CHAPTER XI.

ROSSINI ON HIS TRAVELS.

When in 1823, the year of _Semiramide's_ being produced at Venice, Rossini started with his wife, the former Mdlle. Colbran, for Paris--whence he made his way to London, returning to Paris soon afterwards--he enjoyed a world-wide reputation, but was far from being rich. Thanks, however, to a season in London, and to five years' residence in Paris, where lucrative posts were given to him, he soon made his fortune.

Speaking some thirty years afterwards of his visit to London, Rossini said to Hiller:[9] "'From the beginning I had an opportunity of observing how disproportionately singers were paid in comparison with composers. If the composer got fifty ducats, the singer received a thousand. Italian operatic composers might formerly write heaven knows how many operas, and yet only be able to exist miserably. Things hardly went otherwise with myself until my appointment under Barbaja.'

"'_Tancredi_ was your first opera which really made a great hit, maestro; how much did you get for it?'

"'Five hundred francs,' replied Rossini, 'and when I wrote my last Italian opera, _Semiramide_, and stipulated for 5,000 francs, I was looked upon, not by the impresario alone, but by the entire public, as a kind of pickpocket.'

"'You have the consolation of knowing,' said Hiller, 'that singers, managers, and publishers, have been enriched by your means.'

"'A fine consolation' replied Rossini. 'Except during my stay in England, I never gained sufficient by my art to enable me to put by anything; and even in London I did not get money as a composer, but as an accompanist.'

"'But still,' observed Hiller,'that was because you were a celebrated composer.'

"'That is what my friends said,' replied Rossini, 'to decide me to do it. It may have been prejudice, but I had a kind of repugnance to being paid for accompanying on the piano, and I have only done so in London. However, people wanted to see the tip of my nose, and to hear my wife. I had fixed for our co-operation at musical soirées the tolerably high price of 50_l._ We attended somewhere about sixty such soirées, and that was after all worth having. In London, too, musicians will do anything to get money, and some delicious facts came under my observation there. For instance, the first time that I undertook the task of accompanist at a soirée of this description, I was informed that Puzzi, the celebrated horn-player, and Dragonetti, the more celebrated contrabassist, would also be present. I thought they would perform solos; not a bit of it! They were to assist me in accompanying. "Have you then your parts to accompany these pieces?" I asked them. "Not we," was their answer, "but we get well paid, and we accompany as we think fit!"

'"These extemporaneous attempts at instrumentation struck me as rather dangerous, and I therefore begged Dragonetti to content himself with giving a few pizzicatos when I winked at him, and Puzzi to strengthen the final cadenzas with a few notes, which, being a good musician, he easily invented for the occasion. In this manner things went off without any very disastrous results, and every one was pleased.'"

"'Delicious!' exclaimed Hiller, 'still it strikes me that the English have made great progress in a musical point of view. At the present time a great deal of good music is performed in London--it is well performed and listened to attentively, that is to say, at public concerts. In private drawing-rooms music still plays a sorry part, and a great number of individuals, totally devoid of talent, give themselves airs of incredible assurance, and impart instruction on subjects of which their knowledge amounts almost to nothing.'

"'I knew in London a certain professor who had amassed a large fortune as a teacher of singing and the pianoforte,' said Rossini, 'while all he understood was to play a little, most wretchedly, on the flute. There was another man, with an immense connection, who did not even know the notes. He employed an accompanist to beat into his head the pieces he afterwards taught, and to accompany him in his lessons; but he had a good voice.'"

Many of the French composers, with about an equal proportion of critics, received Rossini with anything but cordiality. He was chiefly condemned as a seeker after new effects. But Berlioz some years later vituperated him from quite another point of view. He found his music heartless, unemotional, and written entirely for the singer, and for the sake of vocal, to the disregard of dramatic effect. "If," he afterwards said, "it had been in my power to place a barrel of powder under the Salle Louvois and blow it up during the representation of _La Gazza Ladra_ or _Il Barbiere_, with all that it contained, I certainly should not have failed to do so."

The composer Bertin, less a contemporary than a predecessor of Rossini, wrote of him in the following terms:--

"M. Rossini has a brilliant imagination, _verve_, originality, great fecundity; but he knows that he is not always pure and correct; and, whatever certain persons may say, purity of style is not to be disdained, and faults of syntax are never excusable. Besides, since the writers of our daily journals constitute themselves judges in music, having qualified myself by _Montano_, _Le Délire_, _Aline_, &c., I think I have the right to give my opinion _ex professo_. I give it frankly, and sign it, which is not done by certain persons who strive incognito to make and unmake reputations. All this has been suggested only by the love of art, and in the interest of M. Rossini himself. This composer is beyond contradiction the most brilliant talent that Italy has produced since Cimarosa; but one may deserve to be called celebrated without being on an equality with Mozart."

It seems afterwards to have occurred to Bertin that music as good as Rossini's might be composed by machinery. He declares, indeed, in a pamphlet directed against Rossini, entitled "La musique mechanique et de la musique philosophique," that he once asked Maelzel, the inventor of the metronome, whether he could construct a machine to compose music; upon which Maelzel daringly replied that he could, but that his mechanically-made tunes would not be up to the level of Sacchini, Cimarosa, and Mozart, and would be worthy only of Rossini.

"M. Auber has told me," says M. Jouvin, in his Life of that composer, "how he met Rossini for the first time at a dinner given by Carafa in honour of his illustrious compatriot. On rising from table the maestro, at the request of his host, went to the piano and sang Figaro's cavatina, 'Largo al fattotum della cità.'

"'I shall never forget,' said M. Auber to me, 'the effect produced by his lightning-like execution.' Rossini had a beautiful baritone voice, and he sang his music with a spirit and _verve_ which neither Pellegrini nor Galli nor Lablache approached in the same part. As for his art as an accompanist, it was marvellous; it was not on a key-board but on an orchestra that the vertiginous hands of the pianist seemed to gallop. When he had finished I looked mechanically at the ivory keys; I fancied I could see them smoking. On arriving home I felt much inclined to throw my scores into the fire. 'It will warm them, perhaps,' I said to myself; 'besides, what is the use of composing music, if one cannot compose like Rossini?'"

Apart from a little professional jealousy, Rossini met in Paris with the warmest possible reception; and the men in authority gave him substantial marks of their esteem. He was appointed director of the Théâtre des Italiens, with a salary of 20,000 francs a year; and when after eighteen months' service he resigned this post, the salary was continued to him in connection with another, of which the duties were purely nominal: that of "Inspector of singing." In granting Rossini this salary, the object of the government was to induce him to remain in France, and to compose a series of works for the Académie where, after producing _Il Viaggio a Reims_, at the Italian Theatre in honour of Charles X.'s coronation, he brought out in succession _Le Siège de Corinthe_,[10] re-arranged from _Maometto Secundo_, an opera of the year 1820; _Moïse_, re-arranged from _Mosè in Egitto_, a Lenten opera oratorio of the year 1818; _Le Comte Ory_, re-arranged with many additions from _Il Viaggio a Reims_; and his greatest work _Guillaume Tell_.

Every one knows that after _William Tell_, Rossini wrote no more for the stage. But every one does not know that he for some little time afterwards entertained an idea of composing an opera on the subject of Faust. "Yes," answered Rossini, when Ferdinand Hiller questioned him on the subject, "it was for a long period a favourite notion of mine, and I had already planned the whole scenarium with Jouy; it was naturally based upon Goethe's poem. At this time, however there arose in Paris a regular 'Faust' mania; every theatre had a particular 'Faust' of its own, and this somewhat damped my ardour. Meanwhile the revolution of July had taken place; the Grand Opera, previously a royal institution, passed into the hands of a private person; my mother was dead, and my father found life in Paris unbearable because he did not understand French: so I cancelled the agreement which bound me by rights to send in four other grand operas, preferring to remain quietly in my native land, enlivening the last years of my old father's existence. I had been far away from my poor mother when she expired; this was an endless source of regret to me, and I was most apprehensive that the same thing might occur in my father's case."

Many explanations have been given of Rossini's reasons for abstaining from writing any more for the stage, when he had once produced _William Tell_--nor did he afterwards compose anything whatever of importance except his thoroughly beautiful _Stabat Mater_. Some of these explanations have been already referred to. The truth in this matter seems to have been that Rossini acted under the influence of a great variety of reasons. Without being hurt by the comparative coldness with which _William Tell_ for a time was received, without being jealous of Meyerbeer's and of Halévy's success, which, according to some anecdote-mongers, caused him to exclaim: "Je reviendrai quand les Juifs auront fini leur Sabbat," without even having "written himself out," he may well have reflected whether such a strain as he had subjected himself to in composing _William Tell_ was worth undergoing a second time. With the exception of _Il Viaggio a Reims_ nothing that he wrote for Paris, until he undertook _William Tell_, was absolutely new. He had already lost the habit, if not the faculty, of composing rapidly; and this same _Viaggio a Reims_ was the only original work he produced between _Semiramide_, 1823, and _Guillaume Tell_, 1829. Writing at Paris for as fine an orchestra as that of the San Carlo Theatre, and for a finer chorus, he paid particular attention to the choral and orchestral portions of his last great work. He also profited by the fact that at the Académie he was free to have as many rehearsals as he pleased; and to turn this advantage to the greatest possible account he gave himself infinite, and with him quite unusual pains, to secure a perfect execution of his opera. In writing for the voices moreover, he had completely changed his style. What indeed can be more different from the florid and frequently insignificant,--or, so to say, anti-significant--passages in the rich, soft, voluptuous melodies of _Semiramide_, than the simple, emotional, eminently dramatic strains given to the singers in _Guillaume Tell_? Heine speaks in his "Parisian Letters" of Meyerbeer's mother having once told him that her son was "not obliged to compose;" on which Heine remarks that a windmill might as well say it was not "obliged" to go round: though a windmill will turn if the wind blows, just as a composer will produce music if moved by the spirit. Talking on this most interesting subject of speculation to Ferdinand Hiller, Rossini himself confessed that "when a man has composed thirty-seven operas he begins to feel a little tired." _Guillaume Tell_, in any case, marks the end of Rossini's career as an operatic composer.

Opera has a distinct history in Italy, in France, and in Germany. For a considerable time it makes progress in Italy. Then Italian composers and Italian singers go abroad taking Italian opera with them. German composers, too, visit Italy, and after studying there return to their native land, to produce with modifications operas which must still be regarded as Italian in character. At last the Germans who have studied in Italy become the rivals of the Italian masters. Then Gluck and Piccinni contend with one another in presence of French audiences, and above all, of French critics. Finally it becomes the turn of the Italians to borrow from the Germans; for Mozart, so highly indebted for his melodic inspiration--or at least for his melodic forms--to Italy, was so much before the Italians in regard to the composition of his orchestra and the construction of his musical pieces, that when Rossini wished to introduce into Italian opera the important reforms which must always be associated with his name, he had nothing to do but to turn to Mozart as a model. Rossini was the first Italian composer who accompanied recitative with the full band, assigned leading parts to bass singers, made of each dramatic scene one continuous piece of music, and brought to perfection those highly varied, amply developed concerted finales, which form so striking a feature in modern Italian opera. All these innovations were simply adaptations from Mozart.

The history of Rossini's Italian career is the history of opera in Italy during the first half of the nineteenth century; for Rossini caused the works of his predecessors to be laid aside, while his own works and those of his immediate successors, and in an artistic sense followers, continued to be played almost to the exclusion of all others until the Verdi period. And even Verdi, who in his latter works has studied dramatic consistency and dramatic effect more than Rossini studied them in his earlier works, must be regarded as belonging, more or less completely, to the school of Rossini.