Music

THE musical season in Boston promises to be one of peculiar interest. The symphony concerts of the Harvard Musical Association, organized some years ago for the benefit of the musically educated few, have now become a most important agent in the higher education of the musical many ; and, in spite of a somewhat ungenial spirit of conservatism evinced in their programmes, they claim our respect and gratitude, by their unswerving adherence to the cause of art alone, where so many others have made art a mere pecuniary speculation. The so-called Ballad Concerts of the Dolby Troup were rather a disappointment, notwithstanding the excellent singing of some of the artists. There was little of the real ballad and madrigal element in their programmes, and the wishywashy, sentimental music of Balfe and Wallace is hardly worthy of artists like Mr. Santley, who stands almost without a rival in the interpretation of the greatest music of all schools, and Mr. Cummings, whose singing of Handel will not be easily forgotten. The great musical fact of the season in New York and Boston is, of course, the appearance in opera of Christine Nilsson. She is in the fullest sense of the word a lyric actress, one who makes the music of her part go hand in hand with her acting, and who makes both acting and singing subservient to the dramatic intention of the poet, rather than to the purely musical expression of the composer. Great as were her successes in the concert-room, she evidently felt herself hampered and constrained ; and though her genius infused new life into many a well-worn song, and showed to us much of the music with which we had thought ourselves well acquainted in a new and higher light, yet she impressed us more by what she was than by what she did, more by what she perceived and felt than by what she expressed. But from the first moment that she appeared upon the operatic stage, one felt that there she was indeed at home and on her own ground. In her impersonations of Marguerite and Lucia the most striking feature is her great dramatic truthfulness. Her acting is not a succession of brilliant “ strokes,” but she seems actually to live her part. In her conception of Marguerite in Faust she comes as near to Goethe’s Margaret as the text and music will allow. For the Marguerite of MM. Barbier and Carré is a vastly different person from Goethe’s Gretchen ; and Gounod’s music, beautiful and sincerely earnest as much of it is, is thoroughly French in character. Yet Miss Nilsson’s impersonation is full of that somewhat idealized rusticity which is so marked a characteristic of Goethe’s Gretchen, and is, even in its coquettishness and naivete, far removed from the more commonplace and superficially more refined espilglerie of the French Marguerite. Her acting in the first few scenes may seem a little cold, but it is only the natural, instinctive reserve and diffidence of a modest girl in the presence of him whom she has but begun to love in secret, and of whose love she is not yet sure. But as the opera goes on and she hears Faust’s love for her from his own lips, then her acting is of a grand intensity that carries everything before it. We have never seen a great, all-conquering passion so vividly and truthfully portrayed. Yet her acting is wholly free from anything like ranting ; it is not violent acting, it is really and spontaneously intense. In the scenes of the fourth act her subdued and passive grief at her brother Valentine’s death, and her utter despair and almost frenzied remorse in the church-scene, are most finely contrasted. In the prison-scene of the fifth act — perhaps the least disagreeable mad-scene in lyric drama — the alternation of passionate expressions of love and fear with moments of terrible calmness and resignation to her fate is grandly conceived. Here, as throughout the opera, she brings the dramatic element into the foreground. When the music of her part helps to intensify and vivify the dramatic situation, her rendering of the composer’s conception is always beautiful musically as well as dramatically ; but if the music for a moment fails to support the dramatic action, or even interferes with it, then she seems to rise superior to the composer, and it is Nilsson we admire, not Gounod.

This is more striking in Lucia than in Faust, for Gounod’s music is essentially dramatic, and in most cases rather helps than impedes the dramatic action; and however much MM. Barbier and Carré may have diluted and distorted Goethe’s idea, yet something of the original Faust, Gretchen, and Mephisto still is left. But when we come to consider Salvatore Cammarano’s Lucia, we look in vain for even a single trace of Scott’s Lucy Ashton. Instead of the affectionate, womanly girl with the great power of loving, whom we have learned to look upon as one of the most beautiful types of womanhood, we find a thoroughly characterless prims, donna soprano, who is weakly in love with somebody, weakly wretched at something, with whom or at what we hardly know or care. And Donnizetti’s music shows a thorough appreciation of the character of Cammarano’s heroine. Not that his music is musically vapid and without soul, but that it interprets the love and distress of a mere operatic Lucia. For Scott’s Lucy Ashton to express her feelings in such strains would be as appropriate as for Hamlet to console himself for his father’s murder by playing Thalberg fantasias. Yet we see in Miss Nilsson a perfect Lucy Ashton, acting real love for Ravenswood, walking before us on the stage as a real woman, not as a mere singing and sighing puppet, and singing Donnizetti’s music as he, good easy man, little dreamed of its being sung. The Cammarano-Donnizetti fabric cannot hold a real woman, so it bursts; and all we have left is Nilsson, or Lucy, which, for the time being, is the same thing. The mad-scene is peculiarly incongruous ; for here the situation is so palpably and irremediably weak and absurd that it seems as it no actor could prevent Lucy from hopelessly degenerating into Lucia again. What a difference between the panic-stricken, blood-stained maniac found crouched in the empty fireplace, gibbering and mowing at the intruding crowd, and the lackadaisical piece of insanity that comes sailing in upon the stage between two rows of admiring chorus-singers, sentimentally attired in flowing white drapery and angel sleeves, singing such a disconnected series of roulades and scales as to leave us in doubt whether she is really mad or only practising for her singing-lesson ! The woman that can make us see but a spark of Lucy Ashton’s madness here must be a genius indeed. Miss Nilsson does wonders in the scene, and at times the real Ashton fire flashes out through the clouds of melodramatic Lueia idiocy ; but in the greater part of the scene her acting is only interesting as a tour de force, as showing how much genius can make out of so little.

Miss Nilsson’s appearance on the stage is a musical event of the really important kind. It is so, because she brings before our very eyes an illustration, which is better than volumes of treatises, of what the lyric drama can and ought to be. She also shows upon what weak foundations that very questionable art-form, the modern Italian opera, is built, and what flimsy absurdities the composers of the school have allowed themselves to use as a framework which they were to tapestry and cover over with their music. No doubt the composers themselves were quite as well aware of the worthlessness of their opera libretti as we can be. With them the music was the only thing of importance. That was what the public were to admire, and the libretto, or, as we have called it, the framework, was t® be kept out of sight. This was so much the case, that the only requisite in an opera libretto was that it should show off the music to the best advantage, — that is, each particular piece of music. All consistent form in the opera as a whole was sacrificed to the perfection of the almost independent parts. The Italian opera was literally, as it is often called on the title-page, a Dramma per Musica, a drama for (the sake of) music. But what was to become of the music when the weak framework rotted away or was broken down, it never seemed to enter the composers’ heads to consider. The music must inevitably fall too ; and this has been the fate of many operas whose texts were too palpably absurd to be endured. But such lapses were not noticed by the public. The operas passed quietly away, unnoticed and unlamented. There were some few conspicuous exceptions. Sometimes the music rvas strong enough to stand by itself, and much of the Italian operatic music has thus held its own in the concert-room long after the operas themselves have disappeared from the stage. But even in these cases people rarely troubled themselves to think of the reason why. Now Miss Nilsson brings this wretched weakness in opera libretti before our very eyes. She does not knock away the frail timbers and so cause the whole structure to collapse ; she starts from the inside and builds a larger, nobler, stronger framework. But the old musical tapestry is too small for the new frame. Here and there great rents appear, and not only the strong framework, but also the half-rotten debris of lath and plaster of the old Cammarano libretto are seen peeping through the cracks. Surely we owe Miss Nilsson many thanks for helping us to learn this lesson.

No debutante has ever been more foolishly or clumsily advertised among us than Mrs. Charles Moulton. She has been compared in various ways to most of the great singers of both continents, — including Homer ! It must seem fainter praise than we intend, to say after this that we should rank her among the first concert-singers. She has the genial, Transatlantic cheerfulness which is a necessary part of every wholesomely artistic nature, and which, added to the beauty of a voice of a rich, mellow quality rare in America, makes her singing really inspiring. We have never heard a more beautiful and sympathetic voice than hers, and her execution is as near perfection as any that we know. She sings with that French artistic refinement and absence of exaggeration so refreshing after the vocal ranting and melodramatic desperation of the modern Italian school. She gives evidence of much dramatic power, but she makes the dramatic element subordinate to the musical expression, as it always should he, excepting on the stage. She is a singer, par excellence, and thus in strong contrast to Miss Nilsson, whom we have characterized as a lyric actress. She also gives evidence of a most genial and refined vis comica, and appears to great advantage in the Rossini-Doimizetti buff* music, especially when seconded by that wonderful buffo barytone, Signor Ferranti.

In recent publications we notice several pieces above the average in sheet music.

Es rauschedas rothe Laub (Koppitz, Priiffer & Co,, Boston) is quite a good song by A. H. Sponholtz, in the modern German salon style. It lacks Franz Abt’s warmth and naturalness of melody, but it has a certain strength and genuineness of sentiment that places it above most songs of the sentimental Abt school. The restless introductory figure in the accompaniment is quite happily carried out in those parts of the song that are in the minor key. If the song have a striking fault, it is that in some passages both melody and harmony lack decision and vitality, the return from the little episode in By major to the first theme in the minor being particularly ineffective and clumsily managed.

Pour qui sera and Serenata di Zanetio (G. D. Russell & Co., Boston), by J. Massenet. Two little songs of more than common merit. They are wholly free from that vulgar, Frenchy piquancy of rhythm that so offends in Meyerbeer, and fascinates us in spite of ourselves in Offenbach, and they are full of the vague, dreamy charm of which we find so much in Gounod. The persistent syncopation of the accompaniment of the first song, and the use of some rather transcendental harmonies in both may sound affected to some ears, but much that might seem affectation in other people is but natural expression in a Frenchman, and we cannot quarrel with M. Massenet for being true to his national instincts. The songs will well bear comparison with many by Robert Franz, which, barring the difference in nationality, they very much resemble in style.

Mandolinata (G. D. Russell & Co., Boston), Roman Serenade, by F. Paladilhe ; a very pleasing song, of rather French than Italian character. The melody is very piquant and taking, and the accompaniment is generally well managed, the little interlude between the verses being particularly charming and pretty. One or two passages are marred by some rather clumsy eccentricities in harmony, which, from the poor effect they make, should be set down rather as unmusician-like blunders than evidences of originality.

Serenata (Koppitz, Prüffer, & Co., Boston), for piano-forte, by William Sterndale Bennett. Zur Guitarre (G. D. Russell & Co., Boston). Impromptu by Ferd. Hiller. Two quite pleasing pianoforte pieces of the so-called modern romantic school. Neither of them has any very salient qualities, but both give evidence of thorough musicianship in the composers, and their finished style as well as the admirable way in which they are written for the instrument places them above many pieces which bear more clearly the stamp of genius. Of the two, the Bennett piece strikes us as the better, though there is a lumbering sort of quaintness in the other that gives it the air of greater originality.

Praeludium and Me uel (Koppitz, Priiffer, & Co., Boston), for piano-forte, by A. Krause. Two very good compositions. The Prelude abounds in strong, healthy harmony, and is very well written for the instrument, though the last few bars are rather commonplace and bring the pieee to a weak, unsatisfactory conclusion. The Menuet is thoroughly charming throughout.

The Alfredian Grand March (White, Smith, & Perry, Boston), for piano-forte, by J. W. Cheeney. Although evidently not the work of a practised musician, there arc some quite good points in this march. Both melody and harmony are vigorous, albeit somewhat commonplace, and, as far as it goes, it will bear comparison with much of Meyerbeer’s Fackeltanz music. It is badly put upon the instrument, however, and thus loses much of the effect it would otherwise produce. The edition is not without some typographical errors.