Opera Makers of To-day

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.