The Mentor, No. 47, Makers of Modern Opera

MAKERS OF MODERN OPERA

By H. E. KREHBIEL

Author and Music Critic

WAGNER

VERDI

THE MENTOR

SERIAL No. 47

DEPARTMENT OF FINE ARTS

The form of entertainment called opera had its origin a little more than three centuries ago in an effort made by a company of scholars and musical amateurs in Florence to rescue music from the artificiality into which the composers, who were all churchmen, had forced it.

The Florentine group had convinced themselves by study that music had been effectively linked with poetry and action in the Greek stage-plays, and in striving to imitate these they created the art-form which in time came to be called “opera”—though at first it was known by names all more or less closely connected with the terms which the composers of today use to describe their dramatic works,—lyric dramas, musical dramas, and so forth. The new style quickly spread over Europe, and inasmuch as Italy was the home of music, it retained for a time the Italian language and the style of musical composition evolved by its creators. Soon other nations, impelled by a desire to hear the new lyric plays, began to translate the Italian books into their own languages. This brought with it a recognition of the incongruity between Italian music and the French, German, and English languages, and the dramatic poets and musicians of these countries began to seek more satisfactory idioms in which to express their ideals. Thus there came into existence the three great schools of operatic composers whose latterday representatives are here considered.

GAETANO DONIZETTI

Two men mark the point of departure of the lyric drama of today from the general style which characterized opera all the world over during the first two centuries following its invention. They are Verdi (vair-dee), the Italian, and Wagner (vahg´-ner), the German; and, strangely enough, they were both born in 1813. The latter exercised an influence which was universal, and Verdi fell under it.

GIOACHINO ROSSINI

THE GLORY OF VERDI

But neither in precept nor in practice was the great Italian brought to disavow the native genius of his people. That is the great glory of Verdi. For decade after decade he kept pace with his German rival in the march toward truthfulness and variety of expression in the lyric drama; but never did he forget that the first, the elemental, appeal which music makes is through melody. His conception of melody changed as his artistic nature grew and ripened; but song, vocal melody, is as dominant a factor in his first successful opera, “Nabuco,” performed in 1842, as it is in “Falstaff,” which he gave to the world fifty-one years later. Verdi’s music illustrates every step of