Page:A Dictionary of Music and Musicians vol 2.djvu/699

PERGOLESI. pupil than he could teach him. His first opera, 'La Sallustia,' was produced in the winter of this year, 1731, at the Fiorentini theatre, and many novel effects were introduced in the orchestral parts. Villarosa says it deserved the highest approval; but it seems to have had a mere succès d'estime. This was also the case with an intermezzo, 'Amor fa l'uomo cieco'; while 'Recimero,' a serious opera, produced at the S. Bartolomeo, failed outright. It would have gone ill with Pergolesi if he had not found a friend in the Prince of Stegliano, first equerry to the King of Naples, who, perceiving his rare abilities, helped him and got employment for him. For this friend he wrote the thirty Trios for two violins and bass, twenty-four of which were afterwards published at London and Amsterdam. It was probably due to the Prince that when, after a terrible earthquake at Naples, a solemn mass was voted to the patron saint of the town, Pergolesi was commissioned to compose the music, a task he performed by writing a mass, with vespers, for ten voices and double orchestra. Soon after this he wrote another mass, also for double chorus of five voices and two orchestras. Leo, whom he invited to hear his work, was astonished, both at the beauty of the music and the short time in which it had been composed, and publicly praised the youthful maestro. To this mass Pergolesi subsequently added a third and fourth choir, and it was performed, entire, at the church of the Filippini.

Fétis remarks that at this time Pergolesi, disgusted with his ill success, had ceased to write for the theatre, and was now led back to it by his artistic bent. But as all the works yet enumerated seem to have been produced in 1731, his disgust cannot have lasted very long, and we can only suppose that the composition of some of them was considerably antecedent to their performance. In the winter of this same year he wrote his celebrated intermezzo, 'La Serva Padrona.' This little operetta, which retains its freshness and charm at the present day, must, when produced, have been unique of its kind, and has served as the foundation of every comic Italian opera written since, up to Rossini's time. Part of its success on the stage is, no doubt, due to the humorous, neatly-written libretto; this however would not have survived commonplace music any more than fine music can secure a long lease of life for an utterly dull libretto. There are but two characters, and the orchestra is limited to the string quartet, but the action is so sustained, and the music so varied, that there is not a dull line in it. Servilely imitated as it has been ever since, it has, itself, the ring of young music. The oppressed master who complains, threatens, blusters, flinches, hesitates, is lost, and finally has to give in, eat his own words, and chanter après to the end of the story; the uppish servant who defies her master, frightens him with her shrewish tongue, cajoles him, deceives him by the most transparent of artifices, then, when she has worked on his feelings enough, turns on him and shows him what a fool he has been, and gets her own way all the same; the mock heroic, the deprecatory, the pathetic and the buffo—these things may have been as well combined and much farther developed since Pergolesi's day, but at that time there was nothing like them. The recitatives are full of animation and spirit. The one blot on the piece is the inevitable Da Capo in the airs, which Pergolesi, with all his genius, was still too much a child of the time to set aside.

The success of the 'Serva Padrona' appears to have been very limited, but was the greatest that ever fell to Pergolesi's lot. His next operas, the 'Maestro di Musica' (very popular at a later date), and 'Il Geloso schernito,' seem to have met with little or no recognition. 'Lo Frate innamorato,' a buffo opera, in Neapolitan dialect, was performed at the Fiorentini theatre in 1732. The San Bartolomeo produced the 'Prigionier superbo,' and repeated the 'Serva Padrona.' For this theatre, in 1734, he wrote 'Adriano in Siria,' an opera in three acts, and an intermezzo 'Livietta e Fracolo'; 'La Contadina astuta' also belongs probably to the same time. In this year he went to live at Loreto, as chapel-master there.

After writing, in 1735, a buffo opera, 'Flaminio,' which met with much success when played in 1749, thirteen years after his death, he undertook a work of another kind, the beautiful and pathetic 'Stabat Mater,' for soprano and contralto, destined to become perhaps the most widely known of all his works. The circumstances which led to its composition were these. Every Friday in March, for many years past, had the Confraternity of San Luigi di Palazzo performed the 'Stabat Mater' of Alessandro Scarlatti. Weary of always repeating the same music, the brethren made up their minds to ask Pergolesi to compose a new Stabat. The luxury was not ruinous. Ten ducats (about 35s.) was the price agreed upon, and this was paid in advance to the composer. Just after its commencement, however, the task had to be suspended for a while. His fame, hitherto solely confined to Naples, seems now to have spread as far as Rome, for he was engaged to compose an opera for the Tordinone theatre in that city. This was 'L'Olimpiade'—the book Metastasio's, the music in its composer's happiest vein. It was, however, received with apathetic indifference, while 'Nerone,' an opera composed for the same house at the same time by Egidio Duni, greatly Pergolesi's inferior, had a brilliant success. Even Duni himself keenly resented this lack of appreciation by the Romans, saying plainly that the failure of 'L'Olimpiade' was due to its being too good for the public, avowing himself 'frenetico contro il pubblico Romano,' and doing all he could, but in vain, to bring about a reaction in its favour.

Pergolesi went back to Loreto much discouraged by his theatrical experiences. He set to work again at the Stabat Mater, but his health, which had been feeble for some time, became worse, and consumption set in. A change of climate was declared imperative j he returned to Naples,