BOOKS.

BALFE, THE COMPOSER.*

SECOND NOTICE.]

WHEN the fortunate youth, who picked up patrons and purses as nobody else out of fairy-lore ever picked them up, went to Italy for the second time, he halted first at Milan, where he was already a personage. Rossini had given him an introduction which resulted in 'his obtaining an engagement as first baritone for the opera at Palermo, then under noble management, so that his usual luck awaited him in the " doke paese." His biographer mentions that Balfe intended to visit the Count Mazzara at Rome, and in- deed, it would have been but becoming. Somehow, however, he did not do it, being diverted from his purpose by the attraction of a newer acquaintance, the Marchese Sampieri, who tempted him to Bologna ; and it does not appear from the memoir that Balfe ever saw the generous, sentimental Count again. Mr. Kenney is right in his reticence about this strange incident in Balfe's life ; it is no business of ours, and he very properly deprecates curi- osity about it, which he declares he would not gratify if he could. All the same, we are reminded of that delightful bit in Pride and Prejudice, when Lydia lets out, to the astonishment of her sisters, that Mr. Darcy was at her wed- ding with Wickham, and Miss Bennet's high sense of honour is inconvenient to Flizabeth,—" Good gracious !" says Lydia, "I quite forgot. I ought not to have said a word about it ; it was to be such a secret. I promised them so faithfully." "If it was to be a secret," said Jane, "say not another word on the subject. You may depend on my seeking no farther." "Oh, certainly !" said Elizabeth, though burning with curiosity, "we will ask you no questions."

The Marchese asks Balfe to stay at his palazzo, carries him off, immediately on his arrival, to a ball at the palazzo of Prince Bacchiocchi, and there, in the historic salon of Napoleon's sister, the susceptible young Irishman sees Giulietta Grisi, at seventeen. Of course, he set to work to compose music for her to sing, and of course, he plunged into the delights of the place and the time, and forgot, in the blandishments of the Philharmonic Society of Bologna, and the intoxication of a popularity which gained for him a life-membership of the Casino dei Nobili, all about his en- gagement at Palermo. This was an affair of State in old Sicilian days, and when the dreamer suddenly awoke, it was to a prospect of prison,—but again his luck came in :—

" The Duke of Canezzaro (Sampieri), had given him a letter for the Princess of Cataldo, a person of influence in Palermo, and through her kindness he was enabled to meet the Count Sommatino, against whose directorship he bad been guilty of high treason, side by side at her dinner-table. Balfe told his story with that total frankness which disarms the sternest judge, and the offended director being thus per- sonally appealed to, promised his intercession with the supreme power. Lucky it was that he did so, or the defaulting baritone would certainly have seen the inside of a Sicilian prison, for he had been denounced to the police, who had orders to watch his movements."

• 4 Memoir of Michael William Belie. By Charles Lamb Kenney. London: Tinsley Brothers.

The Palermitan period is especially noticeable, though it is still outside of the great successes of Balfe's life. His debut was quite exceptional. It was on the King's birthday ; the Viceroy went to the opera in state ; they played La Straniera, and the people of Bellini's native city crowded the theatre. Etiquette would have forbidden applause, but the Viceroy gave the signal, and Balfe learned from his audience that he had charmed them, in the very stronghold of the land of Song. Then came an incident at once characteristic of his luck and of his genius, which made him known as a composer, and "best of all reputations," says his biographer, " one who could serve a manager at a pinch !" Count Sommatino and his chorus had a difference on the delicate ques- tion of pay, and the chorus organised a strike. Here was a difficulty in comparison with which the troubles of Mr. Puff were trifles light as air. The poor Count bemoaned himself in Balfe's hearing. " Oh ! if I had but one more opera without a chorus,

I would serve those scoundrels out. Unfortunately, Il Matrimottio Segreto, and L'Inganno Felice, will only carry me over a few nights more." "Give me twenty days," said Balfe, "and I'll write you an opera such as you desire." He kept his word, I Rivali di Se Stessi was produced, and proved perfectly successfuL An odd and pleasant feature in the story is that Belie never thought of writing a part for himself in the new opera. After Palermo, and with spreading fame, Balfe sang at Bergamo, and there he married the prima donna of the

operatic company, Mdlle. Lina Roser, whom his biographer apostrophises as her husband's "good genius," and of whom Balfe, in his journal, wrote, when the " end-all-here " was not far off, just two sentences which tell their story of life-long love and suit- ability. The first of these is written in 1864, when he is jotting down particulars about Rowney Abbey (Rowena Abbey, pro- perly), which he had recently purchased : "What a wonderful woman my darling wife is,—what a place she has made of Rowney! I could scarcely believe my eyes, everything is so lovely and so very comfortable." The second is written in March, 1868, and is just one line, with which he begins his record of a trip to Paris :— "Biased my darling wife on the pier at Dover. Lina returned to London and Rowney." After Bergamo came Pavia, where Belie brought out his second opera, Un Avvertimento ai Gelosi, with great success, on which occasion the famous Ronconi—he died only the other day—made his second appearance on any stage. At Milan, shortly afterwards, his Enrico Quarto was brought out, at La Scala, and an important incident in Balfe's life took place. Malibran was singing there, on the —in those days—fabulous terms of 3,000 francs per night, and meeting Balfe, she praised his latest opera highly, and added a hope that she might one day sing in an opera of his in London. With all this marked and rapid success Balfe was not growing rich enough to discard the operatic stage, and Malibran made the manager of La Scala engage him, in place of the actual baritone, of whom she did not approve, and he sang with her at Milan, and afterwards at the Fenice at Venice.

Balfe was making money, and his fame was growing daily, but he was not to be satisfied with anything short of recognition in England ; he wanted to work his way to the front as a composer. Malibran knew all about his aspirations, and promised, ere they parted, that she would, when she should reach London, lend the aid of her influence to secure the fulfilment of her prophecies. But Balfe had not patience to wait, and returned to England in the capacity of a public vocalist, with Puzzi, the horn-player, for his "agent." He did well in the second-best expedient he had temporarily adopted, and he had not long to wait for the best which he desired. His luck was just as true as ever, though, like the "hollow hearts" of Bunn's preposterous verses, it "wore a mask." He was engaged—reference having been made to Malibran and Grisi—to write an opera for Mr. Arnold, who was about to open the Lyceum Theatre as an English opera-house. He wrote the opera within the stipulated six weeks, but withdrew it when he found that Arnold's notions of scenery and decorations were founded rather on economy than effect. Balfe would not risk an unattractive mise en scene for his first coup to be struck at the English prejudice against an English composer. He would wait for Malibran ; had she not said to him, "Jo ti faro scrivere un opera Inglese per me Mum) prossimo ?" Enter luck, masked, upon the scene with this seeming failure. Mr. Kenney tells the story pleasantly :—

" Mr. Mapleson, the librarian and copyist of the Lyceum, happening to call on Alfred Bunn manager of Drury Lane Theatre through many years of alternate lack and disaster, was thus interpellated by the

director What's that rubbish, Mapleson, they have been rehearsing at the English Opera House, and who is this Signor Balfe ?' There- upon, Mr. Mapleson, an excellent practical judge, descanted on the ' merits of the new composer, of whose work he had all the parts in his possession, and recommended that Bunn should send for him, with a

view to the production of what he had designated that rubbish.' . . The opera, which was produced October 29th, 1835, was entitled The Siege of Rochelle, and if the subject was not the most interesting or dramatic in its treatment, and if the poetry (Fitzball's) deserved the condemnation it received at the hands of the critics of the day, the composition denoted the hand of a musician, and the public seized on it with the avidity of long deprivation of food so fresh and delicious Never since the days of Tancredi had any work so seized hold of the public taste. To hazard a somewhat nnpoetical comparison, such an issuing-forth of real, down-right tune, stamped in the mint of Apollo, after a long period of constrained and timid attempts at English opera, was like a resumption of cash payments. The effect was electrical, and well might Balfe, after the production of The Siege of Rochelle, rub his waking eyes, and stare at his own sadden and unmistakable popularity."

Whether The Siege of Rochelle lives anywhere now except in the repertoire of the most antiquated of the barrel-organs, which soon bore their unequivocal testimony to Balfe's success, we do not know ; nor is any judgment of his achievements as a composer within our powers or our province. His biographer, whose book is the pleasantest reading we have met with of late, is an ardent admirer of his music, and freely denounces the critics who attacked it with violence at first, and have certainly been contradicted by public taste. Mr. Kenney is very funny about Alfred Bunn, a person whom one cannot regard seriously in our time ; he presents himself to our memory entirely as a godsend to Punch in its early days, and the inspirer of some of the happiest rhymes of that immensely over-rated humourist, Canon Barham. That Bunn's collaboration as a poet did not kill Balfe as a composer is a conclusive testimony to Belle's genius, to us, outsiders from the musical world. Malibran could pull even the Poet Bunn through, and she did it triumphantly, fulfilling her prophecies and her promises. This was in 1836, and the story of the opera and the singers forms a most amusing chapter in this book, which. contrary to the general rule, is not discursive enough. Good theatrical gossip is enticing reading, and we seldom get it good. In 1838, having done a great deal of creditable, if not very long-lived work in the interval, the indefatigable Irishman produced Falstaff —at Her Majesty's Theatre, an event which Mr. Kenney calls "a culmination of the benignant star that ruled the destinies of Balfe." More than one star had to do with him on the occasion, for the cast included Grin, Persiani, Albertazzi, Rubiui, Tamburini, and Lablache.

All this grandeur and glory collapsed when Bunn came to the grand smash which was so little comic to him, but so funny to the generation who had been dazzled by his "blazes of triumph ;" and the next phase of Balfe's career is not so cheerful to contem- plate. It was doubtless necessary that he should take to the stage again, but only the theory that " management " is an infatuation not to be resisted can account for his perpetrating what Mr. Kenney fitly calls "a piece of complicated folly," in "assuming the cares of management, and voluntarily facing the multitudinous responsibilities of an impresario, who undertakes to satisfy the fickle public, and a list of fashionable and exacting subscribers into the bargain." The chapter which narrates Balfe's lesseeship of the English Opera House, and the grand crash with which it terminated, is instructive, and the only dismal one in the book. We cannot follow him through the foreign career which ensued upon his failure as a manager ; it was brilliant, but it did not compensate him for the place he had lost in England, and we are glad t* find him back again, as Conductor, to Her Majesty's Opera, and then preparing his great Parisian success, Le Pails d'A»zour, for representation in London, as Geraldine ; to be fol- lowed by the long list of successful works which began with The Bohemian Girl and ended with II Talisman°, which was performed last season, for the first time, four years after the death of the composer.

From first to last, this memoir of Michael William Balk makes a pleasant impression. I he book is full of anecdote, and we find no fault with the writer's enthusiasm for his subject ; the critics had their say in their day ; now it is the biographer's turn, and he brightens up his book very much by his pugnacity.