Shakespearean Operas

IN nothing is the lofty character of modern musical ambition so evident as in its ceaseless effort during the last two hundred years to interpret the great dramas of Shakespeare. It is also remarkable that it is the supernatural dramas which have most persistently attracted musicians,— the Tempest, the magical Midsummer-Night’s Dream, and the tragedy of human destiny, ambition, and crime as told in the story of Macbeth.

That the Tempest is eminently fitted for music, few musical people will deny. Moreover, it seems probable that this play was the first which in the Elizabethan age assumed in some degree the form of an opera; for pieces to be sung are richly interspersed throughout the whole play. Indeed, all its revivals, till within a late period, were in operatic form, with music by different composers. That of Purcell and Arne is to-day as fresh as ever. Purcell was born in 1658, and in his time the musical drama had no separate existence. Yet many of Shakespeare’s plays had overtures and pieces to be performed between the acts, as well as numerous incidental songs. Purcell in this way embellished Timon of Athens and the Midsummer-Night’s Dream, but his fame rests, in a great measure, on his exquisite music for the Tempest.

In 1667 Sir William Davenant and Dryden altered the text of Shakespeare’s Tempest, for the avowed purpose of affording opportunity for scenic decoration and music. The alteration was an act of sacrilege, and a wretched failure throughout, but Purcell’s music to it contains gems that no musical era or taste will relinquish. For surely, if ever musician had ear to catch and hand to record any of those “ noises ” of which Prospero’s isle was full, those " sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not,” it was Purcell. He understood thoroughly the great principle that the vocal music of every country must be founded upon the peculiar accent or modulation of its spoken language, and therefore his music is remarkable for its genuine English character. The fairy lightness of Ariel’s little song, “ Come unto these yellow sands,” with its wild and simple burden, is still a great favorite ; and there is in the same play a soprano air, “ Halcyon days,” that is perfectly delightful. Caliban’s song, “ The owl is abroad, the bat and the toad,” might have been imagined by Weber. In fact, Purcell’s Tempest music is generally so excellent that if it was wedded to the proper words it would well deserve to be restored to the stage.

On the revival of the Tempest, in 1746, at Drury Lane, Dr. Arne supplied new music for the play, one song of which will keep his memory green for all time, “ Where the bee sucks.” Nothing that has ever been written is more truly “ fairy music ; ” and it has a perennial freshness that neither time nor use seems able to deprive it of. He has been equally felicitous with Amiens’ first song in As You Like It: —

The Forest of Arden, with all its charm of shade and song and good company, is in this delightful melody ; while in a different manner his " Blow, blow, thou winter wind ” is quite as effective.

After Purcell and Arne two German musicians, Rolle and Winter, gave a musical setting to the Tempest; but they were feeble and commonplace composers, and their works live only in a line or two in some musical dictionaries. Later, the fine possibilities of the drama haunted for years the imaginative brain of Mendelssohn, and it is probable that, in conjunction with Immerman, he had already sketched out some portions, when, in 1850, he received offers from a London manager to write an opera on Shakespeare’s Tempest. His immense success in translating the MidsummerNight’s Dream prompted this proposal, and Mendelssohn seemed well inclined to accept it. But the libretto had been prepared by M. Scribe, a Frenchman, and it was impossible to reconcile their peculiar idiosyncrasies. Mendelssohn on the subject of “ faëry ” was of “ imagination all compact ; ” Scribe’s notions on the subject were essentially stagey.” The story of the Tempest was far too simple and dreamy for the dramatist’s ideas; he rendered it piquant by “ intrigues ” and " situations ; ” and this ££ audacity ” so offended the purist taste of Mendelssohn that he indignantly rejected Scribe’s book of the opera, and refused to move any further in the matter, although the opera had been largely advertised in his name, and the portraits of the actors in their costumes given to the public.

To supply Mendelssohn’s place, M. Halévy, who was also French, was procured. The choice might have been worse. If Halévy was not fanciful, he was at least free from vulgarity, and he wrote like one to whom all the resources of his art were known. The cast for Halévy’s Tempest was of the highest promise : Sontag was Miranda, Lablache, Caliban, Grisi, Ariel; and Parodi, Ferraris, Coletti, and Baucarde filled the minor parts ; while Scribe and Halévy both came to London to superintend their work.

It was presented on the 8th of July, 1850, to an overflowing audience, and received with “ frenzied acclamations ” of delight. It was peculiarly rich in melodies, but amid them all “ Where the bee sucks ” — appropriated from Arne’s Tempest by Halévy — stood out in exquisite and delightful freshness. After the triumph, Halévy was overwhelmed with congratulations, especially by the foreign artists : “How charming ! How beautiful is this motivo! ” and then all hummed a melody, the same invariably. It was Arne’s ever new “ Where the bee sucks; ” and poor Halévy, in the midst of his glory, winced under the unconscious criticism.

In this revival of the Tempest, Lablache created his last and his greatest character, Caliban. The dull earthiness and the brute ferocity of the savage, his groveling, revengeful despair, and above all the admirable propriety with which Lablache managed difficulties which might easily have become abominations combined to form one of the greatest masterpieces of force, versatility, and subtle judgment ever seen on the musical stage. In this opera Mademoiselle Parodi gained great applause by her spirited singing of Stephano’s song, “ The master, the swabber, the boatswain, and I,” a ditty whose coarseness has generally deterred musicians.

Since Halévy’s effort, M. Benedict, M. Berlioz, Herr Taubert, of Berlin, and Mr. Arthur Sullivan have attempted the Tempest. Herr Taubert’s work is of mediocre merit; 31. Benedict’s and M. Berlioz’s are both unfinished. Mr. Sullivan has given us the latest and the very best opera on the subject extant; and the sensation which it caused in musical circles was well deserved. “ A new storm and a new Ariel were not easy to conjure up, but the feat has been done ; the music is bright and fresh, and full of delicate fancies.” Mr. Sullivan has been called “ England’s Mendelssohn Scholar;” and he has certainly given the Tempest a musical interpretation which does no dishonor to that of his great master’s Midsummer-Night’s Dream.

For, beyond all doubt or question, the most perfect, the most exquisite, illustration of Shakespeare that musical art has produced is the MidsummerNight’s Dream, by Felix MendelssohnBartholdy. That when a mere boy he should have struck out such an incomparable prelude to it as the marvelous overture to this opera is one of the wonders of genius. Yet the overture lay for a dozen years or more, solitary in its perfection, till it pleased the late king of Prussia to command a revival of the fairy play and its overture, with complete music by the same master hand.

Mendelssohn was delighted with the commission, and towards the end of the year 1843 it was brought out on the Leipzig stage. Much of the music was the unfolding and completing of what had already been given to the world in the overture ; but the charming chorus of fairies singing Titania to sleep, the beautiful Night Song without words, which accompanied Titania’s rest in the grotto, and the wonderfully brilliant Wedding March, with its fascinating trio, were entirely new ; and yet they perfectly corresponded in tone to the older overture.

Schumann, who heard it soon after its completion, declares, “ It is a bridge between Oberon and Bottom, without which it would now be almost impossible to enter fairyland, however much in vogue that was in Shakespeare’s time. The bloom of eternal youth sparkles on it; from the first entrance of Puck and the elves, the instruments chatter and jest as if the elves themselves played them. Here the finished master, in his happiest hours, reached his highest flight.” It is certain that Mendelssohn’s portrayal of fairy life has become typical; all later composers on similar subjects have followed in his footsteps. Louis Tieck, whose readings of Shakespeare had a European reputation, had the charge of putting the opera on the stage, and he conceived the ridiculous idea of making the Athenians wear Spanish dresses ! Mendelssohn used to crow with laughter when telling this incident, and also how the First Stick in Waiting came to him, after the first court performance, and said, “ Charming, delicious music you have made, doctor; but what a wretched, stupid play ! ” “ So you see,” the mu-

sician would add, “ we are not without our Bottoms and Quinces at his majesty’s court.” As a whole, Mendelssohn’s Midsummer - Night’s Dream is one of two most perfect works, and it ranks in its world as high as does his Elijah among oratorios. Had he lived, it is very likely he would have completed his ideas regarding the Tempest; and he had also seriously thought of the Winter’s Tale, a sketch from which he had by him. “ Something merry could be made with Autolycus,” he said to a friend, and how merry he could have made it. the world has since learned by the publication of his operetta, in which the peddler Kanz plays so notable a part. There is an opera on the Midsummer-Night’s Dream, by an English musician of some eminence named Smith; and some of the airs sung in this version have had an immense and enduring popularity.

The third play of Shakespeare demanding supernatural music, which has seemed irresistibly to charm musicians, is Macbeth. It was used as the subject of an opera in England by Matthew Locke, in the first quarter of the seventeenth century ; and somehow it is a canon of musical faith in England to regard Locke’s Macbeth as final. Certainly it is full of genius, and promises to partake of the immortality of the great tragedy with which it is associated. The melodies are highly rhythmical and full of energy and expression ; the harmony is free from petty details, and thrown into masses of astonishing grandeur and breadth. The aria parlante of the opening dialogue, “ Speak, sister, speak,” is said to be different from anything in either ancient or modern music, and yet so simple and natural that it seems to be the only possible way in which the words could have been uttered. Other critics, of more modern schools, say that the music is often bald and monotonous, and that the incantations recall by painful comparison that grand page in Händel’s Saul, where the Witch of Endor, in intense and ghastly simplicity, calls up the prophet Samuel.

The Germans, quickened by Schiller’s translation, and by the great fame of their Siddons, Madame Schröeder - Devrient, as Lady Macbeth, set themselves heartily to work to procure music for the great tragedy. Spohr, Eberwein, André of Offenbach, Holly of Breslau, Reichardt of Berlin, Rastrelli, and Taubert have attempted it, but none have produced anything worthy of the subject. Chèlard, a Frenchman, grappled with its difficulties better, and Mr. Henry F. Chorley, a musical critic of great authority, says that the skill and effectiveness of some portions of M. Chèlard’s Macbeth ought alone to save his name from being forgotten. Of all his operas it was the most successful, and the overture to it is still a favorite piece for concerts. Madame Schröeder - Devrient played the “Lady” in Chèlard’s Macbeth, but scarcely with her usual power, for she was hampered with the music, which demanded an executive facility she did not possess. Later it was admirably sung by Sophia Cruvelli.

It is an interesting fact that the text for Chèlard’s Macbeth was arranged by the clever, unlucky Rouget de Lisle, the author of La Marseillaise. He never took another flight so high, and he had peculiarities of temper that wore out all his friends and admirers, so that he died at Weimar, some years afterwards, an obscure and friendless man.

The Italian version of Macbeth was written by a much more famous man than Chèlard, Signor Verdi. In it he has only shown his perfect incapacity to deal with supernatural subjects. “ His witches are mere Vauxhall sorceresses, and his Lady’s Song at the banquet might be transferred to the free and easy supper of La Traviata.” The last monologue of the heroine is far inferior to Chèlard’s, though it had the advantage of being presented by one of the greatest actresses of any time, Madame Garcia Viardot. Evidently, no music that can be accepted as final has been inspired by Macbeth, and the play awaits its musical interpreter.

Of all Shakespeare’s passion plays, Romeo and Juliet has been the favorite with the great masters of musical thought. It has been set and re-set in operatic form ever since the days of Zingarelli, who composed it for Grassini about the close of the eighteenth century. Yet there is no play which, in one respect, offers so great a difficulty as this : it demands, in addition to fine singing and fine acting, both youth and great beauty. Signor Mario was the only possible Romeo during the last half century. The exceedingly plain Rubini, the singular-looking Duprez, would have appeared ridiculous in the balcony scene. Then, if a Romeo is found, the Juliet is equally important; and there is besides this difficulty, that a competent singing Juliet would of necessity be an experienced and not a very young woman.

The earliest musical Romeo and Juliet was by Benda, one of the musical officials of that flute-playing, philosophical king, Frederick the Great. Only its tradition remains ; not a note of the music has come down to us. Herr Steibelt, whose Storm is still well known, and whose Spanish Tune inspired Keats to write for it, “ Hush ! hush ! tread softly,” treated the tale for the Opera Comique of Paris with some success. The charming Madame Scio, whom Cherubini’s Medea killed by its strain on her voice, was the Juliet. But Steibelt’s music has perished, as well as a subsequent opera by Dalayrac.

There were five Italian operas of Romeo and Juliet before Bellini took it in hand. Of these five Zingarelli’s alone is worth noticing. It may be noted, in passing, that Robert Schumann said that Zingarelli “read the church Fathers in order to gather inspiration for his Romeo e Giulietta.” This work is remembered now only because its libretto served Bellini for an opera which was the vehicle of Madame Pasta’s superb acting and singing in the title rôle. No one has ever approached Pasta as Romeo. Her rich and original ornamentation gave a superb Italian charm to the tomb scene, in no respect contradicting that burst of despair with which, raising tenderly a long lock of Juliet’s hair, she used to thrill all hearts with her “ Ah ! mia Giulietta ! Ah ! sposa ! ”

Bellini’s opera was received in Venice with enthusiastic approbation. In London it owed what success it had to the genius of Pasta, who “ took with a royal license everything that pleased her from every opera, and made a mosaic for herself, the recollection of which is among the imperishable things of art.”

Romeo and Juliet had an enthusiastic musical translator in Hector Berlioz, who gave his clever, paradoxical work in Paris in 1839. Of the events which led to the composition of this work he himself tells the story : “ An English company came to Paris to give some plays of Shakespeare, at that time wholly unknown to the French public. I went to the first performance of Hamlet at the Odéon, and saw that for the next day Romeo and Juliet was advertised. I had my passes to the orchestra of the Odéon ; fearing that the doorkeeper of the theatre might have orders not to let me pass as usual, I ran to the booking office to make assurance doubly sure.

“ Seeing this love, quick and sudden as thought, burning like lava, imperious, irresistible, boundless, pure and beautiful as the smiles of angels, those distracted embraces, those struggles between life and death, was too much after the melancholy anguish, tearful love, cruel irony, madness, tears, and calamities of Hamlot. At that time I did not know a single word of English ; I only caught glimpses of Shakespeare through the fog of Letourneur’s translations. But the play of the actors, and especially of the actress, Miss Henrietta Smithson, who was the Ophelia and the Juliet, the succession of the scenes, the accent of the voices, the pantomime, filled me a thousand times more with Shakespearean ideas than the text of my colorless, unfaithful translation. An English critic in the Illustrated London News said that, after seeing Miss Smithson in Juliet, I cried out, ‘I will marry that woman, and write my grandest work on this play! ’ I did both these things, but I never said anything of the sort.”

Berlioz spent seven months of incessant labor on Romeo and Juliet, and then sent the score to his friend and admirer, Paganini, who was ill at Nice, and who wrote to him, saying, “ Now all is done, envy has nothing left but silence.” Berlioz was exceedingly careful with this score, and it was only after several years that he finally left it in the form it now stands. It has been extravagantly praised and unmercifully criticised, and has had a certain measure of popularity, but it is generally conceded that it is unsuitable for dramatic representation.

In 1851 Bellini’s Romeo and Juliet was revived in London, with Frezzolini as Romeo and Parodi as Juliet; and later, in 1856, it was made the vehicle of the splendid début of Mademoiselle Johanna Wagner. She was heralded by an immense Continental reputation, and the curiosity of the operatic world was strained to its utmost tension. She stepped before the public as Romeo,— tall, stately, self-possessed, clothed in glittering, gilded mail, with her fine, fair hair flung in masses upon her neck. Her clear, sonorous voice rang through the house like a clarion, her declamation was well accented, and her every attitude was a pictorial study. Mademoiselle Wagner took the house by storm, but her Romeo, though one of the great financial successes of her Majesty’s theatre, cannot be ranked artistically with Pasta’s and Malibran’s, or even with Madame Sehröeder-Devrient’s.

What Mendelssohn did for the Midsummer-Night’s Dream, Rossini in a great measure did for Othello. As set by Rossini, it is a gallery of Paul Veronese pictures, and to re set the third act would be simply impossible. This act stands alone in music as the exponent of melancholy pathos and frenzy, united withal to a noble simplicity, all the more remarkable by its contrast with the rich and florid garniture of the first part of the opera. Rossini composed it about the year 1816, the chief part being then taken by the great singer Davide, who was in his day the Rossini of song. Still Davide, however grand, was by no means a conscientious artist; for, considering that the final duet of Othello did not sufficiently show off his voice, he substituted for it a duet from Armida, which is very excellent, but anything but passionate and despairing. As it was impossible to kill Desdemona to such a tune, Davide, after going into the violent passion of jealousy, used to sheathe his dagger, and begin in the most tender and graceful manner his duet with Desdemona, at the conclusion of which he politely took her hand, and retired amid the bravos of the Neapolitan public, who seemed to think it a very appropriate finish.

Garcia made a grand Othello, his daughter Maria, the famous Malibran, being his Desdemona. There was no question in Garcia’s mind about the killing of Desdemona, and one night, after a stormy domestic quarrel between the father and daughter, Malibran really thought he had determined to slay her. At the moment when Othello, with lowering brow and eyes sparkling with rage, approached her, she was struck with terror, and, almost frantic, screamed out in Spanish, “ Papa, papa, for the love of God, do not kill me ! ”

When Malibran sang the part of Desdemona in Paris in her nineteenth year, she made an immense sensation. She knew the temper of a French audience and their love of effect, and in order to gratify them in they finale, instead of being smothered quietly by the Moor, she endeavored to escape. Expectation was prolonged, and to complete the horror of the scene she caused the incensed Othello to draw her to the front of the stage, and there complete his vengeance.

Many musical critics assert that in the part of Desdemona Pasta gained her highest point of excellence. It is certain that in her singing of the last scene her transitions from hope to terror, from supplication to scorn, culminating in her vehement cry of “ Sono innocente !” always electrified an audience. Pasta also attempted the part of Othello, and her personation was extremely powerful, something fierce and Oriental, the like of which had never been before expressed in music. To Pasta’s Othello, Sontag sang the Desdemona; and in her second stage life Sontag again took UP the part, and made it one of her grandest characters. Pauline Garcia, Malibran’s younger sister, also made Desdemona the vehicle of her triumphant début in London; and Madame Schröeder-Devrient played it skillfully and enthusiastically, but she never rivaled Pasta, Malibran, Sontag, and Pauline Garcia in the character.

In Rossini’s Othello the chorus gained a great importance, and the successive entrance of two choruses, each with a fine crescendo at the end of the first act, is one of the most striking musical effects of this magnificent musical scene. The instrumentation of Othello is very sonorous, and when Sigismondi looked over the score with Donizetti, he exclaimed with horror at the prominence given to clarinets, horns, and trombones. “ Third and fourth horns! ” he cried. “What does the man want ? The greatest of our composers have always been content with two. Four horns ! Are we at a hunting party? Four horns! Enough to blow us to perdition.” The old professor was still more shocked by 1°, 2°, 3° tromboni, which, according to an anecdote which is scarcely credible, he mistook for “ 123 ” trombones. No play has so tempted the greatest of great singers as Othello. Pasta, Malibran, Sontag, Grisi, Garcia, Viardot, Schröeder-Devrient, have all expended the utmost resources of their genius on its grand last act.

Verdi’s failure in Macbeth was a signal one, but the fault lay in the master, not in the subject. As regards all attempts at operatizing Hamlet, the difficulty is inherent in the subject. A Hamlet without Hamlet’s philosophy would be bad enough, but a Hamlet searching his own soul to orchestral accompaniments must be absurd. Still, Gasparini, of Venice, dared the attempt, and his opera was represented in London under the name of Ambleto. How little the subject was understood we may gather from Dr. Burney, who says “ the overture had four movements ending in a jig !” This, too, in 1711, when the Spectator was keeping a sharp lookout for everything ridiculous in operatic performances ; yet it has not a single sarcasm for Ambleto.

The Abbé Vogler, who is chiefly remembered as the master of Weber and of M. Meyerbeer, wrote an opera on Hamlet, which was printed in the sleepy old cathedral city of Speyer; and perhaps a copy of it might be found in some dusty library of the Palatinate. We were all made familiar eight years ago with the Hamlet of Ambrose Thomas, with Mademoiselle Nilsson as Ophelia. The text of this opera is often very absurd ; as set upon the stage of the Grand Opera House in Paris, the play concludes with the accession of Hamlet, or Amleto, to the throne of his father, the ghost appearing in the last scene to assist at the proclamation. As represented in New York, the opera concluded with the death of Ophelia; the fate of Hamlet, the King, the Queen, Laertes, and Polonius being left to everybody’s individual imagining. The sixth tableau — in which the madness and death of Ophelia are portrayed — alone prevents the opera from being forgotten. But this scene was admirably adapted for Mademoiselle Nilsson, and she awakened in it a great enthusiasm. It is evident, however, that while the story of Hamlet itself might form the basis of an opera, any attempt to adapt Shakespeare’s Hamlet to lyric representation must necessarily be a failure.

In the list of Shakespeare’s passion plays which have been translated into music, it would not do to omit Weber’s Euryanthe, which is in fact the Cymbeline of Shakespeare transformed and altered to suit Viennese tastes. Euryanthe was received coldly in Vienna at its first presentation in 1823, although the original Imogen (for Euryanthe is Imogen changed for Austrian uses) was the young prima donna, most fair to see and exquisite to hear, Henriette Sontag. It won its way very slowly; the Viennese wits called it Ennuyante, and Beethoven said it was “ a collection of diminished sevenths.” However, it gradually won the success it deserved, and it was in the part of Euryanthe that Madame Schröeder-Devrient made her first great triumph.

The comedies of Shakespeare have not attracted musicians in the same degree as his supernatural and passion plays. Even those which have been essayed have not been the wisest selections. The comedy most in favor is the Merry Wives of Windsor. It was first attempted by Salieri, the friend and coworker of Glück, in 1750, but only one air in his opera, “ La stessa stessissima,” is remembered, and that because Beethoven treated it as a theme for variations. Nicolai, though inferior to Salieri as a musician, has produced from this comedy one of the very best of modern German comic operas. Then the lively and fortunate Mr. Balfe tried his hand at the Merry Wives for Laporte, manager of the Italian Opera at her Majesty’s theatre. The cast was magnificent: Lablache was Falstaff; Rubini, Fenton ; Grisi, Mrs. Ford; Tamburini, Master Brook. The opera was bright, but unequal, and only the capital, droll trio for the two wives and Anne Page keeps the work in memory. It has, however, been heartily accepted in Italy, and ranks among her best comic operas.

As before stated, Mendelssohn had seriously meditated a setting for the Winter’s Tale. The project has been feebly attempted by M. von Flotow. That puzzling man of musical genius, Hector Berlioz, also tried Much Ado About Nothing, which contains among all its entanglements and perplexities one real flash of clear, tender genius, a night piece for Hero and her gentlewoman. But nothing has yet been done with any of Shakespeare’s comedies that can in any way approach Mendelssohn’s Midsummer-Night’s Dream in the supernatural, or Rossini’s Othello in the passion plays.

These examples cover operas written upon the text of Shakespeare, but the number of quotations which have been set to music is far too large a subject to enter upon here. Alfred Roffe’s catalogue enumerates three hundred and fifty glees, trios, solos, etc., mostly of modern date ; having words taken from the plays, sonnets, the Venus and Adonis, and the Passionate Pilgrim of the inspired and inspiring poet.

A. E. Barr.