Part 16 (2/2)
[Sidenote: _Sembrich._]
Madame La Grange had a voice of wide compa.s.s, which enabled her to sing contralto roles as well as soprano, but I have never heard her dramatic powers praised. As for Piccolomini, read of her where you will, you shall find that she was ”charming.” She was lovely to look upon, and her acting in soubrette parts was fascinating. Until Melba came Patti was for thirty years peerless as a mere vocalist. She belongs, as did Piccolomini and Sontag, to the comic _genre_; so did Sembrich and Gerster, the latter of whom never knew it. I well remember how indignant she became on one occasion, in her first American season, at a criticism which I wrote of her _Amina_ in ”La Sonnambula,” a performance which remains among my loveliest and most fragrant recollections. I had made use of Catalani's remark concerning Sontag: ”_Son genre est pet.i.t, mais elle est unique dans son genre_,”
and applied it to her style. She almost flew into a pa.s.sion. ”_Mon genre est grand!_” said she, over and over again, while Dr. Gardini, her husband, tried to pacify her. ”Come to see my _Marguerite_ next season.” Now, Gounod's _Marguerite_ does not quite belong to the heroic roles, though we can all remember how Lucca thrilled us by her intensity of action as well as of song, and how Madame Nilsson sent the blood out of our cheeks, though she did stride through the opera like a combination of the _grande dame_ and Ary Scheffer's spirituelle pictures; but such as it is, Madame Gerster achieved a success of interest only, and that because of her strivings for originality.
Sembrich and Gerster, when they were first heard in New York, had as much execution as Melba or Nilsson; but their voices had less emotional power than that of the latter, and less beauty than that of the former--beauty of the kind that might be called cla.s.sic, since it is in no way dependent on feeling.
[Sidenote: _Melba and Eames._]
[Sidenote: _Calve._]
[Sidenote: _Dramatic singers._]
[Sidenote: _Jean de Reszke._]
[Sidenote: _Edouard de Reszke and Plancon._]
Patti, Lucca, Nilsson, and Gerster sang in the operas in which Melba and Eames sing to-day, and though the standard of judgment has been changed in the last twenty-five years by the growth of German ideals, I can find no growth of potency in the performances of the representative women of Italian and French opera, except in the case of Madame Calve. For the development of dramatic ideals we must look to the singers of German affiliations or antecedents, Mesdames Materna, Lehmann, Sucher, and Nordica. As for the men of yesterday and to-day, no lover, I am sure, of the real lyric drama would give the declamatory warmth and gracefulness of pose and action which mark the performances of M. Jean de Reszke for a hundred of the high notes of Mario (for one of which, we are told, he was wont to reserve his powers all evening), were they never so lovely. Neither does the fine, resonant, equable voice of Edouard de Reszke or the finished style of Plancon leave us with curious longings touching the voices and manners of Lablache and Formes. Other times, other manners, in music as in everything else. The great singers of to-day are those who appeal to the taste of to-day, and that taste differs, as the clothes which we wear differ, from the style in vogue in the days of our ancestors.
[Sidenote: _Wagner's operas._]
[Sidenote: _Wagner's lyric dramas._]
[Sidenote: _His theories._]
[Sidenote: _The mission of music._]
[Sidenote: _Distinctions abolished._]
[Sidenote: _The typical phrases._]
[Sidenote: _Characteristics of some motives._]
A great deal of confusion has crept into the public mind concerning Wagner and his works by the failure to differentiate between his earlier and later creations. No injustice is done the composer by looking upon his ”Flying Dutchman,” ”Tannhauser,” and ”Lohengrin” as operas. We find the dramatic element lifted into n.o.ble prominence in ”Tannhauser,” and admirable freedom in the handling of the musical factors in ”Lohengrin,” but they must, nevertheless, be listened to as one would listen to the operas of Weber, Marschner, or Meyerbeer.
They are, in fact, much nearer to the conventional operatic type than to the works which came after them, and were called _Musikdramen_.
”Music drama” is an awkward phrase, and I have taken the liberty of subst.i.tuting ”lyric drama” for it, and as such I shall designate ”Tristan und Isolde,” ”Die Meistersinger,” ”Der Ring des Nibelungen,”
and ”Parsifal.” In these works Wagner exemplified his reformatory ideas and accomplished a regeneration of the lyric drama, as we found it embodied in principle in the Greek tragedy and the _Dramma per musica_ of the Florentine scholars. Wagner's starting-point is, that in the opera music had usurped a place which did not belong to it.[G]
It was designed to be a means and had become an end. In the drama he found a combination of poetry, music, pantomime, and scenery, and he held that these factors ought to co-operate on a basis of mutual dependence, the inspiration of all being dramatic expression. Music, therefore, ought to be subordinate to the text in which the dramatic idea is expressed, and simply serve to raise it to a higher power by giving it greater emotional life. So, also, it ought to vivify pantomime and accompany the stage pictures. In order that it might do all this, it had to be relieved of the shackles of formalism; only thus could it move with the same freedom as the other elements consorted with it in the drama. Therefore, the distinctions between recitative and aria were abolished, and an ”endless melody” took the place of both. An exalted form of speech is borne along on a flood of orchestral music, which, quite as much as song, action, and scenery concerns itself with the exposition of the drama. That it may do this the agencies, spiritual as well as material, which are instrumental in the development of the play, are identified with certain melodic phrases, out of which the musical fabric is woven. These phrases are the much mooted, much misunderstood ”leading motives”--typical phrases I call them. Wagner has tried to make them reflect the character or nature of the agencies with which he has a.s.sociated them, and therefore we find the giants in the Niblung tetralogy symbolized in heavy, slowly moving, c.u.mbersome phrases; the dwarfs have two phrases, one suggesting their occupation as smiths, by its hammering rhythm, and the other their intellectual habits, by its suggestion of brooding contemplativeness. I cannot go through the catalogue of the typical phrases which enter into the musical structure of the works which I have called lyric dramas as contra-distinguished from operas. They should, of course, be known to the student of Wagner, for thereby will he be helped to understand the poet-composer's purposes, but I would fain repeat the warning which I uttered twice in my ”Studies in the Wagnerian Drama:”
[Sidenote: _The phrases should be studied._]
”It cannot be too forcibly urged that if we confine our study of Wagner to the forms and names of the phrases out of which he constructs his musical fabric, we shall, at the last, have enriched our minds with a thematic catalogue and--nothing else. We shall remain guiltless of knowledge unless we learn something of the nature of those phrases by noting the attributes which lend them propriety and fitness, and can recognize, measurably at least, the reasons for their introduction and development. Those attributes give character and mood to the music constructed out of the phrases. If we are able to feel the mood, we need not care how the phrases which produce it have been labelled. If we do not feel the mood, we may memorize the whole thematic catalogue of Wolzogen and have our labor for our pains. It would be better to know nothing about the phrases, and content one's self with simple sensuous enjoyment than to spend one's time answering the baldest of all the riddles of Wagner's orchestra--'What am I playing now?'
[Sidenote: _The question of effectiveness._]
”The ultimate question concerning the correctness or effectiveness of Wagner's system of composition must, of course, be answered along with the question: 'Does the composition, as a whole, touch the emotions, quicken the fancy, fire the imagination?' If it does these things, we may, to a great extent, if we wish, get along without the intellectual processes of reflection and comparison which are conditioned upon a recognition of the themes and their uses. But if we put aside this intellectual activity, we shall deprive ourselves, among other things, of the pleasures which it is the province of memory to give; and the exercise of memory is called for by music much more urgently than by any other art, because of its volatile nature and the role which repet.i.tion plays in it.”
FOOTNOTES:
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