The Later Nineteenth Century: France, Italy, Germany, and Austria
France
The rise of a new school and a new spirit in French music began in 1871, when the Société Nationale de Musique was founded, with the device Ars gallica. Undiscriminating acceptance of incongruous musical styles on the one hand and a frivolous addiction to the trivialities of operetta on the other were succeeded by a strenuous effort to return to the indigenous music of the land—the folksong—and to restore in modern terms the great musical individuality that had belonged to France in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries.1 The range of activity was widened. Whereas before 1870 composers had centered nearly all their efforts on opera, now choral, symphonic, and chamber music began to be undertaken;2 higher standards of musical education were introduced; and a more cultivated and exacting public gradually came into being. This renewal of national musical life made the opera more vital, original, and adventurous. And although the highest rewards of popular success still went to those composers who were able and willing to bend their talents to the public fancy, nevertheless the best work found hearing and appreciation; there were no scandals like those of the Second Empire, when Tannhäuser was hissed off the stage and Les Troyens closed after only twenty-one performances.3
It is worth remarking that almost every important new operatic work in Paris after 1870 was produced not at the Opéra but at the more enterprising and progressive Opéra-Comique. The old distinction between the forms of opera and opéra comique had practically disappeared by the end of the nineteenth century, for the latter had by then largely abandoned the traditional spoken dialogue; so the repertoire of the two theaters contrasted simply as large-scale, established, conventional works in the one, and new, often experimental works in the other—alternating with the light, operetta-like pieces that continued to flourish. Composers of serious operas that should have been produced at the Paris Opéra frequently had recourse also to the Théâtre de la Monnaie at Brussels for premiere performances, and Monte Carlo was the scene of some notable premieres as well. How little the term opéra comique in this period had to do with comic opera will be realized by recalling that Bizet’s Carmen, Delibes’s Lakmé, Lalo’s Roi d’Ys, Massenet’s Manon, Bruneau’s Attacque du moulin, D’Indy’s Fervaal, Charpentier’s Louise, and Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande were all staged at the Théâtre de l’Opéra-Comique in Paris.
One of the first new operas of distinction to be produced in Paris after 1870 was Carmen, the last opera of Georges Bizet (1838–75).4 Carmen was not altogether a failure at first, as is widely believed, but its full success in France did not begin until some eight years after the composer’s death. It stands today as the most popular and vital French opera of the later nineteenth century. Its Spanish subject was a reflection of the exotic trend in French music that had begun a generation earlier with Félicien David. Even more important than this feature was the realism with which scenes and characters were depicted, a psychological realism that the librettists, Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, had somewhat toned down from Prosper Mérimée’s original story (especially with respect to Carmen herself), but that still was strong enough to scandalize Paris in the seventies. Never before had an audience at the Théâtre de l’Opéra-Comique been offered murder and immorality as ingredients for musical entertainment. In the final moments of the opera, Don José, unable to control the jealous rage that has whelmed up within him, commits murder on stage; he kills Carmen. As the fateful blow hits its mark, he turns to the crowd with the words, “Yes I have killed her, I—my beloved Carmen.”This tragic ending was a target of criticism, but it also had its proponents, among them, Nietzsche.
Bizet formed his musical style from a variety of sources. He borrowed and adapted a number of melodies from folksongs, from other composers (the habañera tune in Act I from a Spanish-American composer Sebastian Yradier), and from his own works (the entr’acte music preceding Acts II and III from L’Arlésienne). He used Spanish dance rhythms to add local color to his original tunes, of which the toreador’s song (Act II) and the seguidilla “Près des remparts de Seville” (Act I) are well known examples. Many of the choruses and ensembles are in characteristic operetta style. The occasional repetition of motifs associated with characters and situations, such as the two forms of the “fate” motif, is of no more significance in Carmen than it was in Verdi’s Rigoletto a quarter of a century earlier. What is fundamental, however, is the firm, concise, and exact musical expression of every situation in terms that only a French composer would be capable of producing: the typical Gallic union of economy of material, perfect grasp of means, vivid orchestral color, and an electric vitality and rhythmic verve, together with an objective cool, yet passionate sensualism.
Carmen is divided into conventional arias, ensembles, and other numbers. In its original form, it also had spoken dialogue, like other works of the opéra comique genre. When it was presented in Vienna seven months after the Paris premiere (and four months after Bizet’s death), it was transformed into a grand opéra by Bizet’s friend Ernest Guiraud (1837–92), who replaced the spoken dialogue with his own newly composed recitatives. This “recitative” version gained wide acceptance outside France and became part of the standard opera repertoire. The original version has also continued to be performed, with ever increasing frequency, to the present day, thereby preserving the proportional relationship that Bizet carefully crafted between dialogue and music, for as the plot unfolds, the balance between the two shifts. In the first act, lengthy dialogue passages separate the musical numbers; in subsequent acts, the dialogue passages become increasingly shorter, allowing the musical numbers to dominate. To omit the spoken dialogue is to destroy this carefully contrived means for enhancing the dramatic action.
The whole structure and aesthetic of Carmen was such that Nietzsche, after he had turned against Wagner, could point to it as the ideal opera according to the principles of a properly “Mediterraneanized” European art: “Yesterday I heard—would you believe it?—Bizet’s masterpiece, for the twentieth time…. This music seems perfect to me…. It is rich. It is precise. It builds, organizes, finishes…. With this work one takes leave of the damp north … In every respect the climate is changed.”5 It is hard to imagine what was in the minds of those contemporary critics who found the music untuneful, lacking in definite outlines, and overpowered by a too-rich orchestration—charges, in a word, of Wagnerianism, such as had been leveled earlier at Gounod. So far as Bizet was concerned, Wagner’s music dramas and theories might never have existed, but Wagnerian was a convenient word in France at this time for damning anything a critic disliked or could not understand. The styles of Gounod and Bizet do, indeed, have much in common, though the affinity is more apparent in Bizet’s earlier operas: Les Pêcheurs de perles (1863) and Djamileh (1872), a one-act opera in which “the composer has given full expression to the local color of the Orient.”6 But these works have less musical individuality and interest than Carmen; in fact, the only other compositions of Bizet that compare with this opera are his incidental music to Daudet’s play L’Arlésienne (1872) and his early Symphony in C (1855).
The exotic flavor of Carmen and Les Pêcheurs de perles is found again in Lakmé (1883), the best opera of Léo Delibes (1836–91),7 which takes place in India and has a tragic plot faintly reminiscent of Meyerbeer’s Africaine and more than faintly foreshadowing Puccini’s Madama Butterfly. Delibes’s music is elegant, graceful, and well orchestrated but lacks the intense quality of Bizet’s. In Lakmé the oriental perfume is blended with an otherwise conventional idiom. Delibes’s amusing and tuneful opéra comique Le Roi l’a dit (1873) is still remembered; a more serious work, Jean de Nivelle (1880), was almost equally successful at first but has not remained in the repertoire. On the whole, Delibes excelled as a composer of ballets, his best works in this form being La Source (1866), Coppélia (1870), and Sylvia (1876).
A more substantial figure than Delibes in French nineteenth-century opera was Ernest Reyer (1823–1909).8 He belongs with those composers whose music often compels more respect for its intentions than admiration for its actual sound. He had “genius without talent”9—that is, lofty and ideal conceptions without the technique for realizing them fully in an attractive musical form. This incapacity may have been due in part to his defective early training, but it was also a matter of temperament; as a critic, he was a despiser of mere prettiness, a rebel against the superficial judgments of the Paris public,10 and an early defender of Berlioz and Wagner.
Reyer was influenced by the fashionable orientalism in his choice of subjects, as seen in his symphonic ode Sélam (1850) and the ballet-pantomime Sacountala (1858). His first important operatic work, La Statue (1861), is also an oriental story. A similar background is found in his last opera, Salammbô (1890), taken with few alterations from Flaubert’s novel and treated in an austere oratorio-like style, yet with a grandeur of line recalling the spirit of Berlioz’s Troyens. The plot in general and the closing scene in particular are reminiscent of Verdi’s Aida.
The most successful of Reyer’s operas was Sigurd (composed in the 1870s, first performed in 1884); the subject is almost identical with that of Wagner’s Siegfried (Act III) and Götterdämmerung, with a touch of Tannhäuser in the shape of a seductive ballet, with a wordless chorus of elves, in Act II. But the resemblance to Wagner is only skin-deep, even in the libretto: Sigurd talks in the accents of Quinault’s Renaud rather than in those of the great blond lad of the Ring, and the rest of the personages likewise somehow seem more Gallic than Teutonic. In the music there is even less evidence of Wagnerian influence; on the contrary, we find the old separate numbers of grand opera, a distinctly periodic melody, and very little chromaticism. There is some recurrence of motifs, but this is not a distinctly Wagnerian trait. The musical style is serious and even has a certain nobility; its model, clearly enough, is Les Troyens.
Parisian journalists had been crying wolf for years before any serious reflection of Wagner’s ideas or musical style became apparent in French music. The bitterness of the Franco-Prussian War, aggravated by Wagner’s silly gibes in his playlet Eine Kapitulation, delayed his acceptance still longer. Yet by the early eighties, all was apparently forgiven, and Wagner became the rage in Paris for some ten or twelve years. “From 1885 Wagner’s work acted directly or indirectly on the whole of artistic thought, even on religious and intellectual thought of the most distinguished people of Paris…. Writers not only discussed musical subjects, but judged painting, literature, and philosophy, from a Wagnerian point of view…. The whole universe was seen and judged by the thought of Bayreuth.”11 A remarkable evidence of this enthusiasm was the flourishing periodical La Revue Wagnerienne (1885–87), contributors to which included Verlaine, Mallarmé, Huysmans, and practically every other important writer in Paris (Baudelaire had been converted as early as 1861). This journal (and its successor, La Revue indépendante) was designed primarily to inform the public about the nonmusical aspects of Wagner’s compositions, philosophy, and aesthetics. One effect of all this was to introduce the subject of music to many people who would not otherwise have taken an interest in it; another was to stimulate symphonic composition. In opera, the risks involved in the magic garden of Wagnerism were so patent that the composers for the most part withstood temptation, though not always without effort. It is sometimes difficult to decide what is to be called imitation of Wagner and what was simply acceptance of new ideas, such as the abolition of formal separate arias and recitatives. Taken altogether, however, the direct influence of Wagner on French opera, in both literary and musical treatment, is seen most strongly in works by three composers: Chabrier, Chausson, and D’Indy.12
Emmanuel Chabrier (1841–94) was one of the foremost composers of the new movement in France, as well as a pianist of exceptional ability.13 He may seem an unlikely person to be an apostle of Wagner, for the pieces by which he is best known, the orchestral rhapsody España and the Bourrée fantasque, show him as a composer of typical Gallic vivacity, wit, and rhythmic exuberance. And indeed these qualities are predominant in his first important comic opera, L’Étoile (1877),14 and in his best-known stage work, Le Roi malgré lui (1887), harmonically one of the most original opéras comiques of this period.
But in 1879 Chabrier heard a performance of Tristan und Isolde at Munich that made a strong impression on him, reinforced by his experience shortly afterward in directing rehearsals of Lohengrin and Tristan for performances at Paris. His opera Gwendoline (Brussels, 1886) is obviously influenced by Wagnerian elements: the libretto brings echoes of Der fliegende Holländer, of the Valhalla mythology, and above all of Tristan, even to a love duet in the second act and a love-death at the end of the third. The form is a compromise between continuous drama and the older number opera. The music shows more than a trace of Wagner in its systematic use of leitmotifs, chromatics, chords of the seventh and ninth, and the characteristic appoggiaturas and suspensions. However, this must not be taken to mean that it is a mere copy of Wagner’s idiom. Chabrier had an individual harmonic style,15 one quite advanced for his time, as well as a genuine and sometimes profound gift of serious expressiveness. The most interesting portions of Gwendoline are the “Spinning Song” in Act I, which incorporates an air from Moore’s Irish Melodies; the love duet (strongly reminiscent of Tristan); and the orchestral prelude to Act 11, the style of which has been well described as one of the links between Wagner and Debussy.16 The skillful voice writing and the highly poetic orchestration of this opera should also be noted. But the uneven quality of the music as a whole, together with a rather dull and awkwardly proportioned libretto, have worked against its success.
Somewhat similar in subject matter to Gwendoline, and likewise tinctured with Wagnerian conceptions, is the only important opera composed by César Franck (1822–90), Hulda, written between 1882 and 1885.17 This opera and his incomplete Ghisèle were performed posthumously in 1894 and 1896, respectively.
A more thorough and at the same time a most personal adaptation of Wagner’s methods to French opera was brought about by Franck’s pupil Vincent d’Indy (1851–1931) in his Fervaal (1897) and L’Étranger (1903).18 Like Wagner, D’Indy wrote his own librettos. The background of Fervaal is vaguely mythological, and the action in both operas is treated as symbolic of broad moral issues—the conflict between pagan religion and sacrificial love in Fervaal and the expiation of unlawful love through death in L’Étranger. But whereas Wagner’s symbolism is nearly always in practice wielded for theatrical effect, D’Indy’s evident purpose is to make art a vehicle for essentially religious teachings and to use every possible artistic means toward that end. The almost medieval combination of this austere ideal with a catholic breadth of resource, welded into unity by superb technical skill, is the clue to D’Indy’s style.19 It explains how he was able to take over many features of Wagner’s music dramas without sacrificing his own individuality: pseudomythology, symbolism, continuity of the music, harmonic sophistication, symphonic orchestral texture with cyclical recurrence of motifs, free arioso treatment of the voice line, Wagnerian instrumental sonorities, even actual reminiscences of Tristan (particularly in the love music of the first and third acts of Fervaal). The strange suggestiveness of the musical landscape in the introduction to Act II of Fervaal and the sober, mysterious poetry of the scene that follows are especially noteworthy. So too is the introduction of choral treatments of Gregorian melodies, notably the “Pange lingua” in the transcendently beautiful closing scene of this opera.20
D’Indy’s indebtedness to Wagner is even more apparent in L’Étranger than in the earlier opera. Although the music is less Wagnerian, with its conciseness of orchestral scoring and its inclusion of folksong themes, the dramatic intention weighs heavily on the side of Wagner’s philosophical ideas, especially those expressed in Der fliegende Holländer. In L’Étranger the musical portrayal of the sea—from the prelude to the tragic ending—is remarkable for its imaginative and pictorial power, as shown by the third scene of Act II (example 23.1). That neither this opera nor Fervaal has become popular may be due in part to the unusual character of the librettos but more to the music, which lacks the simple, salient, easily perceived qualities necessary for success on the stage. One cannot help feeling that, for the theater, the music has many of the defects of Wagner without the latter’s compelling emotional power. Yet Fervaal in particular deserves respect as one of the outstanding French operas of the later nineteenth century, in the noble tradition of Berlioz’s Troyens. D’Indy’s Le Chant de la cloche, a 1912 stage version of an earlier choral work, and La Légende de St. Christophe (composed between 1908 and 1915, performed in 1920), an allegorical opera of sacred history with narrator and a cappella choir, reflect his association with the Schola Cantorum.
The influence of Wagner continues to be noticeable in Le Roi Arthus by Ernest Chausson (1855–99),21 first performed in 1903. It is a not very successful mixture of old grand-opera formal elements with the new Wagnerian idiom, including the inevitable Tristanesque love duet in Act I. Neither libretto nor music offers any passages of real distinction; indeed, the composer himself regarded Le Roi Arthus as only an experiment. This is perhaps the final word for all the attempts by French composers to assimilate Wagner’s methods in the nineteenth century, since no consistent or historically important school grew out of them. Along with these experiments, the natural line of French lyric opera in descent from Gounod continued to flourish, and it is the composers of this distinctively national group who next claim our attention.
The first is Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921),22 whose Princesse jaune (1872) set the fashion for Japanese subjects in comic opera. Saint-Saëns’s most famous dramatic work is the biblical Samson et Dalila (1877), half opera and half oratorio, like Liszt’s Légende von der heiligen Elisabeth or D’Indy’s St. Christophe. Saint-Saëns was not by nature a dramatic composer, but his technical facility and knowledge of many different musical styles enabled him to construct smooth and competent, if not exciting, works in dramatic form. Of his sixteen stage works, the most successful, next to Samson et Dalila, were Henri VIII (1883), with orchestration that is suggestive of Debussy and Ravel; Ascanio (1890); and the opéra comique Phryné (1893).
Another composer of conservative national tendency, who forms a link between Saint-Saëns and Massenet, was Edouard Lalo (1823–92). He wrote only one opera, Le Roi d’Ys (1888); it is based on a Breton legend. The music of this opera is original in style, of remarkable rhythmic vitality, varied in color, and admirably adapted to the stage—qualities that have assured its survival to the present day. Three other French composers of the late nineteenth century should be mentioned in passing, though their work is less important than that of Saint-Saëns or Lalo: Emile Paladilhe (1844–1926), with Patriel (1886); Benjamin Godard (1849–95), a composer of facile and pleasing melodies whose Jocelyn (1888) was long remembered because of one number, the “Berceuse”; and Isidore De Lara (1858–1935), English by birth and residence but most of whose operas, including the successful Messaline (1899), were written to French texts and produced in France.
EXAMPLE 23.1 L’Étranger, Act II, scene iii
The outstanding French opera composer of this era was Jules Massenet (1842–1912),23 an exceptionally productive worker whose music is marked by characteristic French traits that we have already noticed in earlier composers such as Monsigny, Auber, Thomas (Massenet’s teacher), and Gounod. First among these is the quality of the melody. Massenet’s melody is of a highly personal sort: lyrical, tender, penetrating, sweetly sensuous, rounded in contours, exact but never violent in interpreting the text, sentimental, often melancholy, sometimes a little vulgar, and always charming. This melody determines the whole texture. The harmonic background is sketched with delicacy and a fine sense of instrumental color, and every detail of the score shows smooth craftsmanship. With no commitment to particular theories of opera, Wagnerian or otherwise, Massenet within the limits of his own style never hesitated to make use of any new device that had proved effective or popular, so that his works are not free of eclecticism and mirror in their own way most of the successive operatic tendencies of his lifetime. The subjects and their treatment also show the composer’s sensitiveness to popular taste. Thus Le Roi de Lahore (1877) is an oriental story; Le Cid (1885) is in the manner of grand opera; Esclarmonde (1889) is Wagnerian; La Navarraise (1894) shows the influence of Italian verismo; and Cendrillon (1899) recalls Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel.
With Le Jongleur de Notre Dame (1902) and its all-male cast, Massenet explored a different kind of opera. It is a miracle play, based upon a medieval legend, for which there could have been no public demand but which the composer treated with special affection and thereby created one of his best operas. Le Jongleur, in particular, should lay to rest the suspicion that Massenet’s choice of subjects, as well as his use of certain fashionable musical devices, was motivated by a desire to give his audiences what he knew they wanted rather than by any inner impulsion. But there is no sacrifice of musical individuality in all this, and in the case of a composer whose instincts were so completely of the theater, who always succeeded in achieving so neatly and spontaneously just the effect he intended, it seems a little ungracious to insist too strongly on an issue of artistic sincerity.
Massenet excelled in the musical depiction of passionate love, and most of his best works are notable for their heroines—unforgettable ladies all, of doubtful virtue perhaps, but indubitably alive and vivid. To this gallery belong Salomé in Hérodiade (1881), the heroines of Manon (1884), Thaïs (1894), Sapho (1897), and Charlotte in Werther (1892). With these works should also be mentioned Thérèse (1907), one of the last operas of Massenet to obtain general success.24
In Manon the melodramatic scenes (of which there are eighteen) are a prominent feature. Similarly styled scenes dependent upon this musical technique can also be found in several other Massenet operas and are noteworthy for demonstrating the degree to which he focused on this dramatic device. Although Massenet’s preoccupation with melodrama was a prevalent feature of his scores, this style of dramatic composition ultimately exerted a substantial influence on operatic works composed in the twentieth century.25
Massenet traveled the main highway of French tradition in opera, and his natural gifts so corresponded to the tastes of his day that success seemed to come almost without effort. Nor was his style without influence, direct or indirect, on later French composers. But he was the last to produce operas so easily. Changing musical idioms and new literary movements had their effect on the next generation, giving its work a less assured, more experimental character. One of these literary movements was that known as naturalism.
The word naturalism and the related word realism, however useful they may be in the study of literature or the graphic arts, are exceedingly vague when applied to music. Unless they refer to the unimportant practice of imitating everyday sounds by voices or instruments in a musical composition (as, for example. the bleating of sheep in Strauss’s Don Quixote), it is difficult to see what meaning they can have that is related directly to music itself. What some writers call “realistic” or “naturalistic’” music is simply, in effect, a certain kind of program music; the realism is deduced not from the music but from an extra-musical fact (such as a title) about the composition in question. When we speak of realistic or naturalistic opera, therefore, we have reference primarily to the libretto; we mean that the opera presents persons, scenes, events, and conversations that are recognizably similar to the common daily experience of its audience, and that these things are treated seriously, as becomes matters of real moment, not with persiflage or fantasy as in an operetta.
Such tendencies in late nineteenth-century opera grew out of earlier tendencies in literature. Thus Bizet’s Carmen, the first important realistic opera in France and one of the principal sources of the Italian verisimo, was based on Mérimée’s story. The chief disciples of realism in later nineteenth-century French literature were Guy de Maupassant and Emile Zola. The latter found a musical interpreter in Alfred Bruneau (1857–1934),26 Massenet’s pupil and rival, the librettos of whose principal operas were either adapted from Zola’s books or written especially for the composer by Zola himself. To the former group belong Le Rêve (1891) and L’Attacque du moulin (1893); to the latter, Messidor (1897), L’Ouragan (1901), and L’Enfant roi (1905). These works were concerned with current social and economic problems; presented in compact, tense situations with symbolical overtones, and in prose instead of the customary verse. Unfortunately, the rhythm of Zola’s prose did not always inspire Bruneau to achieve correspondingly flexible rhythms in the music; the melodic line is declamatory rather than lyrical, but the regular pattern of accentuation indicated by the bar lines becomes monotonous. The music is austere; it is especially apt in the creation of moods through reiterated motifs, but with all its evident sincerity and undoubted dramatic power, the important quality of sensuous charm is often lacking. Nevertheless, Bruneau is significant as a forerunner of some later experiments in harmony and as an independent, healthy force in the growth of modern French opera, counterbalancing to some extent the Wagnerian tendencies of D’Indy and the hedonism of Massenet.
A fuller measure of success in the field of operatic naturalism was granted to another pupil of Massenet, Gustave Charpentier (1860–1956).27 The “musical novel” Louise (1900), his most important opera, exhibits a strange but successful combination of several distinct elements.28 In scene, characters, and plot, Louise is realistic. Charpentier, writing his own libretto, has almost gone out of his way to introduce such homely details as a bourgeois family supper, the reading of a newspaper, and a scene in a dressmaking shop; many of the minor personages are obviously taken “from life,” and sing in a marked Parisian dialect. The melodramatic closing scene recalls the mood of the Italian verismo composers. Charpentier, like Bruneau, touches occasionally on social questions: the issue of free love, the obligations of children to their parents, the miseries of poverty. But along with realism there is symbolism, especially in the weird figure of the Noctambulist, personification of “the pleasure of Paris.” Paris itself is, as Bruneau remarked, the real hero of this opera.29 Behind the action is the presence of the great city, seductive, mysterious, and fatal, enveloping persons and events in an atmosphere of poetry like that of the forest in Weber’s Freischütz. Its hymn is the ensemble of street cries, running like a refrain through the first scene of Act II and echoing elsewhere throughout the opera. To realism and symbolism is added yet a third factor: sentiment. The dialogue between Louise and her father in Act 1 is of a convincing tenderness, while the love music of Act III, with the often-heard “Depuis le jour,” is not only a fine scene of passion but also one of the few of its kind in late nineteenth-century French opera that never reminds us of Tristan und Isolde—or hardly ever. It was the achievement of Charpentier to take all this realism, symbolism, and sentiment, holding together only with difficulty in the libretto itself, and mold them into one powerful whole by means of music.
The score reminds one in many ways of Massenet: there is the same spontaneity and abundance of ideas, the same simple and economical texture, obtaining the maximum effect with the smallest apparent effort. The harmonic idiom is more advanced than Massenet’s but less daring than Bruneau’s. The orchestral music is continuous, serving as background for spoken as well as sung passages, and is organized by recurring motifs. A number of standard operatic devices are cleverly adapted to the libretto: Julien’s serenade with accompaniment of a guitar, the ensemble of working girls in Act II (where the tattoo of the sewing machine replaces the whirr of the old romantic spinning wheel), and the ballet-like scene where Louise is crowned as the Muse of Montmartre in Act III. On the whole, it will be seen that when this opera is cited as an example of naturalism, the word needs to be taken with some qualifications. In any case, it is not the naturalism that has caused it to survive, for this was but a passing fashion. Louise remains in the repertoire for the same reason that other successful operas do: because it has melodious and moving music wedded to a libretto that permits the music to operate as an effective partner in the projection of the drama.
Fashions in opera might come and go, but the operetta and kindred forms went their way unperturbed.30 The line of French light opera, established in the nineteenth century by Auber, Adam, and Offenbach, was continued after 1870 by Charles Lecocq (1832–1918), whose best work was La Fille de Madame Angot (1872);Jean-Robert Planquette (1848–1903), whose sentimental and still popular Les Cloches de Corneville came out in 1877; Edmond Audran (1840–1901), with La Mascotte (1880); and Louis Varney (1844–1908), with Les Mousquetaires au couvent (1880).
Soon thereafter began the long series of popular operas and operettas, in a straightforward, attractively melodious vein, by André Messager (1853–1929),31 a distinguished conductor and facile composer. The first of Messager’s many successful operetta productions occurred in 1890 with La Basoche, which enjoyed a run of some two hundred performances at the Opéra-Comique. The libretto relates how a student is crowned “king” of an ancient law guild (the Basoche), but in the process is mistaken for King Louis XII by none other than Princess Mary of England. La Basoche, in an English translation, received rare reviews when it opened in 1891 at the Royal English Opera in London and it engendered a similar response two years later when it was performed in New York.
From the 1890s until the 1920s, Messager created many memorable operettas, with some approaching the sophistication of opéras comiques: three of his greatest “hits” were Les P’tites Michu and Véronique, produced at Paris in 1897 and 1898, respectively,32 and Monsieur Beaucaire, at London in 1919.33 His works are distinguished by their superior craftsmanship. Exceptionally lively finales, replete with one melody following close upon another, clever orchestrations,34 and well-wrought duets (especially the “Donkey” and “Swing” duets in Véronique)—combined with excellent librettos—insured that Messager’s music would long be remembered in Paris, London, and New York.
Italy
As Italians in the eighteenth century would have nothing to do with Gluck, so in the nineteenth they cared little for Wagner. It was not until the eighties that even Lohengrin began to be accepted. With the exception of Boito, no important out-and-out Wagner disciples appeared in Italy. There was considerable talk about Wagner and considerable skepticism as to the future of Italian opera, but the only result of any consequence was to call forth a vigorous national reaction, of which the greatest monument is Verdi’s Otello. Italian opera was too secure in its traditions and methods, too deeply rooted in the national life, to be susceptible to radical experiments, especially experiments resulting from aesthetic theories of a sort in which Italians were temperamentally uninterested. A mild influence of German Romanticism, but hardly more, may be found in a few Italian opera composers of the late nineteenth century. Alfredo Catalani (1854–93) is the most distinguished of this group. His principal operas are Loreley (1890—a revision of his Elda, which had appeared in 1880), Dejanice (1883), both in the grand opera tradition, and La Wally (1892), his masterpiece.35 This last named opera reveals the depth of Catalani’s personal style. The libretto for La Wally is based upon Die Geyer Wally, a novelette by Wilhelmine Hillern, which appeared in an Italian translation in 1887. Although the score has arias and duets, La Wally is not structured along the lines of a number opera. Its seamless quality of composition blurs the divisions within a scene, even within an act. Guiding the musical shape of the whole opera is the motivic design—motifs linked with characters, with emotions, or with dramatic situations; their impact upon the audience is significant as the tragic events of the opera unfold.
Catalani has a refined melodic style, nearly always free of exaggerated pathos, with interesting harmonies, and a good balance of interest between voice and orchestra. Along with traces of “Tristanesque chromaticism” are experiments in harmony and texture that anticipate some of the favorite devices of Puccini. The robust rhythms are notable, especially in the choruses and dances of La Wally, a work in which the lovers, La Wally and Hagenbach, perish in an avalanche. Of particular interest are the well-orchestrated instrumental passages that occur as music for the dances, preludes to Acts III and IV, or as moments of scene-painting. Unfortunately, Catalani appeared at a time when the Italian public was being seduced by Mascagni and Leoncavallo, which resulted in his reserved and aristocratic music being drowned by the bellow of verismo.
Some influence of Wagner also seems to be present in the harmonies and the important position of the orchestra in the operas of Antonio Smareglia (1854–1929), whose chief work, Nozze istriane, was performed in 1895. Smareglia lacked the convincing popular touch in his melodies and therefore his operas were not greatly successful. Alberto Franchetti (1860–1942) has been called “the Meyerbeer of Italy” because of his fondness for massive scenic effects, but his music, on the whole, is undistinguished. His principal operas were Asrael (1888), Cristoforo Colombo (1892), and Germania (1902). None of these composers was attracted by the verismo movement of the 1890s, which was the popular trend in Italy at that time.
The most explosive reaction against Wagner was launched with the performance of Cavalleria rusticana by Pietro Mascagni (1863–1945) in 1890 and I pagliacci by Ruggiero Leoncavallo (1858–1919) two years later. Neither composer was ever able to duplicate the fantastic success these two works achieved, though Mascagni approached it with L’amico Fritz (1891) and Iris (1898),36 while Leoncavallo’s Zaza (1900) became fairly widely known.37 Mascagni and Leoncavallo, both small-town musicians, might never have had their names grace the pages of opera history had they not won an opera competition. As prize-winners, their names soon became known in opera houses around the world and their one-act operas—Cavalleria rusticana and I pagliacci—continue as repertory works to the present day, usually given on the same evening as a “double bill.”
Cavalleria rusticana is fashioned from a story of the same title included in a collection of stories about the harsh realities of peasant life in Sicily, written by Giovanni Verga in 1880 and then transformed into a play in 1883. The opera takes place on Easter Day in a nineteenth-century Sicilian village, where Santuzza has been seduced by Turiddu, who also continues to express his love for a former girlfriend, now the wife of Alfo. When Alfo learns from Santuzza that he is being cuckolded, he challenges Turiddu to a duel and mortally wounds him. Separating the scene in which Turiddu’s escapades are revealed to Alfo from that in which the duel takes place is an instrumental interlude that, in essence, is an aria for the orchestra.
Pagliacci, a play within a play, is set in a southern Italian town and centers on a troupe of strolling players, one of whom plans to run away with her lover. Canio and his wife, Nedda, assume similar husband and wife roles in the play that they, as members of the troupe, are performing, but as the plot begins to mirror all too closely the real-life drama Canio suspects is taking place within his own marriage, he steps out of his role, stabs Nedda, and then, as her lover tries to come to her rescue, also kills him.
Cavalleria and Pagliacci are the classics of verismo,38 This typically Italian movement resembles French naturalism in the use of scenes and characters from common life, but the French naturalists used these materials as a means for the development of more general ideas and feelings, idealizing both scene and music, whereas the goal of the Italian realists was simply to present a vivid, melodramatic plot, to arouse sensation by violent contrasts, to paint a cross section of life without concerning themselves with any general significance the action might have. Verismo is to naturalism what the “shocker” is to the realistic novel, and the music corresponds to this conception. It aims simply and directly at the expression of intense passion through melodic or declamatory phrases of the solo voices, to which the orchestra contributes sensational harmonies. Choral or instrumental interludes serve only to establish a mood that is to be rent asunder in the next scene. Everything is so arranged that the moments of excitement follow one another in swift climactic succession. It cannot be denied that there was plenty of precedent in Donizetti and the earlier works of Verdi for melodramatic situations in opera, but by comparison, the action of the veristic operas takes place as in an atmosphere from which the nitrogen has been withdrawn, so that everything burns with a fierce, unnatural flame, and moreover quickly burns out. The brevity of these works is due not so much to concentration as to rapid exhaustion of the material. Much the same is true of the verismo movement as a whole, historically considered. It flared like a meteor across the operatic sky of the 1890s, but by the end of the century it was practically dead, though its influence can occasionally be detected in some later operas.
THE LEADING FIGURE in Italian opera of the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century was Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924), who resembles Massenet in his position of mediator between two eras, as well as in many features of his musical and theatrical style.39 Puccini’s rise to fame began with his third opera, Manon Lescaut (1893), which is less effective dramatically than Massenet’s opera on the same subject (1884) but rather superior in musical interest—this despite occasional reminiscences of Tristan, which few composers in the nineties seemed able to escape. The libretto for Manon was fashioned by Giuseppe Giancosa and Luigi Illica, in close collaboration with the composer. This same collaboration extended to Puccini’s next three works on which his worldwide reputation chiefly rests: La Bohème (1896), Tosca (1900), and Madama Butterfly (1904). La Bohème, considered by many to be his finest work for the stage, is a sentimental opera with dramatic touches of realism, on a libretto adapted from Henri Murger’s Scènes de la vie de Bohème, which had been dramatized in 1849 under the title La Vie de Bohème. Tosca, taken from Victorien Sardou’s drama of the same name (1887), is “a prolonged orgy of lust and crime” made endurable by the beauty of the music, and Madama Butterfly is a tale of love and heartbreak in an exotic Japanese setting. In all four of these operas, the heroines—Manon, Mimi, Tosca, and Butterfly—are doomed to death. Another characteristic these operas hold in common is the “sensuous warmth and melting radiance of the vocal line.”40 It is like Massenet without Massenet’s urbanity—naked emotion crying out, and persuading the listener’s feelings by its very urgency. For illustrations the reader need only recall Rodolfo’s aria “Che gelida manina” and the ensuing duet in the first scene of La Bohème, the closing scene of the same work, or the familiar arias “Vissi d’arte” in Tosca and “Un bel di” in Madama Butterfly.
The history of this type of melody is instructive. It will be remembered that in Verdi we encountered from time to time a melodic phrase of peculiar poignancy that seemed to gather up the whole feeling of a scene in a pure and concentrated moment of expression, such as the “Amami, Alfredo” in La traviata, the recitative “E tu, come sei pallida” of Otello, or the “kiss” motif from the same work. Later composers, perceiving that the high points of effectiveness in Verdi were marked by phrases of this sort, became ambitious to write operas that should consist entirely (or as nearly so as possible) of such melodic high points, just as the verismo composers had tried to write operas consisting entirely of melodramatic shocks. Both tendencies lead to satiety of sensation. These melodic phrases in Verdi are of the sort sometimes described as “pregnant”; their effect depends on the prevalence of a less heated manner of expression elsewhere in the opera, so that they stand out by contrast. But in Puccini we have, as an apparent ideal if not always an actuality, what may be called a kind of perpetual pregnancy in the melody, whether this is sung or entrusted to the orchestra as a background for vocal recitative. The musical utterance is kept at high tension, almost without repose, as though it were to be feared that if the audiences were not continually excited they would go to sleep. This tendency toward compression of language, this nervous stretto of musical style, is characteristic of the fin de siècle period.41
The sort of melody we have been describing runs through all Puccini’s works. In his earliest and latest operas it tends to be organized in balanced phrases, but in those of the middle period it becomes a freer line, often embodying a set of recurring motifs. These motifs of Puccini, admirably dramatic in conception, are used either simply for recalling earlier moments in the opera or, by reiteration, for establishing a mood, but they do not serve as generating themes for musical development.
Puccini’s music was enriched by the composer’s constant interest in the new harmonic developments of his time; he was always eager to put current discoveries to use in opera. One example of striking harmonic treatment is the series of three major triads (B-flat, A-flat, E-natural) that opens Tosca and is associated throughout the opera with the villainous Scarpia (example 23.2) The harmonic tension of the augmented fourth outlined by the first and third chords of this progression is by itself sufficient for Puccini’s purpose; he has created his atmosphere with three strokes, and the chord series has no further use but to be repeated intact whenever the dramatic situation requires it. One common trait of Puccini’s found in all his operas from the early Edgar (1889) down to his last works is the “side-slipping” of chords (example 23.3). Doubtless this device was learned from Verdi (compare the passage “Oh! come è dolce” in the duet at the end of Act I of Otello) or Catalani, but it is based on a practice common in much non-European music and one going back in Western musical history to medieval organum and faux-bourdon. Its usual purpose in Puccini is to break a melodic line into a number of parallel strands, like breaking up a beam of light by a prism into parallel bands of color. In a sense it is an effect complementary to that of intensifying a melody by duplication at the unison and octaves—an effect dear to all Italian composers of the nineteenth century and one to which Puccini frequently resorted. Parallel duplication of the melodic line at the fifth is used to good purpose in the introduction to the third act of La Bohème to suggest the bleakness of a cold winter dawn; parallel triads are employed in the introduction to the second act of the same opera, for depicting the lively, crowded street scene (a passage that might have been in the back of Stravinsky’s mind when he wrote the music for the first scene of Petrouchka); and parallelism of the same sort, extended sometimes to chords of the seventh and ninth (as with Debussy), is found at many places in the later operas.
EXAMPLE 23.2 Tosca, the “Scarpia” chords
EXAMPLE 23.3 Madama Butterfly, Act II
The most original places in Puccini, however, are not dependent on any single device. Consider, for example, the opening scene of Act III of Tosca, with its broad unison melody in the horns, the delicate descending parallel triads over a double pedal in the bass, the Lydian melody of the shepherd boy, and the faint background of bells, with the veiled, intruding threat of the three Scarpia chords from time to time—an inimitably beautiful and suggestive passage, technically perhaps owing something to both Verdi and Debussy, but nevertheless thoroughly individual. Another device used most effectively is silence, the dramatic pause that heightens tension without words or music, as in the silence that follows Scarpia’s murder in Tosca.
An important source of color effects in Puccini’s music is the use of exotic materials. Exoticism in Puccini was more than a mere borrowing of certain details but rather extended into the very fabric of his melody, harmony, rhythm, and instrumentation.42 It is naturally most in evidence in the works on oriental subjects, as in Madama Butterfly, with its authentic Japanese songs and pentatonic melodies, and Turandot (1926), Puccini’s last opera. Turandot is set in China; it is based on Turandot, a tragicommedia of the eighteenth century by Carlo Gozzi and was completed after Puccini’s death by Franco Alfano (1876–1954). The story concerns a legendary tale of a princess who requires men wishing to win her hand to solve three riddles. Failure to solve them brings immediate death. Prince Calef solves the riddles, and then he poses one for the princess, asking her to discover his name. If she does, he promises to give his life so that she will not have to marry him. So desperate is the princess to learn his name, she tortures the slave girl (who is in love with the prince) in hopes of learning his secret. The slave girl dies without revealing the name and the opera concludes with the union of Turandot and the prince. The score shows harmonic experimentation (for example, the bitonality at the opening of Acts I and II), the utmost development of Puccinian lyric melody, and the most brilliant orchestration of any of his operas.
Puccini did not escape the influence of verismo, but the realism of his operas is always tempered by, or blended with, romantic and exotic elements. In La Bohème common scenes and characters are invested with a romantic halo; the repulsive melodrama of Tosca is glorified by the music; and the few realistic details in Madama Butterfly are unimportant. A less convincing attempt to blend realism and romance is found in La fanciulla del West, taken from a play by David Belasco and first performed at the Metropolitan Opera House in 1910. Though enthusiastically received by the first American audiences, La fanciulla did not attain as wide or as enduring a popularity as the preceding works.43 His next opera, La rondine (1917), was even less successful.
A return to works that were universally applauded was made with the trittico, or triptych, of one-act operas first performed at the Metropolitan Opera in December 1918: II tabarro, a veristic melodrama involving adultery and murder; Suor Angelica, a miracle play; and Gianni Schicchi, the most popular of the three. In Gianni Schicchi, a delightful comedy in the spirit of eighteenth-century opera buffa, the title character is asked by relatives to impersonate a dead man so that a new will can be drawn up, but in the process he manages to circumvent their wishes and becomes the beneficiary of the inheritance. Puccini’s comic skill, evidenced also in some parts of La Bohème and Turandot, is here seen at its most spontaneous, incorporating smoothly all the characteristic harmonic devices of his later period. Only the occasional intrusion of sentimental melodies in the old vein breaks the unity of effect.
Puccini was not one of the great composers, but within his own limits—of which he was perfectly aware—he worked honorably and with mastery of his technique. Bill Nye remarked of Wagner’s music that “it is better than it sounds.” Puccini’s music, on the contrary, often sounds better than it is, owing to the perfect adjustment of means to ends. He had the prime requisite for an opera composer, an instinct for the theater; to that he added the Italian gift of knowing how to write effectively for singers, an unusually keen ear for new harmonic and instrumental colors, a mind receptive to musical progress, and a poetic imagination excelling in the evocation of dreamlike, fantastic moods.
This instinct for the theater may have been inherited from his grandfather Domenico Puccini (1772–1815), whose operas—Il trionfo di Quinto Fabio (1810) and Il ciarlatano (1815)—also exhibit an exceptional sense for the dramatic and have remained popular to this day in Italy. Apart from these operas, Domenico holds special interest for his possible influence on the opening scene of Tosca, which is based upon a historical event that occurred at Lucca, an anti-Bonaparte city, in 1800. In that year Domenico was asked to compose a Te Deum to commemorate what was then believed to be a defeat of Napoleon in the Battle of Marengo. Only after the Te Deum was performed was it revealed that Napoleon had prevailed after an initial setback. A scene based on this same event and its erroneous news occurs in Act I of Tosca, suggesting that the Te Deum performed in this scene may have been inspired by that of his grandfather.44
A YOUNGER CONTEMPORARY of Puccini was Umberto Giordano (1867–1948), whose Andrea Chénier (1896) is the only one of his ten operas that is still accorded frequent performances.45 It is like a rescue opera of the French Revolution period without the rescue: both plot and music show the influence of verismo in the exaggerated emphasis on effect at all costs (example 23.4). Luigi Illica’s dramatically intense libretto relates the story of a poet who initially champions the French Revolution and then falls victim to the guillotine, along with the woman he loves. The score offers a number of notable lyric passages in the vocal parts, and some local color is provided by the incorporation of revolutionary songs (“Ça ira,”“La Carmagnole,” and “La Marseillaise”), but overall the opera, laden with harmonies that are heavy and old-fashioned, has little of special interest. Giordano’s Fedora (1898) and Siberia (1803) are in the same style, with a Russian instead of a French background. Fedora is one of the few operas that includes a prominent nonspeaking role, that of the virtuoso Polish pianist Boleslao Lazinski, whose appearance comes in Act II. Lazinski is called upon to dance with Countess Olga and to entertain the guests at a party given by Princess Fedora Romazov by performing a Chopin-styled nocturne.46 In Madame Sans-Gêne (New York, 1915), the composer’s theatrical talents are applied to a vivacious and tuneful comedy drama about a washerwoman who becomes a duchess. Of Giordano’s later operas, La cena delle beffe (1924), a lurid four-act melodrama, was the most successful. None of these operas are of exceptional significance musically; they are the work of a gifted but not profound composer operating within the traditional Italian framework and skillfully adapting it to the current practice of orchestral continuity.
EXAMPLE 23.4 Andrea Chénier, scene ii
A similar but less conspicuous position must be assigned to Francesco Cilèa (1866–1950), who was, incidentally, one of the first Italian composers of this period to have occupied himself to any great extent with music in forms other than opera.47 His Adriana Lecouvreur (1902), based on a libretto by Scribe, is an involved drama of the age of Louis XV, with expertly contrived music of a lyrical-tragic sort obviously influenced by Puccini, unadventurous harmonically or rhythmically but exceptionally good theater and very effective for the singers.
Germany and Austria
Wagner affected the course of lyric drama like a new planet hurled into a solar system. The center of the operatic universe shifted; all the old balances were disturbed; regroupings took place, accompanied by erratic movements. These consequences were least marked in Italy, more so in France, and most of all, naturally, in Germany. Yet even there they did not appear quickly; established traditions—Romantic opera in the manner of Marschner and grand opéra on the model of Meyerbeer—were still strong.48 Loreley (1863) by Max Bruch (1838–1920), composed to a libretto originally written for Mendelssohn, was a Romantic opera, conventional in form, though with some progressive traits in the musical style. Die Königin von Saba (1875) by Karl Goldmark (1830–1915),49 one of the favorite German works of the later nineteenth century (it was performed at the Metropolitan Opera fifteen times in 1885), is grand opera—agreeable but old-fashioned, complete with set numbers, ballets, pageantry, and some conventional strokes of oriental color. Goldmark had accepted Wagner as far as Tannhäuser, but was evidently not acquainted with, or at any rate not at all influenced by, the later style of Tristan and the Ring.
Some typically Wagnerian subject matter had come into German opera independently of Wagner. Karl Mangold (1813–89) had produced a Tannhäuser in 1846, and Heinrich Dorn (1804–92), a Nibelungen in 1854, both composed without knowledge of Wagner’s corresponding works. Dorn’s opera, indeed, was seriously regarded for a time as rivaling Wagner’s Ring.50 One of the first composers in whom the direct influence of Wagner can be seen was Franz von Holstein (1826–78), poet and composer, whose grand opera Der Haideschacht (1868) was based on E.T.A. Hoffmann’s tale Die Bergwerke zu Falun. Holstein resented being known as a mere epigone of Wagner and, in fact, demonstrated considerable independence in his Hochländer (1876), a historical grand opera in the tradition of Meyerbeer, which incidentally uses some Scottish melodies.
Wagnerian ideas in subject matter and treatment, use of leitmotifs, importance of the orchestra, and attempted musical continuity—all modified, however, by some compromises with older operatic forms—are evident in operas by August Klughardt (1847–1902), Felix Draeseke (1835–1913), Cyrill Kistler (1848–1907), Max Zenger (1837–1911), and the Swiss Hans Huber (1852–1921). But some of these composers later managed to shake off the Wagnerian influence and develop along lines more congenial to their own temperaments—Kistler, for example, toward operas of a simple popular style, Zenger (especially in his last opera, Eros und Psyche, 1901) toward the classical ideal of Gluck, and Huber, with moderate success, toward Romantic opera, most notably in Die schöne Belinda (1916).51
The Wagnerian school at the turn of the nineteenth century is represented by Felix von Weingartner (1863–1942), with the trilogy Orestes (1902), as well as many later dramatic works in various styles; Heinrich Zöllner (1854–1941), with Faust (1887); and especially August Bungert (1845–1915), with Homerische Welt, whose completed parts comprise Die Odyssee, a cycle of four operas: Kirke (1898), Nausikaa (1901), Odysseus Heimkehr (1896), and Odysseus Tod (1903).52 Die Odyssee was the most ambitious musico-dramatic undertaking since the Ring, but nevertheless failed to make its way with the public, even though the scores were melodically and diatonically oriented. These composers for the most part followed Wagner in writing their own librettos. Among other Wagnerian-styled works of this period may be mentioned some early operas by other composers who subsequently developed a more personal style: Wilhelm Kienzl’s Urvasi (1886), Max von Schillings’s Ingwelde (1894), Richard Strauss’s Guntram (1894), Hans Pfitzner’s Arme Heinrich (1896), and Eugen d’Albert’s Kain (1900).53
The inevitable consequence of all this imitation of Wagner was a reaction. Both public and composers, growing tired of repetitions of a style in which Wagner had already said the final word, were ready for something new. Possibilities for achieving this were sought in three different genres: comic opera, popular opera (Volksoper), and fairy-tale opera (Märschenoper). An outstanding work in the comic genre was Der Widerspenstigen Zahmung (1874) by Hermann Goetz (1840–76), an opera that, like Cornelius’s Barbier von Bagdad, has never had the wide success it merits by the cleverness of its libretto and the Mozartean humor of its music. A later, more sophisticated school of comic opera, going back for musical inspiration to Der Barbier or Wagner’s Meistersinger, is represented by the celebrated but seldom performed Der Corregidor (1896) of Hugo Wolf (1860–1903).54 Based on a story by P.A. de Alarcón, Der Corregidor is in many respects an inspired attempt to create a gay, original German comic opera “without the gloomy, world-redeeming ghost of a Schopenhauerian philosopher in the background.”55 This laudable intention was frustrated by Wolf’s long-standing admiration for Wagner’s music: the orchestra of Der Corregidor is as heavily polyphonic as that of Die Meistersinger, and the music is full of leitmotifs—a style completely unsuited to Wolf’s libretto. Moreover, Wolf, like Schubert and Schumann, was not at home in the theater: his invention seems to have been paralyzed by the requirements of the stage. The music goes from one song to the next like a Liederspiel; neither persons nor situations are adequately characterized. This composer, “who could be so dramatic in the lied, here in the drama remained above all a lyricist.”56 Der Corregidor, though not lacking in finely wrought details,57 was a failure as an opera.
Another Spanish subject, from Lope de Vega, was treated by Anton Urspruch (1850–1907) in his comic opera Das Unmöglichste von allem (1897), with light parlando dialogue and intricate contrapuntal ensembles derived from the style of Mozart. A more spirited and dramatic composer in this field was the Austrian Emil Nikolaus von Rezniček (1860–1945), whose Donna Diana (1894), again on a Spanish subject, gave promise of a future that was not realized in his next few operas, but with Ritter Blaubart (1920), “an eclectic score embodying elements of Italian cantilena style and the technique of French impressionism,”58 he renewed his reputation.
One of the best German comic operas of the late nineteenth century was D’Albert’s Abreis (1898), a fine example of swift-moving dialogue with a tuneful, spontaneous, and deftly orchestrated score, somewhat reminiscent of Cornelius. More in the Meistersinger idiom were the comic operas Das war ich (1902) and Versiegelt (1908) by Leo Blech (1871–1958), but these, like Wolf’s Corregidor, suffered from the music being, as a rule, too heavy and polyphonic for the simple librettos. Two other similar comic operas of this period were Schillings’s Pfeifertag (1899) and R. Strauss’s Feuersnot (1901), the latter an extraordinary combination of humor, eroticism, and autobiography, with music that shows the composer in transition from his early Wagnerian style to that of Salome and Elektra. On the whole, however, German comic opera of this type in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries is disappointing. No unified or generally accepted tradition evolved, and individual works of talent remained isolated experiments that their composers seemed unable to repeat.
It was otherwise with the Volksoper. Two late nineteenth-century works in this category were Das goldene Kreuz (1875), a pleasant comedy by Ignaz Brühl (1846–1907), with music slightly reminiscent of Auber, and the popular Trompeter von Säckingen (1884) by the Alsatian Viktor Nessler (1841–90), with men’s choruses, airs, and dances, all in a simple, tuneful style. Even more successful was Der Evangelimann (1895) by the Austrian Wilhelm Kienzl (1857–1941).59 The personage of the “Evangelimann” has no English equivalent; he is a wandering mendicant who receives alms in return for reading and telling stories from the Scriptures. Kienzl’s appeal is founded on the application of Wagnerian techniques to nonheroic subjects, but much of his musical material has a distinctly folk-like flavor (example 23.5). Der Evangelimann is, in fact, a kind of anthology of popular dance and song types, together with sentimental melodies in the vein of Nessler and amusing reminiscences of Lohengrin, Tristan, Die Meistersinger, and Hänsel und Gretel—all attached to a libretto of the most flagrantly melodramatic-romantic sort. Its popularity in Germany and Austria may be judged by the fact that Der Evangelimann had more than fifty-three hundred performances in the first forty years of its existence.
Closely related to Kienzl’s work is that of another Austrian, Julius Bittner (1874–1939), whose operas (to his own texts) are based on a folk-like type of melody, alternating closed numbers with declamatory passages and combining sentiment with humor. Die rote Gred (1907) and Der Musikant (1910) show his characteristic style in purest form; Der Bergsee (1911) has curious post-Wagnerian reminiscences. Das höllisch Gold (1916), a humorous miracle play, was his most varied and most popular work. Likewise in the field of people’s opera must be noted the Viennese Richard Heuberger (1850–1914), with Barfüssele (1905), and the Czech Karel Weis (1862–1944), with Der polnische Jude (1901), both works popular in their day.
EXAMPLE 23.5 Der Evangelimann, Act I
The way of recourse to the Märchenoper as a means of escape from wholesale imitation of Wagner—in effect, a return to one kind of subject matter that had been current in the early Romantic era—was discovered almost inadvertently. Alexander Ritter (1833–96), a disciple of Liszt and composer of a number of historically important symphonic poems, had produced at Munich in 1885 a fairy-tale opera, Der faule Hans, which, although it had only a moderate success, is of interest as being a forerunner of a most important fairy-tale opera that came out in 1893: Hänsel und Gretel by Engelbert Humperdinck (1854–1921).60 Humperdinck first wrote this music for a play for his sister’s children to perform at home. Later, when made into a full opera, Hänsel und Gretel caught the public fancy to such a degree as to start a whole new school in Germany. People turned with relief from the misty depths of mythology to the homely, familiar, enchanted world of the fairy tale, to subjects like those their grandparents had enjoyed in the days of Marschner and Lortzing. The transition was made easier because Humperdinck kept up an appearance of loyalty to Wagner: the music of Hänsel und Gretel is, in fact, a peculiar mixture of German folk melody and Wagnerian polyphony. Perhaps the texture is too complicated for the subject matter, but if this be a fault, it is one easy to forgive in view of the many musical beauties and the heartfelt, simple emotion of the work. The music brings together many qualities rooted in the affections of Germans over generations: the songs and dances of the children, the idyllic forest scenes, just enough of the supernatural (but with a comic touch), and the choral-like feeling of the “evening blessing” melody, which recurs in the finale to the words: “When past bearing is our grief, God himself will send relief.”
Of the many fairy-tale operas in neo-Wagnerian style that followed Hänsel und Gretel was Humperdinck’s Königskinder, first composed in 1898 as incidental music to a play and made into an opera ten years later. Other composers who contributed to the repertoire include Heinrich Zöllner (1854–1941), with Die versunkene Glocke (1899), his most successful opera; Ludwig Thuill (1861–1907), with Lobetanz (1898); Friedrich Klose (1862–1942), with Illsebill (1903); Hans Sommer (1837–1922), with Rübezahl (1904). Among other fairy-tale operas were two by Leo Blech, who had been a pupil of Humperdinck: Alpenkönig und Menschenfeind (1903; revised in 1917 under the title of Rappelkopf) and Aschenbrödel (1905), an adaptation of the Cinderella fairy tale. Here in varying degrees the post-Wagnerian musical idiom was adapted to popular subjects. To this group of composers belongs also Richard Wagner’s son Siegfried Wagner (1869–1930), another of Humperdinck’s pupils; his Der Bärenhäuter (1899) was the first and best of a long series of fairy-tale operas to his own texts, which attempt to combine legend, symbolism, and humor in a popular style.61 None of the later works, however, attained the lasting success of Hänsel und Gretel, which remains the classic example of late nineteenth-century German Märchenoper as well as a perennial source of pleasure for children of all ages.
VIENNESE OPERETTA
Finally may be mentioned the Viennese operetta, a distinct branch of which flourished at Vienna from about 1870 into the early twentieth century. One of the early composers of the Viennese operetta was Franz von Suppé (1819–95), whose overtures, in arrangement, have been the delight of amateur orchestras and village bands.62 Early in his career, Suppé, along with Albert Lortzing, was associated for a number of years with the Theater an der Wien, where his responsibilities primarily involved conducting and composing Singspiele. In 1860, at this same theater, Suppé’s operetta Das Pensionat was staged, to considerable acclaim, and a year later it found favor in New York, where it was staged (in German) at the Stadt Theater. Die schöne Galathée, a one-act operetta that had its debut in 1865 at Berlin, achieved for Suppé enduring success. This operetta, clearly influenced by Offenbach’s La Belle Hélèn, is distinguished by an overture that includes a stirring waltz, Italianate ensembles, a rousing trio (“Seht den Schmuck”), and the romantic “kiss” duet near the end of the operetta.
The advent of full-length operettas by Johann Strauss the younger (1825–99) on the Viennese stage between 1867 and 1876 caused Suppé serious competition, for although his Galathée was a “hit,” it was not of a length considered desirable for productions at the Theater an der Wien. In 1876 Suppé composed a three-act comic opera, Fatinitza, the popularity of which encouraged him to compose yet another operetta for Vienna in 1879, Boccaccio, oder Der Prinz von Palermo, which became an international triumph. Notable are its waltz-trio in the second act and the duets in the first and third acts. For a 1931 revival at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, recitatives replaced the spoken dialogue and several pieces from other Suppé operettas were added to provide extra musical material for the title role.
Offenbach’s operettas had become well known in Vienna by the 1860s, and Offenbach himself had also made his presence felt in the city on several occasions. For example, in 1863 he came to supervise the production of his Orphée aux enfers, but the popularity of the Parisian operetta repertoire did not seem to encourage Johann Strauss to try his hand at composing for the stage until the following decade. After achieving only modest success with Indigo und die vierzig Räuber (1871) and Carneval in Rom (1873), his first two operettas to reach the stage, Strauss subsequently created one of his most important and endearing works, Die Fledermaus (1874).63 This finely crafted operetta, staged in modern dress, set a new standard for the genre, one that even Strauss himself was not able to exceed. Der Zigeunerbaron (1885), written more than a decade after Die Fledermaus, tells the story of a nobleman who returns to his ancestral lands, only to discover that they are occupied by a band of gypsies.64 He is captivated by one of the gypsies and, after declaring his love to her, discovers that she is actually a princess. The score abounds with exotic harmonies and gypsy songs, all of which help to create a pseudo-Hungarian atmosphere. In addition to the stunning Schatzwalzer of Act II, Strauss offers some of his finest operatic music in the duet “Wer uns getraut?” in Act II and in the two finales. Two other Strauss works still heard with pleasure are Eine Nacht in Venedig (Berlin, 1883) and the posthumous pasticcio, Die Wiener Blut (1899). All four works may be rightly called “dance operettas” for in them the waltz and other dance rhythms are very prominent.
Among the leading operetta composers of Strauss’s generation in Vienna were Karl Millöcker (1842–99), with Der Bettelstudent (1882); Richard Genée (1823–95), with Der Seekadett (1876); Karl Zeller (1842–98), with Der Vogelhändler (1891); and Richard Heuberger (1850–1914), conductor and critic as well as composer of Der Opernball (1898) and other operettas. Those of the younger generation included Oscar Straus (1870–1954), with Ein Walzertraum (1907) and Der tapfere Soldat (1908); Leo Fall (1873–1925), with Die Dollarprinzessin (1907); Franz Léhar (1870–1948), with more than thirty operettas composed from 1896 to 1934; and Emmerich Kálmán (1882–1953), with Die Csárdásfürstin (1915) and Gräfin Mariza (1924).
The reputation of Franz Léhar today rests upon a single work, Die lustige Witwe (1905), that breathed new life into the Viennese operetta at the turn of the century, but this was by no means his only masterpiece. He also enjoyed triumphs with Der Graf von Luxemburg (1909) and Zigeunerliebe (1910), among many others. With his works, the course of operetta history was altered from a genre, long dependent upon farce and satire, to one enveloped in romantic love stories. To enhance the romantic element, Lehár made considerable use of the waltz, especially in the love duets, although in his operettas “the waltz was danced as much as sung.”65
So popular was Die lustige Witwe the lyrics had to be translated into many different languages to accommodate theatrical performances in foreign countries.66 The secret of this operetta’s hold on audiences stems from a well-spring of marvelous musical materials in the score, including, but not limited to, the overture, the waltz, and three exceptionally fine finales. Beginning in 1925 Léhar composed many of his operettas with a tenor role designed specifically for Richard Tauber, a famous Austrian tenor, whose outstanding performances assured Léhar of unqualified successes. The first time Tauber appeared in an operetta by Léhar was in 1922, when he made his debut at the Theater an der Wien in the premiere production of Frasquita.
Emmerich Kálmán, a Hungarian, wrote a number of operettas that not only had successful productions at Budapest and Vienna but also on Broadway. For example, Ein Herbstmanöver (originally titled Tatárjarás, 1908) appeared in New York in 1909 as The Gay Hussars; Zsuzsi Kisasszony (1915) was transformed into Miss Springtime and had more than two hundred performances on Broadway before being taken on tour in the United States; and Die Bajadere (1921) was staged under the title The Yankee Princess. Kálmán made several trips to New York, eventually emigrating at the start of World War II. He therefore was able to interact with some of Broadway’s librettists and composers and to experience firsthand the production of at least one of his works, Miss Underground, that came to the Broadway stage in 1943.67 His musical palette was similar to that of Léhar, with the waltz continuing to be a prominent feature, but his operettas were spiced with melodies reminiscent of Hungarian folksongs. At the conclusion of the war, Kálmán returned to Europe, where he died in 1953. By this date the vogue for Viennese operetta had run its course. Revivals, however, have allowed the genre to continue making its presence known to audiences around the world.
1. The Schola Cantorum, founded in 1894 by Charles Bordes, Alexandre Guilmant, and Vincent d’Indy, augmented this effort. The school, located in Paris, was dedicated to the restoration of church music through performance, study, and training.
2. The Franco-Prussian War had begun in 1870, bringing to a halt the extravagance of the Second Empire and thus contributing to a reduction in the dominance of opera over other forms of musical entertainment.
3. General works on French music during this period are Almanach des spectacles; Cinquante ans de musique française; Bruneau, La Musique française; Rolland, Musique d’aujourd’hui; Seré, Musiciens français d’aujourd’hui; Cooper, French Music: From the Death of Berlioz to the Death of Fauré; Lacombe, Les Voies de l’opéra français au XIXe siècle.
4. See RdM (November 1938), a special issue on Bizet; Dean, Georges Bizet: His Life and Work; Istel, Bizet und Carmen; McClary, Georges Bizet, Carmen.
5. Kaufmann, Basic Writings of Nietzsche, 613–14. See also Nietzsche, “Der Fall Wagner,” sec. 3, and “Jenseits von Gut und Böse,” part 8, in his Gesammelte Werke.
6. Hanslick, Am Ende des Jahrhunderts, 121.
7. See studies by De Curzon and Coquis.
8. See Reyer, Notes de musique; idem, Quarante Ans de musique; also De Curzon, Ernest Reyer; idem, La Légende de Sigurd.
9. Alfred Bruneau, quoted in Combarieu, Histoire de la musique, 3:389.
10. In this, Reyer shared the attitude of César Franck. See Lavignac, Encyclopédie, 3:1727–28, and Cooper, French Music.
11. Rolland, Musicians of Today, 253.
12. Cf. D’Indy, Richard Wagner et son influence.
13. See Hill, Modern French Music, chap. 4; studies by Myers and Robert.
14. This work has been produced in the United States as The Merry Monarch and elsewhere under various titles. See Loewenberg, Annals.
15. In his unfinished opera Briseïs (Act I, performed 1899), Chabrier demonstrated even more daring harmonies than in Gwendoline.
16. Abraham, A Hundred Years of Music, 201.
17. See Van den Borren, L’Oeuvre dramatique de César Franck: Hulda et Ghiselle.
18. See Vallas, Vincent d’Indy; Paul, “Rameau, D’Indy, and French Nationalism”; D’Indy, Richard Wagner. See also studies of Fervaal, L’Étranger, and Le Chant de la cloche by Bréville and Gauthier-Villars, Calvocoressi, and Destranges, respectively.
19. See Rolland, Musiciens d’aujourd’hui, chapter on D’Indy.
20. See also the quotation of the intonation of the Credo in Act II, scene i of the same opera; and cf. the plainsong passage from the Litany in the finale of Bruneau’s Messidor (also 1897).
21. See Gallois, Ernest Chausson: L’homme et l’oeuvre.
22. Biography by Chantavoine and the composer’s own writings, especially Portraits et souvenirs.
23. Biography by Harding. See also Massenet, Mes Souvenirs, and Salzer, ed., The Massenet Compendium.
24. Several issues of L’Avant-scène opéra are devoted solely to Massenet’s operas. See, for example, nos. 61 (1984), Werther; 63 (1986), Don Quichotte; 109 (1988), Thaïs; and 123 (1989), Manon.
25. See Branger, “Le Mélodrame musical dans Manon de Jules Massenet.”
26. Biography by Boschot; see also Bruneau’s own writings.
27. Delmas, Gustave Charpentier; Himonet, Louise de Charpentier.
28. Many of these same elements can be found in Charpentier’s Julien (1913), with its mixture of realism and regional color.
29. Bruneau, La Musique française, 154.
30. For a definitive history of the operetta, see Traubner, Operetta: A Theatrical History.
31. See Augé-Laribé, Messager, musicien de théâtre; Wagstaff, André Messager: A Bio-Bibliography.
32. After the Paris performances, this operetta enjoyed an exceptionally long run in London (1904) before being staged in New York on Broadway in 1905.
33. All three have been recorded, but they have had few recent revivals.
34. The London Times took note of Messager’s instrumental combinations in Monsieur Beaucaire, citing, in particular, “his dramatically effective use of a pair of clarinets backed by light pizzicato strings and an arpeggio on the harp.”
35. See Gatti, Catalani: La vita e le opere; Pagani, Alfredo Catalani; Nicolaisen, Italian Opera in Transition, 1871–1893.
36. Iris, considered to be a finer work than Cavalleria, may have served as a model for Madama Buttefly. See Mascagni, Mascagni parla, and studies by De Donno and Jeri.
37. Leoncavallo wrote his own librettos and shared in the writing of Manon Lescaut and La Bohème for Puccini.
38. Verismo (truth) is a term applied to a phase of naturalism in literature and music, emerging in the late nineteenth century and characterized by the projection on stage of true-life realism—fierce passions, violence, and death. The relatively few operas that fall into the verismo category tend to be in one act so that a singleness of mood and situation can be presented without interruption. Verga’s Cavalleria rusticana initiated the verismo movement. See Lang, The Experience of Opera, chap. 9, and Rinaldi, Musica e verismo.
39. See studies by Carner, Ashbrook, and Osborne (the last with a synopsis of each opera).
40. Carner, Puccini, 273. Here Carner offers an excellent analysis of the composer’s melodic and general musical style.
41. The compression is also characteristic of Puccini’s librettos; they often eliminate subplots entirely and usually observe the classical unities of time, place, and action.
42. See Carner, “The Exotic Element in Puccini,” with musical examples.
43. On this opera, see also chapter twenty-nine.
44. See Weaver, “In Tosca, a Touch of Family History.”
45. See Cellamare, Umberto Giordano: La vita e le opere.
46. In a 1996 production of Fedora at the Metropolitan Opera, Jean-Ives Thibaudet, a highly acclaimed concert pianist, took the role of Lazinski.
47. See a biography by T. d’Amico; Moschini, Sulle opere di Francesco Cilèa; Pitarresi, ed., La dolcissima effigie: Studie su Francesco Cilèa.
48. General works on the period are Schiedermair, Die deutsche Oper; Louis, Die deutsche Musik der Gegenwart; Istel, “German Opera since Richard Wagner”; idem, Die moderne Oper; Monographien moderner Musiker; Moser, Geschichte der deutschen Musik, 3:351–451; Dahlhaus, Between Romanticism and Modernism.
49. Goldmark was born in Hungary but resided in Austria most of his life. See Goldmark, Erinnerungen; biography by Koch.
50. Rauh, Heinrich Dorn als Opernkomponist.
51. For more on Huber and other Swiss composers, see chapter twenty-six.
52. Bungert intended to introduce the Odyssee cycle with Die Ilias, consisting of two more operas, but this plan was never realized.
53. A discussion of other works by some of these composers will be found in Part VI.
54. See Cook, Hugo Wolf’s Der Corregidor.
55. Letter of Wolf to Grohe, 1890. See Istel. “German Opera since Richard Wagner,” 278–79.
56. Moser, Geschichte der deutschen Musik. 3:397.
57. Examples are the duet “In solchen Abendfeierstunden” (Act II); Frasquita’s “In dem Schatten meiner Locken” (Act I), a charming song taken from Wolf’s earlier Spanisches Liederbuch; Luka’s monologue (Act III, scene iii), the most nearly dramatic music in the opera.
58. Slonimsky, Music since 1900.
59. Selections from his autobiography and letters are in Kienzl-Rosegger; see also an essay on Kienzl by Morold in Monographien moderner Musiker, vol. 3.
60. See Kuhlmann, Stil und Form in der Musik von Humperdincks Oper Hänsel und Gretel.
61. Der Bärenhäuter is untranslatable. The story on which it is based will be found under the title “Des Teufels russiger Bruder” in Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm, Kinder- und Hausmärchen [Berlin, 1815], 2:100–105. See Glasenapp, Siegfried Wagner und seine Kunst; S. Wagner, Erinnerungen.
62. Keller, Franz von Suppé.
63. See Racek, “Zur Entstehung und Aufführungsgeschichte der Fledermaus.” OMz (1975), 30:264–72.
64. See studies by Würzl, including “Neues zum Zigeunerbaron: Eine Dokumentation seiner Entstehung.”
65. Traubner, Operetta: A Theatrical History, 243.
66. This operetta was also made accessible to a wider audience through a series of Hollywood films and through several ballets based upon the story.
67. In 1927, while Kálmán was in New York, he contributed to the score of Hammerstein’s and Harbach’s The Golden Dawn.