CHAPTER III.

ROSSINI IN PARIS.

Rossini's journey to London was not merely an excursion from Paris. But he started from Paris to come to London; he returned to Paris as soon as he had made his seven thousand pounds, and, owing, no doubt, to his horror of sea water, never paid us the compliment of calling again.

M. Castil-Blaze, whose works on musical subjects are full of interesting information, but quite without order, tells us somewhere that large sums were offered to Rossini if he would only put on the jacket of _Figaro_ and appear at the Italian Opera of London in his own immortal "Barber." But this proposition was not likely to suit Rossini, and it is even to be feared that concert singing was not altogether to his taste, though he managed to go through a certain amount of it when he was in London, in consideration of the few hundreds a week that it brought him.

Nor was he above giving lessons during this brief but lucrative visit to England; and a story is told of his having once accompanied the vocal efforts of George IV. himself. The king made a mistake and was about to stop, but as Rossini went on he did the same. He afterwards spoke of having got into the wrong key, and of Rossini's continuing to play as though nothing had happened.

"It was my duty to accompany your Majesty," replied Rossini. "I am ready to follow you wherever you may go."

* * * * *

Before coming to London Rossini had been uncertain whether to return to Paris or not. At least he had not accepted a proposition made to him by the Duke de Lauriston to undertake the direction of the Italian Opera in Paris. He agreed to it, however, when the offer was renewed to him in London by Prince Polignac, the French ambassador, and it was made the basis of a formal contract, which Rossini signed in the prince's presence.

Rossini's arrival in the French capital was the signal for the renewal of disputes as to the merit of his music compared with the good old national music of the country he had come to reside in. It was a feeble attempt to get up the same sort of feud which had divided all Paris when an attempt was made to introduce Italian Opera seventy years before.

Until the end of the eighteenth century the French were unable to understand, or unwilling to acknowledge, the immense superiority of the Italians in everything pertaining to music; and in 1752 the performance of Pergolese's "Serva Padrona" by an Italian company caused a series of pitched battles between the partisans of French and Italian opera, the end of which was that "La Serva Padrona" was hissed, and the two singers who appeared in it driven from Paris.

As the French, however, progressed in the study and knowledge of music, so did they progress in their appreciation of the music of the Italians; and the little cabal got up against Rossini when he went to Paris in the year 1824, had no power to injure him.

But Rossini's relations with the Parisians had commenced in December the year previous. Before coming to London he had passed a month in Paris, during which time the sentiments of the musicians and amateurs of France towards their illustrious visitor had manifested themselves clearly enough. A representation of the "Barber of Seville" was given in Rossini's honour immediately after his arrival. The composer on appearing in the theatre was received with great demonstrations of enthusiasm, and at the end of the first act was called on to the stage--at that time a novel and distinguished compliment. In the music lesson scene, Garcia pronounced with significant emphasis the words "Giovvane di gran genio!" which was the signal for renewed applause.

A dinner was given to Rossini a few days afterwards, at which Auber, Hérold, Boieldieu, Garcia, Horace Vernet, Madame Pasta, Mademoiselle Mars, and other artistic celebrities were present.

The toasts were interesting and characteristic. Lesueur, the greatest composer of the French school, began by proposing the health of Rossini, "whose ardent genius has opened a new road and marked a new epoch in musical art."

Rossini replied by proposing "The French school and the prosperity of the Conservatoire;" and the formal, indispensable toasts having been disposed of, Lesueur drank to Glück, Boieldieu to Méhul, Hérold to Paisiello, Auber to Cimarosa, and Rossini to Mozart.

M. Scribe, then just beginning his career, made the banquet to Rossini the subject of a vaudeville, called "Rossini à Paris, ou le Grand Diner." Rossini was invited to attend the rehearsal, and if any passages in the work displeased him to point them out. He went to the rehearsal, but nothing seems to have displeased him except the airs to which the vaudeville couplets were sung.

"If that is their national music," he said, "I shall do no good here, and may as well pack up my things at once."

It was a proof of good nature on the part of Rossini, better still of good sense, not to be offended by the vaudeville of which his arrival in Paris had been made the subject, and which, by the way, seems to have been the model of fifty similar works, showing how a man coming home from a masquerade may be mistaken for a true Eastern prince, a chorus singer for a great prima donna, a Quaker bearing the name of a prize-fighter, for the prize-fighter himself, &c., &c.

The piece entitled "Rossini à Paris" caused a good deal of excitement. There was a strong "national" party in the house, who wanted to know why an Italian composer should be set above composers of French origin (a mystery which Auber, Hérold, and Boieldieu could easily have explained), and who were pleased to see the enthusiastic admirers of Rossini exhibited as grotesque fanatics. On the other hand, many of Rossini's friends, taking perhaps an unduly serious view of a piece of pleasantry, thought that M. Scribe had treated the great composer with too much levity.

* * * * *

A great deal has been said about the intrigues against Rossini, and the attacks made upon his music in the newspapers on his first arrival in Paris. Writers in the present day are astonished that writers in that day should have been so unjust. Musicians are not astonished that writers at any time should have been so ignorant.

After reading the extracts from the journals of the period, given by Stendhal, and by M. Azevedo, it is easy to see that Rossini was not nearly so ill-treated as is generally supposed; and it is worth noticing that the most important and persistent of the adverse criticisms and all the organised hostility proceeded from musicians. Indeed it is difficult to understand how any man with a natural taste for music, and a more or less cultivated ear, unless hampered by professional prejudices or professional interests, would not be charmed by the music of Rossini.

Among the enemies of Rossini in Paris were a few obscure journalists, who held absurd theories on the subject of French music and Italian music, music which appealed only to the senses, and music which appealed to the heart, &c.; but the chief of the cabal were Berton, the composer of "Montano et Stéphanie," and Paer, the then celebrated Italian composer, who held the office of musical conductor at the Italian Opera of Paris.

Berton may have been quite sincere in not liking the brilliant dramatic music of the young Italian maestro, and he doubtless found sincere supporters among elderly amateurs, whose admiration for the milder and more meagre music of a previous age was connected with all sorts of impressions and associations of their youth. The music of Paisiello and Cimarosa was the music of their first love. Now when they went to hear Rossini's music the gout troubled them.

As for Berton, who was treated by the Rossinists of the period as nothing less than a malefactor, and who was certainly of a mean and envious disposition, he began by criticising the music of the new and rising composer, severely, no doubt, and, in an artistic sense, unjustly; but it was not until he had been provoked by rejoinders--it was in the heat of discussion--that he uttered his grand absurdity, "que M. Rossini ne serait jamais qu'un petit discoureur en musique." Stendhal quotes a letter of Berton's from "L'Abeille," in which the worst that the French composer of the past has to say against the Italian composer of the present and the future is what follows:--

"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."

To understand the position and attitude of Berton in the war which for a time raged in Paris on the subject of Rossini's merit, it is necessary to remember that the praise lavished upon the Italian composer was not only extravagant in regard to Rossini himself (which might be excused as the natural product of enthusiasm), but also unjust to other composers.

Berton, with all his love for art in the abstract, thought no doubt much more of his own reputation than of the reputation of Mozart; but Boieldieu seems also to have thought that the "Rossinists" were carrying their idolatry rather too far.

"The French Rossinists," says Boieldieu, in a letter dated 1823,[31] "want to put us completely under the feet of their idol. But the Italian Rossinists, and Rossini himself, are more just. He has no need of that to raise himself; his great talent will always put him in his proper place. If people would be reasonable, they would do in musical matters what is done in literature and in painting; it is possible to have Dante, and Tasso, and others, in the same library, and to admire Rubens and Raphael in the same gallery. Honour to Rossini, but honour also to Mozart, Glück, Cimarosa, &c. Rossini, with whom I have conversed a great deal, is quite of the same way of thinking. He has made a style of his own by taking, from other styles, examples which have guided him."

Indeed, Boieldieu, Hérold, Auber, were all fervent admirers of Rossini, and all to a certain extent adopted him as a model. Hérold was "_maestro al piano_" at the Italian theatre of Paris when Rossini was director, and may almost be said to have studied under him. The influence of Rossini upon Auber was equally remarkable. With regard to Auber's personal opinion of Rossini, and of his sentiments towards him when Rossini first visited Paris, the following passage[32] from a highly interesting memoir of Auber, by M. Jouvin (well known to readers of the Paris _Figaro_), may be quoted:--

"M. Auber has told me," says M. Jouvin, "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 cita.'

"I shall never forget," said M. Auber to me, "the effect produced by his lightning-like execution. Rossini had a very 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 accompanyist, it was marvellous; it was not on a keyboard, 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?'"

With Auber, Hérold, and Boieldieu on his side, it does not matter much what the views of any other of the French composers may have been.

As for Paer, the director of the Italian theatre, his position did not allow him to express any opinion publicly on the works of the rival by whose fame his own had already been eclipsed. But that position gave him, as we shall afterwards see, the opportunity of carrying on war against him in a much more practical manner. Paer possessed the right of keeping back Rossini's operas, of presenting them as he thought fit, and finally, of producing, as if in contrast, works by other composers, whom Rossini's adverse critics declared to be altogether his superiors.

* * * * *

Some years later, a few nights after the production of "Guillaume Tell," a serenade was given to Rossini, by the artists of the Opera, under the direction of Habeneck, the _chef d'orchestre_. Méry, in the preface to his French version of "Semiramide," has given a lively description of the scene.

"Habeneck," he says, "conducted his army on to the boulevard, and made it execute the overture to 'Guillaume Tell.' Soulié, the charming writer of 'La Quotidienne,' had brought up a crowd of Royalists; Armand Marrast, Carrel, Rabbe, and myself, represented the Liberal journals. The applause shook the windows on the boulevard; and the enthusiasm became really frantic when Levasseur, Nourrit, and Dabadie, sang the trio of the oath.

"Boieldieu, that musician of genius and of heart, who lodged in the same house, went down to Rossini and embraced him.

"Paer and Berton sat at the Café des Variétés, taking an ice, and saying to one another, in a duet, 'Art is lost!'"

* * * * *

Why, it may be asked, does Méry point out that Rossini's music, in the year 1829, was applauded both by Royalists and Liberals?

The explanation is, that the question of Rossini's merit had become, to a certain extent, a political question, like the disputes between the Gluckists and the Piccinnists; and at an earlier period (1752) between the supporters of Italian and the supporters of French music.

Shortly before the French Revolution of 1789, the party of Marie Antoinette believed only in Gluck, while the party of Madame Dubarry swore by Piccinni.

During the Restoration and until the Revolution of 1830, it was the sign of a good royalist to praise Rossini's music, and a sign of liberalism to condemn it. This had nothing whatever to do with Rossini's own political opinions, which were never very marked. But Rossini's music and the romantic school of poetry and painting were classed together, and the romantic school, with Victor Hugo, Lamartine, and Alfred de Vigny at its head, began by being royalist.

Balzac describes somewhere a hero of this period as devoted to "Byron's poetry, Géricault's painting, Rossini's music;" and persons who entertained these tastes were looked upon as Royalists, and denounced accordingly by the Liberals.

It was absurd, but so it was. Of course, too, there were limits to the absurdity; and it must have been near its end when Armand Carrel went out on the boulevard to applaud the overture to "Guillaume Tell."