Judge then of the beauties of a so-called Italian opera, when four foreigners have had their fingers in the pie, and scooped away everything but the crust!
But it would be unjust in us to give all the blame of the absurdity to the translator, and our space, even if so inclined, would prevent us from indulging in too close an examination of his defects. The work of comparison may be pursued by others. We have now to do with the original librettisti. Much as the translator may err in grammar, synonyms, and common sense—or rather in the absence of all these—he is no worse than his associates, the self-dubbed “laureates” of the playhouse. We have a very large crow indeed to pluck with those gentlemen of the quill who flippantly style themselves poets, and invariably remind us of the assertion that the wild-goose flies higher than the eagle, falling down lead-like with a “squeak” from the confines of the eagle’s nest. We know them by their drivelling sentiments and their screaming attempts at passion, as well as by the reckless manner with which they throw about queries and notes of admiration for the bewilderment of the incautious. Filled with insane ambition to excel their retiring brothers—the true poets—as impertinently as the goose endeavours to outfly the eagle, the Italian poetasters attempt everything for a short-lived popularity. Collaborateurs of Verdi and Meyerbeer, they turn out on inspection to be little better than serving-men of the goddess of music. Valets du Parnase, they are no foes to such beverages as beer and wine, but are absolutely ignorant of the divine fire that enlivens the poet’s soliloquy. They are book-makers to the bone, and are more thankful for a pair of scissors than for the lyre of PhœbusApollo. With the exception of Scribe and Romane, the librettisti are the mere purveyors of information for the composers—smugglers of trite expressions, borrowed plots and threadbare sentiments that have done their duty a thousand and one times.
A few words explicative of Italian opera may not be deemed unnecessary.
The libretto may be divided into three classes: the tragic, the comic, and the mezzo-serio. The first includes such operas as the “Huguenots,” the “Trovatore,” and “Lucrezia Borgia;” the second such works as the “Barber of Seville,” “L’Eilsir d’Amore,” and “Don Pasquale;” and the third all operas that have no death in the last act.
Operas of the Italian school, whether tragedies, comedies, or farces, have invariably the same ingredients. They are all provided with a lover, a heroine, a rival, a tyrant (or a dotard), and an all-pervading and insinuating chorus. These are the pieces of glass in the ever-shifting kaleidoscope which the manager can shake at his will and alter to the desired patterns. By a strange fatality the lot of the heroine almost invariably devolves on the soprano, and by a similar caprice of fortune the tenor invariably takes the part of the hero. We are at a loss to imagine why the chorus should make free with other people’s apartments and why the baritone should always pick a quarrel with the tenor. Query, why is the villain of the piece always a baritone?
Perhaps it is this sameness of material that in some measure detracts from the merit of the libretto. It is always excessively amusing—even in the most serious operas—to see that jealous, wilful, mal-à-propos sort of suitor, the baritone, always coming between the two innammorati. The tenor loathes him (in not a few of the operas), but somehow or other, like the hero of “Waverley,” he is always more famous for manners than for manliness. We find him in the “Trovatore,” tamely submitting to the worst insults, and finally losing his lady, his liberty, and his life, at the hands of one from whom he expected better things, and whose sole reason for acting as he did appears to be his possession of a baritone throat and his extraordinary love of soliloquy. In “Ernani” it is the baritone who gets to the soft side of the tenor by persuading him that it is quite chivalrous on the eve of his marriage to give up his claims to matrimony and to existence—on the blowing of the baritone’s horn. But here we have to do with Victor Hugo; and the libretto-writer has merely discovered the point where the sublime and the ridiculous meet, and scratched it out with his pen. How many instances we could give of this nature from the libretti of the Italian opera need not be enumerated; suffice it to say, that we could employ clerks, à la Dumas, for a fortnight, and yet not have done with our citations.
Perhaps, in the whole course of Italian opera, there are not ten examples of a heroine falling in love with the baritone. This gentleman may fume and soliloquise, waylay, terrify, and trepan; but the heroine will have nothing to do with him. She may be friendly to him, as in the “Barbiere”—courteous to him, as in the “Sonnambula,”—self-denying to him, as in the “Traviata”; but love him she will not; and she tells him so; and the aversion she feels for his presence finds vent in some of the most pleasing melodies that ever fell from the lips of a soprano.
Not always, however, does the baritone exercise an evil influence over the characters of the drama. He is sometimes a very sprightly fellow. Some of the operas of Rossini and Donizetti introduce him in a very fascinating light. Who could be nobler, for instance, than the baritone of “William Tell,” when he shot the apple off his son’s head? Who more amiable than Figaro? Who more amusing than Leporello? But these instances are rare; and the operas of Verdi, for instance, scarcely ever allow the baritone a chance of displaying his social virtues.
“Rigoletto,” where the baritone is a jesting fellow, fond of his Duke, and fond of procuring him ladies to be fond of—laughs, as we know, on the other side of his mouth, before the end of the opera. Germont, the elder, in his tête-à-tête with the Traviata, hurries the courtesan to an untimely fate, and breaks the heart of his favourite son into the bargain. All this is very proper, and we have nothing to say against it; but is it not singular that the baritone should always be chosen for these ungrateful tasks? Others of the “amiable” baritones of the same composer commit actions equally disastrous, and invariably turn their ditty into a dirge before the fall of the