A Second Book of Operas | Page 9

opera. It was not the Lord Chamberlain who stood
in the way of Saint-Saens's "Samson et Dalila" in the United States for
many years, but the worldly wisdom of opera managers who shrank
from attempting to stage the spectacle of the falling Temple of Dagon,
and found in the work itself a plentiful lack of that dramatic movement
which is to-day considered more essential to success than beautiful and
inspiriting music. "Samson et Dalila" was well known in its concert
form when the management of the Metropolitan Opera House first
attempted to introduce it as an opera. It had a single performance in the
season of 1894-1895 and then sought seclusion from the stage lamps
for twenty years. It was, perhaps, fortunate for the work that no attempt
was made to repeat it, for, though well sung and satisfactorily acted, the
toppling of the pillars of the temple, discreetly supported by too visible
wires, at the conclusion made a stronger appeal to the popular sense of
the ridiculous than even Saint-Saens's music could withstand. It is easy
to inveigh against the notion frivolous fribbles and trumpery trappings
receive more attention than the fine music which ought to be
recognized as the soul of the work, the vital spark which irradiates an
inconsequential material body; but human nature has not yet freed itself
sufficiently from gross clogs to attain so ideal an attitude.
It is to a danger similar to that which threatened the original New York
"Samson" that the world owes the most popular melody in Rossini's
"Mose." The story is old and familiar to the students of operatic history,
but will bear retelling. The plague of darkness opens the opera, the
passage of the Red Sea concludes it. Rossini's stage manager had no
difficulty with the former, which demanded nothing more than the
lowering of the stage lights. But he could evolve no device which could
save the final miracle from laughter. A hilarious ending to so solemn a
work disturbed the management and the librettist, Totola, who, just
before a projected revival in Naples, a year or two after the first
production, came to the composer with a project for saving the third act.
Rossini was in bed, as usual, and the poet showed him the text of the
prayer, "Dal tuo stellato," which he said he had written in an hour. "I

will get up and write the music," said Rossini; "you shall have it in a
quarter of an hour." And he kept his word, whether literally or not in
respect of time does not matter. When the opera was again performed it
contained the chorus with its melody which provided Paganini with
material for one of his sensational performances on the G-string.
[figure: a musical score excerpt]
Carpani tells the story and describes the effect upon the audience which
heard it for the first time. Laughter was just beginning in the pit when
the public was surprised to note that Moses was about to sing. The
people stopped laughing and prepared to listen. They were awed by the
beauty of the minor strain which was echoed by Aaron and then by the
chorus of Israelites. The host marched across the mimic sea and fell on
its knees, and the music burst forth again, but now in the major mode.
And now the audience joined in the jubilation. The people in the boxes,
says Carpani, stood up; they leaned over the railings; applauded; they
shouted: "Bello! bello! O che bello!" Carpani adds: "I am almost in
tears when I think of this prayer." An impressionable folk, those
Italians of less than a century ago. "Among other things that can be said
in praise of our hero," remarked a physician to Carpani, amidst the
enthusiasm caused by the revamped opera, "do not forget that he is an
assassin. I can cite to you more than forty attacks of nervous fever or
violent convulsions on the part of young women, fond to excess of
music, which have no other origin than the prayer of the Hebrews in the
third act with its superb change of key!"
Thus music saved the scene in Naples. When the opera was rewritten
for London and made to tell a story about Peter the Hermit, the
corresponding scene had to be elided after the first performance. Ebers
tells the story: "A body of troops was supposed to pass over a bridge
which, breaking, was to precipitate them into the water. The troops
being made of basketwork and pulled over the bridge by ropes,
unfortunately became refractory on their passage, and very sensibly
refused, when the bridge was about to give way, to proceed any further;
consequently when the downfall of the arches took place the basket
men remained very quietly on that part of