MUSIC.
LUCREZIA BORGIA IN THE STANDARD LYRIC DRAMA.°
'Marry persons will object to the introduction of Lucrezia Borgia into this aeries; denying its claim to be placed among the standard productions of the musical stage. The editor, in his preface, has anticipated this objection, and replied to it. Me admits that this is not the best of Donizetti's works ; but he says truly, that its dramatic interest has given it great popularity,—a circumstance which must be considered in making the selectionand, moreover, that a complete edition of this opera was a desideratum. If these reasons are not deemed sufficient, he tries to pacify the unappeasable by stating that Beethoven's immortal Ft:dello is to be the next number of the series. For our part, we are well pleased to be in possession of an elegant and complete edition of this famous opera. It is not by any means a work of consummate art. There is much in it that is trite and common—the verbiage of music ; its choruses and concerted pieces are often insuffficially constructed and shallow in counterpoint; and a great deal of its instrumentation is at once meagre -and noisy. But with all this it has many beauties of melody and expression, vocal combination, and instrumental accompaniment; and the critic who, keeping his judgment unbiassed by generalizations respecting the merits or demerits of this or that musical school, shall "seriously incline his ear" to the music of this opera, will find in it much to gratify his taste and to move his feelings. Lucrezia .Borgia is a lyrical version of Victor Hugo's celebrated play with the same title,—one of those pieces by which that writer brought into vogue the " romantic " drama at the expense of the "classical," -which had previously posseesed exclusively the French stage. It is written in prose, and, like the English plays which the French Romantic school took as models, its tragic gloom is relieved by colloquial familiarity and flashes of humour. In adapting it to the musical stage, the Italian poet has adopted the usual and necessary course of simplifying the incidents, and reducing the dialogue to those plain and concise phrases which are necessary for musical purposes. But he has closely followed the plot, except in its very catastrophe, (in the original, Gennaro, infuriated by his own fate and that of his friends, stabs Lucrezia before he knows she is his mother,) and has well preserved the wild and terrible character of the subject. Victor Hugo, in drawing the picture of his heroine, has adopted that view of her character which represents her as a moral monster—an adulteress, a murderess, stained with every crime ; and has relieved the dark shades of the character by only one touch of light, her maternal love fbr her son. So she was painted in her own time, and her name for more than three centuries has lain under a weight of infamy, from which, however, it was effectually relieved by the author of the Life of Leo the Tenth. The editor of the opera has introduced into his prefatory matter the whole of Mr. Roscoe's learned and searching inquiry ; which does not leave a doubt that this remarkable woman was belied by contemporary traducers, whose calumnies have been unhesitatingly repeated and implicitly received down to our own day. While Mr. Roscoe has shown that the charges against Lucrezia are unsupported by proof, it is impossible to resist the weight of evidence which shows that she was not merely the most beautiful and accomplished woman of her time, but blameless in her life, and the generous and enlightened patroness of learning and the ruts.
• Lucrezia Borgia ; a Lyric. Tragedy. Written by Felice Romani; the Music by Gaetano Donizetti. (Volume VII. of the Standard Lyric Drama.) If such was her character, its lustre is heightened by the very circumstance which blackened it—her being the daughter of Alexander the Sixth and the sister of etesar Borgia. It is to be added, that the character of Lncrezia's husband, .Alfonao of Elite, Duke of Ferrara, who plays so terrific a part in this drama, has been equally misrepresented. He was one of the most distinguished princes of his time as a statesman anti a warrior ; and hiaconjugal union with Lucrezia, of more than thirty years' duration, appears to have been undisturbed and harmonious. We mast therefore regard. the Lecrezia Brogia of Victor Hugo ass fictitious personage, as unreal as Lady Macbeth or any other creature.of the imagination : and this imaginary Lucrezia, like Lady Macbeth, has a power and grandeur in her hladmeas which makes her a striking object on the tragic stage. Luerezia, accordingly, is the character in which Grisi is most unapproachable ; as Lady Macbeth might perchance have been, had the great prima donna been an English tragedian. The present edition of this opera is the only one published in England ; the music being known to the public only by its performance at. the Opera-houses, and by a very imperfect, inaccurate, and ill-arranged Paris edition. The skill and care with which Mr. Rockstro has compressed. the orchestral parts into a pianoforte accompaniment indicating the most remarkable effects produced by the various combinations of instruments, and the dearness and correctness of the mashed text throughout, have enabled us to obtain a more distinct view of the composition than we had. previously been enabled to form ; and the result haa certainly raised our estimate of Donizetti's qualities as an artist. When a whole work is made up of trite, unmeaning melodies, and exhibits teething but poor harmony and unskilful instrumentation, we at once set the author down as void of genius and ignorant of his art ; but when we.ftnd, mingled with baser matter, beautiful airs, striking choral effects, and ingenious orchestral writing, we must ascribe his faults to haste, carelessness, and the influence of a bad schooL It is not to be supposed that Donizetti, whose prolific pen produced sixty-four operas besides many minor pieces, ever went back to his studies ; yet when in his latter days he wrote for the French and German stage, he was able by an effort of will to give his music the strength and solidity which helaiew would be demanded.
In Lucrezia Borgia there are several airs which have an intrinsic beauty and expression, independently of the charms bestowed on them. by Grid and Mario. The scene in which Lucrezia first appears, even in perusal, is exquisitely beautiful. The instrumental symphony as her gondola glides into sight, and, descending from it, she descries her sleeping son, is a bit of description worthy of Mozart or Weber; and the smooth little phrase, alternately breathed by the oboe, flute, and clarinet, and responsively murmured by the Lass instruments, is full of repose, and delicious to the ear. As the notes die away while the heroine is gazing on her son, we are fittingly prepared for her first ejaculation, " Tranquil° ei posit!" she continues in a fine pensive strain; in the accompaniment of which, however, we find one of those impurities of harmony which betray carelessness. In a full chord of the dominant in the key of P (see page 51) the notea G and B Satin the bass are sounded along with G sharp and B natural in the treble ; a cacophony which anybody who tries it on the pianoforte will find insupportable, though the smooth tones of the clarinets in the two upper parts make it pass off at the theatre. But suck a thing is not to be found in the whole works of Mozart; and it is easy to see that Donizetti did not give himself the trouble to avoid it. Crudities like this abound in the works of -modern composers, Rossini inaluded ; and they have been justified on the ground that they escape the ear. But though the ear may be unable to detect the precise fault in a passage which fleets rapidly by, yet a sense of indistinotness is produced. The whole of the subsequent scene, including the tender tenor air which has become so popular, "Di pescator ignoble," is exceedingly dramatic, and delicately accompanied. Indeed, it may be observed that Donizetti and his countrymen, however noisy their instruments may frequently be, do not allow them to interfere with the solo voices ; unlike the modem Gallo-German school, which notoriously ruins the finest voices by exposing them to a constant struggle with the orchestral storm. The excessively favourite anacreontie, "II. segreto per esser felice," is, sooth to say, somewhat vulgar when stripped of the prestige created by the voioe of Brambilla or Alboni; but the dying accents of Gennaro are instinct with melody and feeling, which would do honour to any composer. The editor wishes the curtain to fail here ; objecting to the subsequent passage given to Lucrezia, as a mere piece of vocalization for the Eadre of display. We differ. Lucrezia's wild burst upon the G fiat, (see top of page 2970 is the very cry of despair, and the rapid roulades which follow are the inarticulate sounds which become the language of passion when it rises beyond the power of words. But such a passage domande the very
highest powers If the tone of passion is ever so little deficient in strength, or if there is the slightest appearance of vocal effort, then the whole sinks into an unmeaning display of execution.
The concerted pieces and choruses for the most part, though with remarkable exceptions, are written with great carelessness. We find page after page of score whore four or five solo voices are accompanied by a chorus seemingly in four parts, but where, after all, there is nothing but unisons and octaves, or, perhaps, two or three parts, ill arranged, meagre, and sometimes crude and harsh. The long concerted scene in the prologue, in which the five solo voices of German and his friends arc accompanied by the chorus of maskers, is a flagrant specimen (especially at pages 36 and 37) of this pitiful writing. But it is redeemed by the series of fine concerted pieces in the first act : the chorus of the sbirri or guards of the Duke of Ferrara; the superb trio between the Duke, Lucrezia, and Gennaro, where the Duke blandly presents the poisoned goblet to the youth in his mother's presence; and the subsequent duet, in which she implores him to swallow the antidote. Such pieces arc sufficient to free the composer from, the imputation of want of dramatic power or of skill in his art
Previous page
