CHAPTER XXVI
ITALIAN AND FRENCH OPERA
175. New Life in the Italian Style.—The underlying principle
of the Italian opera has always been the capture of the
favor of audiences, especially by exploiting brilliant soloists
in highly colored or showy melodies and by other devices
essentially sensational. But between the followers of this style
in any given period there has often been much difference, some
being content with imitating the vapid, ad captandum ways of
their predecessors, and some reaching out with originality and
genius toward a better dramatic ideal. At the opening of the
19th century these extremes were sharply marked. On the
one hand were the writers who worked principally in Italy
alone, often with Naples as a centre, who went on gratifying
the popular craving for flowing airs, clever effects and conventional
comedy or pathos without real advance. On the other,
were those aware of the great movements going on in other
departments of musical creation, generally because they carried
on their work outside of Italy, and who sought to infuse into
Italian writing elements akin to those elsewhere prominent.
Besides several worthy, but not highly inspired, writers of this
second class, the period is notable for the phenomenal career of
Rossini, who certainly had genius and success, however he may
be classified as to principles. His vogue spread throughout
Europe and, with the help of several later writers of the same
class, served to delay until after the middle of the century the
triumph of better ideas.
Among lesser composers the following were especially productive or
popular:—
Vittorio Trento (d. after 1824), born at Venice, was active there from his youth, producing bright comic operettas (from 1780). In 1797 he was in London, gaining popularity with The Triumph of Love and other works, including Ifigenia in Aulide (1804). After 1806 he served for a time as opera-director at Amsterdam, and later at Lisbon. He was very prolific—his Climene (1811, London) being numbered his 53d. At Venice he had special success with Gli assassini (1801).
