An Opera and Lady Grasmere/Book 2/Chapter 9

HE curtain had risen on the final act of Francesca of Rimini, and once more the audience was silent; only the orchestra filled the darkened house with sound. Harvey sat alone with Lady Grasmere, half expecting that she would seize upon the opportunity and question him; but no, she was apparently occupied with the scene before them, the stage whereon Paolo and Francesca were energetically misinterpreting the third act of Isabella.

Harvey had had some difficulty with this last part of his libretto, had been obliged to diverge considerably from Boccaccio's story: entirely omitting the incident of the pot of basil, and, with it, the lingering termination of the original. Instead, by substituting a continuous and swifter action, he had brought his story to a more conventional, though no less tragic, close. The hunting-party in the forest was the first episode of the final act. The two brothers entered and reiterated their intention to slay the hapless Lorenzo, then hid behind some trees. The tenor followed, his face "flush with love," and giving utterance to his feelings. He was interrupted by the brothers, who first killed and then, buried him, amid orchestral wailings. They departed, making way for Isabella and her nurse. The former explained how she had had a vision, wherein she had seen her lover murdered and his body hidden upon that very spot. She recognised various landmarks common to the two localities—the forest of the vision and this forest. A voice broke in upon her sad declamation. She listened. It was Lorenzo answering her, telling her of his treacherous murder and his undying love. She staggered to the "fresh thrown mould," responded in an ebbing death-song, and expired upon her lover's grave. So ended Isabella.

Sopwith and his librettist had had a great many difficulties to contend against in the manipulation of this portion of the score and book. The whole course of events was altogether different, but in spite of these discouragements, the pair had worked wonders. For the forest they had substituted a dungeon in the Castle of the Lord of Rimini. Here the lovers were imprisoned. Francesca opened the Act with Isabella's recitative, lamenting her own and her lover's impending doom in very similar terms to Isabella's account of the vision. Paolo interrupted this mournful declamation with Lorenzo's answering tones, transposed, more robustly set—for he was not singing from somewhere underground. He, too, discoursed of imminent death, of his undying affection. Then Lanciotto and his favourite minion entered, sword in hand, and delivered themselves in a manner precisely similar to the bass and baritone threatenings of the two brothers in the legitimate opening scene. Paolo defied them with Lorenzo's flushed utterance, which was cut short by a slaughtering identical with the bloodshed of the genuine version. Francesca was also despatched, and the curtain descended amid the orchestral wailings.

So terminated Sopwith's noisily heralded music-drama, Francesca of Rimini, a thing of splendid opportunities imperfectly grasped, a wonderful story marred by impotent treatment, a youthful extravagance, fruit of a too eager brain, of juvenile impatience—a work entered into rashly, heedlessly, an undertaking blindly pursued, and pathetic with the reckless daring of inexperience.

Through the whole opera there ran an irritating air of largeness, a mock-perfection that angered; for the workmanship was carried out with a care, an acuteness, a deftness of touch and an unsparing devotion at once pitiful and grotesque. It seemed as though the composer, lacking all intimacy with Life, had perforce vented all his powers upon this framework, upon the vase wherein he had bestowed his artificial flowers. A very emblem and a monument was this opera. Soaring youth articulate had chiselled it, overspread it, had fed it with its own vague emotions, undisciplined now and now hesitant, its own uncertainties; had filled it with its own blind impulses, shrinkings, and labours misapplied—the errors that chasten. The work, though ineffectual, was brave enough and clean with honest endeavour. There was, indeed, no cause for shame in the effort; its public appearance was its one sin, it had no right to thrust itself thus brazenly upon a busy world. The conscientious and scholarly critic in the stalls viewed the thing not altogether unfavourably. Of that whole audience, perhaps he and Harvey alone knew Isabella's proper place, assessed it at its real value. It had taught its author how to write. Matter, direct and sure emotion, the great sanity, might come with the years.

The curtain had fallen amid a stubborn silence that ended in a sigh of relief. The gallery and amphitheatre sought its hat, heavily disappointed, yet bearing the blow without a murmur; for there were patriotic as well as musical issues at stake.

Francesca of Rimini, with all its faults, was of native growth, was deserving of sympathy as the plucky though unsuccessful attempt of a British composer to attain to a place beside the pre-eminent foreigner. More in sorrow than in anger, therefore, did the multitude prepare for departure.

In the boxes and stalls, however, a different and a less sentimental spirit prevailed. Here the decorum, the self-respect of the upper circles was replaced by a far-spreading display of foolishness. Sopwith's friends and patrons, the Mrs. Hopgood-Smyths and their compeers, beat their gloved hands together, and made their men-folk join this acclamation. As before, a wave of artificial and ill-considered applause was set in motion by the occupants of the more expensive portions of the house. But this time the cheaper seats refused to swell the hubbub, remained cold, unresponsive, were not to be inveigled into the deception. Resentment rather filled the honest gods at this vain argument. Their good-nature had been already strained to its extreme.

The applause continued, sustained, persistent. Two or three ominous hisses, protestant from the gallery, blended with the noise from below, were drowned, however, by the opposition; and the clapping continued, redoubling in vigour as the curtain rose upon the performers, was aided by a hundred voices as Sopwith appeared, bland, clean-shaven, a flower in his coat, apparently none the worse for his recent collapse—the very image of his published portrait.

The vain applause reached its full limits as he bowed his thanks, hand on heart—a pleasing embodiment of conscious merit chastened by modesty. The offended deities chafed at the spectacle. By now the situation was fully revealed to them; they had recognised the relationship between claque and composer, their outraged sentiment had found voice, their resentment liberal expression. The Briton, who had spared the victim of honourable defeat, showed less mercy to the charlatan, the humbug.

The welcome from the stalls and boxes was now but barely audible above a rising volume of groans and hisses. The composer's friends, hopelessly outnumbered and already at fullest tension, at the extreme limit of their powers, tried to prevail, to hold their own. But the raging up above increased, grew to a sibillant [sic] roar, a tempest that carried all before it. They were overpowered; their counterings swallowed up, drowned and lost, sunk to a mere undistinguishable item of the general outcry, had at last gone to swell the furious protest from above. A new comer, entering at this moment, would have fancied the house unanimous in its condemnation, have suspected no warring of divided interests. Even the bowing Sopwith was taken aback, dumbfounded by the swiftness of this inversion, had failed to keep pace with his audience's apparent change of front.

Prey to a fresh series of violent transformations, his unhappiness was unmistakable. Once more he had been victimised, deluded, trapped; once more his child-like confidence and trust had been rewarded by a rude betrayal. A sudden fall of the curtain hid him from the audience, ended the hubbub, and he was left alone upon the boards to face the furious management.

Thus ended the first and last performance of Sopwith's initial effort towards the regeneration of the British Operatic Stage; in a scene memorable alike to spectators and participants, a scene that afforded the critics even more scope than the work itself, the musical world an even greater degree of delectation.

Harvey, impassive as a Beethoven, displaying even some of that master's greatness in the stoicism with which he received impact after impact, a succession of shocks that would have doubly and trebly destroyed the composure of a lesser man, had looked on imperturbable, through the final act, with its succeeding engagement, rout, débâcle. For his thoughts were rather on the morrow than on any present spectacle; he was reserving his powers for a greater work than the pursuit of an ignominious imposition, was saving his energies for the larger combat. The failure of Isabella caused him neither regret nor surprise; he recognised the opera merely as a probationary exercise, a 'prentice-work preliminary to mastership. As for the unannounced effects which followed, the audience's contributions, their additions to the official harmonies, he had taken these lightly, more as an interested spectator than as something affecting himself.

When, after the finale, the Hopgood-Smyths had vented vain applause, Harvey had smiled incredulously and helped the Countess into her cloak; at Sopwith's unexpected reappearance, curiosity had blended with his scepticism. The gallery's rising disapproval made him pause.

"Surely it wasn't bad enough for all this fuss—heaven save a man from such friends!" he said to Lady Grasmere who, standing beside him, was following the spectacle.

She nodded acquiescence, and then the duello that ensued, with its swift termination in one general, undistinguishable demonstration of disgust, eclipsed the first interest. Harvey, quick to feel the workings, the several provocations which had given rise to this tumult, sympathised momentarily with the upper circles, the outraged deities above. Momentarily, however; for at last the sublimity of his own position reached him, crowned this bevy of unrealities with the one essential, the one deep-rooted fact. He recognised in himself the unseen dramatist. It was he who had set these players in motion. Without him, all this theatre, with its perspiring audience, disordered composer, performers and management, had been but an empty shell.

The situation was one of appalling comedy. Insistent and farcical there occurred to him the makings of an additional scene, a culmination and a climax worthy of the occasion. What if he should cry "!" from his box and explain that he was the real culprit, the identical; that they were wasting their energies, their wind and muscle upon an innocent man; that the wretch they were hounding was altogether blameless; that they, he, Sop with, the whole company, were the victims of a chain of unforeseen circumstances which he himself had set in motion! And Harvey laughed aloud over his suppressed oration. How the popular novelist would have revelled in it, with what melodrama would he have engarlanded such a speech delivered under such circumstances! The falling of the curtain interrupted this train of thought, the people were leaving and Sopwith had disappeared.

Merceron and the Countess descended the broad staircase, the crowd at their elbows, behind and before them, filling the entrance hall and passing homewards amid the flash of carriage lamps, the rattle of hoof and harness. The air was full of exclamations, flying discussions, and the immediate.

Nine months ago years they seemed to Harvey as he looked down upon this commotion—he and Hutchinson had stood attentive upon that self-same spot, had watched this self-same crowd. With what other feelings, what other attitude, what reversals of present emotion! Years ago it seemed to Harvey! But the Countess' man had caught his eye, had come forward touching his hat. Now Lady Grasmere and he were in the brougham, alone together,' and rolling towards Albert Gate.

Poor Harvey! if there had been anything of pain, anything of struggle, if he had at all suffered that night, it was now that his real trial and torment were to begin!