Part 13 (2/2)

[Sidenote: _Past and present._]

It is interesting to note that in this respect the condition of affairs in London in the early part of the eighteenth century, which seemed so monstrously diverting to Addison, was like that in Hamburg in the latter part of the seventeenth, and in New York at the end of the nineteenth. There were three years in London when Italian and English were mixed in the operatic representations.

”The king or hero of the play 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.”

[Sidenote: _Polyglot opera._]

At length, says Addison, the audience got tired of understanding half the opera, ”and to ease themselves entirely of the fatigue of thinking, so ordered it that the whole opera was performed in an unknown tongue.”

[Sidenote: _Perversions of texts._]

There is this difference, however, between New York and London and Hamburg at the period referred to: while the operatic ragout was compounded of Italian and English in London, Italian and German in Hamburg, the ingredients here are Italian, French, and German, with no admixture of the vernacular. Strictly speaking, our case is more desperate than that of our foreign predecessors, for the development of the lyric drama has lifted its verbal and dramatic elements into a position not dreamed of two hundred years ago. We might endure with equanimity to hear the chorus sing

[Sidenote: _”Robert le Diable.”_]

”_La soupe aux choux se fait dans la marmite, Dans la marmite on fait la soupe aux choux_”

at the beginning of ”Robert le Diable,” as tradition says used to be done in Paris, but we surely ought to rise in rebellion when the chorus of guards change their muttered comments on Pizarro's furious aria in ”Fidelio” from

[Sidenote: _”Fidelio.”_]

_”Er spricht von Tod und Wunde!”_

to

_”Er spricht vom todten Hunde!”_

as is a prevalent custom among the irreverent choristers of Germany.

Addison confesses that he was often afraid when seeing the Italian performers ”chattering in the vehemence of action,” that they were calling the audience names and abusing them among themselves. I do not know how to measure the morals and manners of our Italian singers against those of Addison's time, but I do know that many of the things which they say before our very faces for their own diversion are not complimentary to our intelligence. I hope I have a proper respect for Mr. Gilbert's ”bashful young potato,” but I do not think it right while we are sympathizing with the gentle pa.s.sion of _Siebel_ to have his representative bring an offering of flowers and, looking us full in the face, sing:

_”Le patate d'amor, O cari fior!”_

[Sidenote: _”Faust.”_]

[Sidenote: _Porpora's ”Credo.”_]

It isn't respectful, and it enables the cynics of to-day to say, with the poetasters and fiddlers of Addison's day, that nothing is capable of being well set to music that is not nonsense. Operatic words were once merely stalking-horses for tunes, but that day is past. We used to smile at Brignoli's ”_Ah si! ah si! ah si!_” which did service for any text in high pa.s.sages; but if a composer should, for the accommodation of his music, change the wording of the creed into ”_Credo, non credo, non credo in unum Deum_,” as Porpora once did, we should all cry out for his excommunication.

As an art-form the opera has frequently been criticised as an absurdity, and it is doubtless owing to such a conviction that many people are equally indifferent to the language employed and the sentiments embodied in the words. Even so serious a writer as George Hogarth does not hesitate in his ”Memoirs of the Opera” to defend this careless att.i.tude.

[Sidenote: _Are words unessential?_]

”The words of an air are of small importance to the comprehension of the business of the piece,” he says; ”they merely express a sentiment, a reflection, a feeling; it is quite enough if their general import is known, and this may most frequently be gathered from the situation, aided by the character and expression of the music.”

<script>