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Opera Makers of To-day
How the ancient feud between the Italian school and the German school has ended in a union of methods on a Wagnerian foundation.
by Giacomo Minkowsky, Munsey's Magazine, 1903
PIETRO MASCAGNI, COMPOSER OF "CAVALLERIA
RUSTICANA," THE BEST KNOWN MEMBER OF THE SO-CALLED
"YOUNG ITALIAN SCHOOL."
From a photograph by
Guigoni & Bossi, Milan.
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There are people of
some intelligence who speak of the Italian school of opera as though
it still existed. No such mistake is made in Italy. There every one
knows that the tree of opera, native to Italy, has been transplanted
in German soil, and that its existing Italian characteristics have
been recently grafted upon it by Italian pupils of Richard Wagner.
There is still, however, a distinctively Italian interpretation, and
always will be. When an Italian conductor interprets German music
the instruments give an ardent spirit even to phrases which the
composer intended should be serene and reposeful. This fact was
rendered emphatic at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, early
in the present season, when Mascagni and his orchestra played the
majestic overture to "Tannhäuser." Accordingly, when the
"young Italian composers" build their operas on a
foundation that is purely Wagnerian, they manage to inject a
sufficient flavor of their own national spirit to entitle their
country to a certain share in the creation.
To see that this is true it is only necessary to compare the operas
of Verdi's early and middle period with the "Tosca" of
Puccini or the "Iris" of Mascagni. Yet it was Mascagni
who was declared to have created a revolution, and to have
established a new school for the sunny south with strength enough to
oppose the northern giant. Though old and exhausted, Verdi knew
better. In the last year of his life, when the world begged him to
say who among the rising young Italian composers would succeed him
as the successful champion of Italian operatic traditions, he said:
"Whoever he is, he does not belong to the 'modern Italian
school.' If he exists, he is a patriot first of all; he is Italian,
not German. The Italian who goes further than I have in 'Aïda,'
'Otello,' and 'Falstaff,' will have to go over to the Germans."
UMBERTO GIORDANO, COMPOSER OF "ANDREA
CHENIER."
From a photograph by Guigoni & Bossi,
Milan.
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When annoyed by their questions, Verdi often said to students that
no such task confronted them as was triumphantly faced by Bellini,
Donizetti, and Rossini, who were rivals of such giants as Bach,
Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert. If Verdi had been
less modest, he would have placed himself at the head of these
Italian champions. While the operatic form was admittedly in the
hands of his predecessors, he had for a rival a musical genius who
was slowly but surely wresting opera from Italy's grasp.
RUGGIERO LEONCAVALLO, COMPOSER OF "I PAGLIACCI."
From a photograph by Sciutto, Genoa.
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Since Wagner no more northern giants have risen, yet Italy has
produced no champion strong enough to withstand the influence of a
Goliath now twenty years dead. Is it because the men of to-day are
deficient in patriotism, or because they are not artists for art's
sake? Wagner knew as well as Verdi that patriotism must be his
corner stone. He was always patriotic, yet his own countrymen were
his enemies, making his task more arduous even than Verdi's, the
latter having always the ardent support of his own people.
GIACOMO PUCCINI, COMPOSER OF "LA TOSCA."
From a photograph by Schaarwachter, Berlin.
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The supremacy of Wagner
Let us see, then, what elements enter into this universal school
which has caused opera to be transplanted from Italian to German
soil. No one has analyzed them with greater certainty and clarity
than has Haweis in his "Musical Memories." This writer
says: "Wagner is the most powerful personality that has
appeared in the world of music since Beethoven. Mozart taught him
that exquisite certainty of touch which selects exactly the right
notes to express a given musical idea. Weber taught him the secret
of pure melody, how to stamp with an indelible type a given
character, as in the return of the Samiel motive in 'Der
Freischutz'; he also perceived in that opera the superiority of
legend and popular myth, as on the Greek stage, to present the
universal and eternal aspects of human life in their most pronounced
and ideal forms. Beethoven supplied him with the mighty orchestra
capable of holding in suspension an immense crowd of emotions, and
of manipulating the interior and complex feelings with an
instantaneous and infallible power of a magician's wand. Schubert
taught him the freedom of song: Chopin the magic elasticity of
chords; Spohr the subtle qualities of the chromatic scale; and even
Meyerbeer revealed to him the possibility of stage effect through
grand opera. Shakspere, Goethe, and Schiller suggested the kind of
language in which such dramas as 'Lohengrin ' and 'Rheingold' might
be written; while Mme. Schroeder-Devrient revealed to him what a
woman might accomplish in the stage presentation of ideal passion
with such a part as Elsa in 'Lohengrin,' or
Brunnhilde in 'Walküre.'"
Wagner took upon his shoulders not only the burden of the composer,
but also those of the dramatist and the stage director. The first
reward of every great innovator is to be called a charlatan. That is
what Wagner's own countrymen called him, even after the success of
"Lohengrin," and this notwithstanding that he had observed
the first rule of Verdi, that of patriotism. Only in the case of
" Rienzi " did he go outside of his own country for a
subject. Before he died he had fixed in imperishable form all the
great myths of his fatherland, and he lived to realize that he had
established a school.
The young Italian composers
We may as well ask, with Verdi, where is the Italian who is
competent to establish a school of opera that can rival that of
Wagner? Where is the great Italian poet, with a sufficient dramatic
talent who is willing to yoke his art with that of a composer? For
we can hardly expect again a great poet, a great stage director, and
a great composer to exist in one man'. This is the reason why
musical Italy today has to bow to Germany.
Realizing this, for ten years past Pietro Mascagni, Giacomo Puccini,
Ruggiero Leoncavallo, Umberto Giordano, and Alberto Franchetti have
been straining every nerve to produce worthy Italian operatic fruit
by grafting some branches of their own on this German trunk.
Generally their reward has been that Italy has refused to recognize
the product as in any way belonging to her. It almost seems that
even the graft has been a failure. But the Germans themselves have
no cause for exultation; since Wagner they have done nothing to
speak of.
M. CHARPENTIER, THE YOUNG FRENCH MUSICIAN, COMPOSER OF
"LOUISE."
From a Photograph by Barry, Paris.
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And yet we are not to lose hope altogether because there are no more
Wagners, and because Shakspere and Beethoven refuse to collaborate.
A young Frenchman named Charpentier has lately given the young
Italians a hint with his "Louise", a simple story of
Paris life in these times, admirably fitted to characteristic music.
Charpentier looked the situation squarely in the face; refused to
be awed by Wagner or anybody else; turned his back upon gods,
princes, dukes, and brigands of romance for characters, and
determined to recreate in musical form the people and scenes with
which he was familiar. He knew all about the shop girls of Paris; he
took one of them for his heroine. The other characters were all of
the Quartier Latin, which Charpentier knows so well.
Realistic in his drama, he was no less realistic in his music. He
took for his themes the familiar cries of the street venders, the
simple airs of the people, and developed them, with the skill of a
Verdi or a Wagner. Yet there was nothing Italian or German in the
effect of the whole. The opera stamped Charpentier as a composer of
great originality, and as a realist, the latter something unheard of
in the whole history of music. "Louise" ran for a year at
the Opera Comique. Its popularity was no greater than the
estimation in which if was held by musicians.
Personally I do not see how the Italians can profit by
Charpentier's hint. The whole life of Italy for centuries has been
exhibited in its musical works. The soil is exhausted. Its composers
are romantic; the whole Italian people is romantic, and cannot be
converted to realism. They are natural artists, but the day of
originality, for them is past.
Russia as a factor in music
While contemporary German composers are trying vainly to live down
Wagner, there is a people to the east of them which has no such
handicap. This is a very different race from that to which
Charpentier belongs. Its realism is not light and joyous, but
somber, almost tragic, better suited to noble music. This race, the
Russian, has as yet produced no great opera composers, but in
Tschaikowsky it claims a symphonist the equal of Beethoven. Perhaps
out of this comparatively fresh soil may come opera, powerful,
human, and original. The people and the traditions of this country
are so different from those of all other countries that though the
established forms may be used the result must be new and
characteristic.
A nation's melodies constitute its principal identification. In
Russia sorrow has always been the keynote of the popular
temperament. The natives to this day even dance to melancholy, minor
strains. As for literature, Gorky has shown what is possible in the
way of tragic realism.
It would seem, then, that there is hope for something worthy from
Russia. Tschaikowsky has made a rich collection of the native
musical themes, and there are several composers entirely capable of
utilizing them for opera — when a great poet is discovered who is
capable of creating a Russian national drama.
At present the fact remains that Italy is exhausted and Germany is
unable to improve on the creator of its school — the school which
has become universal.
Comments, additions, corrections are welcome.
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