Verdi: Man and Musician

tures of Verdi's music-Stereotyped pattern operas-Change of style imminent in Luisa Miller-Altered second period style of Rigoletto-This maintained in Il Trovatore-La Traviata forebodings-Basevi's cha

Falstaff-Its position as an opera-A saviour of Italian art-The Illustrated Lond

one, he is familiar by name and tune to thousands of the poorest and lowest, whose only music is the street organ, and whose main musical literature is the opera-house announcements on the theatre doors and public hoardings. Men and women who cannot pronounce the name of Mende

. His artistic career is most instructive in its steady growth to mature ripeness. His efforts, too, have been almost entirely confined to opera, and if we examine Verdi's operas from first to last, it will not be difficult to trace the change that has taken place in the fashion of opera during the past three-quarters of

many wondrous melodists; but not one of them, not even Rossini, has so modified and influenced the national art as has Verdi. The entire extent of his impress will only be fully known when the Italians

become known during their lifetimes outside the range of their own country. There seems to be a profound musical problem here, but the solution is at hand. The greatest of the great composers were each and all before their time. Bach, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, and Schumann came in an age that was all unprepared for them. Verdi, on the

rs. If this be true, then, in a sense, they stand indebted to him; for Verdi is the best-heard Italian composer to-day.

magic music, and, from Nabucco to Falstaff-an unparalleled instance of consistent artistic unfolding-this distinct power of the master's has act

ss came upon them. Donizetti, mainly through his melodic prolificness, had brought Italian grand opera to a level of triviality and mediocrity; Verdi, with his depth of feeling and breadth of melody, pr

redecessors, and he went on advancing with the times. His countrymen had melody mainly at their pen-tips. Verdi used this and much more, and, while Wagner, for example, came along "great guns" with his German national opera, Verdi was proceeding to show that Italian grand opera could be brought to equal importance, musically and materially. Verdi, in his first work, unquestionably gave the lovers of opera something more than they had ever

essors; but in Luisa Miller there came a decided and suggestive advance. There was a greater heightening of the dramatic interest, while many of the vocal and instrumental combinations had never been equalled in Italian opera. Certainly, Verdi was already doing more than perpetuating the accepted Bellini-Donizetti method. It was yet early to give the world an A?da; but Verdi, we shall believe,

rchestration is replete with richness and variety. The whole style of Luisa Miller is musician-like to a degree, despite occasional reflections of his own and other men's compositions. The alleged defect of Luisa Miller was a lack of melody. None of the fervour and force that were heralded in Nabucco were wanting, but the composer's melodic vein appeared to be drying up!

ory of Italian operatic art, was more characteristic of himself. As it has been well put-"Verdi is the rough, fiery composer no longer. Charm and grace are more to him now than mere noise and hubbub. In Rigoletto

ve or musica parlante, but the orchestration had met a chastening process. While vocally the score was adjudged poor in melody and enti

libretto was, it had striking situations, with its black story and its gross improbabilities, which afforded Verdi scope for passionate expression and effect in more than one vivid scene. I

still possesses the power to charm and attract large, if not fashionable, audiences. Yet, what a span divides it from Otello! No two of the master's works show his change and development of style more distinctly than these operas. To say nothing about conception and construction, the vocal and instrumental music in one and the other is as removed as a storm is from the rippling of a rivulet. The two works have to be heard in the same week-as they were at Covent Garden during the 1895 season with the hidden orchestra-to realise and appreciate rightly, the mighty step (espe

own in private circles. In these latter years, we have seen Luigi Gordigiani and Fabio Campana making themselves known principally in this style of music, called da camera. Verdi with his Traviata has transported this chamber-music on to the stage, and with happy success, to which the subject he has chosen well lends itself. We meet with more simplicity in this work than in the others of the same composer, especia

i! No one will doubt that its music gave the opera its permanent position. Not only the nervous débutante, but every prima donna has seen in the character of Violetta a r?le admitting of the finest touches and varied emotions which a leading lady can be called upon to express in the exercise of her art. From the day when Piccolomini roused the excited habitués of Mr. Lumley's house to a

ers its final departure! Why does the music continue to please the public?-the uneducated section let us say. How is it that the cantatrice and queen of song loves the part still? The answer is found in the natural and graceful character of Verdi'

ind appears disturbed. No Italian opera music could be more thoroughly Verdi's than the numbers, "Giorno di Pianto," a reflection o

ting in his mind nine years previously. A?da in form and conception is clearly based upon La Forza del Destino and Don Carlos. Strikingly successful as the master has been with his First and Second period operas, they were not productions that reflected the fullest power of the high-minded musician. Profitable financially they had indeed proved to their composer;

roduction, doubts were freely expressed concerning its permanent qualities. "It is easy to see that the work will never achieve the lasting success of Rigoletto, the Trovatore, and the Traviata," wrote one critic. Another said, "Except as a spectacle, that it will be preferred by Verdi's

owledge. The splendid opera also, has proved one of a triad which have raised Verdi considerably in the estimation of every right-minded musician. Before A?da, Otello, and Falstaff, he was dubbed by critics the "sanguinary Italian melodist," the "m

ner-hunting. Critics in the musical profession and out of it-critics who know a little about music, and a considerably larger number who knew nothing of the art-declared that Italy had at last gone over to the German musical method. But thirty years previously we were told that "Signor Verdi's forte is declamatory music of the highest passion"; also that "the composer's music becomes almost intolerable, owing to his immoderate employment of brass instruments." Undoubtedly in A?da the master adopts a deeper and more dramatic character than had been usually shown by Italian masters; but he could have as easily done this had Wagner never lived. The ambition of a ma

ian. To cut himself adrift from the conventionalities of Italian opera, and place before the public a grand and beautiful dramatic lyric work, comparable with any opera that had preceded it, was indeed a great proceeding. With its

where the master, retaining his country's manner, rises triumphantly over French and German dramatic music. The vocal music is thoroughly characteristic of Verdi. There are few solos, yet the charm of such pieces as "Celeste A?da," "L'insana parola," and A?da's romance, "O cieli azzurri," wherein she recalls the

still be Verdi if, exercising his privilege, he elected to blow his theatre down with brass. "The work," wrote a critic, "is very heavily scored, over-instrumented in the brass particularly, and it would exact double the number and twice the tone of the strings at Covent Garden to counterbalance the blatant effects,"[75]- from which we are to believe, we suppose, that in this opera the talented, experienced composer had taken leave of his senses! Quite an unlucky hit, coming as it did at a time when the musical world was only too ready to see in such

od" in the world. It is from this profuse employment of brass instruments, particularly the six genuine Egyptian trumpets used in the triumphal march of Radamès and his army, that the charge of imitating Wagner, or of becoming "Germanised," has probably arisen. But if the truth be told, this Verdi development has as much to do with Wagner as with Adam, the departures being a consequence of th

passionate expression peculiar to Verdi. All this is as it should be from the Verdinian point of view; but if the result of this laudable attempt to formulate a modern Italian opera must be to brand it with some guiding influence or subject-model, then, instead of making Wagner that power, it should be Meyerbeer. If Verdi has followed any model at all, which we do not admit, it is the sumptuous richness and pi

on of varied and conflicting passions, stamp the work from beginning to end-the love duet in the second act, between soprano and tenor, a romance in the third act, a soprano and contralto duet, a quartet and chorus, and all the music, from the consecration of Radamès down to his victorious return with A?da's captive father, being particularly Verdinian. Even the composer's supposed weaknesses are present in A?da. The whole subjec

were overwhelming. Nobody expected it from Italy, still less from Verdi. Quite a surprise! Here was a work wherein all the lights and shades of human passion were depicted with a truthfulness and reality which no living musician could equal. The greatest of the world's poets and dramatists was set in a fashion to dispute which, or to disparage, would be useless. There could be no other conclusion, and whether performed in Italy, France, or in England, one opinion only has been possible as to the Otello music. This must be held to be a great triumph for the justly famed, though long abused, musician, especially when, as we contend, this perfected art-s

with perfect homogeneity, and it must be regarded as a wholly uninfluenced score, more so than A?da. The "Love duet" and Iago's "Credo" are the only pieces in the opera that recall Wagner, and they have too much of the Verdi and the intensely Italian about them to be mistaken. No! Otello is an opera which only an Italian could write; a work which will al

act will ever stand amongst remarkable efforts in musical annals. Il Trovatore is a monument of melody, a standing example of what passionate tune can be and is as an element of art; Otello was an extraordinary development in breadth of style and usage, vocal and instrumental; but Falstaff surpassed all. It sums up all that is best in Verdi's musical mind and method, and will ever serve as a standard of Italian national art, nemine dissentiente. It is the most brilliant, the most masterly, of all his operatic productions. Gorgeous in its wealth of invention and consummate skill, it places Verdi on his highest artistic pedestal. Like A?da and Otello it is pre-eminently a musician's work, and shows the widened style of the composer, which used to be

al world. The tragic, melodramatic Verdi was no more: in his place stood the exalted, the chastened master of art. No other composer had ever made such a change of front, a change that brought him on good terms with the whole musical world. Falstaff was indeed a new apocalypse. Perhaps the most striking feature of the Falstaff music after its jovialness is its consistent character-one of high quality and finely detailed workmanship. It is not a case of sandwiching a good tune, dramatic chorus, or an overwhelming ensemble, between a mass of meagre indifferent writing, but from first to last the music is of a

nts of emotional expression, the brilliant ensembles, the ingeniously contrived pieces, where three and more rhythms are expressing chattering views and sentiments at one and the same time; beautiful solo pieces, duets, and notably an accompanied quartet-all these, and the highly dramatic and well-judged finales, have no more to do with Wagner, or any other composer save Verdi, than they have with Homer. As a whole, Falstaff is an astounding masterpiece. In form, construction, scholarship, and musicianly result, it is the finest opera Verdi, or any Italian, has written. Its vocal and instrumental play and device are such as were never t

? How came it that a composer, who had lovingly placed many splendid tributes upon the high altar of his art, w

ight of his star is pretty distinctly to be observed. It is hardly possible to imagine his violence outdone by any

advantage appears to have been atoned for by the character of the criticisms. Some few of the musical scribes deigned to notice, and were deemed capable of considering, Verdi. These began, from the first, to hunt him à outrance, neither discerning nor expecting an

ed, after these awful denunciations of indignant journalism at the performance of such 'unmitigated trash,' that the name of Verdi could be no more uttered in this musical metropolis. And yet the thus extinguished composer-on paper-the very next season was sure to be brought forward in the shape of a revival of one of his 'failures,' or in the representation of his latest continental novelty. What then is the key to this anomalous state

mongst English audiences not to be carried away by mere clamour; and Rigoletto, the three-act lyric drama, put on the stage for the first time on

the pen-and-ink slaughter raged fast and furious, for several years following Verdi's advent here. Com

here can be no doubt; but this does not do away with a present-day question of how far public criticism should influence those who read it, or to what extent hostile censorship has operated, or may do, to crush

he latter, had been particularly endowed, as it would appear, with the mission of "slating" Verdi, until there could be reached what in pugilistic

s, and it still "draws" crowds who enjoy listening to it. What more is wanted? If Music does these things, then, surely some of the first conditions of Art are fulfilled. The most modern of modern music can accomplish little more, unless it be to vex the mind with its abstruseness, and to tax the brain in divining the whereabouts of this or that theme, and the entry and passage of some particular "subject" phrase. This revelling in the region of theory, the perpetual expectation for progressions of fugal en

tenor, as Signor Tamagno is, can more or less galvanise the corpse into life? We think not. Our opinion is that there is real genius, true sterling worth, in the music of the Trovatore, which of itself-and not from any lack of taste, or culture, or of mental aberration on the part of the "mob" (for whom alone, we have been assured Verdi could cater)-has preserved this opera, and many others, in the hearts and ears of the public at large. Here and there the vocal and instrumental processes may seem, and probably are, uncouth; but that the music as a whole possesses undying properties, a life-current passing on to all who hear it, we have no doubt. Thus, alth

eir heart's content, malgré the pityings of wiseheads. When Trovatore is as extinct as the dodo, and as dead as the door nail, that will be the time to sing its requiem, although there would seem to be little promise of any of this generation being required to attend

upon his merits. From the first he encountered a determined opposition. It has never been quite clear what this opposition wanted, but that it was supported by such a

ot expecting a transformed Italian opera model from an Italian at one bound? Verdi had been applauded in Italy for what he had accomplished on the continental lines of his country's opera. He was professing nothing more, and Mr. Lumley, when arranging for the composer's works for the English stage, contracted for naught else. As all the world knows, Verdi has accomplished immeasurably more since, in bringing Italian opera fully up to the level of the Weber, Meyerbeer, or Wagner model. The public is now prepared for Italia

ng to England. Equally certain is it that Mr. Chorley became a powerful mouthpiece of the opposition. With a freedom permitted to its talented staff that did infinite credit to the management of that leading journal of art and li

can only, save very exceptionally, be achieved towards the end, not at the beginning, of a lifetime; and the perspicuous critic should be able to foresee the prospects of this in a young composer. G

d so unremittingly in music. Now the critics on all sides fall down and worship him. He is beloved in England not less than in his own land, while all the world will long remember him by h

ty-three years of age), experienced a long spell of powerful English critical hostility is beyond doubt. Whether Italian opera had so obtained under Bellini, Donizetti, Mercadante, and Rossini that folks, or sections of society, were so surfeited with it as to positively refuse to tolerate more while Weber, Wagner, and Meyerbee

oser's musical manner and method, together with a corresponding recognition from his critics, would be understandable enough; but we do not get this. Our study of the critical processes leaves us with the conviction that he was knocked about like a tennis ball. Little wonder that the critic of the Illustrated London News felt constrained, on behalf of the maltreated, half-murdered man, to call "fair play." Then, much that was written was as contradictory as are scientific negatives and positive

wrote Ernani, Rigoletto, Il Trovatore, and La Traviata? Was there no promise of that store of art to be opened to us in Verdi's Third period works? Was there not a veritable rough diamond here, awaiting only to be shorn of its excrescences, and subjected to the lapidary's art to become a precious jewel? Did not the genius of the great operatic composer exist in embryo, while Verdi was taking the lower rung

entrusted with the power of the press-pen. In the case of Verdi, it was war to the knife. Delenda est Carthago went forth, and Carthage must be destroyed. But it wasn't. The criticism which for the most part was meted out to Verdi rarely ever contained a sentence of encouragement, but instead, the man who was some day to become the wonder and admiration of the entire musi

urnish the most foolish of explanations of the situation. Verdi had the great public of this and of other countries on his side, however, and on this he was content to rely. Public opinion once again proved to be right, and Ve

unlock the door of every repository of science and art; but, chiefly, does it prove that no amount of adverse criticism or opposition can, or should, be permitted to bar the way to that goal of high excellence which every earnest worker with

Musicale, 25t

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d: Henry Fothergill Chorley, edited

heard to satiety wrote thus of Verdi:-"A better state of things is, however, we trust, approaching. The appearance of a composer of so much originality of genius as Verdi, heralds, it may be hoped

usical England (