Part 3 (1/2)
”FIRST GENTLEMAN.--'_Apres 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. Honore 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. Evremond, 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. Evremond 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 plat.i.tudes of ordinary conversation. At all events, there is no novelty, and above all no wit, in repeating seriously the pleasantries of St. Evremond, 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'etre 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. Evremond's _Les Operas_--
”_Monsieur comment vous portez vous?_”
”_Je me porte a 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. Evremond, wis.h.i.+ng to amuse himself by exaggerating to a ridiculous point the latest fas.h.i.+onable 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 _Astree_; and to a.s.sert 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 a.s.sume, as is a.s.sumed 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, Ca.s.sani and ”Signora Isabella,” in the princ.i.p.al 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 astonis.h.i.+ng, 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 n.o.bler 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 publis.h.i.+ng 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.]