Works of Honore De Balzac, page 1148
Se brami in liberta
Il popol tuo fedel,
Di lui di noi pieta!”
(O God of Israel, if thou wouldst see thy faithful people free, have mercy on them, and on us.)
“Never was a grander synthesis composed of natural effects or a more perfect idealization of nature. In a great national disaster, each one for a long time bewails himself alone; then, from out of the mass, rises up, here and there, a more emphatic and vehement cry of anguish; finally, when the misery has fallen on all, it bursts forth like a tempest.
“As soon as they all recognize a common grievance, the dull murmurs of the people become cries of impatience. Rossini has proceeded on this hypothesis. After the outcry in C major, Pharoah sings his grand recitative: Mano ultrice di un Dio (Avenging hand of God), after which the original subject is repeated with more vehement expression. All Egypt appeals to Moses for help.”
The Duchess had taken advantage of the pause for the entrance of Moses and Aaron to give this interpretation of that fine introduction.
“Let them weep!” she added passionately. “They have done much ill. Expiate your sins, Egyptians, expiate the crimes of your maddened Court! With what amazing skill has this great painter made use of all the gloomy tones of music, of all that is saddest on the musical palette! What creepy darkness! what a mist! Is not your very spirit in mourning? Are you not convinced of the reality of the blackness that lies over the land? Do you not feel that Nature is wrapped in the deepest shades? There are no palm-trees, no Egyptian palaces, no landscape. And what a healing to your soul will the deeply religious strain be of the heaven-sent Healer who will stay this cruel plague! How skilfully is everything wrought up to end in that glorious invocation of Moses to God.
“By a learned elaboration, which Capraja could explain to you, this appeal to heaven is accompanied by brass instruments only; it is that which gives it such a solemn, religious cast. And not merely is the artifice fine in its place; note how fertile in resource is genius. Rossini has derived fresh beauty from the difficulty he himself created. He has the strings in reserve to express daylight when it succeeds to the darkness, and thus produces one of the greatest effects ever achieved in music.
“Till this inimitable genius showed the way never was such a result obtained with mere recitative. We have not, so far, had an air or a duet. The poet has relied on the strength of the idea, on the vividness of his imagery, and the realism of the declamatory passages. This scene of despair, this darkness that may be felt, these cries of anguish, — the whole musical picture is as fine as your great Poussin’s Deluge.”
Moses waved his staff, and it was light.
“Here, monsieur, does not the music vie with the sun, whose splendor it has borrowed, with nature, whose phenomena it expresses in every detail?” the Duchess went on, in an undertone. “Art here reaches its climax; no musician can get beyond this. Do not you hear Egypt waking up after its long torpor? Joy comes in with the day. In what composition, ancient or modern, will you find so grand a passage? The greatest gladness in contrast to the deepest woe! What exclamations! What gleeful notes! The oppressed spirit breathes again. What delirium in the tremolo of the orchestra! What a noble tutti! This is the rejoicing of a delivered nation. Are you not thrilled with joy?”
The physician, startled by the contrast, was, in fact, clapping his hands, carried away by admiration for one of the finest compositions of modern music.
“Brava la Doni!” said Vendramin, who had heard the Duchess.
“Now the introduction is ended,” said she. “You have gone through a great sensation,” she added, turning to the Frenchman. “Your heart is beating; in the depths of your imagination you have a splendid sunrise, flooding with light a whole country that before was cold and dark. Now, would you know the means by which the musician has worked, so as to admire him to-morrow for the secrets of his craft after enjoying the results to-night? What do you suppose produces this effect of daylight — so sudden, so complicated, and so complete? It consists of a simple chord of C, constantly reiterated, varied only by the chord of 4-6. This reveals the magic of his touch. To show you the glory of light he has worked by the same means that he used to represent darkness and sorrow.
“This dawn in imagery is, in fact, absolutely the same as the natural dawn; for light is one and the same thing everywhere, always alike in itself, the effects varying only with the objects it falls on. Is it not so? Well, the musician has taken for the fundamental basis of his music, for its sole motif, a simple chord in C. The sun first sheds its light on the mountain-tops and then in the valleys. In the same way the chord is first heard on the treble string of the violins with boreal mildness; it spreads through the orchestra, it awakes the instruments one by one, and flows among them. Just as light glides from one thing to the next, giving them color, the music moves on, calling out each rill of harmony till all flow together in the tutti.
“The violins, silent until now, give the signal with their tender tremolo, softly agitato like the first rays of morning. That light, cheerful movement, which caresses the soul, is cleverly supported by chords in the bass, and by a vague fanfare on the trumpets, restricted to their lowest notes, so as to give a vivid idea of the last cool shadows that linger in the valleys while the first warm rays touch the heights. Then all the wind is gradually added to strengthen the general harmony. The voices come in with sighs of delight and surprise. At last the brass breaks out, the trumpets sound. Light, the source of all harmony, inundates all nature; every musical resource is produced with a turbulence, a splendor, to compare with that of the Eastern sun. Even the triangle, with its reiterated C, reminds us by its shrill accent and playful rhythm of the song of early birds.
“Thus the same key, freshly treated by the master’s hand, expresses the joy of all nature, while it soothes the grief it uttered before.
“There is the hall-mark of the great genius: Unity. It is the same but different. In one and the same phrase we find a thousand various feelings of woe, the misery of a nation. In one and the same chord we have all the various incidents of awakening nature, every expression of the nation’s joy. These two tremendous passages are soldered into one by the prayer to an ever-living God, author of all things, of that woe and that gladness alike. Now is not that introduction by itself a grand poem?”
“It is, indeed,” said the Frenchman.
“Next comes a quintette such as Rossini can give us. If he was ever justified in giving vent to that flowery, voluptuous grace for which Italian music is blamed, is it not in this charming movement in which each person expresses joy? The enslaved people are delivered, and yet a passion in peril is fain to moan. Pharaoh’s son loves a Hebrew woman, and she must leave him. What gives its ravishing charm to this quintette is the return to the homelier feelings of life after the grandiose picture of two stupendous and national emotions: — general misery, general joy, expressed with the magic force stamped on them by divine vengeance and with the miraculous atmosphere of the Bible narrative. Now, was not I right?” added Massimilla, as the noble sretto came to a close.
“Voci di giubilo,
D’ in’orno eccheggino,
Di pace l’ Iride
Per noi spunto.”
(Cries of joy sound about us. The rainbow of peace dawns upon us.)
“How ingeniously the composer has constructed this passage!” she went on, after waiting for a reply. “He begins with a solo on the horn, of divine sweetness, supported by arpeggios on the harps; for the first voices to be heard in this grand concerted piece are those of Moses and Aaron returning thanks to the true God. Their strain, soft and solemn, reverts to the sublime ideas of the invocation, and mingles, nevertheless, with the joy of the heathen people. This transition combines the heavenly and the earthly in a way which genius alone could invent, giving the andante of this quintette a glow of color that I can only compare to the light thrown by Titian on his Divine Persons. Did you observe the exquisite interweaving of the voices? the clever entrances by which the composer has grouped them round the main idea given out by the orchestra? the learned progressions that prepare us for the festal allegro? Did you not get a glimpse, as it were, of dancing groups, the dizzy round of a whole nation escaped from danger? And when the clarionet gives the signal for the stretto, — ’Voci di giubilo,’ — so brilliant and gay, was not your soul filled with the sacred pyrrhic joy of which David speaks in the Psalms, ascribing it to the hills?”
“Yes, it would make a delightful dance tune,” said the doctor.
“French! French! always French!” exclaimed the Duchess, checked in her exultant mood by this sharp thrust. “Yes; you would be capable of taking that wonderful burst of noble and dainty rejoicing and turning it into a rigadoon. Sublime poetry finds no mercy in your eyes. The highest genius, — saints, kings, disasters, — all that is most sacred must pass under the rods of caricature. And the vulgarizing of great music by turning it into a dance tune is to caricature it. With you, wit kills soul, as argument kills reason.”
They all sat in silence through the recitative of Osiride and Membrea, who plot to annul the order given by Pharaoh for the departure of the Hebrews.
“Have I vexed you?” asked the physician to the Duchess. “I should be in despair. Your words are like a magic wand. They unlock the pigeon-holes of my brain, and let out new ideas, vivified by this sublime music.”
“No,” replied she, “you have praised our great composer after your own fashion. Rossini will be a success with you, for the sake of his witty and sensual gifts. Let us hope that he may find some noble souls, in love with the ideal — which must exist in your fruitful land, — to appreciate the sublimity, the loftiness, of such music. Ah, now we have the famous duet, between Elcia and Osiride!” she exclaimed, and she went on, taking advantage of the triple salvo of applause which hailed la Tinti, as she made her first appearance on the stage.
“If la Tinti has fully understood the part of Elcia, you will hear the frenzied song of a woman torn by her love for her people, and her passion for one of their oppressors, while Osiride, full of mad adoration for his beautiful vassal, tries to detain her. The opera is built up as much on that grand idea as on that of Pharaoh’s resistance to the power of God and of liberty; you must enter into it thoroughly or you will not understand this stupendous work.
“Notwithstanding the disfavor you show to the dramas invented by our libretto writers, you must allow me to point out the skill with which this one is constructed. The antithesis required in every fine work, and eminently favorable to music, is well worked out. What can be finer than a whole nation demanding liberty, held in bondage by bad faith, upheld by God, and piling marvel on marvel to gain freedom? What more dramatic than the Prince’s love for a Hebrew woman, almost justifying treason to the oppressor’s power?
“And this is what is expressed in this bold and stupendous musical poem; Rossini has stamped each nation with its fantastic individuality, for we have attributed to them a certain historic grandeur to which every imagination subscribes. The songs of the Hebrews, and their trust in God, are perpetually contrasted with Pharaoh’s shrieks of rage and vain efforts, represented with a strong hand.
“At this moment Osiride, thinking only of love, hopes to detain his mistress by the memories of their joys as lovers; he wants to conquer the attractions of her feeling for her people. Here, then, you will find delicious languor, the glowing sweetness, the voluptuous suggestions of Oriental love, in the air ‘Ah! se puoi cosi lasciarmi,’ sung by Osiride, and in Elcia’s reply, ‘Ma perche cosi straziarmi?’ No; two hearts in such melodious unison could never part,” she went on, looking at the Prince.
“But the lovers are suddenly interrupted by the exultant voice of the Hebrew people in the distance, which recalls Elcia. What a delightful and inspiriting allegro is the theme of this march, as the Israelites set out for the desert! No one but Rossini can make wind instruments and trumpets say so much. And is not the art which can express in two phrases all that is meant by the ‘native land’ certainly nearer to heaven than the others? This clarion-call always moves me so deeply that I cannot find words to tell you how cruel it is to an enslaved people to see those who are free march away!”
The Duchess’ eyes filled with tears as she listened to the grand movement, which in fact crowns the opera.
“Dov’ e mai quel core amante,” she murmured in Italian, as la Tinti began the delightful aria of the stretto in which she implores pity for her grief. “But what is the matter? The pit are dissatisfied — ”
“Genovese is braying like a stage,” replied the Prince.
In point of fact, this first duet with la Tinti was spoilt by Genovese’s utter breakdown. His excellent method, recalling that of Crescentini and Veluti, seemed to desert him completely. A sostenuto in the wrong place, an embellishment carried to excess, spoilt the effect; or again a loud climax with no due crescendo, an outburst of sound like water tumbling through a suddenly opened sluice, showed complete and wilful neglect of the laws of good taste.
The pit was in the greatest excitement. The Venetian public believed there was a deliberate plot between Genovese and his friends. La Tinti was recalled and applauded with frenzy while Genovese had a hint or two warning him of the hostile feeling of the audience. During this scene, highly amusing to a Frenchman, while la Tinti was recalled eleven times to receive alone the frantic acclamations of the house, — Genovese, who was all but hissed, not daring to offer her his hand, — the doctor made a remark to the Duchess as to the stretto of the duet.
“In this place,” said he, “Rossini ought to have expressed the deepest grief, and I find on the contrary an airy movement, a tone of ill-timed cheerfulness.”
“You are right,” said she. “This mistake is the result of a tyrannous custom which composers are expected to obey. He was thinking more of his prima donna than of Elcia when he wrote that stretto. But this evening, even if la Tinti had been more brilliant than ever, I could throw myself so completely into the situation, that the passage, lively as it is, is to me full of sadness.”
The physician looked attentively from the Prince to the Duchess, but could not guess the reason that held them apart, and that made this duet seem to them so heartrending.
“Now comes a magnificent thing, the scheming of Pharaoh against the Hebrews. The great aria ‘A rispettarmi apprenda’ (Learn to respect me) is a triumph for Carthagenova, who will express superbly the offended pride and the duplicity of a sovereign. The Throne will speak. He will withdraw the concessions that have been made, he arms himself in wrath. Pharaoh rises to his feet to clutch the prey that is escaping.
“Rossini never wrote anything grander in style, or stamped with more living and irresistible energy. It is a consummate work, supported by an accompaniment of marvelous orchestration, as indeed is every portion of this opera. The vigor of youth illumines the smallest details.”
The whole house applauded this noble movement, which was admirably rendered by the singer, and thoroughly appreciated by the Venetians.
“In the finale,” said the Duchess, “you hear a repetition of the march, expressive of the joy of deliverance and of faith in God, who allows His people to rush off gleefully to wander in the Desert! What lungs but would be refreshed by the aspirations of a whole nation freed from slavery.
“Oh, beloved and living melodies! Glory to the great genius who has known how to give utterance to such feelings! There is something essentially warlike in that march, proclaiming that the God of armies is on the side of these people. How full of feeling are these strains of thanksgiving! The imagery of the Bible rises up in our mind; this glorious musical scena enables us to realize one of the grandest dramas of that ancient and solemn world. The religious form given to some of the voice parts, and the way in which they come in, one by one, to group with the others, express all we have ever imagined of the sacred marvels of that early age of humanity.
“And yet this fine concerted piece is no more than a development of the theme of the march into all its musical outcome. That theme is the inspiring element alike for the orchestra and the voices, for the air, and for the brilliant instrumentation that supports it.
“Elcia now comes to join the crowd; and to give shade to the rejoicing spirit of this number, Rossini has made her utter her regrets. Listen to her duettino with Amenofi. Did blighted love ever express itself in lovelier song? It is full of the grace of a notturno, of the secret grief of hopeless love. How sad! how sad! The Desert will indeed be a desert to her!
“After this comes the fierce conflict of the Egyptians and the Hebrews. All their joy is spoiled, their march stopped by the arrival of the Egyptians. Pharaoh’s edict is proclaimed in a musical phrase, hollow and dread, which is the leading motif of the finale; we could fancy that we hear the tramp of the great Egyptian army, surrounding the sacred phalanx of the true God, curling round it, like a long African serpent enveloping its prey. But how beautiful is the lament of the duped and disappointed Hebrews! Though, in truth, it is more Italian than Hebrew. What a superb passage introduces Pharaoh’s arrival, when his presence brings the two leaders face to face, and all the moving passions of the drama. The conflict of sentiments in that sublime ottetto, where the wrath of Moses meets that of the two Pharaohs, is admirable. What a medley of voices and of unchained furies!
“No grander subject was ever wrought out by a composer. The famous finale of Don Giovanni, after all, only shows us a libertine at odds with his victims, who invoke the vengeance of Heaven; while here earth and its dominions try to defeat God. Two nations are here face to face. And Rossini, having every means at his command, has made wonderful use of them. He has succeeded in expressing the turmoil of a tremendous storm as a background to the most terrible imprecations, without making it ridiculous. He has achieved it by the use of chords repeated in triple time — a monotonous rhythm of gloomy musical emphasis — and so persistent as to be quite overpowering. The horror of the Egyptians at the torrent of fire, the cries of vengeance from the Hebrews, needed a delicate balance of masses; so note how he has made the development of the orchestral parts follow that of the chorus. The allegro assai in C minor is terrible in the midst of that deluge of fire.
