The Opera from Mozart to Weber
(excerpt, Chapter V, The Viennese Period)
By W. H. Hadow
In the history of operatic music the part played by Joseph Haydn may practically be disregarded. Of his fourteen operas all but two were occasional pieces written for the private theatres of Eisenstadt and Esterhàz, and of the exceptions La vera Costanza was driven from Vienna unheard, and Orfeo, intended for London, was never finished. He believed himself that he needed only opportunity and experience to become a master of the stage, spoke of Armida (1783) as his best work, and eloquently complained of the country exile which put all theatrical triumphs beyond his reach (1). But it would seem that in this matter he miscalculated his own powers. His constructive genius was essentially symphonic in character; he had little power of breaking his design to suit the requirements of a stage situation, and the best of his dramatic work is to be found in such light comedies as La Canterina and L’lnfedeltà delusa, in which the methods of the theatre most nearly approximate to those of the concert room. Had Gluck never written a single note the work of Haydn would not have been appreciably altered.
With Mozart the case is different: indeed, the history of opera during the next ten years is little more than an account of the wealth which he inherited and bequeathed. In him converged all the streams of tendency which we have hitherto been separately considering: the sweetness of Italy, the mastery of C. P. E. Bach and Haydn, a dramatic insight which, though inferior to that of Gluck, was nevertheless its most worthy successor. He possessed a natural gift of melody, such as the world has never seen equaled, and a quickness of apprehension which learned by instinct all that the science of his day had acquired. Born in 1756, he was a composer at the age of four, a pianist of European reputation at the age of ten; at twelve he had written La Finta Semplice, at fifteen he took his place among the doctors of Bologna. Educated under the wise severity of his father, he attained a proficiency to which effort was needless and difficulty unknown; and he entered manhood a skilled performer on three instruments, a master in every known branch of composition, and a genius whose brilliance and fertility of resource were in their kind unsurpassable.
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(1) see Pohl’s Haydn, vol. ii. pp. 344-58.
His early operas are cut after the customary Italian pattern, though they differ from the works of Galuppi or Hasse by their far greater melodic beauty and their far higher sense of musicianship. In the best of them. La Finta Giardiniera, for example, or Mitridate, or Lucio Silla, there is an abundance of fine melody and a style remarkably mature, but, except perhaps for the last, there are few indications of dramatic power while in all alike there are a good many concessions to the tyranny of the singer. It would of course be unreasonable that we should expect otherwise. Mozart wrote these works at an age when most boys are studying the Latin grammar, and though the gift of music has often manifested itself early, some experience of life is needed for the understanding of the theatre. Again he had, as yet, been almost exclusively subjected to Italian influence, and though as a child he had witnessed the first performance of Alceste in Vienna, it was not until later that he realized its true artistic value. But, in 1778, after a prolonged study of the Mannheim orchestra, he paid a visit to Paris and arrived there in the very middle of the ‘Gluckist and Piccinnist’ controversy. In its actual movement he seems to have taken little or no part. Gluck was away, writing Iphigénie en Tauride; with Piccinni he was on terms of no more than formal courtesy, and though Grimm was his most cordial patron, yet Grimm was at this time beginning to waver in allegiance. Indirectly, however, this visit marked a crisis in his operatic career, and its effects were clearly shown when, in 1781, he produced at the Munich Carnival his opera of Idomeneo. Here the influence of Gluck is unmistakable. The story does not admit of such dramatic subtleties as those of Alceste or Iphigénie, but it is full of vivid and salient contrasts, and it affords abundant opportunity for stage-effect. And if we compare the score with any of Mozart’s previous works for the theatre, we shall see at once the way in which he had profited by his new lesson. The formal overture is abandoned, and replaced, after Gluck’s manner, by a short dramatic prelude. The chorus has become an integral part of the plot; indeed, at the most exciting moment it is virtually protagonist. The characters, though not yet free from conventionalism, are within their limits clearly defined; the rich and brilliant orchestration is evidently intended to give picturesque expression to the scenes. We know that about this time Mozart was making a careful study of Alceste: we may infer that the preface not less than the composition occupied his attention and directed his thoughts.
No doubt the differences are wide enough. ‘When I sit down to write an opera,’ said Gluck, ‘I endeavour before all things to forget that I am a musician.’ To Mozart, at any time in his career, such a confession would have seemed little short of artistic blasphemy. In his eyes the musical aspect was not an accessory but the supreme essential, and even dramatic expression must recognize the limitations imposed by pure beauty of design and colour. Again, Idomeneo is laid out on Italian lines, and to a large extent determined by the Italian style. The second tenor song, for example, is an aria di bravura of pure virtuosity, wonderfully ennobled by rich harmonies and recondite modulations, but belonging far more to what is called ‘absolute-music’ than to music with any definite poetic intention. In short, the main historical interest of the opera lies in its reconciliation of separate ideals. A supreme work of individual genius, it is not less remarkable as the meeting point of many confluent streams.
It would be interesting to conjecture how much farther Mozart might have followed Gluck had he continued to throw his strength into tragedy. Circumstances, however, decided otherwise. A few weeks after his success at Munich he quarrelled with his patron the Archbishop of Salzburg, was turned penniless into the street, and there accepted a commission which affected the whole subsequent course of his operatic writing. It happened that at this time the Emperor Joseph II was endeavouring, as a part of his general policy, to establish a German opera-house in Vienna. The Burgtheater had been selected for the purpose, and reopened, in 1778, with Die Burgknappen by a composer named Umlauf: it was now, after three years of effort, languishing for want of genius to direct it. National German opera was as yet in its childhood. The only native form was the Singspiel, a sort of light comedy or vaudeville, which in the hands of Johann Adam Hiller (1728-1804) was beginning to attain an immense popularity at Leipzig. The titles of Hiller’s best known works —Der Dorfbarbier, Die Jagd, Liebe auf dem Lands—will sufficiently indicate their character: pleasant little stories of village life, bright, innocent, and amusing, which introduced the folk-song to the stage as Haydn was introducing it to the concert-room. Their example was followed by a host of other composers, by Wolf and Schweitzer, by Andre of Berlin, by Neefe, who was Beethoven’s first instructor, by Georg Benda, who brought the style to Austria and showed Dittersdorf how to use it (1). Naturally, therefore, the Burgtheater looked to comedy as its means of expression, and finding Mozart at the door called him in forthwith to collaborate.
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(1) Dittersdorf’s Der Apotheker und der Doktor (Vienna, 1786) is perhaps the best extant specimen of a Singspiel pure and simple.
There can be no doubt that he was a fitting ally. The natural bent of his genius was, on the whole for comedy; his brilliance, his wit, his playfulness moved more easily in the sock than in the buskin; despite many preoccupations he had always been interested in the Singspiel, and had testified his interest both in his early operetta of Bastien et Bastienne, and in the comic opera of Zaide which was still unfinished. When, therefore, the management offered him Bretzner’s Entführung aus dem Serail he accepted it gladly, worked through the winter with something more than his customary enthusiasm, and, in 1782, effected with it the same minor revolution on the stage of Germany which Philidor and Gretry had effected on that of France. The book was an ordinary Singspiel, and had recently been set in that form by Andre of Berlin, Mozart deliberately readjusted its balance, cut down the spoken dialogue, added new lyrics, revised the plot, polished the characters, and produced what was no longer a mere comedietta with incidental songs, but a true comic opera in which, as he said himself, ‘the music should be everything.’ Indeed, so far did he carry his principle, that in one or two numbers, notably in Osmin’s immortal aria, the music was written before the words.
The success of Die Entführung led Mozart to believe that German opera would take permanent root in Vienna. His letters are full of it:—advocacy of the German language as ‘not less fitted for singing than French or English and more so than Russian,’ projects of a new comedy, ‘the text by Baron Binder, the first act already finished,’ predictions that the Italian company would soon give way to a worthier rival. But as time went on his tone grew less hopeful and more denunciatory; the whole scheme, indeed, was ruined by sheer mismanagement. True the directors offered him a libretto of their own, Welche ist die beste Nation, but it was so bad that he refused to set it, and in a moment of absurd pique they quarreled with him, turned him out of the theatre which he had helped to create, and went back to Gassmann and Umlauf and the rest of their docile mediocrities. The sole result of all his endeavours was a little farce called Der Schauspieldirector, which he wrote in 1786 for the Emperor’s private opera-house at Schönbrunn. And by that time the German theatre had died of inanition, and Italy, led by Gluck’s pupil Salieri, was once more in possession of the field.
Mozart adapted himself to circumstances. Vienna wanted its operas in Italian, in Italian it should have them: and with Figaro (1786), Don Giovanni (1788), and Cosi fan tutte (1790), he permitted himself to concede to popular fashion. The change, however, was of less moment than at first sight would appear. In these three opera-books there is nothing distinctively Italian except the versification and the phraseology: two of them are adapted from French originals, the third, forced upon Mozart by the Emperor’s command, is an ill-wrought tissue of impossible intrigue which belongs to no country in the reasonable world. It is, in short, a mere historical accident that the three great operas were set to Italian texts. Had they been written for the German, in which they are so often played, we cannot suppose that the quality of the music would have been sensibly affected. For Mozart’s dramatic method was always singularly independent of the poet’s collaboration. It was focused mainly on two points: first, the presentation of each scene as a separate unit, second, and dependent on the first, the portrayal of such dramatis personae as successively take part in the action and movement. For the general development of the plot he cared little or nothing; for the actual words uttered far less than for the type of emotion which they suggest. The situations, one by one, are vivid and picturesque; the characters, point by point, are discriminated by a hundred subtle and delicate touches; but in no one of the great operas is there a coherent story or even any serious attempt at dramatic illusion. They take us from the issues of human life into a fantastic fairyland of their own, a land in which we feel that anything may happen, and that to sympathize or censure is to emulate Don Quixote at the puppet-show.
At the same time it is no paradox to urge that they are, in their way, highly dramatic. Given the scene, and admitting for the sake of argument that it could possibly have occurred, we feel that the whole colour and movement of it are set before us with extraordinary skill and invention. The ball-scene in Don Giovanni strains credulity beyond the breaking-point, yet how well-marked is the contrast, how vigorous the denunciatory close. The imbroglio in Cost fan tutte is, dramatically speaking, little short of an outrage: yet at the time it so holds our imagination that we almost forget to disbelieve it. On each successive event is concentrated everything that music can do, every appropriate device of rhythm and figure and orchestration; there is not a motion, not a gesture that is not illustrated by voice or instrument, there is not a shade of feeling which lacks its natural expression. The scene is always laid in Cloud-cuckoo-town, but it maintains the laws of its kingdom.
Even more striking is Mozart’s treatment of his characters. They are no more like real life than the Mirabells and Witwouds of Congreve: allowing the utmost for necessary operatic convention we see that they are drawn to a different scale, that they occupy a different canvas from ours. But though artificial they are wholly consistent; they stand upon their own feet, they breathe freely in their own atmosphere. To have created Figaro and Leporello, Donna Anna and the Countess, Despina and Susanna, is no small feat of characterization; and, in every single case, we may say that the limitations belong mainly to the librettist, the merits entirely to the composer (1).
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(1) On this point the reader should consult the analyses of the operas in Jahn’s Mozart, vol. iii.
Yet, when all is said and done, it is the music and not the play that remains with us: the intricacy of thematic treatment, the novelty and vigour of rhythm, the volume of sound, rich, pure, and transparent, and above all the ‘little dew-drops of celestial melody’ which hang sparkling upon every scene. To think of Figaro is to think of ‘Voi che sapete’ and ‘Dove sono’ and ‘Deh vieni’; to think of Don Giovanni is to recall ‘La ci darem’ and ‘Batti batti’ and the great sestet in the second act. All the rest is there, everything is there if we have only the wit to see it; but to the most experienced critic as to the most unsophisticated auditor, it is the music that comes first. Plot and character, pathos and wit, all are idealized in the light of a serene and absolute beauty, which, even if it shines more abundantly to those who can dissect its rays, yet illuminates to the full measure of capacity every eye that beholds it. When we are told that in these operas Mozart shows himself a great dramatist, we accept the proposition as one which is beyond denial: when we are told that he shows himself a great musician it is our heart that assents.
The same is true in even further degree of his last work for the stage. La Clemenza di Tito (1791) may, for critical purposes, be disregarded: it was a mere court-pageant put together in eighteen days for the Emperor Leopold’s coronation at Prague and though it contains some fine numbers, it is not unjustly described as ‘a weak copy of Idomeneo.’ But in Die Zauberflöte (1791), produced but two months before his death, we have Mozart’s method in quintessence. A plot so hopeless that after the first few scenes we give it up in despair: an atmosphere of magic which is merely an excuse for absurdities: a set of characters who are as ineffectual in action as they are unaccountable in motive: a bird-catcher dressed in feathers with a padlock upon his lips: a goddess from the machine who cuts every knot that stupidity could tie:—such was the harlequinade which Schikaneder handed over and which Mozart has turned into a living breathing masterpiece. As we listen to the music the ridiculous incidents pass out of our field of vision, the doggerel verse ceases to annoy us, and, most wonderful of all, the characters grow into distinct being and personality. The magic of Tamino’s flute has passed into the hands of the composer himself, and before it all criticism lies powerless and spellbound. Indeed, if we want a ready measure of Mozart’s genius we have but to read this libretto and remember that, after witnessing a performance of the opera, Goethe seriously proposed to supplement it with a second part.
With Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Die Zauberflöte, the opera of the eighteenth century attains its climax. Before carrying on the story to its next great halting-place, in Fidelio, we must diverge for a moment to gather and group the lesser records of contemporary events, and may begin by noting an innovation which, though it had no immediate result, yet possesses in the history of the time a certain value and significance. [ … ]
Source: The Opera from Mozart to Weber (Chapter V), by W. H. Hadow. The Viennese Period. (The Oxford History of Music Vol. V. 1904. Oxford, At the Clarendon Press)
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