Page:A Dictionary of Music and Musicians vol 3.djvu/682

670 by Briffaut and Dieulafoy from Voltaire's tragedy. Spontini took a most unusual length of time for the composition. He was at work upon the last act in December 1815, and yet the opera was not finished by January 1819. After so much trouble and pains he not unnaturally considered it his best work. 'This score,' he writes Nov. 27, 1819, 'must be ranked higher, for importance and range of subject, than those of La Vestale and Cortez'; and to this opinion he adhered, in spite of many proofs that the public judged otherwise. At the first performance (Paris, Dec. 15, 1819), a bitter disappointment awaited him, for the opera failed in spite of his numerous supporters, and of the generally favourable disposition of the Parisians towards him. Spontini however was not the man to throw up his cause for a first failure. The libretto was chiefly to blame. The writers had adhered too closely to Voltaire, without remembering the requirements of the music, or the established forms of Grand Opera. The tragical conclusion especially was objected to as an innovation. This was remedied first of all, and a happy ending substituted. By February, 1820, Spontini was at work on the revision, which he completed in less than a year, and the opera was produced in its new form, May 14, 1821, at Berlin. In 1822 it was again revised, the changes this time being in the airs for Olympic and Cassandre, the duet for the same in the first act, and a new scene with terzetto in the third. As this last is not included in the printed edition it looks as if the final form of the opera had not even yet been attained. Schlesinger of Berlin published a complete pianoforte-score in 1826. The opera was again put on the stage in Paris Feb. 28, 1826, and by March 15 it had already been played 6 times. Each time it pleased more, and at last Spontini was able to count it among his great triumphs. It was however only in Berlin, where he settled in 1820, that it kept a permanent place in the repertoire. It had a short run at Dresden and Darmstadt in 1822, and was proposed at Vienna, but the performance did not take place. The opera has now completely disappeared from musical life, a fate it shares with Cherubini's 'Medée.' That no attempts have been made to revive it must be attributed partly to the enormous demands which it makes on the dramatic and scenic resources of a theatre, and also to the fact that Spontini's operas are of an individual type and require a peculiar style of representation. The few living musicians who remember the performances of Spontini's operas in Berlin between 1820 and 1830 know the kind of interpretation he used to give of them—one which by no means lay on the surface. Dorn, in his 'Recollections,' says that at Leipzig in 1829 the final chorus in the 2nd act of the 'Vestale' was ridiculed as a mere waltz-tune. When Dorn undertook the direction of the opera, and had to conduct the 'Vestale,' he made such good use of his recollections of the way in which it was conducted by the composer, that the chorus in question was scarcely recognised, and all adverse comments were silenced. 'Another fifty years,' continues he, 'and the Spontini traditions will have disappeared, as the Mozart traditions have already done.' It would be more correct to say that both have disappeared. The Spontini traditions might possibly have lived longer had his work in Germany been more successful than it was. But there is enough to account for this, and more, in the unsettled condition of all stage matters in Germany for many years past.

'Olympie' and 'Agnes von Hohenstaufen'—written ten years later—stand alone among operas of the 19th century for grandeur of conception. True, in isolated scenes of the 'Huguenots' and the 'Prophète,' Meyerbeer approached his predecessor, but he never succeeded in creating a whole of such magnificent proportions. The unity of design is remarkable, each act seems to be cast in one mould; and this from the fact that musically the several scenes of each act run into each other in a much more marked manner than in 'Cortez' or the 'Vestale.' There is also, throughout, the closest connection between the music, the scenes on the stage, and the development of the plot—the cachet of the true dramatic artist. The principal characters are well defined, and the tone assigned to each at the start is skilfully maintained. The first entrances, always the most important moment in opera for fixing the character of a part, are always very significant. For instance, it is interesting to observe the entirely different nature of the music at the entrances of Olympia and of Statira. The latter, the principal character in the piece, has no rival, unless it be Cherubini's 'Medée,' or perhaps Gluck's 'Armide.' A sorrowful woman, burdened with horrible memories and burning for revenge, she is yet a Queen from the crown of her head to the sole of her foot, and a heroine, as all must acknowledge, worthy of Alexander the Great. Bearing in mind the grandeur of the subject, and its background of history, the composer's choice of material does not seem exaggerated.

But these great qualities are accompanied by considerable defects. Apart from the falsified history of the plot, which might easily disturb a cultivated spectator in these days of accuracy, the happy conclusion weakens the interest in the fate of the chief characters. The part of Statira, at any rate, was far more consistent and homogeneous when the ending was tragic. The music, undeniably grandly sketched as a whole, lacks charm in the details. Spontini was not an instrumental composer. His overtures, dances, and marches, are in all cases music without any independent existence, simply intended to introduce or accompany. Instrumental music, from its immense plasticity and variety, is the best possible school for developing all the rich resources of the musical art; but