Part 37 (1/2)
The old gentleman, however, was quite right in impressing upon the bearer of his name, that having once resolved to be a composer, he had better make up his mind to produce as little rubbish as possible.
The first signs of the dreadful malady to which Donizetti ultimately succ.u.mbed, manifested themselves during his last visit to Paris, in 1845. Fits of absence of mind, followed by hallucinations and all the symptoms of mental derangement followed one another rapidly, and with increasing intensity. In January, 1846, it was found necessary to place the unfortunate composer in an asylum at Ivry, and in the autumn of 1847, his medical advisers recommended as a final experiment, that he should be removed to Bergamo, in the hope that the air and scenes of his birth-place would have a favourable influence in dispelling, or, at least, diminis.h.i.+ng the profound melancholy to which he was now subject.
During his journey, however, he was attacked by paralysis, and his illness a.s.sumed a desperate and incurable character.
Donizetti was received at Bergamo by the Maestro Dolci, one of his dearest friends. Here paralysis again attacked him, and a few days afterwards, on the 8th of April, 1848, he expired, in his fifty-second year, having, during the twenty-seven years of his life, as a composer, written sixty-four operas; several ma.s.ses and vesper services; and innumerable pieces of chamber music, including, besides arias, cavatinas, and vocal concerted pieces, a dozen quartetts for stringed instruments, a series of songs and duets, ent.i.tled _Les soirees du Pausilippe_, a cantata ent.i.tled _la Morte d'Ugolino_, &c., &c.
Antoine, Donizetti's attendant at Ivry, became much attached to him, and followed him to Bergamo, whence he forwarded to M. Adolphe Adam, a letter describing his ill.u.s.trious patient's last moments, and the public honours paid to his memory at the funeral.
[Sidenote: DONIZETTI'S DEATH.]
”More than four thousand persons,” he relates, ”were present at the ceremony. The procession was composed of the numerous clergy of Bergamo; the most ill.u.s.trious members of the community and its environs, and of the civic guard of the town and suburbs. The discharges of musketry, mingled with the light of three or four hundred large torches, presented a fine effect--the whole was enhanced by the presence of three military bands, and the most propitious weather it was possible to behold. The service commenced at ten o'clock in the morning, and did not conclude until half-past two. The young gentlemen of Bergamo insisted on bearing the remains of their ill.u.s.trious fellow-citizen, although the cemetery in which they finally rested lay at a distance of a league-and-a-half from the town. The road there was crowded along its whole length by people who came from the surrounding country to witness the procession--and, to give due praise to the inhabitants of Bergamo, never, hitherto, had such great honours been bestowed upon any member of that city.”
Bellini, who was Donizetti's contemporary, but who was born nine years after him, and died thirteen years before, was a native of Sicily. His father was an organist at Catania, and under him the future composer of _Norma_ and _La Sonnambula_, took his first lessons in music. A Sicilian n.o.bleman, struck by the signs of genius which young Bellini evinced at an early age, persuaded his father to send him to Naples, supporting his arguments with an offer to pay his expenses at the celebrated Conservatorio. Here one of Bellini's fellow pupils was Mercadante, the future composer of _Il Giuramento_, an opera which, in spite of the frequent attempts of the Italian singers to familiarize the English public with its numerous beauties, has never been much liked in this country. I do not say that it has not been justly appreciated on the whole, but that the grace of some of the melodies, the acknowledged merit of the orchestration and the elegance and distinction which seem to me to characterize the composer's style generally, have not been accepted as compensating for his want of pa.s.sion and of that spontaneity without which the expression of strong emotion of any kind is naturally impossible. Mercadante could never have written _Rigoletto_, but, probably, a composer of inferior natural gifts to Verdi might, with a taste for study and a determination to bring his talent to perfection, have produced a work of equal artistic merit to _Il Giuramento_. And here we must take leave of Mercadante, whose place in the history of the opera is not a considerable one, and who, to the majority of English amateurs, is known only by his _Bella adorata_, a melody of which Verdi has shown his estimation by borrowing it, diluting it, and re-arranging it with a new accompaniment for the tenor's song in _Luisa Miller_.
[Sidenote: RUBINI.]
I should think Mercadante must have written better exercises, and pa.s.sed better examinations at the Conservatorio than his young friend Bellini, though the latter must have begun at an earlier age to compose operas.
Bellini's first dramatic work was written and performed while he was still a student. Encouraged by its success, he next composed music to a libretto already ”set” by Generali, and ent.i.tled _Adelson e Salvino_.
_Adelson_ was represented before the ill.u.s.trious Barbaja, who was at that time manager of the two most celebrated theatres in Italy, the St.
Carlo at Naples, and La Scala at Milan,--as well as of the Italian opera at Vienna, to say nothing of some smaller operatic establishments also under his rule. The great impresario, struck by Bellini's promise, commissioned him to write an opera for Naples, and, in 1826, his _Bianca e Fernando_ was produced at the St. Carlo. This work was so far successful, that it obtained a considerable amount of applause from the public, while it inspired Barbaja with so much confidence that he entrusted the young composer, now twenty years of age, with the libretto of _il Pirata_, to be composed for La Scala. The tenor part was written specially for Rubini, who retired into the country with Bellini, and studied, as they were produced, the simple, touching airs which he afterwards delivered on the stage with such admirable expression.
_Il Pirata_ was received with enthusiasm by the audiences of La Scala, and the composer was requested to write another work for the same theatre. _La Straniera_ was brought out at Milan in 1828, the princ.i.p.al parts being entrusted to Donzelli, Tamburini, and Madame Tosi. This, Bellini's third work, appears, on the whole, to have maintained, but scarcely to have advanced, his reputation. Nevertheless, when it was represented in London soon after its original production, it was by no means so favourably received as _Il Pirato_ had been.
Bellini's _Zaira_, executed at Parma, in 1829, was a failure--soon, however, to be redeemed by his fifth work, _Il Capuletti ed i Montecchi_, which was written for Venice, and was received with all possible expressions of approbation. In London, the new operatic version of _Romeo and Juliet_ was not particularly admired, and owed what success it obtained entirely to the acting and singing of Madame Pasta in the princ.i.p.al part. It may be mentioned that the libretto of Bellini's _I Montecchi_ had already served his master, Zingarelli, for his opera of _Romeo e Julietta_.
[Sidenote: LA SONNAMBULA.]
The time had now arrived at which Bellini was to produce his master-pieces, _La Sonnambula_ and _Norma_; the former of which was written for _La Scala_, in 1831, the latter, for the same theatre, in the year following. The success of _La Sonnambula_ has been great everywhere, but nowhere so great as in England, where it has been performed in English and in Italian, oftener than any other two or perhaps three operas, while probably no songs, certainly no songs by a foreign composer, were ever sold in such large numbers as _All is lost_ and _Do not mingle_. The libretto of _La Sonnambula_, by Romani, is one of the most interesting and touching, and one of the best suited for musical ill.u.s.tration in the whole _repertoire_ of _libretti_. To the late M. Scribe, belongs the merit of having invented the charming story on which Romani's and Bellini's opera is founded; and it is worthy of remark that he had already presented it in two different dramatic forms before any one was struck with its capabilities for musical treatment. A thoroughly, essentially, dramatic story can be presented on the stage in any and every form; with music, with dialogue, or with nothing but dumb action. Tried by this test, the plots of a great number of merely well written comedies would prove worthless; and so in substance they are. On the other hand, the vaudeville of _La Somnambula_, became, as re-arranged by M. Scribe, the ballet of _La Somnambule_, (one of the prettiest, by the way, from a ch.o.r.egraphic point of view ever produced); which, in the hands of Romani, became the libretto of an opera; which again, vulgarly treated, has been made into a burlesque; and, loftily treated, might be changed (I will not say elevated, for the operatic form is poetical enough), into a tragedy.
The beauties of _La Sonnambula_, so full of pure melody and of emotional music, of the most simple and touching kind, can be appreciated by every one; by the most learned musician and the most untutored amateur, or rather let us say by any play-goer, who, not having been born deaf to the voice of music, hears an opera for the first time in his life. It was given, however, to an English critic, to listen to this opera, as natural and as unmistakably beautiful as a bed of wild flowers, through a special ear-trumpet of his own; and in number 197 of the most widely-circulated of our literary journals, the following remarks on _La Sonnambula_ appeared. With the exception of one or two pretty _motivi_, exquisitely given by Pasta and Rubini, the music is sometimes scarcely on a level with that of _Il Pirata_, and often sinks below it; there is a general thinness and want of effect in the instrumentation not calculated to make us overlook the other defects of this composition, which, in our humble judgment, are compensated by no redeeming beauties. Bellini has soared too high; there is nothing of grandeur, no touch of true pathos in the common place workings of his mind. He cannot reach the _Opera semi-seria_; he should confine his powers to the lowest walk of the musical drama, the one act _Opera buffa_.”
Equally ill fared _Norma_ at the hands of another musical critic to whose ”reminiscences” I have often had to refer, but who tells us that he did not hear the work in question himself. He speaks of it simply as a production of which the scene is laid in _Wales_, and adds that ”it was not liked.”
Yet _Norma_ has been a good deal liked since its first production at Milan, now nearly thirty years ago; and from Madame Pasta's first to Madame Grisi's last appearance in the princ.i.p.al part, no great singer with any pretension to tragic power has considered her claims fully recognised until she has succeeded in the part of the Druid priestess.
[Sidenote: I PURITANI.]
_Beatrice di Tenda_, Bellini's next opera after _Norma_, cannot be reckoned among his best works. It was written for Venice, in 1833, and was performed in England for the first time, in 1836. It met with no very great success in Italy or elsewhere.
In 1834, Bellini went to Paris, having been requested to write an opera for the excellent Theatre Italien of that capital. The company at the period in question, included Grisi, Rubini, Tamburini and Lablache, all of whom were provided with parts in the new work. _I Puritani_, was played for the first time in London, for Grisi's benefit, in 1835, and with precisely the same distribution of characters as in Paris. The ”_Puritani_ Season” is still remembered by old habitues, as one of the most brilliant of these latter days. Rubini's romance in the first act _A te o cara_, Grisi's _Polonaise_, _Son vergin vezzosa_ and the grand duet for Tamburini and Lablache, produced the greatest enthusiasm in all our musical circles, and the last movement of the duet was treated by ”arrangers” for the piano, in every possible form. This is the movement, (destined, too soon, to find favour in the eyes of omnibus conductors, and all the worst amateurs of the cornet), of which Rossini wrote from Paris to a friend at Milan; ”I need not describe the duet for the two ba.s.ses, you must have heard it where you are.”
_I Puritani_ was Bellini's last opera. The season after its production he retired to the house of a Mr. Lewis at Puteaux, and there, while studying his art with an ardour which never deserted him, was attacked by a fatal illness. ”From his youth up,” says Mr. J. W. Mould, in his interesting ”Memoir of Bellini;” ”Vincenzo's eagerness in his art was such as to keep him at the piano day and night, till he was obliged forcibly to leave it. The ruling pa.s.sion accompanied him through his short life, and by the a.s.siduity with which he pursued it, brought on the dysentery, which closed his brilliant career, peopling his last hours with the figures of those to whom his works were so largely indebted for their success. During the moments of delirium which preceded his death, he was constantly speaking of Lablache, Tamburini and Grisi, and one of his last recognisable impressions was, that he was present at a brilliant representation of his last opera, at the Salle Favart. His earthly career closed on Wednesday, the 23rd of September, 1835.”
[Sidenote: BELLINI'S DEATH.]
Thus died Bellini, in the twenty-ninth year of his age. Immediately after his death, and on the very eve of his interment, the Theatre Italien re-opened with the _Puritani_. ”The work,” says the writer from whom I have just quoted, ”was listened to throughout with a sad attention, betraying evidently how the general thoughts of both audience and artists were pre-occupied with the mournful fate of him so recently amongst them, now extended senseless, soulless, and mute, upon his funeral bier. The solemn and mournful chords which commence the opera, excited a sorrowful emotion in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of both those who sang and those who heard. The feeling in which the orchestra and chorus partic.i.p.ated, ex-tended itself to the princ.i.p.al artists concerned, and the foremost amongst them displayed neither that vigour nor that neatness of execution which Paris was so accustomed to accept at their hands; Tamburini in particular, was so broken down by the death of the young friend, whose presence amongst them spurred the glorious quartett on the season before, to such unprecedented exertions, that his magnificent organ, superb vocalisation were often considerably at fault during the evening, and his interrupted accent, joined to the melancholy depicted on the countenances of Grisi, Rubini, and Lablache, sent those to their homes with an aching heart who had presented themselves to that evening's hearing of _I Puritani_, previously disposed, moreover, to attend the mournful ceremony of the morrow.”
A committee of Bellini's friends, including Rossini, Cherubini, Paer, and Carafa, undertook the general direction of the funeral of which the musical department was entrusted to M. Habeneck the _chef d'orchestre_ of the Academie Royale. The expenses of the ceremony were defrayed by M.