VOL. 33.-No. 31.

CONVERSATIONS WITH FELIX MENDELSSOHN.* (Continued from page 480.)

V.

ONE day, I succeeded in leading the conversation back again to the subject mentioned in the last chapter, and put the question to him: Whether the artist could, knowingly, do still more for his idiosyncracy, and whether he, Mendelssohn, was not conscious of certain modes of mental proceeding for this end? "Except sharp self-criticism when the work is finished, and careful alterations, I can name you no others," said Mendelssohn. "And yet," he added, after a short pause, smiling ironically, and tapping me on the shoulder, "the fact of a musician's composing more, and grubbing on less in reflection, may also assist idiosyncracy. As in every other thing in the world, so also in the case of the musician, there are secret agencies at work, which we perceive in the fact, but whose primitive grounds we can never find out. We enable these, by continual labour, to develope themselves, while we keep them back by too much merely critical reflection."

"I may grant that," I replied, "but still, we may be too easily contented, if we take this last view, and consider what is explicable in a subject as exhausted, at a stage when such is not, perhaps, the case. Had we dug further, we might, possibly, have discovered more."

"Have you done so, and discovered more?" inquired Mendelssohn, eagerly.

"I have certainly thought further about a thing, but without discovering much. The following ideas on the matter have suggested themselves to me :

It strikes me that all we create is principally, though other causes have some influence, decided by what, in our art, interests or repels, especially pleases or especially displeases, in the works of our predecessors; for if we want to render ourselves a strict account of the impressions which musical compositions produce upon us, we find that many works do not please us at all indeed, it is very seldom that we meet with one which satisfies us in every respect. In one case the melodic outline of the thought pleases us but not the accompaniment, or if the latter pleases, the harmony to it does not, and so on. Some persons, again, delight especially in the most vigorous thoughts, with a plentiful supply of brass instruments, while another individual, more delicately organised, does not like them, but prefers far more the finer, milder shades, etc. These likings and dislikings implanted in us, for productions of art, constitute our original individual dispositions, and are, in their various degrees and combinations, intellectually, what the outward varieties of figure, bearing, and features are physically. In this respect, all men, or at least the great mass of individuals, possess a disposition for idiosyncracy."

"There is something in what you say," replied Mendelssohn. "I presume that you deduce from this the fact that the artist must give the reins to his original disposition; that he should not, for instance, seek to remodel or modify it in obedience to the authority of great artists, or even prevailing views, and that, by this means, he can work, with full consciousness, towards the development of his idiosyncracy?"

"That is certainly what I mean," I continued. "There are, as * Bv the author of Fliegende Blätter für Musik, Leipsic, 1853. 31. lo rodent

PRICE 4d. STAMPED 5d.

majority of public suffrages has sanctioned this appreciation of Meyerbeer's talent. On the other hand, it must be acknowledged, that there are some who are no great admirers of the music of the mastera circumstance hardly to be wondered at, and to which many things combine. The moral and physical organisation of individuals, education, and, what is more to be grieved at, conflicting interests, are likely to beget very different opinions upon works of art; but these opinions can only prevail with those who own them. If each is confident in his impressions, he cannot offer them to others as a standard of judgment. Truth is unassailable, except by positive facts. When, therefore, the admiration and enthusiasm of the friends of Meyerbeer and the contempt of his adversaries shall have equally fallen into oblivion, the compositions and the name of the artist will endure in the history of music for self-evident reasons.

On Monday, the 20th February, 1832, an English version of Robert le Diable was brought out at Drury-Lane, and on the following night a rival adaptation at Covent Garden, under the title of The Fiend Father. The history of these events is too curious to pass over. We shall quote an authority of the day:

"The celebrity," says the Harmonicon of March, 1832, "which Meyerbeer's Crociato in Egitto so deservedly obtained for him in this country, the anxious curiosity with which his so long-announced new work has been expected by the musical world in general, and the enthusiastic accounts of its success and beauties, with which the newspapers were crowded, naturally led the managers of our great theatres into an intense and active competition for the honour and profit of being the first to introduce it to an English audience. Mr. Monk Mason was the successful candidate, giving, it is said, £500 for a copy of the score, and the exclusive right of playing it at the King's Theatre (Italian Opera), London. The managers of the winter theatres determined, however, not to put up with entire disappointment; the pianoforte copy, published in Paris, put them in possession of the vocal parts and the outline of the accompaniments, and they forth with employed persons in England to prepare a score in imitation of M. Meyerbeer's-set the scenepainters, machinists, dressmakers, and copyists to work, and put each his own version of Robert le Diable into rehearsal. The intention of the Drury Lane manager was so early and openly avowed, that it was for some time thought it must have shared with the Opera House in the purchase and right of performance. The proceedings at the rival establishment were more secret; reports, indeed, got abroad, but it was not until Drury-Lane announced The Dæmon; or, the Mystic Branch, with Meyerbeer's music, as published in Paris, for Tuesday, 21st February; and Covent-Garden gave out The Fiend Father; or, Robert of Normandy, for the same Tuesday, that the town was fully assured of the worthy race which the two winter establishments had been running. The Drury-Lane manager was too good a general to be disconcerted by a surprise, or defeated by a coup de main. He forthwith altered his day from Tuesday to Monday, and succeeded in snatching the honour of giving-twenty-four hours in advance of his rivalan imitation of Robert le Diable to a London audience."

"In no country in the world," writes Mr. C. A. Gruneisen, in his interesting Memoir of Meyerbeer, "not even amongst the savage Algerine, or Mexican tribes, has Robert le Diable undergone worse treatment than in London-a painful and mortifying fact." All the pains and care were expended in the spectacle, but even splendour, magnificence, and novelty, could not of themselves conduce to success Both the English versions of Robert le Diable proved failures*-no fault of the singers, it may be presumed, as the following list will show -Mr. Keeley's being the only non-musical name which appears in the two casts, and, even in his best day, this now great comedian, it will be acknowledged, could hardly be suited to a part sustained by Mario :—

In Paris, Nourrit was the original Robert; Levasseur, Bertram; Lafont, Raimbaut; Mdile. Dorus (afterwards Mdme. Dorus-Gras), Alice; Mdme. Cinti-Damoureau, Isabelle; and Mdlle. Taglioni, the Abbess. On Monday, June 11th, 1832, Robert le Diable was given in the original version, at the King's Theatre, with nearly the same cast as that of the Académie-Royale at Paris, the exceptions being Mdme. de Meric in Alice, and Mdlle. Heberlé in the Abbess. The opera was splendidly got up and was running a triumphant career, when Mdme. *This is an error. The success at Drury Lane was very great.ED. M. W.

Cinti-Damoureau seceded from the company. "The quarrels with the subscribers and artists," says Mr. Gruneisen, as to the establishment of three distinct companies-French, Italian, and German-at one time, also stood in the way of its popularity. Meyerbeer came to London expressly to bring out the work, but, through various delays, was compeiled to leave for Berlin before the performance, without ever attending a single rehearsal."

Although, so far as the opera-going public was concerned, Robert le Diable achieved a decided success at the Italian Opera House, and was progressing in favour when the performances were interrupted, the critics were not all well disposed, while several exhibited the utmost hostility against the composer and his work. "The opinions of certain critics of the day-in 1832" (we have again recourse to Mr. Gruneisen's sketch, which was written in 1848)—" almost_reconciles us to some of the musical notices of the present period. By one writer, Robert le Diable was styled 'the acme of insane fiction''the apotheosis of blasphemy, indecency, and absurdity'-'Fuseli set to music,' etc. Another critic wrote as follows:-'And first of the somuch vaunted music of Meyerbeer, which, it gives us real pleasure to state, does but in a very slight degree redeem from the mingled contempt and indignation which they deserve, the monstrosities and fooleries of the French emasculation of a piece of German diableriefor Robert the Devil is but a sort of French Faust, diverted of the bitter irony, the pungent satire, the exquisite poetry, and the useful moral. The only piece of music deserving of high and unqualified consideration is the opening chorus, a Bacchanalian at once brilliant, original, and highly expressive of the mingled sentiments sought to be conveyed-those engendered by love and wine. The minstrel's air and its accompanying chorus, which follow in the same scene, are clever and effective; but their effect is the result of trick, not of any. thing deserving the name of 'music.' The Princess has one very pleasing and brilliant air, of the joyous kind, in the second act; and Robert has also one, of a simple character, which is worthy of preserva tion. Having mentioned these, our debt of gratitude to this so extravagantly entitled composition is paid-at least, a first hearing of it has left no traces upon our memory, and that we take to be the true

criterion.""

A conscientious critic would have refrained from offering a decided opinion, after a first hearing, on a work so long, so elaborate, and so original. From 1832 to 1845-during which space of time Meyerbeer's operas, with Rossini's Guillaume Teli, alone sustained the lyric stage throughout France-not one work of the composer of Robert le Diable French or Italian-was produced in London. In 1845, a new English version of Robert le Diable was brought out at Drury Lane, under Mr. Bunn's management, with little success, however, owing to the inefficiency of the principal singers, and the incompleteness of the band and chorus. The manager could not create vocalists, but it was quite in his power to strengthen his orchestra and his chorus. As a spectacle, Robert the Devil was almost unsurpassed. Mere show, however, is but a poor accessory to a work of genius, which makes its appeals to other senses besides the external. Robert the Devil was withdrawn after a brief career, and did not replenish the treasury of Drury Lane. The Brussels operatic company, in the same year, gave a much more satisfactory representation of the opera at Covent Garden Theatre, and attracted crowded audiences. In 1846, the same company obtained similar success, in the same opera, at Drury Lane. On the 4 h of May, 1847, the first Italian version was brought out at Her Majesty's Theatre, Mdlle. Jenny Lind making her début on the London boards in the part of Alice. The opera of Meyerbeer was considered as little or nothing in this performance, the prima donna absorbed all the attention, and the part of

Isabelle was omitted!

On Saturday, May the 12th, 1849, Roberto il Diavolo was represented for the first time at the Royal Italian Opera, with great splendour and magnificence. The principal parts were distributed as follows: Alice, Miss Catherine Hayes; Isabella, Mdile. Corbari: Roberto, Signor Salvi; and Bertram, Sig. Marini. The cast, however, as it embraced only one or two public favourites, was not sufficiently strong, and the opera not proving lucrative to the treasury, was withdrawn after two representations. In the same season, it may be observed, the Huguenots, the performance of which included nearly all the strength of the Royal Italian Opera Company, made the fortune of the theatre. In 1850, Roberto was given with a much stronger cast-among other improvements, Mario appearing as the Minstrel Rambaldo-and the success was in proportion. Sig. Tamberlik created a marked sensation in the part of the hero. Perhaps, when it was given at the Royal Italian Opera in 1850, Robert le Diable may be said to have been really heard for the first time in England. (To be continued).

OPERA AND DRAMA.

BY RICHARD WAGNER.

(Continued from page 482.)

PART IL

THE DRAMA AND THE CONSTITUTION OF DRAMATIC POETRY.

CHAPTER I.

WHEN Lessing endeavoured, in his Laocoon, to discover and determine the limits of poetry and painting, he had in view only that poetry which was itself merely painting. He sets out from lines of comparison and limitation, which he draws between the plastic piece of sculpture pourtraying the scene of Laocoon's death struggle, and the description Virgil gives of the same scene, in his Eneid, an epic written for perusal. Although, in the course of his investigation, Lessing touches upon Sophocles as well, he is only thinking of the literary Sophocles, as he stands before us, or, if he has in his mind the poet's living tragic work of art as produced upon the stage, he involuntarily places it beyond the sphere of any comparison with the work of sculpture or painting, because the living tragic work of art is not limited in relation to these two plastic arts, but these, from their needy nature, find their necessary bounds when placed by its side. In every case where Lessing assigns boundaries and limits to poetry, he does not mean the work of dramatic poetry, placed immediately before our eyes, and materially represented, and which, uniting in itself every moment of the plastic art, with the greatest amount of fullness, attainable by itself alone, first imparted to the above art the power of higher artistic life, but the sorry shadow of this same work, the narrative, descriptive literary poem, manifesting itself not to the senses but the imagination, and in which the latter is constituted the real representing factor, while the poem simply acts as an incentive to it. Such an artificial art, it is true, can only achieve any result at all, by the strictest observance of boundaries and limits, because great care must be taken in order that, by a prudent course of proceeding, it shall guard the unbridled imagination, which has really to be the representing power in its place, from everything like exaggerated confusion, so as to lead it to the one concise point, where it is able to display, as clearly and decidedly as the case will allow, the object it has in view. But it is to the imagination that all egotistically isolated arts appeal, especially the plastic art, which can only realise the most important moment of art, namely movement, by an appeal to the fancy. All these arts merely intimate; actual representation is only possible for them through promulgation to the universality of the artistic susceptibility of man, and communication with his perfect material organisation and not his imagination, for the real work of art is begotten only by the advance from imagination to reality, that is: materialism.

Lessing's honest endeavours to determine the limits of these separate branches of art, which could not immediately represent but only describe, is, at the present day, most stupid'y misunderstood by those to whom the immense difference between these arts and real art properly speaking is unintelligible. While they have present to their mind only these branches of art, of themselves powerless for immediate representation, they can naturally only suppose the object of each of them--and thus (as they must imagine) of art generally-to consist in overcoming as quietly as possible the difficulty of providing the imagination with a steady fulcrum in description; heaping up the means of this description can very truly only confuse it, and by harassing and disturbing the imagination, through the introduction of dissimilar means of description, divert it from grasping the subject.

Purity in a branch of art is therefore the first requisite for its intelligibility, while, on the other hand, a mixing up of the different branches can only obscure this intelligibility. We can, in truth, fancy nothing more confusing than if, for instance, a painter wished to represent an object in motion such as a poet only could describe; but a picture first strikes us as altogether repulsive, when the poet's verses are written and placed in a

person's mouth. When the musician-that is to say: the absolute musician-tries to paint, he produces neither music nor a picture; but if he wished to accompany the view of a picture with his music, he might be sure that neither his music nor the picture would be understood. The man who can only understand the union of all the arts in a work of art as meaning, for instance, that in a picture gallery, between a number of statues, a romance by Goethe should be read, as well as a symphony by Beethoven played,* is certainly right in insisting on a separation of the arts, and in having each one treated so as to arrive at the greatest degree of clearness in the description of its especial subject. But for our modern state æstheticians to place the drama, also, in the category of a branch of art, and, as such, award it to the poet as his especial property, but with the understanding that the introduction of another art, such as music, into it, needs an apology, is to draw from Lessing's definition a conclusion, of which the definition does not contain the slightest trace of justification. Such people, see, however, in the drama nothing but a branch of literature, a species of poetry, like the romance or the didactic poem, with the sole difference, that the drama, instead of being simply read, is intended to be learned by heart, declaimed, and accompanied with gestures by several persons, and lighted up by the stage float. It is very true that music would hold about the same relative position to a mere literary drama produced upon the stage, as it would if played to a picture while the latter was exhibited, and it was, therefore, with perfect justice that the socalled melodrama was rejected as a medley of the most unedifying description. The above kind of drama, however, which alone our men of letters have in view, is just as little a true drama, as a pianot is an orchestra, or an entire company of singers. The origin of the literary drama sprang from exactly the same egoistical spirit of our general art development as the piano, and I will briefly render very clear, by means of that instrument, the course that has been pursued.

The oldest, most genuine, and most beautiful organ of music, the organ to which alone our music is indebted for its existence, is the human voice, which was most naturally imitated by wind instruments, and these, in their turn, by stringed instruments; the symphonic consonance of an orchestra of wind and stringed instruments was then imitated by the organ, while the place of the unwieldy organ, finally, was supplied by the easily manageable piano. The first thing we remark in this process, is that the primitive organ of music has sunk, from the human voice to the piano, lower and lower in deficiency of expression. The instruments of the orchestra, although even they wanted the speaking tones of the voice, were still able, more satisfactorily than anything else, to imitate the human tone, with its endlessly varied and lively changing power of expression; the pipes of the organ could only catch the tone as far as its duration was concerned, but not its changing expression, until, at last, the piano could only intimate the tone, but left its real body to the imagination of the acoustic organs. Thus we have in the piano an instrument which simply pourtrays music. But how did it come to pass that the musician contented himself at last with a toneless instrument? For no other reason than to be enabled to make music alone, entirely by himself, without working in common with any one else. The human voice, which of itself can be melodically enounced only in connection with speech, is an individual; nothing but the co-operation of a number of such individuals agreeing with each other can produce symphonic harmony. The wind and stringed instruments were also nearly allied to the human voice, from the fact that this individual character was peculiar to them as well, and that,

*Thus, in truth, do childishly-clever court-literati represent to themselves the "united work of art" referred to by me, when they think they must regard this as an act of "wild jumbling up of various elements." also, to understand my appeal to materialism as the coarsest "sensuA royal statesman-minister-critic of Saxony thinks fit, ality," under which he naturally includes certain pleasures of the belly. We can only explain the stupidity of these estheticians by their lying intentions.

† A violin played to a piano mingles as little with that instrument, as the music to a literary drama would with that.