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 CHAPTER XXVI

ITALIAN AND FRENCH OPERA

175. New Life in the Italian Style.—The underlying principle of the Italian opera has always been the capture of the favor of audiences, especially by exploiting brilliant soloists in highly colored or showy melodies and by other devices essentially sensational. But between the followers of this style in any given period there has often been much difference, some being content with imitating the vapid, ad captandum ways of their predecessors, and some reaching out with originality and genius toward a better dramatic ideal. At the opening of the 19th century these extremes were sharply marked. On the one hand were the writers who worked principally in Italy alone, often with Naples as a centre, who went on gratifying the popular craving for flowing airs, clever effects and conventional comedy or pathos without real advance. On the other, were those aware of the great movements going on in other departments of musical creation, generally because they carried on their work outside of Italy, and who sought to infuse into Italian writing elements akin to those elsewhere prominent. Besides several worthy, but not highly inspired, writers of this second class, the period is notable for the phenomenal career of Rossini, who certainly had genius and success, however he may be classified as to principles. His vogue spread throughout Europe and, with the help of several later writers of the same class, served to delay until after the middle of the century the triumph of better ideas.

Among lesser composers the following were especially productive or popular:—

Vittorio Trento (d. after 1824), born at Venice, was active there from his youth, producing bright comic operettas (from 1780). In 1797 he was in London, gaining popularity with The Triumph of Love and other works, including Ifigenia in Aulide (1804). After 1806 he served for a time as opera-director at Amsterdam, and later at Lisbon. He was very prolific—his Climene (1811, London) being numbered his 53d. At Venice he had special success with Gli assassini (1801).