-- D. Scott.
The work which points most clearly to the cultural appetite of the growing urban "middle" (rather than upper -- or landed gentry, or nobilily, or royalty) class and set in motion major changes in operatic entertainment was the so-called "ballad opera" (not an opera by any means), entitled, "The Beggar's Opera" ("L'opera del mendicante") by Pepusch and John Gay (1685-1732).
"The Beggar's Opera" was, in every respect, the anti-thesis of "opera seria".
Instead of the gods and Italian mythological heroes like "Enea", from classical history, the characters are high-waymen and prostitutes.
Instead of broad spans of embellished melody ("melopea"), the tunes are simple and direct.
Instead of a falsetto castrato, the protagonist is A TENOR ("all singers above", as Gilbert would have it) -- a rarity in opera seria.
----
Pepusch and Gay satirize the court and ARISTOCRATIC entertainment.
At the same time, they carefully instill into the work a naive moral purpose which, while designed to appeal to the taste of a middle-class audience, is calculated NOT to offend the ARISTOCRACY at large. (Indeed, one wonders if classes can be distinguished thus!)
Ironically, Gay really writes a "play" rather than an "opera" (as the Italians conceive this), and we can claim "Beggar's Opera" is a misnomer. There is a meta-operatic side to this. The beggar is supposed to have composed an opera that he is presenting to the audience.
Gay originally intends the songs to be sung entirely "without accompaniment" (almost 'recitativo secco', as the Italians would have it -- cfr. Peri, 'recitare cantando').
It was when Colley Gibber refuses Gay the opportunity of performing "The Beggar's Opera" at Drury Lane, that John Rich, at whose theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields the thing was first seen in 1728 persuades Gay to allow his resident musical director, one Johann Pepusch, to 'enrich' the a cappella tunes with some sort of an accompaniment.
This alteration of Gay's plans, in fact, does not work to the play's advantage throughout.
For example, the pace of Act 3: scene 13, where the tenor Macheath sits in the condemned cell drinking and singing snatches of ten different songs (cfr. my favourite ever, "Roses and Lilies") is seriously impeded.
As a consequence of its being a last-minute decision, Pepusch's arrangements are fragmentary and sketchy.
Because of this, the unusual convention arises that all revivals of "The Beggar's Opera" become musically updated.
Arne and then Bishop both produce later versions of "The Beggar's Opera".
They are among the first to build a tradition which has lasted to the present day.
Frederic Austin's -- my favourite! -- 1920 arrangement of the score, runs for over three years at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith.
It is the most acclaimed revival so far during the twentieth century.
(It can be heard in Jeremy Irons's film, "A Chorus of Disapproval", based on the play by Ayckbourne.
"The Beggar's Opera" provides the stimulus for Brecht and Weill's revolutionary land-mark in the history of modern musical theatre, "Die Drei Groschen Oper", written to commemorate the bicentenary of Gay's pioneering drama in 1928.
This time, however, the shafts of political satire are aimed from the perspective of the proletariat rather than the bourgeoisie.
---- A MUSICAL ANALYSIS OF "BEGGAR'S OPERA": what's operatic about it?
The source for the majority of Pepusch's and Gay's tunes in "The Beggar's Opera" is the collection
"Pills to Purge Melancholy"
by the bawdy Restoration poet Tom Durfey (or, spelt in the quasi-aristocratic manner he preferred, "D'Urfey").
This fact is clear because the tunes are cited by the names they bear in this collection by D'Urfey, even when they exist under different titles elsewhere.
Most of the Scotch songs are from Thomson's "Orfeo caledonio", to which Gay's patroness, the Duchess of Queensbury, subscribes.
Many other songs are originally from theatrical productions, including Italian opera.
Among them are simple, tuneful pieces by
Henry Purcell (of "Didone ed Enea" fame)
Eccles
Leveridge, and even
Handel ("Let us take the road" from "Rinaldo") ("Tweedledum")
and Bononcini ("Tweedledee")
The tunes are sometimes not simple enough, however, as the incorrect version of Handel's march from his opera seria "Rinaldo" (1711) demonstrates.
No doubt the reason for Pepusch's error was that the march (which becomes "Let us take the road") is notated from memory, either from its regular performance by the band of The Royal Horse Guards, or its previous parody as a tavern song,
'Let the Waiter Bring Clean Glasses'. (This becomes, "Let us take the road")
Gay may be entirely unaware that he had converted what in "Rinaldo" was a march of the Christians into a march of the highwaymen (But then again he may not).
-------
Allan Ramsay's "The Gentle Shepherd" (1725), which he described as a Scots pastoral comedy with songs to ballad airs, is often considered a fore-runner of "The Beggar's Opera" and other "ballad operas", as they came to be labelled (which is doubly misleading, in that they are not operas and their musical sources are not ballads -- a double misnomer if ever there was one).
The truth is that, until the success of Gay's "opera", Ramsay's "The Gentle Shepherd" was a spoken play with just *four* songs.
Only following an Edinburgh production of "The Beggar's Opera" does Ramsay augment the musical substance of "The Gentle Shepherd" to twenty 'sangs'.
Theophilus Gibber adapts this version for performance in London as "Patie and Peggy" in 1730.
The latter's father, Colley Gibber, who shows initial lack of enthusiasm for Gay's "Beggar Opera" already leaps onto the band-wagon with his own ballad opera, "Love in a Riddle" in 1729.
That same year, in Dublin, the major theatrical centre outside London, Charles Coffey produces "The Beggar's Wedding".
------ ANATOMY OF A "BALLAD OPERA".
The success of a ballad "opera" depends on its librettist alone.
It is the librettist alone who selects the already existing (sometimes operatic) tunes to which they wished to write parodied words.
It is not surprising to find prestigious literary figures such as Henry Fielding joining the growing numbers attracted to this genre ("The Roast Beef of Old England" -- a drawing-room ballad if ever there was one).
Fielding is also not averse to creating political controversy, as "The Welsh Opera" of 1731 shows (rewritten as "Grub Street Opera")
Here, political satire is directed at both parties and even involves the Royal Family, typically (the darling of the aristocracy and landed gentry, and upper class generally).
In 1737, the government has had enough and passes "The Licensing Act" in response to continuing satirical attacks.
From now on, there are to be only two legitimate theatres in London:
(a) The "Opera House" at Covent Garden and
(b) Drury Lane.
Further, all plays are subject to a well-regulated system of censorship.
The limitation on theatre numbers lasts until 1843.
The strict enforcement of censorship begun by the Act lasts until 1968.
There are also completely original works, like Thomas Arne's "Thomas and Sally: an opera" (1760), composed to a libretto by Isaac Bickerstaffe.
"Thomas and Sally" has a small cast, lasts under an hour, and is performed at Covent Garden as an 'after-piece' opera to an Italian opera seria.
Although described by Burney as having very little musical merit, it is an immediate and lasting success.
For the most part, Thomas Arne writes the simple strophic settings (that is, the same tune for each verse) which dominate ballad opera.
The melodic style, however, is more ornate than the typical pastoral ballad airs.
This indicates a further sophistication in Arne.
It also indicates a return to the influence of the ITALIAN OPERATIC aria which, because of its "aristocratic" tics, was felt to be more "refined" than the plain English song.
Another ITALIAN feature in Arne's "Thomas and Sally" is the use of the declamatory musical style known as "recitative" -- instead of plain spoken dialogue.
On top of all this, Thomas Arne also has a penchant for Scottish elements of a fashionable artificiality.
The overture to "Tom and Sally" contains a scotch gavotte which demonstrates this quality in its title and style.
The reason for the opera's appreciation must be attributed in part to Thomas, the hero, and his chauvinism.
Thomas arrives on stage fresh
'From ploughing the ocean and threshing mounsieur'
Britain was in the midst of the Seven Years War.
The character of "Thomas" is a forerunner of the jolly Jack Tar who is later given enormous popularity by Dibdin.
"Thomas" constantly employs nautical metaphors and even interprets the squire's attempted rape of his beloved Sally as "a pirate just about to board my prize".
The moral of Thomas Arne's (non-pastoral) ballad opera, "Thomas and Sally", is one that becomes a great favourite of the Victorian bourgeoisie, who never tires of recommending it to those who lacked fortune or position.
It is summed up in Sally, the milkmaid's remark:
Virtue commands me
Be honest and poor.
The emphasis throughout is on true-heartedness, thus contrasting markedly with the fickleness of the characters in "The Beggar's Opera", an arrangement of which Thomas Arne had produced at Covent Garden the year before.
OTHER ENGLISH OPERATIC COMPOSERS:
T There is no space here to discuss the stage entertainments of composers like:
--- Samuel Arnold (whose "Inkle and Yarico" (1787) concerned slavery in the West Indies and was contemporary with Wilberforce's agitation) and the author of the opera with the longest title ever.
--- James Hook, of "Lass of Richmond Hill" fame.
--- Thomas Linley,
--- Stefano Storace -- who wrote THREE ITALIAN OPERAS (in the Italian language) before venturing in a long succession of successes of English-language Italian operas (including a translation of Cherubini) and "The Cherokee" -- the first English opera based on the American Wild West.
------
Charles Dibdin, although he too creates some pieces in the ballad-"opera" vein, such as "The Waterman" (1774) and "The Seraglio" (1776), is treated separately in connection with his more original table entertainments. -- but cfr. "The Operas of Charles DIDBIN".
-----
The most 'popular' type of "opera" towards the close of the eighteenth century in London was a light sentimental comedy which contained a mixture of original music, favourite tunes or 'airs' from Italian operas, and traditional airs.
The musical director of Covent Garden at this time was William SHIELD (1748-1829), and those of his operas which are most admired are of the "after-piece" variety rather than full length, and they use traditional airs alongside freshly composed music.
Shield's "Rosina" (1782) contains the tune now sung to the words 'Auld Lang Syne', and was, indeed, responsible for the spreading of this melody's popularity throughout England.
The song by Shield, 'The Plough Boy', with its attractive 'whistling' piccolo part, comes from "The Farmer: an opera" (1787), one of the many operas he wrote in partnership with the Irish dramatist John O'Keefe.
An authentic composition of Shield's which became a war horse of the Victorian drawing room and parlour was "The Wolf", from his and O'Keefe's "The Castle of Andalusia: an opera" (1798).
at the peaceful midnight hour
every sense, and every pow'r
fetter'd lies in downy sleep
then our careful watch we keep
while the wolf in nightly prowl
bays the moon with hideous howl
gates are barr'd - a vain resistance
females shriek, but no assistance
silence, or you meet your fate
your keys, your jewels, cash and plate
locks, bolts, and bars, soon fly asunder
then to rifle, rob, and plunder.
It held a place throughout the nineteenth century as one of the half-dozen best-known "bass" songs.
Shield's 'The Wolf" does much to encourage a cult for the low-pitched menacing song.
Not that it is so very alarming.
No one had heard the 'hideous howl' of a wolf in Britain for over half a century
It is specifically aimed at the wealthy
'silence, or you meet your fate'
might be taken by the average person as a threat of death, but the main emphasis is on the fear of losing possessions rather than one's life.
The precious possessions whose possible loss chills the hearts of the drawing-room audience are the vanities of luxury — jewels, cash, and plate.
The reason needs to be explored why, at this stage of evolution of the English opera (and Italian opera as was performed in London), a drawing-room classic should emerge.
As noted above, the words to "The Wolf" relate to the fears of the wealthy bourgeois, but why did the song survive musically?
A song such as Shield's'The Wolf' (from "The castle of Andalusia") presents itself as unaffected, realistic, while at the same time imaginative and polished.
Yet, some of its features, for example, the excessive use of SEQUENCE (the repetition of a melodic phrase at a different pitch) borrowed from the Italian opera aria, would have sounded ROUTINE and old-fashioned in the nineteenth century.
The principal explanation for its continued musical fascination would seem to be the possibilities it offered for a melo-dramatic rendition.
The tempo moves from a gentle, rocking rhythm for the sleepy world, to a slightly quicker, atmospheric section for the prowling wolf, to a vigorous final section for the robbing and plundering.
The stimulating effect of the increases in speed, which are coupled to similar increases in loudness, only wanted the addition of a dramatic flair on the part of the singer to be sure, in the language of the day, of creating astonishment in the listener.
--- BRAHAM
The next OPERATIC composer relevant to this survey, the tenor John Braham (1774-1854), one of the most celebrated tenors of the first half of the nineteenth century, contributed three perennial favourites to the drawing-room repertoire:
-- the song 'The Anchor's Weigh'd'
-- the duet 'All's Well', and
-- the recitative and aria 'The Death of Nelson'.
----
None of Braham's songs display any willingness to venture beyond the simplest harmonies.
(a)
"The anchor's weigh'd", for example, moved thousands to tears with its yearning pauses and its pathetic farewells uttered by the sailor lad parting from his true-love.
(b)
"All's well" contains the drama of excited questioning between the voices.
But elsewhere they sing in the plainest sweetest-sounding harmony.
The duet of "All's well" was the first to give wide popularity to the partnership of tenor and bass, a blend of voices chosen by Balfe in 1857 for perhaps the most famous of all drawing-room duets, his setting of Longfellow's "Excelsior".
Braham's duet originally appeared in "The English Fleet: an opera" in 1842, an "opera" written for Covent Garden in 1803 in return for what was, by the standards of the time, the enormous sum of one thousand guineas.
(c)
Many Victorians expected the tenor aria 'The Death of Nelson', from the opera "The Americans: an operar" of 1811, to confer immortality on the name of Braham, and it did.
Instead, Braham acquired the anonymity which W. H. Auden said all great artists should aspire to, when, in 1931, the editor of "The Oxford Song Book" included this by now traditional song with the composer given as "unknown" (to him, that is).
This neglect was unkind, even if an old rumour was believed that Braham based his piece on a French sailors' song, for it would still have required extensive re-working in order to accommodate S. J. Arnold's lengthy stanzas.
The Oxford version also omits the preceding atmospheric recitative
'O'er Nelson's tomb'
and rejects Brahams most imaginative music, the first fourteen bars of verse 3, in favour of a repeat of the equivalent bars in verses 1 and 2.
RECIT.
o'er Nelson's tomb with silent grief oppress'd
Britannia mourns her hero now at rest
but those bright laurels ne'er shall fade with years
whose leaves are water'd by a nation's tears.
ARIA
'twas in Trafalgar's bay
we saw the Frenchmen lay
each heart was bounding then
we scorn'd the foreign yoke
for our ships were British oak
& hearts of oak our men
our Nelson mark'd them on the wave
three cheers our gallant seamen gave
nor tho't of home or beauty
along the line this signal ran
England expects that every man
this day will do his duty
& now the cannons roar
along th' affrighted shore
our Nelson led the way:
his ship the vict'ry named
long be that vict'ry famed
for vict'ry crowned the day
but dearly was that conquest bought
too well the gallant hero fought
for England, home & beauty
he cried, as 'midst the fire he ran
England shall find that every man
this day will do his duty
at last the fatal wound
which spread dismay around
the hero's breast received
heav'n fights upon our side
the day's our own!' he cried
now long enough I've lived
in honour's cause my life was pass'd
in honour's cause I fall at last
for England, home, and beauty
thus ending life as he began
England confess'd that every man
that day had done his duty.
The tenor is frequently interrupted by fanfare-like musical punctuations which are designed to arouse those whose emotions have not already been overtaken by patriotic sentiment.
The well-known words concerning "England, home, and beauty" are set tranquilly and lyrically to obtain maximum dramatic contrast.
The tragic final verse begins with a conventional switch to the MINOR KEY to convey melancholy.
And the receipt of the fatal wound is recorded loudly and sonorously in the depths of the accompaniment.
The words attempt to engage the listener's sympathy by continual use of the possessive pronoun 'our', 'our ships', 'our men', 'our Nelson' (twice), 'Heav'n fights upon our side!'
Ostensibly, this is because it is sung by a participant in the battle of Trafalgar.
Yet, notice the lines 'HIS ship the "Vict'ry" named' (not OUR ship), and 'Three cheers our gallant seamen gave' (not WE gallant seamen).
It is clearly aimed at those who did NO fighting and invites them to bask in the glory of victory, sharing the pride of being part of a nation which has produced such a hero as Nelson.
Naval victories of previous years are conjured up by the quotation of words from the eighteenth-century patriotic song by Garrick and Boyce, 'Heart of Oak,' Nelson's famous call for Englishmen to do their duty could not fail to swell the patriotic breast of the industrial bourgeois faced with no more immediate danger than a decline in the rate of profit.
--- HOME HOME SWEET SWEET HOME -- Payne in East Hampton.
Braham's junior by twelve years, Sir Henry Rowley Bishop (1786-1855) was a composer of immense importance to early nineteenth-century theatre music.
Over a dozen of Bishop's songs, taken in the main from stage productions (some of them labelled "operas") remained in the drawing-room repertoire for the rest of the century -- and beyond.
Even in 1918 there were prestigious musicians who believed Bishop's songs had 'put on immortality'.
Bishop's only compositions at all familiar today are the song "Home Sweet Home" and the dance 'The Dashing White Sergeant', taken from the song of that title composed to verses by General Burgoyne in 1826.
It was one of his English operas (in reality, for the most part a spoken play) "Clari; or, The Maid of Milan" (1823) that his famous song "Home, Sweet Home" was first heard, sung by one Miss Maria Tree.
"Home Sweet Home" functions in this domestic drama as an all-pervading melancholy tune which stamps its character on the entire piece.
Yet, in 1829, Bishop decides something fresh was required to exploit the success of "Home Sweet Home" and puts on a drama called, not surprisingly "Home, Sweet Home".
-----
The tune of the verse (but not the refrain) exists in a Gouldmg and Dalmaine publication of 1821, "Melodies of Various Nations", edited by Bishop.
Here, also, are several other airs by Bishop, masquerading under such descriptions as 'Portuguese' or 'Hindostanee'.
His air labelled "Sicilian" (to become "Home, home, sweet sweet home" -- or rather, "'Mid pleasures and palaces though I may roam") has words by the fashionable poet Thomas Haynes Bayly: '
-- to the home of my childhood in sorrow I came.
Bishop later deposed on oath in court that he had composed the tune himself, being unable to locate a genuine Sicilian air which went more or less like that.
The words of the SECOND version, which now includes a REFRAIN ("home, home, sweet sweet home") are by John Howard Payne, an American actor and dramatist, who ironically never had a settled home. (Although his "Home" is still in East Hampton, my favourite Hampton, almost).
Widespread as the song's fame was in the late 1820s its celebrity and cultural importance increased towards the end of Bishop's life when it became a favourite of the 'Swedish Nightingale', Jenny Lind -- and later Patti ("When Patti Sang Home Sweet Home" -- "Tin Pan Opera").
Bishop, however, seems to have felt greater financial satisfaction than musical pride in its success.
Jacqueline Bratton, in "The Victorian Popular Ballad", quite rightly points out that it is an assemblage of talasmanic words'.
But Bratton is misled by its emotional associations in describing it as a 'wailing, tear-laden tune'.
One has only to listen to a tune like Tucker's 'Sweet Genevieve', which aptly suits that description, to realize how very PLAIN Professsor Bishop's melody is by contrast.
Even so, it has an "Italianate" (shall we say?) quality in its simplicity, more reminiscent of an aria such as Handel's 'Verdi prati' from Handel's Italian opera "Alcina" (1735) than a proper *English* air (and it _was_ Sicilian, no?)
A typical "operatic " feature is the musical decoration around the significant words.
'there's no place like home'
which is completely ironed out in many late Victorian editions.
The accompaniment is a variant if an eighteenth-century cliché known as "The Alberti Bass" (after one Italian named Alberti).
Another cliché is the trilling accompaniment to
'the birds singing gaily'
although its naïve simplicity almost disarms criticism among us disarmed.
Harmonically, the song also demonstrates the same "artlessness", as Bratton should call it.
"Home Sweet Home" consists of no more than four different chords throughout -- pathetic, no?
The melody, except for two of its moments of brief ornamentation, uses only the notes of the major scale and is, of course, of narrow range, as any tenor who wants to shine in singing this, may testify.
Each line of the verse and refrain comes to rest on either the first or third degree of the scale.
Bishop constantly requires a hushed vocal tone and asks for the voice to be SLIGHTLY raised just once, for the penultimate
'there's NO place like home.'
Note that 'home' is always begun with a capital letter, as if to emphasize its hallowed quality. (But it's a good thing that a tenor SINGS the song, rather than WRITES it).
The words had universal appeal, for, no matter what or where one's home was, it could be argued that that there was (or will be) no place like it -- especially in East Hampton.
If a person no longer possessed a home, it evoked nostalgia or recalled the Christian promise of a heavenly home in the hereafter.
To the working class, the home was increasingly the retreat from the exhaustion, tedium, and alienation of their labour.
The many paintings which adopt the title of this song depict a multiplicity of homes, from a wealthy young middle-class couple with a baby to a dog lying content in his kennel. My favourite is a vintage postcard from East Hampton ("The Lost Hamptons").
The universality of appeal and the simplicity and ready comprehensibility of the musical language of "Home, home, sweet sweet home" equipped it for a hegemonic role.
The journalist and poet Dr Charles Mackay maintained that it had done more than statesmanship or legislation to keep alive in the hearts of the people the virtues that nourish at the fireside'
Even a group of Zulus, members of the only tribe in South Africa to resist the might of British imperialism, were reported to have been melted by a performance of this song by the celebrated Marie Albani, in Kimberly, albeit in Italianate diction.
Superficially, "Home Sweet Home" seems to be addressed to the person living in a lowly home -- if one can call "East Hampton" lowly!
In reality, it is aimed at the new urban wealthy, in whom it awakens tender reassurances that the change in their fortunes has not entailed a change in the simplicity of their hearts.
"Home Sweet Home" provides with a nostalgic yearning for the simple life which is a fantasy of rustic bliss (trotting out of the cottage to call to the gaily singing birds) rather than a picture of the actual poverty and squalor endured by most occupants of humble country cottages.
The emphasis on 'home' implies that a spiritual, if not material, contentment is available to everyone peace of mind is 'dearer than all'.
Listeners are assured that they would not be seduced by the glittering splendour of a palace because it would not be home (cfr. 'marble halls', 'the top of St. Paul's').
Its "Italian" (shall we say? -- or is it Sicilian) manner gives it polite sophistication but, unlike some of Bishop's output, it does not display an affectedly "Italian" style -- for as we shall see, the whole point of being "English" is NOT to be "Italian" ("We dislike affectation").
--- BISHOP'S OTHER OUTPUT.
On the other hand, Bishop's song 'Tell Me My Heart' makes use of the characteristic turns of musical phrase designed for the common weak endings of *Italian* words for the setting of strong one-syllable English words.
Careful attention is paid to the accenting of words -- a care not shown by editors of later editions.
The music is not merely repeated for verse two.
Rhythmic differences are notated with some subtlety.
For instance, Bishop marks that the word 'dearer' is to be sung at a quicker pace than the words 'met with' which occur at the corresponding position in verse 1.
Bishop is nowadays known solely for the simplest of his songs, in spite of his enormous efforts to please his contemporary audience and singers.
Bishop was willing to furnish them with music in any vein which was profitable.
If this meant cashing in on the success of others, so be it.
'Tis When To Sleep', from "The Maniac" (1810), is a most flattering imitation of Shield's best-seller, 'The Wolf.
For virtuoso singers, Bishop is ready to compose display pieces which would guarantee them rapturous applause.
A few of these, such as 'Lo here the gentle lark', remains in the repertoire of operatic divas like Amelita Galli-Curci this century -- notaby in the Singing Lesson of Barbiere.
Bishop's rewards were not just financial (most of these gains were quickly spent).
Bishop was one of the first professors of music at the University of Edinburgh -- where Senate Jealousy restricted the time allowed for music lectures to a maximum of two per year.
Bishop was the first musician to receive a knighthood.
Bishop replaced Dr Crotch as "Professor of Music" at the University of Oxford towards the end of his life, becoming a doctor of music himself.
Bishop's work consolidates the new blend of drama and music which had developed in the eighteenth century.
Bishop ensures the English opera's survival as a RIVAL to the *Italian* variety.
-----
The biggest problem facing English opera was that it had won no real status as an art-form because of the SCORN of the English aristocracy (On the other hand, the Italian aristocrats, who knew it, loved it!)
There was still a noticeable class division in the audience for opera -- and one wonders why non-aristocrats even bothered to go! :).
The aristocracy, on one side, showed contempt for the *English* opera ("I don't care what lingo opera is sung in, provided it's a lingo I don't understand").
The English middle class, on the other hand, felt suspicious of the foreign -- oddly, "Italian" -- variety -- particularly on moral and religious (anti-Catholic) grounds.
The division is observable in the fact that between 1792-1843 the King's Theatre in the Haymarket (which became Her Majesty's on the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837) was the ONLY London theatre LICENSED to perform opera in Italian.
Cfr. later "The Royal ITALIAN Opera" at Covent Garden as from 1841 to 1892.
Strictly, the English middle class *differs* in their attitude to "Italian" opera in a factional way among themselves.
Some mebers of the 'middle class' respect the "Italian" taste of the English aristocracy.
Indeed they may seek to emulate it (or show it)
Others, notably the largely non-conformist industrial bourgeoisie, were inclined to reject ALL Italian opera as "decadent".
For English aristocratic taste, the Italian language only is considered the perfect medium for singing.
The lack of diphthongs in Italian means
pure vowel sounds, which in
turn means steadier pitch and evenness of tone.
The artistic status of Balfe's "The Bohemian Girl" was considerably raised when it was given at Her Majesty's in Italian translation, as "La Zingara".
It was rare for any opera to be presented in English at the Haymarket, and during the years 1810—40, it was
Mozart,
Bellini,
Donizetti, and
Rossini
who were the most frequently performed composers.
Although ITALIAN opera began to gain ground among the middle class thanks to the charm of Rossini, it should be stressed that this wider "middle class" audience was for Italian opera, as translated into English.
Rossini's music first won over the Covent Garden audience in 1829, when Robin Lacy used music from Rossini's "Semiramide" for an operatic adaptation of Scott's "Ivanhoe", giving the work the fashionable title "The Maid of Judah".
Virginal heroines are frequently found in opera titles at this time, perhaps as a guarantee of the moral wholesomeness of the drama.
Once Rossini's music had been accepted at Covent Garden, there was bound to be a certain amount of influence on this theatre's other stage entertainments because the same singers were used in all the repertoire.
When Alfred Bunn became lessee of both Covent Garden and Drury Lane in 1833, the influence was spread further as a result of the meanness of Bunn's contracts which committed his singers to performances at both his theatres -- sometimes on the same evening.
Bunn was one among many who believed that a fusion of elements between English and ITALIAN opera could produce a national variety of grand opera which would be universally admired and consequently prove immensely profitable.
It is Bunn who makes determined efforts to establish an English operatic tradition.
Together with Edward Fitzball (originally of the unadorned surname Ball), and occasionally working in partnership with him, Bunn dominates the writing of libretti.
In 1835, Bunn stages Balfe's first success, "The Siege of Rochelle" (libretto by Fitzball) which ran for three months at Drury Lane.
The next year, in 1836, scenting a windfall, Bunn overcomes his customary parsimony and offeres the celebrated Madame Malibran the unprecedented salary of £125 a week in order to persuade her to sing the title role in another Balfe opera, "The Maid of Artois", a setting of Bunn's own libretto.
Alas, neither Bunn nor Balfe were to make their fortune with the opera "The Maid of Artois", partly because they failed to recognize the exact nature of the artistic compromises which had to be made if an English opera was to achieve success.
The unavoidable conflict of artistic principles which composers and librettists faced but seldom satisfactorily resolved is an important one.
Bunn often translates and adapts what he thought to be suitably romantic libretti from operas which had been successful in Italy.
"The daughter of St Mark " (music by Balfe), for example, is based on a French libretto by J-H. V. de St Georges, "La Reine de Chypre", set to music by Halevy three years earlier, in 1841.
Plagiarism was by no means confined to Bunn in England.
Lachner's "Catharina Comoro" (Munich, 1841) and Donizetti's "Catarina Comoro" (Naples, 1844) are both musical settings of versions of the same original French libretto.
A survey of English opera in nineteenth-century Britain is only relevant here in so far as it acts as one of the store-houses of drawing-room song.
It will suffice to give brief descriptions of the character and output of the most successful composers working in this field, and to single out Balfe as a representative figure for closer scrutiny.
BALFE.
The dream of many composers was of being the first to sow the seed of a strong English operatic tradition.
The conditions for growth were made unfavourable, however, by the presence of two conflicting demands.
One of these was dictated by the drama.
The other was dictated by the middle-class audience.
The middle-class (rather than aristocratic) audience tends to judge opera by the resources it offers for use in the drawing room or "parlour" -- a good motto, if ever there is one.
A perfect "Italian" (even) opera, from this point of view, is a chain of 'favourite airs'.
Obviously, this limited the dramatic interaction between characters, because of the resulting restriction imposed upon ensemble passages (Mozart's rapid and eventful "Nozze di Figaro", for example, is full of ensembles).
While Bunn was trying to establish English opera at his theatres, the Lyceum re-opened its doors as the English Opera House -- to compete with Covent Garden's "Royal Italian Opera".
In a bid to stimulate interest, The English Opera House at the Lycaeum began its first season with a grand opera, "Nourjahad", composed by Edward James LODER (1813-65) and based on a play by Arnold, the theatre's manager.
The real success, however, came with the next production, "The Mountain Sylph" by John Barnett (1802-90).
Barnett shows his artistic aspirations in opting for recitative instead of spoken dialogue, which gave "The Mountain Sylph" the distinction of being the first through-composed English opera since Arne's Artaxerxes.
In spite of that, "The Mountain Sylph" ran for three months initially and remained in favour for the rest of the century.
Indeed, Gilbert and Sullivan's "Iolanthe; or the Peer and the Peri", consciously satirizes it.
Nevertheless, the English Opera House at the Lycaeum is not financially viable.
Barnett himself later fails in two attempts to set up a permanent venue for English opera.
When Barnett leaves for Cheltenham in 1841 to devote his career to the teaching of singing, he took with him the conviction that there was a conspiracy to crush English opera on the part of concert promoters.
LODER.
Loder also decides to leave for the provinces, though he too had enjoyed a notable success with a fairy-tale romantic opera, "The Night Dancers".
Loder obtained the post of musical director at the Theatre Royal, Manchester, in 1851.
If Loder had hopes of greater success for English opera in the liberal climate there, he was mistaken.
Loder's last important opera, "Raymond and Agnes" (libretto by Fitzball), fails because the music was too difficult for a provincial theatre to cope with in 1855.
Loder has a limited success in the drawing room, but his music clearly shows that he is torn by conflicting interests.
Sometimes Loder writes in the style of the English 'traditional' air, as in his two popular settings of H. F. Chorley, '
The brave old aak' and
'The three ages of love'.
At other times, Loder demonstrates his dramatic skills and his indebtedness to the ITALIAN romantic operatic aria, as in 'The Diver'.
----
The Irish composer William Vincent Wallace (1812-65) was regarded with a mixture of disapproval and admiration as a wild rover.
The son of a band-master, Wallace becomes, perhaps surprisingly, not a wind player but an outstanding violinist and pianist.
Wallace is much involved with the rich musical life of Dublin as a young man.
Then, at the age of twenty-three, Wallace emigrates with his wife to Tasmania.
A few years later, heavily in debt, Wallace deserts his wife and child and fled to South America.
Here, and afterwards in North America, Wallace builds considerable fame as a performer.
Wallace also begins concocting stories about his past - his service in punitive expeditions against the Maoris, his rescue by a chief's daughter, and all manner of well-received apocrypha.
When Wallace finally comes to London in 1845, Fitzball, who nourished the idea of being a wild man himself, was impatient for his consent to the request that he compose the music to "Maritana".
If an operatic heroine was not a fairy or a maid then she would more than likely be, as "Maritana" is, a gypsy.
Fitzball no doubt assumes that this would suit Wallace's temperament, and he was proved right when Wallace completed the score the same year.
The opera had a successful run only exceeded in the nineteenth century by Balfe's "The Bohemian Girl" (another gypsy).
In "Maritana", Wallace manages to maintain the delicate balance between the demands of stage drama and home music-making.
Wallace's "MARITANA" has "favourite airs" in plenty
--
'Yes let me like a soldier fall'
'Alas those chimes so sweetly stealing'
'There Is a Flower'
'Scenes That Are Brightest', etc. --
but also contains some well-thought-out concerted sections (such as the finale to Act II).
I DREAMED THAT I DWELT IN MARBLE HALLS -- "La Zingara"
Michael William BALFE (1808-70), another Irish composer, was the person who seems most likely to establish a proud future for English opera in view of the acclaim he received for "The Siege of Rochelle", "The Maid of Artois", and greatest of all for "The Bohemian Girl" (aka LA ZINGARA) which was first presented at Drury Lane in 1843 and went on to become the most frequently performed English opera after "The Beggar's Opera".
Balfe's experience as a professional singer (like Braham he had toured widely as a young man) obviously stood him in good stead as a composer for the voice.
Balfe is not concerned, however, with trying to thrill the opera audience with the virtuosity of vocal displays by characters on stage.
Musical fireworks might win admiration for the singer but they would hamper sales of the song.
Balfe learns this lesson the hard way when, flushed with success, he ambitiously followed "The Bohemian Girl" with a 'grand opera seria' "The Daughter of St Mark", making few concessions to the amateur market.
"The daughter of St. Mark" effectively demonstrates to Balfe the financial penalty of a failure in the drawing room.
Balfe concentrates his skill afterwards into writing simple, affecting melodies.
As a result, more operatic airs by Balfe found then way into the drawing room than those of any other composer.
Because of the close links Balfe and Bishop enjoyed with the fashionable area of Covent Garden, they were both able to command higher sums for their songs than the majority of composers.
Balfe in particular is prepared to engage in hard bargaining over this lucrative source of income.
The best-known number from "The Bohemian Girl" was, and still is, the soprano air:
I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls
with vassals & serfs at my side
& of all those assembled within those walls
that I was the hope & the pride
I had riches too great to count could boast
of a high ancestral name
but I also dreamt which pleased me most
that you loved me still the same
I dreamt that suitors sought my hand
that knights upon bended knee
& with vows no maiden heart could withstand
they pledged their faith to me
& I dreamt that one of that noble host
came forth my hand to claim
but I also dreamt which charmed me most
that you loved me still the same.
This is a perfect example of the detachable English operatic air (vide: "From the Royal Italian Opera to the Drawing-Room").
"I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls" relies in no way upon any knowledge of its function in Act II nor, indeed, is any understanding of the opera's plot necessary to make sense of the words.
It therefore has the advantage of appealing to those of the middle class who felt uncomfortable about attending opera performances and who chose to avoid the risk of being infected by the theatre's not altogether scrupulous consideration of moral proprieties -- on top of which, it was often a pick-up place for prostitutes.
The title, "The Bohemian Girl", suggests that unsavoury characters may be represented on stage.
Bohemianism can also extend, in a more alarming manner, to the subversive status of a counter-culture, particularly among rebellious creative artists.
In opera, bohemianism is little else than simple escapism.
The gypsies are no more of the real world than the fairies.
In the case of 'I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls', not only are words and music part of a self-contained unit which makes sense outside of its original operatic context, but mood and message comply with the requirements for consumption in the INTIMACY of the drawing room.
The mood is nostalgic, the vein of melancholy Bunn taps most successfully.
Memory provides Bunn with the theme of this air, as in many of his other well-known lyrics, such as
'The light of other days'
'The heart bow'd Down' ('mem'ry is the only friend')
'When other lips' ('you'll remember me').
'The Dream' is Arline's subconscious memory other childhood.
Its message out of context is clear.
The love of a good man is more important than the possession of marble halls, the services of vassals, or the payment o homage by knights.
The contemporary bourgeois listener is thus given room to consider the by-gone accoutrements of feudal power in a harmlessly romantic light and led to ponder instead upon the wider mysteries of the power of love and the strength of individual character.
Balfe attempts to evoke a mood by eschewing the overtly dramatic technique of 'word-painting'.
The mood is one of exhilaration.
It is conveyed by the giddy waltz-like momentum and the breathless repetition of the words about being loved.
Balfe creates the effect of breathlessness by allowing scarcely any time for the singer to inhale before each of the last two musical phrases in both verses.
True to his usual form, Balfe is cavalier in his word setting.
He specifies an off-beat rhythmic effect in the middle of many of the bars but is unconcerned that, because of this, accents fall on unimportant words such as 'at' and 'of', or on unstressed syllables as in 'assembled'.
Worse still, Balfe rides roughshod over the enjambment in lines 5-6, breaking up the continuity of meaning by writing a separate musical phrase for each line.
Balfe does the same thing with even more devastating effect in "Thaddeus"' Act III air '
'The fair land of Poland'
when he brings a positive conclusion to a musical phrase at the end of line 2.
when the fair land of Poland was plough'd by the hoof
of the ruthless invader when might
with steel to the bosom & flame to the roof
completed her triumph o'er right:
Enjambment is not a device which lends itself readily to convincing musical treatment so Balfe prefers to ignore it.
Influence of the ITALIAN opera composers on the style of Balfe's melodies and accompaniments is evident.
The contention that there is an all-pervasive imitation of Rossini is, however, an exaggeration.
The trio in "The Daughter of St Mark", for instance, bears an unmistakable family resemblance to the quartet in Beethoven's Fidelio.
A typical Rossini-like feature employed by Balfe is the repetition of a musical phrase which seems to be on the point of concluding a melodic sentence.
Earlier examples, however, are easily found in Mozart.
Balfe appropriates enough ITALIAN features to appear progressive and fashionable.
But Balfe knows full well that
Bellini, Donizetti, and
Rossini are RARELY heard in the drawing room.
Rosina's aria 'Una voce poco fa' from Act II of Rossini's The Barber of Seville may have been a great favourite with opera audiences, who could appreciate the rapid runs and elaborate decorations woven around what was a simple and appealing melodic skeleton.
But "Una voce poco fa" demands a virtuoso soprano technique which rules it out for amateur performance.
Balfe is careful to introduce only slight decoration in his airs, after noting that the loudly applauded virtuoso numbers he had written for celebrated singers like Malibran did more for their performers' reputations than for his own pocket.
Balfe enjoys using the ITALIAN procedure of following a succession of two-bar phrases with an extended and decorated closing phrase.
Again, this had been done by Mozart, had been taken up by Rossini, and is found later with greater frequency in Donizetti and Bellini.
Balfe uses this procedure, in preference to a straightforward repetition of his final phrase, in many of his most 'popular' airs, such as
'The heart bow'd down',
'When other lips',
'The light of other days'
'In this old chair' and
'The peace of the valley'.
The beautiful cavatina
'The power of love', from "Satanella", has its short structure elongated by a whole series of "Italianate" phrase extensions, motivic repetitions, and word-painting.
At the same time it retains a limpid charm typical of Balfe.
It is this melodic attractiveness that allows Balfe to succeed with a setting of Longfellow's 'The Arrow and the Song' very much "arioso" in style (a half-way house between recitative and aria) where others would have been dull.
Balfe's banality lies in his accompaniments.
Balfe's accompaniments seldom contain any melodic interest and are generally no more than repeated broken-chord patterns.
It cannot be argued that Balfe is deliberately catering for the parlour pianist, since solo piano interludes in his songs require a higher level of skill.
Nevertheless, Balfe avoids obvious clichés.
An examination of the accompaniment to
'The light of other days'
will reveal Balfe's efforts to avoid a commonplace Alberti bass.
--- AFTER BALFE.
There was a late success for an English opera at Covent Garden in 1862: "The Lily of Killamey" by Sir Julius Benedict.
Otherwise interest in English opera had flagged.
The dream of the national opera house still haunts Victorian composers, however.
The last attempt to make it a reality came with the building of the Royal English Opera House which opened in 1891 with Sullivan's succes d'estime "Ivanhoe" (libretto by J. Sturgis, after Scott).
English opera is an unpredictable art-form.
English Opera always seems ready to blossom and was always found to be blighted.
A parallel might be drawn with the twentieth-century musical and the constant high hopes which have been entertained for its potential as an elevated artistic genre.
The same demand for the detachability of certain songs is there.
The only difference is that these demands are now born of the desire to market best-selling records instead of sheet music.
-----
Max Miradin has reconstructed the lost libretto of this work, and a modern score has been published, edited by Nicholas Temperley.This aria may be found in Turner and Miall 1972: 32-34.
See Cherubino's aria Non sopiu, from Act 2 of Mozart's he Marriage of Figaro.
See the Countess's aria Dove sono, from Act 3 of the above.
See Rosina and Figaro's duet Dunque io son, from Act 2 of Rossini's The Barber of Seville.
See Percy's aria Vivi tu, tu ne scongiuro, from Act 2 of Donizetti's "Anna Bolena"
See Rodolfo's cavatina "Viravviso", from Bellini's "La Sonnambula".
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