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Search - Rossini - A Study In Tragic Comedy

Rossini - A Study In Tragic Comedy
Author: Francis Toye

ROSSINI Drawing by Kunike in Vienna ROSSINI A Study in Tragi-Comdy by FRANCIS TOYE ALFRED A KNOPF New Yorfc . 1947 TO Thomas Beecham IN GRATITUDE FOR HIS MUSIC AND HIS WIT PREFACE To THE best of my belief there is no demand whatever for a life of Rossini in English. Supply, however, sometimes creates de mand, and Rossini as a figure is so fascin... more »ating that people may eventually wonder why they were content to remain for so long in ignorance of his extraordinary career. Moreover, there are un doubted signs of a renewed interest in his music other than the immortal Barber of Seville. The most important overtures, res cued at long last from the embraces of tired military bands on the piers of depressing seaside resorts, are beginning to creep back once again into the programs of our more enterprising con certs. Some of the songs, notably La Danza and the little trilogy entitled La Regata Veneziana, have made many new friends in recent years. Outside England, of course, the signs are more evident still. William Tell obstinately maintains its place in the repertory when a cast of singers can be found adequate to sing the music, and sometimes even when it cannot. Two operas, well-nigh forgotten, La Cenerentola and Lltaliana in Algeri, have been revived with brilliant success in Paris, where the younger generation of French musicians manifested an unex pected enthusiasm not only by their constant attendance at the OpeVa Comique, but by their laudatory comments in the press. When a composer of the standing of Darius Milhaud, writing in Le Soir, can wax so keen as to express his fervent desire for the additional revival of La Donna del Lago and Comte Ory, there must still be something in Rossinf s music that satisfies a modern need. It is not surprising that this should be so. The more purely musical a composer is, the better are his chances of weathering the storms of successive fashions, and Rossini, whatever his de fects as a man and a musician, was one of the most musical of vti viii Preface composers. Indeed, it may be doubted whether his natural genius for musical expression was not equal to that of a Handel, a Mozart, or a Schubert, though he failed to turn it to such good account as they did, partly owing to the handicap of his early training and the circumstances of his career, partly ow ing to a certain flabbiness in his nature. If ever public school masters need an example from the arts of the dangers attending the lack of what they call character they can hardly do bet ter than cite the case of Rossini. Had the methods and ideals deriving from the late Dr. Arnold been current in the Liceo Musicale at Bologna, the world might have gained an addition to its dozen composers of the front rank. On the other hand, it might have lost its Rossini altogether. Further, there is a striking parallel between the conditions of the Europe in which Rossini won his triumphs and the con ditions that obtain today. Europe then was exhausted by the Napoleonic Wars just as Europe today is exhausted by the war of 1914 and the economic depression consequent upon it. Rossinis gaiety and high spirits, his exuberant vitality and bril liance, provided just the tonic that Europe needed in the sec ond, third, and fourth decades of tie nineteenth century. Owing to the passing of the convention to which his operas con form, the supersession of his idiom and an entire change of conditions in the musical theater, we can never recapture wholly the thrill of delight and surprise felt by Rossinis con temporaries. The delicious shock of novelty, indispensable to perfect aesthetic enjoyment, is gone. But there remains behind the idiom and the conventions something permanent that can still give us unique pleasure, as indeed was proved by the success of La Boutique fantasque, which, despite its modern trappings, possessed the merit of preserving the genuine flavor of the original Rossinian ingredients...

ISBN-13: 9781406767858
ISBN-10: 1406767859
Publication Date: 3/15/2007
Pages: 264
Rating:

0 stars, based on 0 rating

Publisher: Irving Lewis Press
Book Type: Paperback
Members Wishing: 0
Reviews: Amazon | Write a Review

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