A Book of Operas | Page 9

operas brought together in performance in order
to note the effect produced upon each other by comparison of their
scores. One effect, I fancy, would be to make the elder of the operas
sound younger than its companion, because of the greater variety and
freshness, as well as dramatic vigor, of its music. But though the names
of many of the characters would be the same, we should scarcely
recognize their musical physiognomies. We should find the sprightly
Rosina of "Il Barbiere" changed into a mature lady with a countenance
sicklied o'er with the pale cast of a gentle melancholy; the Count's tenor
would, in the short interval, have changed into barytone; Figaro's
barytone into a bass, while the buffo-bass of Don Basilio would have
reversed the process with age and gone upward into the tenor region.
We should meet with some new characters, of which two at least would
supply the element of dramatic freshness and vivacity which we should
miss from the company of the first opera--Susanna and Cherubino.
We should also, in all likelihood, be struck by the difference in the
moral atmosphere of the two works. It took Beaumarchais three years
to secure a public performance of his "Mariage de Figaro" because of
the opposition of the French court, with Louis XVI at its head, to its too
frank libertinism. This opposition spread also to other royal and
imperial personages, who did not relish the manner in which the poet
had castigated the nobility, exalted the intellectuality of menials, and
satirized the social and political conditions which were generally
prevalent a short time before the French Revolution. Neither of the
operas, however, met the obstacles which blocked the progress of the
comedies on which they are founded, because Da Ponte, who wrote the
book for Mozart, and Sterbini, who was Rossini's librettist, judiciously
and deftly elided the objectionable political element. "Le Nozze" is by
far the more ingeniously constructed play of the two (though a trifle too
involved for popular comprehension in the original language), but "Il
Barbiere" has the advantage of freedom from the moral grossness
which pollutes its companion. For the unspoiled taste of the better class

of opera patrons, there is a livelier as well as a lovelier charm in the
story of Almaviva's adventures while outwitting Dr. Bartolo and
carrying off the winsome Rosina to be his countess than in the
depiction of his amatory intrigues after marriage. In fact, there is
something especially repellent in the Count's lustful pursuit of the bride
of the man to whose intellectual resourcefulness he owed the successful
outcome of his own wooing.
It is, indeed, a fortunate thing for Mozart's music that so few
opera-goers understand Italian nowadays. The play is a moral blister,
and the less intelligible it is made by excisions in its dialogue, the better,
in one respect, for the virtuous sensibilities of its auditors. One point
which can be sacrificed without detriment to the music and at only a
trifling cost to the comedy (even when it is looked upon from the
viewpoint which prevailed in Europe at the period of its creation) is
that which Beaumarchais relied on chiefly to add piquancy to the
conduct of the Count. Almaviva, we are given to understand, on his
marriage with Rosina had voluntarily abandoned an ancient seignorial
right, described by Susanna as "certe mezz' ore che il diritto feudale,"
but is desirous of reviving the practice in the case of the Countess's
bewitching maid on the eve of her marriage to his valet. It is this
discovery which induces Figaro to invent his scheme for expediting the
wedding, and lends a touch of humor to the scene in which Figaro asks
that he and his bride enjoy the first-fruits of the reform while the
villagers lustily hymn the merits of their "virtuous" lord; but the too
frank discussion of the subject with which the dialogue teems might
easily be avoided. The opera, like all the old works of the lyrical stage,
is in sad need of intelligent revision and thorough study, so that its
dramatic as well as its musical beauties may be preserved. There is no
lovelier merit in Mozart's music than the depth and tenderness with
which the honest love of Susanna for Figaro and the Countess for her
lord are published; and it is no demerit that the volatile passion of the
adolescent Cherubino and the frolicsome, scintillant, vivacious spirit of
the plotters are also given voice. Mozart's music could not be all that it
is if it did not enter fully and unreservedly into the spirit of the comedy;
it is what it is because whenever the opportunity presented itself, he
raised it into the realm of the ideal. Yet Mozart was no Puritan. He

swam along gayly and contentedly