Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 95.djvu/251

Rh longer and more elaborate ones found in the operas of composers of the latter half of the seventeenth century.

At the end of that century the Italian method of singing was complete. The great Pistocchi school of Bologna was ready to send into the world its wonderful pupils, and Porpora was prepared to instruct the youthful Caffarelli. How thorough the instruction of that time was we learn from the often told anecdote of Porpora’s keeping Caffarelli at work for six years on a single sheet of music paper,on which the teacher had written all the possible feats of vocalization. At the end of the period of study the teacher said to the pupil, “Go, my son, you are the greatest singer in the world.”

The achievements of these rigorously trained singers founded that firm faith in mere singing which still exists among Italians. The history of opera in the time of Handel is well known, and it exhibits a curious state of musical art. The singer was the monarch of the musical kingdom. Composers were merely tailors who made garments of vocal glory for these potentates. The adulation which is now poured at the feet of a Calvé or a Caruso, when compared to the blind devotion offered to Crescentini or Faustina, is as the gentle sigh of a summer zephyr in the presence of a cyclone.

The great Handel had to write his operas according to the dictation of these lords of song. It was not for him to say where he would introduce a duet or a solo. It was not for him to say what kind of an aria he would write at any given place in his score. All these things were laid down in the vocal code of the singers. They decreed what solos and duets they were to have, and where they were to be introduced, and what their character was to be. No Gounod could have bestowed the patriarchal osculation upon the brow of the successful Marguerite in those days. The prima donna, if pleased with the jewel song, might have held out her little finger for the composer to kiss kneeling. No Wagner would have dared in 1735 to tell a soprano how to phrase a declamation. The spectacle of the bowed heads of Materna and Winkelmann and Scaria at Baireuth would have started the princes of the early eighteenth century to writhing in their tombs. They would have. made this Wagner wriggle at their feet like his own “Wurm.”

Nevertheless, these singers had great and sound merits which lay at the foundation of their influence in the world. The stories told of them sound fabulous, yet they are well attested. Farinelli’s beautiful voice and exquisite singing certainly did cure Philip V of Spain of an attack of melancholy which threatened his reason. When the Princess Belmont was almost insane from grief, it was Raff who saved her life by singing so that he moved her to tears. Senesino threw off the assumption of his réle and rushed across the stage to embrace Farinelli, who had just sung an air marvelously. Crescentini in Romeo e Giulietta wrung moisture from the eye of the Man of Destiny, and wet the cheeks of all his court. These are not fables; they are facts. Yet the accomplishments of these singers were all in the domain of vocal finish. What they did, they did by pure beauty of tone and phrasing.

In purity and beauty of tone, in command of breath, in accuracy of intonation, in smoothness and agility in the delivery of ornamental passages, the singers of this first great school were the greatest that have ever lived. With all deference to the opinion of Porpora, Farinelli must have been the supreme master of them all. My colleague, H. E. Krehbiel, owns the collection of musical manuscripts made by the poet Gray. In writing about it in his charming volume, Music and Manners in the Classical Period, he draws some valuable information from the music as to the vocal abilities of the eighteenth century. He gives the crown to Farinelli, and adds, “One of the things which Gray’s music can teach us is that, taking the art for what it was one hundred and fifty years ago, the greatest operatic artists