The Opera | Page 2

not represent the
case at all fairly. For, to take only modern instances, Italy, on whose
congenial soil 'Cavalleria Rusticana' and the productions it suggested
met with such extraordinary success, saw also in 'Falstaff' the wittiest
and most brilliant musical comedy since 'Die Meistersinger', and in
'Madama Butterfly' a lyric of infinite delicacy, free from any suggestion
of unworthy emotion. Among recent French operas, works of tragic
import, treated with all the intricacy of the most advanced modern
schools, have been received with far greater favour than have been
shown to works of the lighter class which we associate with the genius
of the French nation; and of late years the vogue of such works as
'Louise' or 'Pelléas et Mélisande' shows that the taste for music without
any special form has conquered the very nation in which form has
generally ranked highest. In Germany, on the other hand, some of the
greatest successes with the public at large have been won by
productions which seem to touch the lowest imaginable point of artistic
imbecility; and the ever-increasing interest in musical drama that is
manifested year after year by London audiences shows that higher
motives than those referred to weigh even with Englishmen. The theory
above mentioned will not hold water, for there are, as a matter of fact,
only two ways of looking at opera: either as a means, whether
expensive or not, of passing an evening with a very little intellectual
trouble, some social _éclat_, and a certain amount of pleasure, or as a
form of art, making serious and justifiable claims on the attention of
rational people. These claims of opera are perhaps more widely
recognised in England than they were some years ago; but there are still
a certain number of persons, and among them not a few musical people,

who hesitate to give opera a place beside what is usually called
'abstract' music. Music's highest dignity is, no doubt, reached when it is
self-sufficient, when its powers are exerted upon its own creations,
entirely without dependence upon predetermined emotions calling for
illustration, and when the interest of the composition as well as the
material is conveyed exclusively in terms of music. But the function of
music in expressing those sides of human emotion which lie too deep
for verbal utterance, a function of which the gradual recognition led on
to the invention of opera, is one that cannot be slighted or ignored; in it
lies a power of appeal to feeling that no words can reach, and a very
wonderful definiteness in conveying exact shades of emotional
sensation. Not that it can of itself suggest the direction in which the
emotions are to be worked upon; but this direction once given from
outside, whether by a 'programme' read by the listener or by the action
and accessories of the stage, the force of feeling can be conveyed with
overwhelming power, and the whole gamut of emotion, from the
subtlest hint or foreshadowing to the fury of inevitable passion, is at the
command of him who knows how to wield the means by which
expression is carried to the hearer's mind. And in this fact--for a fact it
is--lies the completest justification of opera as an art-form. The
old-fashioned criticism of opera as such, based on the indisputable fact
that, however excited people may be, they do not in real life express
themselves in song, but in unmodulated speech, is not now very often
heard. With the revival in England of the dramatic instinct, the
conventions of stage declamation are readily accepted, and if it be
conceded that the characters in a drama may be allowed to speak blank
verse, it is hardly more than a step further to permit the action to be
carried on by means of vocal utterance in music. Until latterly, however,
English people, though taking pleasure in the opera, went to it rather to
hear particular singers than to enjoy the work as a whole, or with any
consideration for its dramatic significance. We should not expect a
stern and uncompromising nature like Carlyle's to regard the opera as
anything more than a trivial amusement, and that such was his attitude
towards it appears from his letters; but it is curious to see that a man of
such strongly pronounced dramatic tastes as Edward FitzGerald,
though devoted to the opera in his own way, yet took what can only be
called a superficial view of its possibilities.

The Englishman who said of the opera, 'At the first act I was enchanted;
the second I could just bear; and at the third I ran away', is a fair
illustration of an attitude common in the eighteenth century; and in
France things were not much better, even in days when stage
magnificence reached a point