de la Croix, whom the regent found examining it while Bernier
himself was in the next room regaling himself with his friends. The
immediate consequences of this discovery were a box on the ear for
Bernier, and ten louis for de La Croix.

The Regent also devoted some attention to the study of antiquity. He
occupied himself in particular with inquiries into the nature of the
music of the Greeks, and with the construction of an instrument which
was to resemble their lyre.

[Sidenote: MUSIC IN COURT.]

To the same prince was due the excellent idea of engaging the celebrated
Italian Opera Company of London, at that time under the direction of
Handel, to give a series of performances at the Académie. A treaty was
actually signed in presence of M. de Maurepas, the minister, by which
Buononcini the conductor, Francesca Cuzzoni, Margarita Durastanti,
Francesco Bernardi, surnamed _Senesino_, Gaetano Bernesta, and Guiseppe
Boschi were to come to Paris in 1723, and give twelve representations of
one or two Italian Operas, as they thought fit. Francine, the director
of the Académie, engaged to pay them 35,000 francs, and to furnish new
dresses to the principal performers. This treaty was not executed,
probably through some obstacle interposed by Francine; for the manager
signed it against his will, and on the 2nd of December following, the
regent, with whom it had originated, died. The absurd privileges secured
to the Académie Royale, and the consequent impossibility of giving
satisfactory performances of Italian Opera elsewhere than at the chief
lyrical theatre must have done much to check the progress of dramatic
music in France. From time to time Italian singers were suffered to make
their appearance at the Grand Opera; but at the regular Italian Theatre
established in Paris, as at the Comédie Française, singing was only
permitted under prescribed conditions, and the orchestra was strictly
limited, by severe penalties, rigidly enforced, to a certain number of
instruments, of which not more than six could be violins, or of the
violin family.

At the Comédie Italienne an ass appeared on the stage, and began to
bray.

"Silence," exclaimed Arlechinno, "music is forbidden here."

       *       *       *       *       *

Among the distinguished amateurs of the period of the regency was M. de
Saint Montant, who played admirably on the viola, and had taught his
sons and daughters to do the same. Being concerned in a law suit, which
had to be tried at Nimes, he went with his family of musicians to visit
the judges, laid his case before them, one after the other, and by way
of peroration, gave them each a concert, with which they were so
delighted that they decided unanimously in favour of M. de Saint
Montant.

A law suit had previously been decided somewhat in the same manner, but
much more logically, in favour of Joseph Campra, brother of the composer
of that name, who was the conductor of the orchestra at the Opera of
Marseilles. The manager refused to pay the musicians on the ground that
they did not play well enough. In consequence, he was summoned by the
entire band, who, when they appeared in court, begged through Campra
that they might be allowed to plead their own cause. The judges granted
the desired permission, upon which the instrumentalists drew themselves
up in orchestral order and under the direction of Campra commenced an
overture of Lulli's. The execution of this piece so delighted the
tribunal that with one voice it condemned the director to pay the sum
demanded of him.

A still more curious dispute between a violinist and a dancer was
settled in a satisfactory way for both parties. The dancer was on the
stage rehearsing a new step. The violinist was in the orchestra
performing the necessary musical accompaniment.

"Your scraping is enough to drive a man mad," said the dancer.

"Very likely," said the musician, "and your jumping is only worthy of a
clown. 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?"

[Sidenote: 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 proposed interchange of good offices took place, and with the
happiest results. The unmusical fiddler, whose name was Dupré, acquired
great celebrity in the ballet, and Léclair, the awkward dancer, became
the chief of the French school of violin playing.

Marie-Anne Cupis de Camargo did not lose so much time in discovering her
true vocation. She gave evidence of her genius for the ballet while she
was still in the cradle, and was scarcely six months old when the
variety of her gestures, the grace of her movements, and the precision
with which she marked the rhythm of the tunes her father played on the
violin led all who saw her to believe that she would one day be a great
dancer. The young Camargo, who belonged to a noble family of Spanish
origin, made her _début_ at the Académie in 1726, and at once achieved a
decided success. People used to fight at the doors to obtain admittance
the nights she performed; all the new fashions were introduced under her
name, and in a very short space of time her shoemaker made his fortune.
All the ladies of the court insisted on wearing shoes _à la Camargo_.
But the triumph of one dancer is the despair of another. Mademoiselle
Prévost, who was the queen of the ballet until Mademoiselle de Camargo
appeared was not prepared to be dethroned by a _débutante_. She was so
alarmed by the young girl's success that she did her utmost to keep her
in the background, and contrived before long to get her placed among
the _figurantes_. But in spite of this loss of rank, Mademoiselle de
Camargo soon found an opportunity of distinguishing herself. In a
certain ballet, she formed one of a group of demons, and was standing on
the stage waiting for Dumoulin, who had to dance a _pas seul_, when the
orchestra began the soloist's air and continued to play it, though still
no Dumoulin appeared. Mademoiselle de Camargo was seized with a sudden
inspiration. She left the demoniac ranks, improvised a step in the place
of the one that should have been danced by Dumoulin and executed it with
so much grace and spirit that the audience were in raptures.
Mademoiselle Prévost, who had previously given lessons to young Camargo,
now refused to have anything to do with her, and the two _danseuses_
were understood to be rivals both by the public and by one another. The
chief characteristics of Camargo's dancing were grace, gaiety, and above
all prodigious lightness, which was the more remarkable at this period
from the fact that the mode chiefly cultivated at the Opera was one of
solemn dignity. However, she had not been long on the stage before she
learned to adopt from her masters and from the other dancers whatever
good points their particular styles presented, and thus formed a style
of her own which was pronounced perfection.

[Sidenote: STAGE COSTUME.]

Mademoiselle de Camargo, in spite of her charming vivacity when dancing,
was of a melancholy mood off the stage. She was not remarkably pretty,
but her face was highly expressive, her figure exquisite, her hands and
feet of the most delicate proportions, and she possessed considerable
wit. Dupré, the ex-violinist, who had leaped at a bound from the
orchestra to the stage, was in the habit of dancing with Camargo, and
also with Mademoiselle Sallé, another celebrity of this epoch, who
afterwards visited London, where she produced the first complete _ballet
d'action_ ever represented, and at the same time introduced an important
reform in theatrical costume.

The art of stage decoration had made considerable progress, even before
the Opera was founded, but it was not until long after Mademoiselle
Sallé had given the example in London that any reasonable principles
were observed in the selection and design of theatrical dresses. In
1730, warriors of all kinds, Greek, Roman, and Assyrian, used to appear
on the French stage in tunics belaced and beribboned, in cuirasses, and
in powdered wigs bearing tails a yard long, surmounted by helmets with
plumes of prodigious height. The tails, of which there were four, two in
front and two behind, were neatly plaited and richly pomatumed, and when
the warrior became animated, and waved his arm or shook his head, a
cloud of hair powder escaped from his wig. It appeared to Mademoiselle
Sallé, who, besides being an admirable dancer, was a woman of taste in
all matters of art, that this sort of thing was absurd; but the reforms
she suggested were looked upon as ridiculous innovations, and nearly
half a century elapsed before they were adopted in France.

This ingenious _ballerina_ enjoyed the friendship and regard of many of
the most distinguished writers of her time. Voltaire celebrated her in
verse, and when she went to London she took with her a letter of
introduction from Fontenelle to Montesquieu, who was then ambassador at
the English Court. Another danseuse, Mademoiselle Subligny came to
England with letters of introduction from Thiriot and the Abbé Dubois to
Locke. The illustrious metaphysician had no great appreciation of
Mademoiselle de Subligny's talent, but he was civil and attentive to her
out of regard to his friends, who were also hers, and, in the words of
Fontenelle, constituted himself her "_homme d'affaires_."

[Sidenote: PHILOSOPHERS AND ACTRESSES.]

Mademoiselle Sallé was not only esteemed by literature, she was adored
by finance, and Samuel Bernard, the Court banker and money lender, gave
her a hundred golden louis for dancing before the guests at the marriage
of his daughter with the President Molé. The same opulent amateur sent a
thousand francs to Mademoiselle Lemaure, by way of thanking her for
resuming the part of "Délie," in the "Les Fêtes Grecques et Romaines,"
on the occasion of the Duchess de Mirepoix's marriage. I must mention
that at this period it was not the custom in good society for young
ladies to appear at the Opera before their marriage. Their mothers were
determined either to keep their daughters out of harm's way, or to
escape a dangerous rivalry as long as possible; but once attached to a
husband the newly-married girl could show herself at the Opera as often
as she pleased, and it was a point of etiquette that through the Opera
she should make her entrance into fashionable life. These _débutantes_
of the audience department presented themselves to the public in their
richest attire, in their most brilliant diamonds; and if the effect was
good the gentlemen in the pit testified their approbation by clapping
their hands.

But to return to Mademoiselle Sallé. What she proposed to introduce
then, and did introduce into London, in addition to her own admirable
dancing, were complete dramatic ballets, with the personages attired in
the costumes of the country and time to which the subject belonged. To
give some notion of the absurdity of stage costumes at this period we
may mention that forty-two years afterwards, when Mademoiselle Sallé's
reform had still had no effect in France, the "Galathea," in Rousseau's
_Pygmalion_, wore a damask dress, made in the Polish style, over a
basket hoop, and on her head on enormous _pouf_, surmounted by three
ostrich feathers!

In her own _Pygmalion_, Mademoiselle Sallé carried out her new principle
by appearing, not in a Polish costume, nor in a Louis Quinze dress, but
in drapery imitated as closely as possible from the statues of
antiquity. Of her performance, and of _Pygmalion_ generally, a good
account is given in the following letter, written by a correspondent in
London, under the date of March 15th, 1734, to the "Mercure de France."
In the style we do not recognise the author of the "Essay on the
Decadence of the Romans," and of the "Spirit of Laws," but it is just
possible that M. de Montesquieu may have responded to M. de Fontenelle's
letter of introduction, by writing a favourable criticism of the
bearer's performance, for the "influential journal" in which the notice
actually appeared.

"Mdlle. Sallé," says the London correspondent, "without considering the
embarrassing position in which she places me, desires me to give you an
account of her success. I have to tell you in what manner she has
rendered the fable of Pygmalion, and that of Ariadne and Bacchus; and of
the applause with which these two ballets of her composition have been
received by the Court of England.

"Pygmalion has now been represented for nearly two months, and the
public is never tired of it. The subject is developed in the following
manner.

[Sidenote: MADEMOISELLE SALLE.]

"Pygmalion comes into his studio with his pupils, who perform a
characteristic dance, chisel and mallet in hand. Pygmalion tells them to
draw aside a curtain at the back of the studio, which, like the front is
adorned with statues. The one in the middle above all the others
attracts the looks and admiration of every one. Pygmalion gazes at it
and sighs; he touches its feet, presses its waist, adorns its arms with
precious bracelets, and covers its neck with diamonds, and, kissing the
hands of his dear statue, shows that he is passionately in love with it.
The amorous sculptor expresses his distress in pantomime, falls into a
state of reverie, and then throwing himself at the feet of a statue of
Venus, prays to the goddess to animate his beloved figure.

"The goddess answers his prayer. Three flashes of light are seen, and to
an appropriate symphony the marble beauty emerges by degrees from her
state of insensibility. To the surprise of Pygmalion and his pupils she
becomes animated, and evinces her astonishment at her new existence, and
at the objects by which she is surrounded. The delighted Pygmalion
extends his hand to her; she feels, so to speak, the ground beneath her
with her feet, and takes some timid steps in the most elegant attitudes
that sculpture could suggest. Pygmalion dances before her, as if to
instruct her; she repeats her master's steps, from the easiest to the
most difficult. He endeavours to inspire her with the tenderness he
feels himself, and succeeds in making her share that sentiment. You can
understand, sir, what all the passages of this action become, executed
and danced with the fine and delicate grace of Mdlle. Sallé. She
ventured to appear without basket, without skirt, without a dress, in
her natural hair, and with no ornament on her head. She wore nothing, in
addition to her boddice and under-petticoat, but a simple robe of
muslin, arranged in drapery after the model of a Greek statue.

"You cannot doubt, sir, of the prodigious success this ingenious ballet,
so well executed, obtained. At the request of the king, the queen, the
royal family, and all the court, it will be performed on the occasion
of Mademoiselle Sallé's benefit, for which all the boxes and places in
the theatre and amphitheatre have been taken for a month past. The
benefit takes place on the first of April.

"Do not expect that I can describe to you Ariadne like Pygmalion: its
beauties are more noble and more difficult to relate; the expressions
and sentiments are those of the profoundest grief, despair, rage and
utter dejection; in a word all the great passions perfectly declaimed by
means of dances, attitudes and gestures suggested by the position of a
woman who is abandoned by the man she loves. You may announce, sir, that
Mademoiselle Sallé becomes in this piece the rival of the Journets, the
Duclos, and the Lecouvreurs. The English, who preserve so tender a
recollection of their famous Oldfield, whom they have just laid in
Westminster Abbey among their great statesmen (!) look upon her as
resuscitated in Mademoiselle Sallé when she represents Ariadne.

"P. S. The first of this month the Prince of Orange, accompanied by the
Prince of Wales, the Duke of Cumberland and the Princesses, went to
Covent Garden Theatre [Théâtre du _Commun Jardin_ the French newspaper
has it] to see the tragedy of King Henry IV., when there was a numerous
assembly; and all the receipts of the representation were for the
benefit of Mademoiselle Sallé."

[Sidenote: MADEMOISELLE SALLE.]

[Sidenote: A PROFITABLE PERFORMANCE.]

M. Castil Blaze, who publishes the whole of the above letter, with the
exception of the postscript, in his history of the Académie Royale, is
wrong in concluding from Mademoiselle Sallé having appeared at Covent
Garden, that she was engaged to dance there by Handel, who was at that
time director of the Queen's Theatre (reign of Anne) in the Haymarket.
M. Victor Schœlcher may also be in error when, in speaking of the
absurd fable that Handel being in Paris heard a canticle by Lulli,[10]
and coming back to England gave it to the English, as God Save the King,
he assures us that Handel never set foot in Paris at all. It is certain
that Handel went to Italy to engage new singers in 1733, and it is by no
means improbable that he passed through Paris on his way. At all events,
M. Castil Blaze assures us that in that year he visited the Académie
Royale de Musique, and that "while lavishing sarcasms and raillery on
our French Opera," he appreciated the talent of Mademoiselle Sallé. "A
thousand crowns (three thousand francs) was the sum," he continues,
"that the _virtuose_ asked for composing two ballets and dancing in them
at London _during the carnival_ of 1734. The director of a rival
enterprise watched for her arrival in that city, and offered her three
thousand guineas instead of the three thousand crowns which she had
agreed to accept from Handel; adding that nothing prevented her from
making this change, inasmuch as she had signed no engagement. 'And my
word,' answered the amiable dancer; 'is my word to count for nothing?'
This reply, applauded and circulated from mouth to mouth, prepared
Mademoiselle Sallé's success, and had the most fortunate influence on
the representation given for her benefit. All the London journals gave
magnificent accounts of the triumphs of Marie Taglioni, and of the marks
of admiration and gratitude that she received. Equally flattering
descriptions reached us from the icy banks of the Neva. Mere trifles,
_niaiseries, debolleze_! This _furore_, this enthusiasm, this
fanaticism, this royal, imperial liberality was very little, or rather
was nothing, in comparison with the homage which the sons of Albion
offered to and lavished upon the divine Sallé. History tells us that at
the representation given for her benefit people fought at the doors of
the theatre; that an infinity of amateurs were obliged to conquer at the
point of the sword, or at least with their fists, the places which had
been sold to them by auction, and at exorbitant prices. As Mademoiselle
Sallé made her last curtsey and smiled upon the pit with the most
charming grace, furious applause burst forth from all parts and seemed
to shake the theatre to its foundation. While the whirlwind howled,
while the thunder roared, a hailstorm of purses, full of gold, fell upon
the stage, and a shower of bonbons followed in the same direction. These
bonbons, manufactured at London, were of a singular kind; guineas--not
like the doubloons, the louis d'or in paste, that are exhibited in the
shop-windows of our confectioners, but good, genuine guineas in metal
of Peru, well and solidly bound together--formed the sweetmeat; the
_papillote_ was a bank-note. Projectiles a thousand times, and again a
thousand times precious. Arguments which sounded still when the fugitive
tempest of applause was at an end. Our favourite _virtuoses_ place now
on their heads, after pressing them for a moment to their hearts, the
wreaths thrown to them by an electrified public. Mademoiselle Sallé put
the proofs of gratitude offered by her host of admirers into her pockets
or rather into bags. The light and playful troop of little Loves who
hovered around the new dancer, picked up the precious sugar-plums as
they fell, and eight dancing satyrs carried away in cadence the
improvised treasures. This performance brought Mademoiselle Sallé more
than two hundred thousand francs."

What M. Castil Blaze tells us about the bonbons of guineas and
bank-notes may or may not be true--I have no means of judging--but it is
not very likely that eight dancing satyrs appeared on the stage at
Mademoiselle Sallé's benefit, inasmuch as the ballet given on that
occasion was not _Bacchus and Ariadne_, as M. Castil Blaze evidently
supposes, but _Pygmalion_. The London correspondent of the _Mercure de
France_ has mentioned that _Pygmalion_ was to be performed by desire of
"the king and the queen, the royal family, and all the court," and
naturally that was the piece selected. According to the letter in the
_Mercure_ the benefit was fixed for the first of April; indeed, the
writer in his postscript speaks of it as having taken place on that day,
but he says nothing about purses of gold, nor does he speak of guineas
wrapped up in bank-notes.

It appears from the _Daily Journal_ that Mademoiselle Sallé took her
benefit on the 21st of March (which would be April 1, New Style), when
the first piece was _Henry IV., with the humours of Sir John Falstaff_,
and the second _Pigmalion_ (with a _Pig_). It was announced that on this
occasion "servants would be permitted to keep places on the stage,"
whereas in most of the Covent Garden play bills of the period the
following paragraph appears:--"It is desired that no person will take it
ill their not being admitted behind the scenes, it being impossible to
perform the entertainment unless these passages are kept clear."

[Sidenote: MADEMOISELLE SALLE AND HANDEL.]

At this time Handel was at the Queen's Theatre, and it was not until the
next year, long after Mademoiselle Sallé had left England, that he moved
to Covent Garden. The rival who is represented as having offered such
magnificent terms to Mademoiselle Sallé with the view of tempting her
from her allegiance to Handel, must have been, if any one, Porpora;
though if M. Castil Blaze could have identified him as that celebrated
composer he would certainly have mentioned the name. Porpora, who
arrived in England in 1733, was in 1734 director of the "Nobility's
Theatre" in Lincoln's-Inn Fields.

The following is the announcement of Mademoiselle Sallé's first
appearance in England:--

     "AT THE THEATRE ROYAL COVENT GARDEN, On Monday, 11th March, will be
     performed a Comedy, called "_The_ WAY _of the_ WORLD, by the late
     Mr. Congreve, with entertainments of dancing, particularly the
     Scottish dance by Mr. Glover and Mrs. Laguerre, Mr. le Sac, and
     Miss Boston, M. de la Garde and Mrs. Ogden.

     "The French Sailor and his Lass, by Mademoiselle Sallé and Mr.
     Malter.

     "The Nassau, by Mr. Glover and Miss Rogers, Mr. Pelling and Miss
     Nona, Mr. Le Sac and Mrs. Ogden, Mr. de la Garde and Miss Batson.

     "With a new dance, called _Pigmalion_, performed by Mr. Malter and
     Mademoiselle Sallé, M. Dupré, Mr. Pelling, Mr. Duke, Mr. le Sac,
     Mr. Newhouse, and M. de la Garde.

     "No servants will be permitted to keep places on the stage."

It appears that at the King's Theatre on the night of Mademoiselle
Sallé's benefit, at Covent Garden, there was "an assembly." "Two
tickets," says the advertisement, "will be delivered to every
subscriber, this day, at White's Chocholate House, in St. James's
Street, paying the subscription-money; and if any tickets remain more
than are subscribed for, they will be delivered the same day at the
Opera office in the Haymarket, at six and twenty shillings each.

"Every ticket will admit either one gentleman or two ladies.

"N. B.--Five different doors will be opened at twelve for the company to
go out, where chairs will easily be had.

N. B.--To prevent a crowd there will be but 700 tickets printed."

I find from the collection of old newspapers before me, that Handel,
whose _Ariadne_ was first produced and whose _Pastor Fido_ was revived
in 1734, is called in the playbills of the King's Theatre "Mr. Handell."
The following is the announcement of the performance given at that
establishment on the 4th June, 1734, "being the last time of performing
till after the holidays."

"AT the KING'S THEATRE in the HAYMARKET, on Tuesday next, being the 4th
day of June will be performed an Opera called

PASTOR FIDO,

Composed by Mr. Handell, intermixed with Choruses.

The Scenery after a particular manner.

Pit and Boxes will be put together, and no persons to be admitted
without tickets, which will be delivered that day at the Office of the
Haymarket, at half a guinea each.

GALLERY FIVE SHILLINGS.

[Sidenote: MR. HANDELL.]

BY HIS MAJESTY'S COMMAND.

No persons whatever to be admitted behind the scenes.

To begin at half an hour after six o'clock."

Handel had now been twenty-four years in London where he had raised the
Italian Opera to a pitch of excellence unequalled elsewhere in Europe,
except perhaps at Dresden, which during the first half of the 18th
century was universally celebrated for the perfection of its operatic
performances at the Court Theatre directed by Hasse. But of the
introduction of Italian Opera into England, and especially of the
arrival of Handel, his operatic enterprises, his successes and his
failures, I must speak in another chapter.




CHAPTER V.

INTRODUCTION OF ITALIAN OPERA INTO ENGLAND.

     Operatic Feuds.--Objections to Nose-pulling.--Arsinoe.--Camilla and
     the Boar.--Steele on insanity.--Handel and Clayton.--Nicolini and
     the lion.--Rinaldo and the sparrows.--Hamlet set to music.--Three
     enraged musicians.--Three charming singers.


It was not until the close of the 17th century that England was visited
by any Italian singers of note, among the first of whom was the
well-known Margarita de l'Epine. This vocalist's name frequently occurs
in the current literature of the period, and Swift in his "Journal to
Stella" speaks in his own graceful way of having heard "Margarita and
her sister and another drab, and a parcel of fiddlers at Windsor." This
was in 1711, nineteen years after her arrival in England--a proof that
even then Italian singers, who had once obtained the favour of the
English public, were determined to profit by it as long as possible.
Margarita was an excellent musician, and a virtuous and amiable woman;
but she was ugly and was called Hecate by her husband, who had married
her for her money.

[Sidenote: OPERATIC FEUDS.]

The history of the Opera in England is, more than in any other country,
the history of feuds and rivalries between theatres and singers. The
rival of Margarita de l'Epine was Mrs. Tofts, who in 1703 was singing
English and Italian songs at the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields.
Instead of enjoying the talent of both, the London public began to
dispute as to which was the best; and what was still more absurd, to
create disturbances at the very theatres where they sang, so that the
English party prevented Margarita de l'Epine from being heard, while the
Italians drowned the voice of Mrs. Tofts.[11] Once, when the amiable
Margarita was singing at Drury Lane, she was not only hissed and hooted,
but an orange was thrown at her by a woman who was recognised as being
or having been in the service of the English vocalist. Hence
considerable scandal and the following public statement which appeared
in the _Daily Courant_ of February 8th, 1704.

"Ann Barwick having occasioned a disturbance at the Theatre Royal on
Saturday last, the 5th of February, and being thereupon taken into
custody, Mrs. Tofts, in vindication of her innocencey, sent a letter to
Mr. Rich, master of the said Theatre, which is as followeth:--'Sir, I
was very much surprised when I was informed that Ann Barwick, who was
lately my servant, had committed a rudeness last night at the playhouse
by throwing of oranges and hissing when Mrs. L'Epine, the Italian
gentlewoman, sang. I hope no one will think it was in the least with my
privity, as I assure you it was not. I abhor such practices, and I hope
you will cause her to be prosecuted that she may be punished as she
deserves. I am, sir, your humble servant, KATHARINE TOFTS.'"

[Sidenote: ARSINOE.]

At this period the unruly critics of the pit behaved with as little
ceremony to those who differed from them among the audience as to those
performers whom they disliked on the stage. In proof of this, we may
quote a portion of the very amusing letter written by a linen-draper
named Heywood (under the signature of James Easy), to the
_Spectator_,[12] on the subject of nose-pulling. "A friend of mine, the
other night, applauding what a graceful exit Mr. Wilkes made," says Mr.
Easy, "one of these nose-wringers overhearing him, pulled him by the
nose. I was in the pit the other night," he adds, "when it was very
crowded. A gentleman leaning upon me, and very heavily, I civilly
requested him to remove his hand; for which he pulled me by the nose. I
would not resent it in so public a place, because I was unwilling to
create a disturbance; but have since reflected upon it as a thing that
is unmanly and disingenuous, renders the nose-puller odious, and makes
the person pulled by the nose look little and contemptible. This
grievance I humbly request you will endeavour to redress."

Fifty years later, at the Grand Opera of Paris, a gentleman in the pit
applauded the dancing of Mademoiselle Asselin. "_Il faut être bien bête
pour applaudir une telle sauteuse_," said his neighbour, upon which a
challenge was given and received, the two amateurs went out and fought,
when the aggressor fell mortally wounded.

In the letters of Frenchmen and Englishmen from Italy, describing the
Italian theatres of the eighteenth century, we read neither of pelting
with oranges, nor of nose-pulling, nor of duelling. One of the most
remarkable things in the demeanour of the audience appears to have been
the unceremonious manner in which the aristocratic occupants of the
boxes behaved towards the people in the pit. The nobles, who were
somewhat given to expectoration, thought nothing of spitting down into
the parterre, and "what is still more extraordinary," says Baretti, who
notices this curious habit, "those who received it on their faces and
heads, did not seem to resent it much." We are told, however, that "they
made the most curious grimaces in the world."

But to return to the rival singers of London. In 1705, then, Mrs. Tofts
and Margarita were both engaged at Drury Lane; the former taking the
principal part in _Arsinoe_, which was performed in English, the latter
singing Italian songs before and after the Opera. _Arsinoe_ ("the first
Opera," says the _Spectator_, "that gave us a taste for Italian music")
was the composition of Clayton, the _maestro_ who afterwards wrote music
for Addison's unfortunate _Rosamond_, and who described the purpose and
character of his first work in the following words:--"The design of this
entertainment being to introduce the Italian manner of singing to the
English stage, which has not been before attempted, I was obliged to
have an Italian Opera translated, in which the words, however mean in
several places, suited much better with that manner of music than others
more poetical would do. The style of this music is to express the
passions, which is the soul of music, and though the voices are not
equal to the Italian, yet I have engaged the best that were to be found
in England; and I have not been wanting, to the utmost of my diligence,
in the instructing of them. The music, being recitative, may not at
first meet with that general acceptation, as is to be hoped for, from
the audience's being better acquainted with it; but if this attempt
shall be a means of bringing this manner of music to be used in my
native country, I shall think my study and pains very well employed."

[Sidenote: CAMILLA AND THE BOAR]

Mr. Hogarth, in his interesting "Memoirs of the Opera," remarks that
"though _Arsinoe_ is utterly unworthy of criticism, yet there is
something amusing in the folly of the composer. The very first song may
be taken as a specimen. The words are--

    Queen of Darkness, sable night,
    Ease a wandering lover's pain;
      Guide me, lead me
    Where the nymph whom I adore,
      Sleeping, dreaming,
    Thinks of love and me no more.

The first two lines are spoken in a meagre sort of recitative. Then
there is a miserable air, the first part of which consists of the next
two lines, and concludes with a perfect close. The second part of the
air is on the last two lines; after which, there is, as usual, a _da
capo_, and the first part is repeated; the song finishing in the middle
of a sentence,--

    "Guide me, lead me
     Where the nymph whom I adore"--

which, I venture to say, has not been beaten by Bunn, or Fitzball, or
any of our worst librettists at their worst moments.

The music of _Camilla_, the second opera in the Italian style, performed
in England, was by Marco Antonio Buononcini, the brother of Handel's
future rival. The work was produced at the original Opera House, erected
by Sir John Vanburgh, on the site of the present building, in 1705.[13]
It was sung half in English and half in Italian. Mrs. Tofts played the
part of "Camilla," and kept to _her_ mother tongue. Valentini played
that of the hero, and kept to his. Both the Buononcinis were composers
of high ability and the music of _Camilla_ is said to have been very
beautiful. The melodies given to the two principal singers were
original, expressive, and well harmonized. Mrs. Tofts' impersonation of
the Amazonian lady was much admired by persons of taste, and there was a
part for a pig which threw the vulgar into ecstacies.

"Mr. Spectator," wrote a correspondent, "your having been so humble as
to take notice of the epistles of the animal, embolden me, who am the
wild boar that was killed by Mrs. Tofts, to represent to you that I
think I was hardly used in not having the part of the lion in Hydaspes
given to me. It would have been but a natural step for me to have
personated that noble creature, after having behaved myself to
satisfaction in the part above mentioned; but that of a lion is too
great a character for one that never trode the stage before but upon two
legs. As for the little resistance I made, I hope it may be excused when
it is considered that the dart was thrown at me by so fair a hand. I
must confess I had but just put on my brutality; and Camilla's charms
were such, that beholding her erect mien, hearing her charming voice,
and astonished with her graceful motion, I could not keep up to my
assumed fierceness, but died like a man."

[Sidenote: STEELE ON INSANITY.]

Mrs. Tofts quitted the stage in 1709, in consequence of mental
derangement. We have seen Mademoiselle Desmâtins, half fancying in her
excessive, vanity that she was really the queen or princess she had been
representing the same night on the stage, and ordering the servants, on
her return home, to prepare her throne and serve her on their bended
knees. Poor Mrs. Tofts laboured under a similar delusion; only, in her
case, it was not a moral malady, but the hallucination of a diseased
intellect. "In the meridian of her beauty," says Hawkins, in his History
of Music, "and possessed of a large sum of money, which she had acquired
by singing, Mrs. Tofts quitted the stage, and was married to Mr. Joseph
Smith, a gentleman, who being appointed consul for the English nation,
at Venice, she went thither with him. Mr. Smith was a great collector of
books, and patron of the arts. He lived in great state and magnificence;
but the disorder of his wife returning, she dwelt sequestered from the
world, in a remote part of the house, and had a large garden to range
in, in which she would frequently walk, singing and giving way to that
innocent frenzy which had seized her in the early part of her life."

The terrible affliction, which had fallen upon the favourite operatic
vocalist, is touched upon by Steele, with singular want of feeling, of
taste, and even of common decency, in No. 20 of the _Tatler_. "The
theatre," he says, "is breaking, and there is a great desolation among
the gentlemen and ladies who were the ornaments of the town, and used to
shine in plumes and diadems, the heroes being most of them pressed, and
the queens beating hemp." Then with more brutality than humour he adds,
"The great revolutions of this nature bring to my mind the distress of
the unfortunate 'Camilla,' who has had the ill luck to break before her
voice, and to disappear at a time when her beauty was in the height of
its bloom. This lady entered so thoroughly into the great characters she
acted, that when she had finished her part she could not think of
retrenching her equipage, but would appear in her own lodgings with the
same magnificence as she did upon the stage. This greatness of soul has
reduced that unhappy princess to a voluntary retirement, where she now
passes her time among the woods and forests, thinking on the crowns and
sceptres she has lost, and often humming over in her solitude:--

    'I was born of royal race,
     Yet must wander in disgrace, &c.'

"But for fear of being overheard, and her quality known, she usually
sings it in Italian:--

    'Nacqui al regno, nacqui al trono,
     E pur sono,
     Sventatura pastorella.'"

[Sidenote: STEELE AND DRURY LANE.]

It is "the Christian soldier" who wrote this; who rejoiced in this
anti-christian and cowardly spirit at the dark calamity which had
befallen an amiable and charming vocalist, whose only fault was that
she had aided the fortunes of a theatre abhorred by Steele. And what
cause had Steele for detesting the Italian Opera with the unreasonable
and really stupid hatred which he displayed towards it? Addison, as it
seems to me, has been most unfairly attacked for his strictures on the
operatic performances of his day. They were often just, they were never
ill-natured, and they were always enveloped in such a delightful garb of
humour, that there is not a sentence, certainly not a whole paper, and
scarcely even a phrase,[14] in all he has published about the Opera,
that a musician, unless already "enraged," would wish unwritten. It is
unreasonable and unworthy to connect Addison's pleasantries on the
subject of _Arsinoe_, _Camilla_, _Hydaspes_, and _Rinaldo_, with the
failure of his _Rosamond_, which, as the reader is aware, was set to
music by the ignorant impostor called Clayton. Addison, it is true, did
not write any of his admirably humorous papers about the Italian Opera
until after the production of _Rosamond_, but it was not until some time
afterwards that the _Spectator_ first appeared. St. Evrémond, who was a
great lover of the Opera, wrote much more against it than Addison. In
fact, the new entertainment was the subject of the day. It was full of
incongruities, and naturally recommended itself to the attention of
wits; and we all know that, as a rule, wits do not deal in praise. All
that _Rosamond_ proves is, that Addison liked the Opera or he would
never have written it.

But about this Christian Soldier who endeavours to convince his readers
that music is a thing to be despised because it does not appeal to the
understanding, and who laughs at the misfortunes of a poor lunatic
because she is no longer able to attract the public by her singing from
the dramatic theatre in which he took so deep an interest, and of which
he afterwards became patentee?[15]

[Sidenote: HANDEL V. AMBROSE PHILLIPS.]

Of course, if music appealed only to the understanding, mad Saul would
have found no solace in the tones of David's harp, and it would be
hideously irreverent to imagine the angels of heaven singing hymns to
their Creator. Steele, of course, knew this, and also that the pleasure
given by music is not a mere physical sensation, to be enjoyed as an
Angora cat enjoys the smell of flowers, but he seems to have thought it
was his duty (as it afterwards became his interest) to write up the
drama and write down the Opera at all hazards. Powerful penmanship it
must have been, however, that would have put down Handel, or that would
have kept up Mr. Ambrose Phillips. It would have been easier, at least
it would have been more successful, to have gone upon the other tack. We
all know Handel, and (if the expression be permitted) he becomes more
immortal every day. Steele, it is true, did not hold his music in any
esteem, but Mozart, a competent judge in such matters, _did_, and
reckoned it an honour to write additional accompaniments to the elder
master's greatest work. And who was this Ambrose Phillips? some reader,
not necessarily ignorant of his country's literature, may ask. He was
Racine's thief. He stole _Andromaque_, and gave it to the English as his
own, calling it prosaically and stupidly "The Distrest Mother," which is
as if we should call "Abel" "The Uncivil Brother," or "Philoctetes" "The
Man with the Bad Foot," or "Prometheus," "The Gentleman with the Liver
Complaint." Steele wrote a paper[16] on the reading of this new tragedy,
in which he declares that "the style of the play is such as becomes
those of the first education, and the sentiments worthy of those of the
highest figure." He also says, "I congratulate the age that they are at
last to see truth and human life represented in the incidents which
concern heroes and heroines."

Translated Racine was very popular just then with writers who regarded
Shakespeare as a dealer in the false sublime. "Would one think it was
possible," asks Addison, "at a time when an author lived that was able
to write the _Phedra and Hippolytus_ (translate _Phèdre_, that is to
say), for a people to be so stupidly fond of the Italian Opera as scarce
to give a third day's hearing to that admirable tragedy."

Sensible people! It seems quite possible to us in the present day that
they should have preferred Handel's music to Racine's rhymed prose,
rendered into English rhymes by a man who had nothing of the poetical
spirit which Racine, though writing in an unpoetical language, certainly
possessed.

The triumphant success of Handel's _Rinaldo_ was felt deeply by Steele
and by the _Spectator's_ favourite composer Clayton, a bad musician, and
apart from the practice of his art, as base a scoundrel as ever libelled
a great man. But of course critics who besides expatiating on the
blemishes of Shakespeare dwelt on the beauties of Racine as improved by
Phillips, would be sure to enjoy the cacophony of Clayton;

    "Qui Bavium non odit amet tua carmina Mævi."

[Sidenote: NICOLINI AND THE LION.]

However we must leave the chivalrous Steele and his faithful minstrel
for the present. We have done with the writer's triumphant gloating over
the insanity of the poor _prima donna_. We shall presently see the
musician publishing impudent falsehoods, under the auspices of his
literary patron, concerning Handel and his genius, and endeavouring,
always with the same protection, to form a cabal for the avowed purpose
of driving him from the country which he was so greatly benefiting.

Before Handel's arrival in England Steele had not only insulted operatic
singers, but in recording the success of Scarlatti's _Pyrrhus and
Demetrius_, had openly proclaimed his chagrin thereat. "This
intelligence," he says, "is not very agreeable to our friends of the
theatre."

       *       *       *       *       *

_Pyrrhus and Demetrius_, in which the celebrated Nicolini made his first
appearance, was the last opera performed partly in English and partly in
Italian.

In 1710, _Almahide_, of which the music is attributed to Buononcini, was
played entirely in the Italian language, with Valentine, Nicolini,
Margarita de l'Epine, Cassani, and "Signora Isabella" (Isabella
Girardean), in the principal parts. The same year _Hydaspes_ was
produced. This marvellous work, which is not likely to be forgotten by
readers of the _Spectator_, was brought out under the direction of
Nicolini, the sopranist, who performed the part of the hero. The other
singers were those included in the cast of _Almahide_, with the addition
of Lawrence, an English tenor, who was in the habit of singing in
Italian operas, and of whom it was humourously said by Addison, in his
proposition for an opera in Greek, that he "could learn to speak the
language as well as he does Italian in a fortnight's time." "Hydaspes"
is a sort of profane Daniel, who being thrown into an amphitheatre to be
devoured by a lion, is saved not by faith, but by love; the presence of
his mistress among the spectators inspiring him with such courage, that
after appealing to the monster in a minor key, and telling him that he
may tear his bosom but cannot touch his heart, he attacks him in the
relative major, and strangles him.

[Sidenote: NICOLINI AND THE LION.]

"There is nothing of late years," says Addison, in one of the most
amusing of his papers on the Opera, "that has afforded matter of greater
amusement to the town than Signior Nicolini's combat with a lion in the
Haymarket, which has been very often exhibited to the general
satisfaction of most of the nobility and gentry in the kingdom of Great
Britain." Upon the first rumour of this intended combat, it was
confidently affirmed, and is still believed by many in both galleries,
that there would be a tame lion sent from the tower every Opera night,
in order to be killed by Hydaspes; this report, though altogether so
universally prevalent in the upper regions of the play-house, that some
of the most refined politicians in those parts of the audience gave it
out in whisper, that the lion was a cousin-german of the tiger who made
his appearance in King William's days, and that the stage would be
supplied with lions at the public expense, during the whole session.
Many likewise were the conjectures of the treatment which this lion was
to meet with from the hands of Signior Nicolini; some supposed that he
was to subdue him in recitative, as Orpheus used to serve the wild
beasts in his time, and afterwards to knock him on the head; some
fancied that the lion would not pretend to lay his paws upon the hero,
by reason of the received opinion, that a lion will not hurt a virgin.
Several who pretended to have seen the Opera in Italy, had informed
their friends, that the lion was to act a part in high Dutch, and roar
twice or thrice to a thorough bass, before he fell at the feet of
Hydaspes. To clear up a matter that was so variously reported, I have
made it my business to examine whether this pretended lion is really the
savage he appears to be, or only a counterfeit.

"But before I communicate my discoveries, I must acquaint the reader
that upon my walking behind the scenes last winter, as I was thinking on
something else, I accidentally justled against a monstrous animal that
extremely startled me, and upon my nearer survey much surprised, told me
in a gentle voice that I might come by him if I pleased, 'for,' says he,
'I do not intend to hurt any body.' I thanked him very kindly, and
passed by him; and in a little time after saw him leap upon the stage,
and act his part with very great applause. It has been observed by
several, that the lion has changed his manner of acting twice or thrice
since his first appearance; which will not seem strange, when I acquaint
my reader that the lion has been changed upon the audience three several
times. The first lion was a candle-snuffer, who being a fellow of a
testy choleric temper, overdid his part, and would not suffer himself to
be killed so easily as he ought to have done; besides, it was observed
of him, that he grew more surly every time he came out of the lion; and
having dropped some words in ordinary conversation, as if he had not
fought his best, and that he suffered himself to be thrown upon his back
in the scuffle, and that he would wrestle with Mr. Nicolini for what he
pleased, out of his lion's skin, it was thought proper to discard him;
and it is verily believed to this day, that had he been brought upon the
stage another time, he would certainly have done mischief. Besides, it
was objected against the first lion, that he reared himself so high upon
his hinder paws, and walked in so erect a posture, that he looked more
like an old man than a lion.

[Sidenote: NICOLINI AND THE LION.]

"The second lion was a tailor by trade, who belonged to the play-house,
and had the character of a mild and peaceable man in his profession. If
the former was too furious, this was too sheepish for his part; insomuch
that after a short modest walk upon the stage, he would fall at the
first touch of Hydaspes, without grappling with him, and giving him an
opportunity of showing his variety of Italian trips. It is said, indeed,
that he once gave him a rip in his flesh colour doublet; but this was
only to make work for himself, in his private character of a tailor. I
must not omit that it was this second lion who treated me with so much
humanity behind the scenes. The acting lion at present is, as I am
informed, a country gentleman who does it for his diversion, but desires
his name may be concealed. He says, very handsomely, in his own excuse,
that he does not act for gain; that he indulges an innocent pleasure in
it; and that it is better to pass away an evening in this manner, than
in gaming and drinking; but at the same time says, with a very agreeable
raillery upon himself, and that if his name should be known, the
ill-natured world might call him 'the ass in the lion's skin.' This
gentleman's temper is made out of such a happy mixture of the mild and
the choleric, that he outdoes both his predecessors, and has drawn
together greater audiences than have been known in the memory of man.

"I must not conclude my narrative without taking notice of a groundless
report that has been raised to a gentleman's disadvantage, of whom I
must declare myself an admirer; namely, that Signior Nicolini and the
lion have been sitting peaceably by one another, and smoking a pipe
together, behind the scenes; by which their enemies would insinuate, it
is but a sham combat which they represent upon the stage; but upon
enquiry I find, that if any such correspondence has passed between them,
it was not till the combat was over, when the lion was to be looked upon
as dead, according to the received rules of the drama. Besides, this is
what is practised every day in Westminster Hall, where nothing is more
usual than to see a couple of lawyers, who have been tearing each other
to pieces in the court, embracing one another.

"I would not be thought, in any part of this relation, to reflect upon
Signior Nicolini, who, in acting this part, only complies with the
wretched taste of his audience; he knows very well that the lion has
many more admirers than himself; as they say of the famous equestrian
statue on the Pont Neuf at Paris, that more people go to see the horse
than the king who sits upon it. On the contrary, it gives me a just
indignation to see a person whose action gives new majesty to kings,
resolution to heroes, and softness to lovers, thus sinking from the
greatness of his behaviour, and degraded into the character of a London
'prentice. I have often wished that our tragedians would copy after this
great master in action. Could they make the same use of their arms and
legs, and inform their faces with as significant looks and passions, how
glorious would an English tragedy appear with that action which is
capable of giving dignity to the forced thoughts, cold conceits, and
unnatural expressions of an Italian Opera! In the meantime, I have
related this combat of the lion, to show what are at present the
reigning entertainments of the politer part of Great Britain."

[Sidenote: RINALDO AND THE SPARROWS.]

But the operatic year of 1710 is remarkable for something more than the
production of Almahide and Hydaspes; for in 1710 Handel arrived in
England, and the year after brought out his Rinaldo, the first of the
thirty-five operas which he gave to the English stage. For Handel we are
indebted to Hanover. It was at Hanover that the English noblemen who
invited him to London first met the great composer; and it was the
Elector of Hanover, afterwards George I., who granted him permission to
come, and who when he in his turn arrived in England to assume the
crown, added considerably to the pension which Queen Anne had already
granted to the former chapel-master of the Hanoverian court. In 1710 the
director of the theatre in the Haymarket was Aaron Hill, who no sooner
heard of Handel's arrival in London than he went to him, and requested
him to compose an opera for his establishment. Handel consented, and
Hill furnished him with a plan, sketched out by himself, on the subject
of _Rinaldo and Armida_ in Tasso's _Jerusalem Delivered_, the writing of
the _libretto_ being entrusted to an Italian poet of some note named
Rossi. In the advertisements of this opera Handel's name does not
appear; not at least in that which calls attention to its first
representation and which simply sets forth that "at the Queen's Theatre
in the Haymarket will be performed a new opera called _Rinaldo_."

It was in _Rinaldo_ that the celebrated operatic sparrows made their
first appearance on the stage--with what success may be gathered from
the following notice of their performance, which I extract from No. 5 of
the _Spectator_.

"As I was walking in the streets about a fortnight ago," says Addison,
"I saw an ordinary fellow carrying a cage full of little birds upon his
shoulder; and as I was wondering with myself what use he would put them
to, he was met very luckily by an acquaintance, who had the same
curiosity. Upon his asking him what he had upon his shoulder, he told
him that he had been buying sparrows for the opera. 'Sparrows, for the
opera,' says his friend, licking his lips, 'What! are they to be
roasted?' 'No, no,' says the other, 'they are to enter towards the end
of the first act, and to fly about the stage.'

[Sidenote: RINALDO AND THE SPARROWS.]

"This strange dialogue wakened my curiosity so far that I immediately
bought the opera, by which means I perceived the sparrows were to act
the part of singing birds in a delightful grove, though upon a nearer
inquiry I found the sparrows put the same trick upon the audience that
Sir Martin Mar-all practised upon his mistress; for though they flew in
sight, the music proceeded from a concert of flageolets and bird-calls,
which were planted behind the scenes. At the same time I made this
discovery, I found by the discourse of the actors, that there were great
designs on foot for the improvement of the Opera; that it had been
proposed to break down a part of the wall, and to surprise the audience
with a party of a hundred horse; and that there was actually a project
of bringing the New River into the house, to be employed in jetteaus and
waterworks. This project, as I have since heard, is postponed till the
summer season, when it is thought that the coolness which proceeds from
fountains and cascades will be more acceptable and refreshing to people
of quality. In the meantime, to find out a more agreeable entertainment
for the winter season, the opera of _Rinaldo_ is filled with thunder and
lightning, illuminations, and fireworks; which the audience may look
upon without catching cold, and indeed without much danger of being
burnt; for there are several engines filled with water, and ready to
play at a minute's warning, in case any such accident should happen.
However, as I have a very great friendship for the owner of this
theatre, I hope that he has been wise enough to insure his house before
he would let this opera be acted in it.

"But to return to the sparrows. There have been so many flights of them
let loose in this opera, that it is feared the house will never get rid
of them; and that in other plays they may make their entrance in very
wrong and improper scenes, so as to be seen flying in a lady's
bedchamber, or perching upon a king's throne; besides the inconveniences
which the heads of the audience may sometimes suffer from them. I am
credibly informed, that there was once a design of casting into an opera
the story of 'Whittington and his Cat,' and that in order to it there
had been set together a great quantity of mice, but Mr. Rich, the
proprietor of the playhouse, very prudently considered that it would be
impossible for the cat to kill them all, and that consequently the
princes of the stage might be as much infested with mice as the prince
of the island was before the cat's arrival upon it, for which reason he
would not permit it to be acted in his house. And, indeed, I cannot
blame him; for as he said very well upon that occasion, 'I do not hear
that any of the performers in our opera pretend to equal the famous pied
piper who made all the mice of a great town in Germany follow his music,
and by that means cleared the place of those noxious little animals.'

"Before I dismiss this paper, I must inform my reader that I hear that
there is a treaty on foot between London and Wise,[17] (who will be
appointed gardeners of the playhouse) to furnish the opera of _Rinaldo
and Armida_ with an orange grove; and that the next time it is acted the
singing birds will be impersonated by tom tits: the undertakers being
resolved to spare neither pains nor money for the gratification of their
audience."

[Sidenote: HAMLET SET TO MUSIC.]

Steele, in No. 14 of the _Spectator_, tells us that--"The sparrows and
chaffinches at the Haymarket fly, as yet, very irregularly over the
stage; and instead of perching on the trees and performing their parts,
these young actors either get into the galleries or put out the
candles," for which and other reasons equally good, he decides that Mr.
Powell's Puppet-show is preferable as a place of entertainment to the
Opera, and that Handel's _Rinaldo_ is inferior as a production of art to
a puppet-show drama. Indeed, though Steele, in the _Tatler_, and Addison
in the _Spectator_, have said very civil things about Nicolini, neither
of them appears to have been impressed in the slightest degree by
Handel's music, nor does it even seem to have occurred to them that the
composer's share in producing an opera was by any means considerable.
Steele, thought the Opera a decidedly "unintellectual" entertainment
(how much purely intellectual enjoyment is there, we wonder, in the
pleasure derived from the contemplation of a virgin, by Raphael, and
what is the meaning in criticising art of looking at it merely in its
intellectual aspect?); but he at the same time bears testimony to the
high (æsthetic) gratification he derived from the performance of
Nicolini, who "by the grace and propriety of his action and gesture,
does honour to the human figure," and who "sets off the character he
bears in an opera by his action as much as he does the words of it by
his voice."[18]

In 1711, in addition to Handel's _Rinaldo_, _Antiochus_, an opera, by
Apostolo Zeno and Gasparini, was performed, and about the same time, or
soon afterwards, _Ambleto_, by the same author and composer, was brought
out. If we smile at Signor Verdi for attempting to turn _Macbeth_ into
an opera, what are we to say to Zeno's and Gasparini's experiment with
the far more unsuitable tragedy of _Hamlet_? In _Macbeth_, the songs and
choruses of witches, the banquet with the apparition of the murdered
Banquo, and above all, the sleep-walking scene might well inspire a
composer of genius; but a "Hamlet" without philosophy, or, worse still,
a "Hamlet" who searches his own soul to orchestral accompaniments--this
must indeed be absurd. I learn from Dr. Burney, that _Ambleto_ was
written for Venice, that it was represented at the Queen's Theatre, in
London, and that "the overture had four movements ending with a jig!" An
overture to _Hamlet_ "ending with a jig!" To think that this was
tolerated, and that we are shocked in the present day by burlesques put
forth as such! The _Spectator_, while apparently keeping a sharp look
out for all that is ridiculous, or that can be represented as ridiculous
in the operatic performances of the day, has not a word to say against
_Ambleto_. But it must be remembered that since Milton's time, "Nature's
sweetest child" had ceased to be appreciated in England even by the most
esteemed writers--who, however, for the most part, if they were not good
critics, could claim no literary merit beyond that of style. In a paper
on Milton, one of whose noblest sonnets is in praise of Shakespeare,
Addison, after showing how, by certain verbal expedients, bathos may be
avoided and sublimity attained, calmly points to the works of Lee and
Shakespeare as affording instances of the false sublime[19], adding
coolly that, "_in these authors_ the affectation of greatness often
hurts the perspicuity of the style."

[Sidenote: THREE ENRAGED MUSICIANS.]

I have spoken of Steele's and Clayton's consternation, at the success of
_Rinaldo_. Some months after the production of that work, the despicable
Clayton, supported by two musicians named Nicolino Haym, and Charles
Dieupart, (who were becomingly indignant at a foreigner like Handel
presuming to entertain a British audience), wrote a letter to the
_Spectator_, which Steele published in No. 258 of that journal,
introducing it by a preface, full of wisdom, in which it is set forth
that "pleasure and recreation of one kind or other are absolutely
necessary to relieve our minds and bodies from too constant attention
and labour," and that, "where public diversions are tolerated, it
behoves persons of distinction, with their power and example, to preside
over them in such a manner as to check anything that tends to the
corruption of manners, or which is too mean or trivial for the
entertainment of reasonable creatures." The letter from the "enraged
musicians" is described as coming "from three persons who, as soon as
named, will be thought capable of advancing the present state of
music"--that is to say, of superseding Handel. But the same perverse
public, which in spite of the _Spectator's_ remonstrances, preferred
_Rinaldo_ to translated Racine, persisted in admiring Handel's music,
and in paying no heed whatever to the cacophony of Clayton. Here is the
letter from the three miserable musicasters to their patron and
fellow-conspirator.

"We, whose names are subscribed, think you the properest person to
signify what we have to offer the town in behalf of ourselves, and the
art which we profess,--music. We conceive hopes of your favour from the
speculations on the mistakes which the town run into with regard to
their pleasure of this kind; and believing your method of judging is,
that you consider music only valuable, as it is agreeable to and
heightens the purpose of poetry, we consent that it is not only the true
way of relishing that pleasure, but also that without it a composure of
music is the same thing as a poem, where all the rules of poetical
numbers are observed, though the words have no sense or meaning; to say
it shorter, mere musical sounds in our art are no other than
nonsense-verses are in poetry." [A beautiful melody then, apart from
words, said no more to these musicians, and to the patron whose idiotic
theory they are so proud to have adopted than a set of nonsense-verses!]
"Music, therefore, is to aggravate what is intended by poetry; it must
always have some passion or sentiment to express, or else violins,
voices, or any other organs of sound, afford an entertainment very
little above the rattles of children. It was from this opinion of the
matter, that when Mr. Clayton had finished his studies in Italy, and
brought over the Opera of _Arsinoe_, that Mr. Haym and Mr. Dieupart, who
had the honour to be well-known and received among the nobility and
gentry, were zealously inclined to assist, by their solicitations, in
introducing so elegant an entertainment, as the Italian music grafted
upon English poetry." [Such poetry, for instance, as

[Sidenote: THREE ENRAGED MUSICIANS.]

    "Guide me, lead me,
     Where the nymph whom I adore

which occurred in Clayton's _Arsinoe_--Haym, it may be remembered, was
the ingenious musician who arranged _Pyrrhus and Demetrius_ for the
Anglo-Italian stage, when half of the music was sung in one language,
and half in the other.] "For this end," continue the precious trio, "Mr.
Dieupart and Mr. Haym, according to their several opportunities,
promoted the introduction of _Arsinoe_, and did it to the best advantage
so great a novelty would allow. It is not proper to trouble you with
particulars of the just complaints we all of us have to make; but so it
is that without regard to our obliging pains, we are all equally set
aside in the present opera. Our application, therefore, to you is only
to insert this letter in your paper, that the town may know we have all
three joined together to make entertainments of music for the future at
Mr. Clayton's house, in York Buildings. What we promise ourselves is, to
make a subscription of two guineas, for eight times, and that the
entertainment, with the names of the authors of the poetry, may be
printed, to be sold in the house, with an account of the several authors
of the vocal as well as the instrumental music for each night; the money
to be paid at the receipt of the tickets, at Mr. Charles Lulli's. It
will, we hope, sir, be easily allowed that we are capable of undertaking
to exhibit, by our joint force and different qualifications, all that
can be done in music" [how charmingly modest!] "but lest you should
think so dry a thing as an account of our proposal should be a matter
unworthy of your paper, which generally contains something of public
use, give us leave to say, that favouring our design is no less than
reviving an art, which runs to ruin by the utmost barbarism under an
affectation of knowledge. We aim at establishing some settled notion of
what is music, at recovering from neglect and want very many families
who depend upon it, at making all foreigners who pretend to succeed in
England to learn the language of it as we ourselves have done, and not
be so insolent as to expect a whole nation, a refined and learned
nation, should submit to learn theirs. In a word, Mr. Spectator, with
all deference and humility, we hope to behave ourselves in this
undertaking in such a manner, that all Englishmen who have any skill in
music may be furthered in it for their profit or diversion by what new
things we shall produce; never pretending to surpass others, or
asserting that anything which is a science is not attainable by all men
of all nations who have proper genius for it. We say, sir, what we hope
for, it is not expected will arrive to us by contemning others, but
through the utmost diligence recommending ourselves."

Poor Clayton seems, here and there, to have really fancied that it was
his mission to put down Handel, and stuck to him for some time in most
pertinacious style. One is reminded of the writer who endeavoured to
turn Wilhelm Meister into ridicule, and of the epigram which that
attempt suggested to Goethe, ending:--

    "Hat doch die Wallfisch seine Laus."

[Sidenote: THREE ENRAGED MUSICIANS.]

But Clayton was really a creator, and proposed nothing less than "to
revive an art which was running to ruin by the utmost barbarism under an
affectation of knowledge." One would have thought that this was going a
little too far. Handel affecting knowledge--Handel a barbarian? Surely
Steele in giving the sanction of his name to such assertions as these,
puts himself in a lower position even than Voltaire uttering his
celebrated dictum about the genius of Shakespeare; for after all,
Voltaire was the first Frenchman to discover any beauties in Shakespeare
at all, and it was in defending him against the stupid prejudices of
Laharpe that he made use of the unfortunate expression with which he has
so often been reproached, and which he put forward in the form of a
concession to his adversary.

Clayton and his second fiddles returned to the attack a few weeks
afterwards (January 18th, 1712). "It is industriously insinuated," they
complained, "that our intention is to destroy operas in general, but we
beg of you (that is to say, the _Spectator_, as represented by Steele,
who signs the number with his T) to insert this explanation of ourselves
in your paper. Our purpose is only to improve our circumstances by
improving the art which we profess" [the knaves are getting candid]. "We
see it utterly destroyed at present, and as we were the persons who
introduced operas, we think it a groundless imputation that we should
set up against the Opera itself," &c., &c.

What became of Clayton, Haym, and Dieupart, and their speculation, I do
not know, nor do I think that any one can care. At all events, even with
the assistance of Steele and the _Spectator_ they did not extinguish
Handel.

The most celebrated vocalist at the theatre in the Haymarket, from the
arrival of Handel in England until after the formation of the Royal
Academy of Music, in 1720, was Anastasia Robinson, a _contralto_, who
was remarkable as much for her graceful acting as for her expressive
singing. She made her first appearance in a _pasticcio_ called _Creso_,
in 1714, and continued singing in the operas of Handel and other
composers until 1724, when she contracted a private marriage with the
Earl of Peterborough and retired from the stage. Lady Delany, an
intimate friend of Lady Peterborough, communicated the following account
of her marriage and the circumstances under which it was made, to Dr.
Burney, who publishes it in his "History of Music."

[Sidenote: ANASTASIA ROBINSON.]

"Mrs. Anastasia Robinson was of middling stature, not handsome, but of a
pleasing, modest countenance, with large blue eyes. Her deportment was
easy, unaffected, and graceful. Her manner and address very engaging,
and her behaviour on all occasions that of a gentlewoman, with perfect
propriety. She was not only liked by all her acquaintance, but loved and
caressed by persons of the highest rank, with whom she appeared always
equal, without assuming. Her father's house, in Golden Square was
frequented by all the men of genius and refined taste of the times.
Among the number of persons of distinction who frequented Mr. Robinson's
house, and seemed to distinguish his daughter in a particular manner,
were the Earl of Peterborough and General H--. The latter had shown a
long attachment to her, and his attentions were so remarkable that they
seemed more than the effects of common politeness; and as he was a very
agreeable man, and in good circumstances, he was favourably received,
not doubting but that his intentions were honourable. A declaration of a
very contrary nature was treated with the contempt it deserved, though
Mrs. Robinson was very much prepossessed in his favour.

"Soon after this, Lord Peterborough endeavoured to convince her of his
partial regard for her; but, agreeable and artful as he was, she
remained very much upon her guard, which rather increased than
diminished his admiration and passion for her. Yet still his pride
struggled with his inclination, for all this time she was engaged to
sing in public, a circumstance very grievous to her; but, urged by the
best of motives, she submitted to it, in order to assist her parents,
whose fortune was much reduced by Mr. Robinson's loss of sight, which
deprived him of the benefit of his profession as a painter.

"At length Lord Peterborough made his declaration to her on honourable
terms. He found it would be in vain to make proposals on any other, and
as he omitted no circumstance that could engage her esteem and
gratitude, she accepted them. He earnestly requested her keeping it a
secret till a more convenient time for him to make it known, to which
she readily consented, having a perfect confidence in his honour.

"Mrs. A. Robinson had a sister, a very pretty accomplished woman, who
married D'Arbuthnot's brother. After the death of Mr. Robinson, Lord
Peterborough took a house near Fulham, in the neighbourhood of his own
villa at Parson's-green, where he settled Mrs. Robinson and her mother.
They never lived under the same roof, till the earl, being seized with a
violent fit of illness, solicited her to attend him at Mount Bevis, near
Southampton, which she refused with firmness, but upon condition that,
though still denied to take his name, she might be permitted to wear her
wedding-ring; to which, finding her inexorable, he at length consented.

[Sidenote: ANASTASIA ROBINSON.]

"His haughty spirit was still reluctant to the making a declaration that
would have done justice to so worthy a character as the person to whom
he was now united; and indeed his uncontrollable temper and high opinion
of his own actions made him a very awful husband, ill suited to Lady
Peterborough's good sense, amiable temper, and delicate sentiments. She
was a Roman Catholic, but never gave offence to those of a contrary
opinion, though very strict in what she thought her duty. Her excellent
principles and fortitude of mind supported her through many severe
trials in her conjugal state. But at last he prevailed on himself to do
her justice, instigated, it is supposed by his bad state of health,
which obliged him to seek another climate, and she absolutely refused to
go with him unless he declared his marriage. Her attendance on him in
this illness nearly cost her her life.

"He appointed a day for all his nearest relations to meet him at the
apartment over the gateway of St. James's palace, belonging to Mr.
Poyntz, who was married to Lord Peterborough's niece, and at that time
preceptor of Prince William, afterwards Duke of Cumberland. He also
appointed Lady Peterborough to be there at the same time. When they were
all assembled, he began a most eloquent oration, enumerating all the
virtues and perfections of Mrs. A. Robinson, and the rectitude of her
conduct during his long acquaintance with her, for which he acknowledged
his great obligation and sincere attachment, declaring he was determined
to do her that justice which he ought to have done long ago, which was
presenting her to all his family as his wife. He spoke this harangue
with so much energy, and in parts so pathetically, that Lady
Peterborough, not being apprised of his intentions, was so affected that
she fainted away in the midst of the company.

"After Lord Peterborough's death, she lived a very retired life, chiefly
at Mount Bevis, and was seldom prevailed on to leave that habitation but
by the Duchess of Portland, who was always happy to have her company at
Bulstrode, when she could obtain it, and often visited her at her own
house.

"Among Lord Peterborough's papers, she found his memoirs, written by
himself, in which he declared he had been guilty of such actions as
would have reflected very much upon his character, for which reason she
burnt them. This, however, contributed to complete the excellency of her
principles, though it did not fail giving offence to the curious
inquirers after anecdotes of so remarkable a character as that of the
Earl of Peterborough."

[Sidenote: DUCAL CONNOISSEURS.]

The deserved good fortune of Anastasia Robinson reminds me of the
careers of two other vocalists of this period, one of them owed her
elevation to a fortunate accident; while the third, though she entered
upon the same possible road to the peerage as the second, yet never
attained it. "The Duke of Bolton," says Swift, in one of his letters,
"has run away with Polly Peachum, having settled four hundred a year on
her during pleasure, and upon disagreement, two hundred more." This was
the charming Lavinia Fenton, the original Polly of the Beggars' Opera,
between whom and the Duke the disagreement anticipated by the amiable
Swift never took place. Twenty-three years after the elopement, the
Duke's wife died, and Lavinia then became the Duchess of Bolton. She
was, according to the account given of her by Dr. Joseph Warton, "a very
accomplished and most agreeable 

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