The Lives and Times of the Great Composers E-Book

Michael Steen

• Herausgeber: Icon Books
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 2049

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

'A glorious plum-pudding of a book, to be consulted, with pleasure and profit, over and over again' Sir Jeremy Isaacs Michael Steen's 'Great Composers' was originally published in 2003. A lifetime's work and almost 1000 pages long, it has since become 'the' reference point and key read on the biographical backgrounds to classical music's biggest names. Authoritative and hugely detailed - but nonetheless a joy to read - this new edition will expand its readership further and capitalise on a newfound popular interest in classical music. Steen's book helps you explore the story of Bach, the respectable burgher much of whose vast output was composed amidst petty turf disputes in Lutheran Leipzig; or the ugly, argumentative Beethoven in French-occupied Vienna, obsessed by his laundry; or Mozart, the over-exploited infant prodigy whose untimely death was shrouded in rumour. Read about Verdi, who composed against the background of the Italian Risorgimento; or about the family life of the Wagners; and, Brahms, who rose from the slums of Hamburg to become a devotee of beer and coffee in fin-de-siecle Vienna, a cultural capital bent on destroying Mahler ... and much, much more.

Leseprobe

THE LIVES AND TIMES OF

THE GREAT COMPOSERS

MICHAEL STEEN

This revised edition published in the UK in 2010 by Icon Books Ltd, Omnibus Business Centre, 29–41 North Road, London N7 9DP email: [email protected]

Original edition published in 2003 by Icon Books

Sold in the UK, Europe, South Africa and Asia by Faber & Faber Ltd, Bloomsbury House, 74–77 Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3DA or their agents

Distributed in the UK, Europe, South Africa and Asia by TBS Ltd, TBS Distribution Centre, Colchester Road, Frating Green, Colchester CO7 7DW

This edition published in Australia in 2010 by Allen & Unwin Pty Ltd, PO Box 8500, 83 Alexander Street, Crows Nest, NSW 2065

Distributed in Canada by Penguin Books Canada, 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2YE

ISBN 978-184831-135-0

Text copyright © 2003, 2010 Michael Steen The author has asserted his moral rights.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any means, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Typesetting by Wayzgoose and Marie Doherty

Printed by Gutenberg Press, Malta

For all who want to know more

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The sources, upon which this book is wholly dependent, are generally quoted in the section entitled ‘Sources and Further Reading’. I cannot overstate the extent to which I have depended on them.

I am grateful for assistance at the City of London Libraries and the Royal College of Music Library. I have also been helped by the Bodleian Library and the Library of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Whereas the content of libraries may be different, their staff seem to share the same sense of dedication and to display a degree of courtesy, helpfulness and speed of response which is both exceptional and exemplary.

Others to whom I am most grateful for pointing me in the right direction, advice, information, or just help and support, are Dr Roland Aubrey, Nigel Blackwell, Nicholas Boggis-Rolfe, Jenny Brown, Peter Byrom, The Rev. Anthony Chambers, Sophie Chessum, Paul Collen, Peter Collett, Christopher Collier, Sarah Dodgson, Miles Emley, Alex Findlater, Dr Brian Gilmore, Jenny Haimes, Geoffrey Hodgkins, Sir Jeremy Isaacs, Nigel Jaques, many of my former partners at KPMG, Richard Macnutt, Dr Robert Manning, Robert Meekings, Dr Janet Morgan, Roger Munnings, Provost Nicholson and his colleagues at Oriel, Dr Caitríona Ó Dochartaigh, Christopher Paterson, Sir Joseph Pilling, Dame Janet Ritterman and her colleagues at the Royal College of Music, Clive Ryder Runton, Dr Amar Sabberwal, Yvonne Scott, Daniel Snowman, Sue Sturrock, Pamela Thompson, Nicholas West, Paul Whitfield and Peter Willett. These are just some of those with whom I have corresponded.

I am deeply grateful to those who commented on specific excerpts and early drafts, in full or in part: Dr Guy Deutscher, Dr David Maw, Andrew Robinson, Dr Esther Schmidt and Dr Janie Steen. Jonathan Price and David Vaughan gave me unstinting help and support. Because I did not act on all their suggestions, they cannot be assumed to agree with the final text, and responsibility for any errors that remain is entirely mine. But without their input, whatever shortcomings the book may have would have been more considerable.

The team at Icon, led by Peter Pugh and Jeremy Cox, has been tremendously helpful, and I must especially thank the editors Duncan Heath and Ruth Nelson, Jenny Rigby, and the designer Christos Kondeatis.

This book could not have been written without considerable effort by, and encouragement from, Professor Robert and Mrs Elizabeth Steen, and Sir Stanley Cochrane, Bart. I owe Rosemary my wife a special word of thanks for her skill, for reading drafts and for unswerving support. She is now expert in locating a Geburtshaus, a Casa Natale, a museum or a ruined house.

CONTENTS

LISTOF COLOUR PLATES

MAP OF PRESENT-DAY EUROPE SHOWING COMPOSERS’ BIRTHPLACES

MAP OF MID-19TH-CENTURY ITALY

MAP OF SAXONYAND CENTRAL GERMANY

PREFACE

PRELUDE

1 HANDEL (1685–1759)

2 BACH (1685–1750)

3 HAYDN (1732–1809)

4 MOZART (1756–91)

5 BEETHOVEN (1770–1827)

6 SCHUBERT (1797–1828)

7 ROSSINI (1792–1868)

8 MEYERBEER, BELLINIAND DONIZETTI

9 BERLIOZ (1803–69)

10 MENDELSSOHN (1809–47)

11 CHOPIN (1810–49)

12 SCHUMANN (1810–56)

13 LISZT (1811–86)

14 WAGNER (1813–83)

15 OFFENBACHAND JOHANN STRAUSS

16 VERDI (1813–1901)

17 BRAHMS (1833–97)

18 BIZET (1838–75)

19 LATE-19TH-CENTURY FRANCE: FRANCK, SAINT-SAËNSAND FAURÉ

20 RUSSIAN COMPOSERS: GLINKAANDTHE FIVE

21 TCHAIKOVSKY (1840–93)

22 CENTRAL-EUROPEAN NATIONALISTS: SMETANA, DVOÁK, JANÁEK, BARTÓK

23 SCANDINAVIAN NATIONALISTS: GRIEGAND SIBELIUS

24 MAHLER (1860–1911)

25 RICHARD STRAUSS (1864–1949)

26 DEBUSSY (1862–1918)

27 PUCCINI (1858–1924)

28 THE RUSSIAN SEQUEL

29 ENGLAND: ELGAR, VAUGHAN WILLIAMSAND BRITTEN

POSTLUDE

NOTES

SOURCESAND FURTHER READING

NOTE ON MONEY, DATESAND NAMES

BOURBON FAMILY TREE

HABSBURG FAMILY TREE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Michael Steen OBE was born in Dublin. He studied at the Royal College of Music, was an organ scholar at Oriel College, Oxford, and then spent 30 years in a successful career in the City of London. He is Treasurer of the Open University, and has been chairman of the Royal College of Music Society and the Friends of the Victoria and Albert Museum. He is also the author of Enchantress of Nations: Pauline Viardot: Soprano, Muse and Lover (Icon, 2007).

LIST OF COLOUR PLATES

1. Canaletto’s Venice, The Stonemasons’Yard

2. Bellotto’s painting of Dresden

3. Galli’s View of Hamburg, around 1680

4. Vienna bombarded in 1809, by Piringer

5. The Place de la Concorde, Paris 1829, by Canella

6. Empress Maria Theresa, by Liotard

7. Frederick ‘the Great’, by Francke

8. Elector Augustus ‘the Strong’ of Saxony, by Louis de Silvestre

9. Emperor Joseph II and his sisters, by Haunzinger

10. Rousseau’s painting of a ball in Bonn, 1754

11. Turner’s painting of the pass over Mont Cenis

12. Karl and Franz Xaver Mozart, by Hansen

13. Constanze Mozart, by Hansen

14. Beethoven’s nephew Karl, anonymous miniature

15. The young Clara Schumann, née Wieck

16. Schubert entertains friends at the piano

17. Isabella Colbran, Rossini’s Spanish wife

18. Maria Malibran, star soprano

19. Harriet Smithson, Berlioz’ stage idol

20. Mathilde Wesendonck, Wagner’s Isolde

21. Delacroix’ portrait of George Sand and Chopin, reconstruction

22. Wagner with daughter Eva and Russ, the dog

23. Cosima Wagner, by Lenbach

24. Daumier’s The Heavy Burden

25. Emperor Franz Joseph, by Wassmuth

26. Donizetti’s deterioration

27. Donizetti’s further deterioration

28. Chopin with terminal tuberculosis

29. Tchaikovsky and wife Antonina

30. Napoleon III, by Holl

31. Empress Eugénie, by Winterhalter

32. Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l’Herbe

33. Cabanel’s La Naissance de Vénus

34. Dvoák’s wife and her sister at the piano

35. Dvoák feeding the doves at Vysoká

36. Janáek and wife Zdeka

37. Smetana and second wife Bettina

38. Sibelius, painted by Eero Järnefelt

39. Grieg receives an honorary degree from Oxford

40. Tidemand and Gude’s BridalProcession in Hardanger

41. Mendelssohn’s watercolour of the Rheinfall at Schaffhausen

42. Johann Strauss with Brahms

43. Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Richard Strauss

44. Giuseppina Strepponi

45. Debussy on his trike

46. Talbot Hughes’ portrait of Elgar

47. Puccini goes for a jaunt in his De Dion Bouton

48. Edgar Degas’ ballerinas

49. Alma Mahler: Oskar Kokoschka’s Die Windsbraut

50. The Siege of Leningrad: Shostakovich defends the Conservatoire

51. The site of the Mendelssohn family home today

52. Wagner’s Wahnfried, restored

53. An American soldier poses in the drawing room of Wahnfried

MAP OF PRESENT-DAY EUROPE SHOWING COMPOSERS' BIRTHPLACES

KEY TO BIRTHPLACES OF THE COMPOSERS

BIRTHPLACES COMPOSERS

Bergamo . . . . . . . . . .Donizetti

Bergen . . . . . . . . . . .Grieg

Berlin . . . . . . . . . . . .Meyerbeer

Bonn . . . . . . . . . . . .Beethoven

Busseto . . . . . . . . . . .Verdi (Le Roncole)

Catania . . . . . . . . . . .Bellini

Cologne . . . . . . . . . .Offenbach

Cremona . . . . . . . . .Monteverdi

Down Ampney . . . . .Vaughan Williams

Eisenach . . . . . . . . . .Bach

Halle . . . . . . . . . . . .Handel

Hamburg . . . . . . . . .Mendelssohn, Brahms

Hämeenlinna . . . . . .Sibelius

Hukvaldy . . . . . . . . .Janáek

Kalit . . . . . . . . . . .Mahler

Karevo . . . . . . . . . . .Mussorgsky

La Côte St André . . .Berlioz

Leipzig . . . . . . . . . . .Wagner

Liège . . . . . . . . . . . . .Franck

Litomyl . . . . . . . . . .Smetana

Lowestoft . . . . . . . . .Britten

Lucca . . . . . . . . . . . .Puccini

Moscow . . . . . . . . . .Scriabin

Munich . . . . . . . . . .Richard Strauss

Nagyszentmiklós . . . .Bartók

Nelahozeves . . . . . . .Dvoák

Novgorod . . . . . . . . .Rachmaninov, Rimsky-Korsakov (nearby)

Pamiers . . . . . . . . . . .Fauré

Paris . . . . . . . . . . . . .Bizet, Saint-Saëns, Debussy, Poulenc

Pesaro . . . . . . . . . . . .Rossini

Raiding . . . . . . . . . . .Liszt

Rohrau . . . . . . . . . . .Haydn

Salzburg . . . . . . . . . .Mozart

Smolensk . . . . . . . . .Glinka (nearby)

St Petersburg . . . . . .Borodin, Shostakovich, Stravinsky (nearby)

St-Germain-en-Laye .Debussy

St-Jean-de-Luz . . . . .Ravel (Ciboure)

Vienna . . . . . . . . . . .Schubert, Johann Strauss

Vilnius . . . . . . . . . . .Cui

Worcester . . . . . . . . .Elgar (nearby)

elazowa Wola . . . . .Chopin

Zwickau . . . . . . . . . .Schumann

Tchaikovsky was born 600 miles east of Moscow

KEY TO MAPS

Birthplaces of composers

MAP OF MID-19TH-CENTURY ITALY

KEY TO MAP

MAP OF SAXONY AND CENTRAL GERMANY

PREFACE

‘Mr Lely, I desire you would use all your skill to paint my picture truly likeme, and not flatter me at all; but remark all these roughnesses, pimples,warts, and everything as you see me; otherwise I will never pay a farthingfor it.’

– Oliver Cromwell1

This book provides sketches of some of the great and popular classical composers, their world and their lives. It is for those who have neither the time nor the inclination to read the many enjoyable and excellent, but longer, individual biographies that are available.

I have accepted that:

The art of Biography Is different from Musicography. Musicography is about Cellos But Biography is about Fellows.2

Readers wanting the analysis of individual works, so necessary for good performance, should turn to the longer studies or to programme notes.

This book emphasises the context, the setting in which the composers lived, what was going on at the time, some of the things that they might have talked about. Some readers might protest: surely, of all the arts, music is above all this mundane stuff. Of course, they might say, many novelists, dramatists and poets, Austen, Dickens, Ibsen, Brecht, to name but a few, deliberately described or reflected the world in which they lived; painters like Goya, Delacroix and Picasso responded to the events of their time. But musicians have always been rather different. Did not Sibelius claim that music is on a higher plane than everything else in this world?3 To this I would say: music may be, but composers are not. They lived, and do live, on Earth. Mozart did not write an opera for eternity, or for an ideal, but when there was a demand for one.4 Even though Beethoven was in a position to compose music for the sake of art alone, nobody would deny that events in France affected where he chose to live and influenced his ‘Eroica’ Symphony.

Many composers have been caught up directly in the events of their time: Michael Wise, a 17th-century English composer, was killed by the night watch for ‘stubborn and refractory language’5 during a brawl in Salisbury. In Austria, 250 years later, three shots fired by an American sentry tragically killed Anton Webern when he emerged from the house to smoke a contraband cigar.6 Wagner made a sensational escape from Dresden in 1848, was sheltered by Liszt, and was subsequently exiled for over a decade.

However, it is far beyond the scope of this book to explore the relationship between the works of a composer and his environment. That is a complex matter: Prokofiev’s Classical Symphony and Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony were each composed at times of great upheaval, the one, the most momentous revolution, and the other, the longest siege in history. Yet they are entirely different in character.

I shall not tread on such dangerous territory. I merely aim to turn up the lights on some selected aspects of the background scenery. By illuminating them, I necessarily and deliberately reduce the spotlight on the individual.

When to begin and end? I chose to start in the 1680s with Handel and Bach, and to finish with a selection of composers who were already well established in the first half of the 20th century. There is an underlying rationale to my choice, partly musical, partly just based on convenience.

By the time Handel and Bach were born, a number of familiar features of classical music were securely in place. The most obvious of these is the sense of key, or tonality, which enables listeners to recognise an obviously ‘wrong’ note, and feel comfortable when the music has ended on the ‘right’ one. Much of the pleasure in listening to music is actually provided by the tension as the music moves away from the initially established key and reverts back to it.7

I chose to draw to a close when that sense of key broke down. An outraged Camille Saint-Saëns thought he saw the end coming with Richard Strauss, who was then considered avant-garde. ‘The completest liberty reigns’, Saint-Saëns complained. ‘While one group of instruments covers one tonality, another has no scruples about battling with its neighbour, while the voices travel along elsewhere.’8

As it happens, our ears sense that conventional tonality survived, in one form or other, long beyond Saint-Saëns, and thus I continue for some time after Strauss. However, the decision to exclude those composers whose main works are called ‘atonal’ enabled me to draw a line in the first half of the 20th century. I did this with relief: I did not relish the considerable challenge of doing sufficient justice to the 20th century and the times and lives of Schoenberg’s group and its successors. But I felt that I should include several whose principal compositions are ‘tonal’ in character, who were active in the early decades of the 20th century and lived long into it. So, in the end, my line became increasingly blurred as I wandered on. I do not think that matters.

Having drawn some boundaries, albeit arbitrary, I faced the question: which composers to include? What about Henry Purcell, England’s renowned master, the composer of Dido’s Lament, ‘When I am laid in earth’? He was at his height in the 1680s. He ‘began to shew his Great skill before the reforme of musick, al Italliana, and, while he was in warm pursuit of it, Dyed, but a greater musical genius England never had’.9 However, unfortunately, we know little about Purcell, this ‘amazing shadowy musical figure’.10 Only at the beginning of the 18th century, with Handel and Bach, do the lives of most of the individual composers emerge in something approaching full colour.

Or I might have been tempted to begin with ‘the shrewd avarice and great pomp’11 of Jean-Baptiste Lully who died in the 1680s. The glittering but mind-numbingly rigid court of Louis XIV, the Sun-King, could have made a good story with a contemporary flavour. Imitating the rapacity of his monarch, Lully secured, for himself and his heirs, a complete monopoly over opera. He thus became one of the richest musicians there has ever been. He augmented his earnings with realestate speculation.12 He was bisexual. Being fleet of foot in every sense (like his monarch, he was a skilled and graceful ballet dancer),13 his end was appropriate. In his day, and long afterwards, conductors beat time by banging the floor, or a desk, with a cane. Fate caught up with Lully, when conducting a Te Deum: he missed the floor and stabbed his foot; it turned gangrenous;14 so he died. But Lully’s monopoly constrained the progress of music in France, and to start with him would have given him undue prominence. Hence, my first chapters are about Handel and Bach.

For chapter headings, I have somewhat arbitrarily chosen composers who are generally regarded as ‘popular’. So Puccini qualifies, but Gluck and Weber, to name but two, who on any measure of excellence should have deserved a full chapter, do not. With the twentieth century, I become increasingly selective. The more glaring omissions, I have mentioned en passant.

What to include? I have had to be ruthless in my choice of background material, cultural, social, military and political. If I were not, this book would turn into a comprehensive history of Europe. Certain chapters, particularly the earlier ones, require more background material to ‘get the story going’. Equally, various parts of the scenery must be painted in some detail if those sitting in the audience are to gain a reasonable impression of what is being portrayed on the stage. So, I make liberal use of footnotes to relegate information which might otherwise impede the flow of the narrative. This detail, which readers can read or ignore at their choice, provides a counterpoint to the main themes in the text.

A caveat is necessary. In some cases, considerable mythology has grown up around the lives of composers, Mozart’s death being an obvious example. Stories have been handed down and gained credibility. Biography is often written by people who want to force their version onto the record. Fanny Burney’s Memoirs of her father Doctor Burney, author of the four-volume General History of Music published towards the end of the 18th century, is a notorious case of this.15 As to accuracy, I enjoyed one 19th-century biographer’s admission: ‘I should not be in the least surprised to discover some thirty or forty inaccuracies among the countless masses of minute detail which go to make up this biography.’ A footnote provided by the translator adds acidly ‘perhaps a hundred would be nearer the mark’.16 Auto-biography, particularly by a ‘Romantic’ such as Berlioz, is arguably even more untrustworthy, which will be of no surprise to modern readers familiar with autobiographies of politicians and others.

I have sometimes drawn on material from contemporary literature. For example, I found the novels of Stendhal and Balzac helpful in looking at France in the first half of the 19th century, and Zola subsequently. The background portrayed by those authors is intended to be reasonably authentic, even if they too have wanted ‘to make a point’. And their perceptions are contemporary. I have, however, regarded historical novels as unreliable: because they portray a period much earlier than the time at which the novel was issued, there is more room for confusion between fact and fiction.

Some readers may feel that much of my material is too earthy. For this I make no apology, although I emphasise that this is not intended to be a book about composers’ sex lives. Just as it is interesting to know that Schubert and Scriabin, Mozart, Mahler and Ravel were tiny, it is relevant that Scriabin seduced a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl,17 Janáek and Bartók married pupils who were almost (although not quite) ‘under age’ under current British definitions, and Tchaikovsky’s taste in boys would be suspect at a time when the press focuses so much on paedophilia. Sex, of varying sorts, plays such a part in most people’s lives that it cannot be ignored. If, for some, this tarnishes the image, too bad; it makes the individual human.

The achievement of the composers makes me very humble. Put aside art, for a moment. Handel’s enormous output includes more than 2,000 arias. The first page of Bach’s manuscript of the St Matthew Passion contains less than twenty seconds of a work lasting two and a half hours. On that page alone are at least 450 individual notes written on 24 staves. This is just the first item in the work. Twenty pages later, there is a page of music which lasts about two seconds longer: it contains about 800 notes, countless sharps, flats, naturals, rests and words.

Imagine, if you can, the effect of the delay between conceiving the music in the ear and writing it down. Imagine the sheer physical effort needed to write this, to obtain and rule the paper, with none of our modern facilities such as electric light to lengthen the working day. The Bach-Gesellschaft edition amounts to around 50 volumes and that does not include Bach’s compositions which never survived beyond his own lifetime. The piled up volumes of the Mozart edition on display in Salzburg measure over six feet high. Mozart also wrote voluminous correspondence. Grieg is said to have written more than 17,000 letters.18

Or, travel forward in time from Mozart and imagine Berlioz struggling to put on concerts in Paris in the 1830s ‘with no telephone, no secretary, no publicity machine, no regular backers, no permanent orchestra and nobody to assemble the players but himself ’.19 How did the composers have the time to do it, or to relax? These were people I would love to have met. This, to a limited extent, is what I have tried to do.

One of the interesting aspects of getting to ‘know’ them has been to see where so many of them lived and worked. I sometimes have been asked why that has been necessary. I can find no better answer than to quote some words of the leading conductor Bruno Walter: ‘I once saw at Stefan Zweig’s Salzburg home Beethoven’s wooden desk, to the eye a soberly uninteresting object without distinguishing features. But it caused a hardly bearable tumultuous onrush of imagination, pictures, memories, thoughts and sentiments.’20

It has been a privilege for me to visit places where the composers lived. It seemed incredible to be high up in the old city of Bergamo and hold the original manuscript of Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’Amore; and to sit in a Russian Conservatoire and hold an autograph book containing entries from most of the leading mid- to late-19th-century composers. It was thrilling to find the country house in Slovakia where Schubert stayed for two summer vacations, to find the farm in Moravia which Smetana’s father wanted him to run, to see the miniature palace on the Ukrainian steppe where Liszt wooed his princess.

Although my bibliography shows considerable breadth of coverage, I cannot claim to have done any significant primary research. Even then, there is a vast corpus of literature about these composers and the world in which they lived; I can only claim to have touched the tip of the iceberg. I am totally indebted to my sources. I trust I have acknowledged them all.*

Sadly, so much of all that the composers knew and left behind has been destroyed. Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor in the 18th century, said that war was a ‘horrible thing … much worse than I had imagined … the ruin of so many innocent people’.21 The cultural damage has also been appalling, whether in the Leipzig of Bach, Mendelssohn and Schumann; the Vienna of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Mahler and Bruckner; the Warsaw of Chopin; the Weimar of Bach and Liszt; or the Dresden of Weber and Wagner. At this distance in time, it is difficult to comprehend why the asylum near Bonn in which Schumann died, or the monument over his grave, should have been wrecked in the Second World War; presumably there was some good military reason. There is a poignancy about the war memorials in the great church in Lübeck, a city that figures in the lives of Handel and Bach. There, one can see a memorial for the Germans killed in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71; also, the two bells which had sounded over the city for 434 and 273 years now lying shattered on the ground where they fell on the night before Palm Sunday 1942. The human and cultural loss stands as an awesome reminder that requiems for war are many-sided.

In the mid 1700s, the peer and poet Lord Cornbury asked Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, known for describing her travels through Europe, for her ‘sincere opinion’ of his poetry. She wrote: ‘I was not so barbarous to tell him that his verses were extremely stupid (as God knows they were) … I contented myself with representing to him … that it was not the business of a man of quality to turn author, and that he should confine himself to the applause of his friends, and by no means venture on the press.’22 I hope that even those of my friends who look askance at a claim by me to be a man of quality will concede that I have written something which readers will enjoy, and which will help them learn a bit more about the history of music, the people involved and the times they lived in. Readers may even feel that ‘Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose’?

PREFACETO THESECOND EDITION

This edition incorporates several minor improvements. Also, hopefully, it gives due credit to the much-derided Emperor Joseph for his patronage of Mozart, patronage which has recently been emphasised by Derek Beales in his magisterial second volume Joseph II: Against the World 1780–1790 (Cambridge, 2009). To the emperor, the world should be eternally grateful; to the professor, I must add my own thanks.

Michael Steen, Mattingley

*Many of my sources have provided quotations which it would be foolish to try to paraphrase. Their attribution in the narrative would break the continuity. To find the source, readers should turn to the References.

PRELUDE

THE ITALIAN AND GERMAN

BACKGROUND

Allegro, ma non troppo, un poco maestoso. These tempo markings at the start of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, and words such as sonata, concerto and opera remind us of Italy’s enduring influence on music. Handel and Mozart both went there to gain experience. Bach and Haydn never visited Italy, but Haydn composed numerous Italian operas and Bach’s first biographer dared to claim that he began to ‘think musically’ only after he had studied and transcribed some of Vivaldi’s violin concertos.1 So, if we wish to look at the Continental European setting for the late baroque period,* clearly it is in Italy that we should start. Besides, as Joseph Addison, journalist of TheTatler and The Spectator, observed around 1700, ‘there is certainly no Place in the World, where a Man may travel with greater Pleasure and Advantage than in Italy’.4

Addison added that in Italy is ‘the great School of Musick and Painting’.5 Indeed, when he was there, Antonio Vivaldi was based in Venice, and Alessandro Scarlatti in Naples. Rome was home of Arcangelo Corelli, known as ‘Il Bolognese’ because he was trained in Bologna, which was famed for the quality of its instrumental music.6 In Florence, the birthplace of opera,** Bartolomeo Cristofori had recently manufactured the first piano; and in Cremona, about 50 miles from Milan, Antonio Stradivari was making violins. Handel and Bach were but teenagers.

Italy in the 17th century was very different from the nation we think of today. As a country, it did not exist. The peninsula was divided by the Papal States, the ‘seamless garment of Christ’,8 ruled by the Pope. The States were a large area, and cut right across the middle, from the mouth of the River Po to a point some 80 miles south of Rome. Further to the south, the Spanish Habsburgs ruled in Sicily and in Naples, which was then Europe’s fourth largest city, somewhat smaller than Paris. To the north, there were several small states. There were republics in Venice and Genoa. There were decaying duchies, such as Tuscany, Parma and Modena, which were ruled by relicts of the formidable families of a bygone age, the Medici, the Farnese and the d’Este. From Turin, then the capital of Piedmont, the Duke of Savoy ruled territories which reached up to Lake Geneva. The Spanish Habsburgs ruled in Milan.

The complicated components of Italy were relatively straightforward compared to the ragbag of territories over the Alps, which owed allegiance to the Viennese branch of the ubiquitous Habsburg family. The head of this German branch had a grandiloquent and confusing title, the ‘Holy Roman Emperor’. It was in his ‘Empire’ that so many leading composers were born; there, to a great extent because of the Habsburgs, or despite them, several made their career. So, as well as looking briefly at the background in Venice, Rome, Florence and Naples, we must also visit Germany. We shall conclude this Prelude by looking at some aspects of the music of the period and particularly at the Italian Opera, which could be attended by those gentlemen like Addison when doing the Grand Tour, and which followed them back to London. We shall meet some musical celebrities including the castrati whose presence is, to us, such an extraordinary aspect of the time.

VENICE

Our usual image of Italy in the 18th century is of Venice, the city of Canaletto. We picture St Mark’s Square, the lagoon, gondoliers in bright clothes plying their trade along the Grand Canal near the Rialto Bridge. We think of the Carnival and the magnificent festivals, such as Ascension Day, when the ruler, the Doge, sailed out in his ornate barge to drop a ring into the sea, thereby signifying the marriage between the Republic and the Adriatic. The reality was more reminiscent of Canaletto’s picture of TheStonemasons’ Yard, with its labouring stonemasons, its women at work, washing, spinning, shouting, and nursing a bawling, urinating child (see colour plate 1).9 The odour from the canals, sewers of filth, was inde-scribable. It was easy to slip on the paving and fall in, because there were no railings on the bridges. Visitors were therefore advised to beware of the four Ps: ‘Pietra bianca, Putana, Prete and Pantalone’, which, translated, are ‘a white stone, a whore, a priest, and the last P may denote either mounte-banks and jugglers, or the nobility themselves, that being a nickname given them by the vulgar’.10 Like most major cities at the time, Venice was full of beggars and prostitutes.

This ‘great Town half floated by a Deluge’11 had a magnificent musical tradition, especially at St Mark’s. In the 16th century, Andrea Gabrieli had directed its music. His nephew Giovanni* had studied under the Flemish master Orlando di Lasso, and on his return was a magnet attracting others to come to Venice. Claudio Monteverdi, whose Orfeo, produced in 1607, was ‘unquestionably the first masterpiece of operatic history’,13 spent the second half of his life working at St Mark’s.** Venice became pre-eminent in opera.

Monteverdi died in 1643. The next Italian composer whose name most of us recognise today is that of Antonio Vivaldi, memorable for The FourSeasons. He was born in Venice in early 1678. He became the leading concerto composer of his time and boasted that he could compose a concerto faster than it could be copied.* He composed 500 concertos16 and also claimed to have composed 94 operas.17

Among the entertainments attended by those doing the Grand Tour were the weekend concerts at the Pietà, where Vivaldi first worked as a brilliant maestro di violino and as an ineffectual priest. The number of foundlings abandoned by their parents or by desperate unmarried mothers was one of the bleakest aspects of 18th-century society. Unwanted girls were placed in the Pietà which was one of the four conservatorio or orphanages. The Pietà specialised in music and also accepted girls who were not orphans. ‘I assure you, there is no more delightful sight than a pretty young nun wearing a white robe and a bouquet of pomegranate flowers in her hair, leading an orchestra with incomparable grace and with the proper feeling’, wrote one visitor.18

Despite its musical accomplishments, Venice and much of the rest of Italy were in decline. Venice was no longer a supreme maritime power, dominating the trade in the Eastern Mediterranean. It was not the first, nor the last, great power to become a mere resort for tourists.

The discovery of America and the sea-route to the Indies had caused this decay. Also, as Addison recorded, ‘the Venetians are in continual Apprehensions from the Turk’,19 the vast Ottoman Empire ruled by the Sultan in Constantinople. In the opening storm scene of Otello, Verdi’s Moor of Venice arrives in Cyprus proclaiming ‘Esultate!’ at a Turkish defeat.** In the middle of the 17th century, the Turk was still a significant threat: Venice’s treasury was depleted by over 90 per cent as a consequence of a 24-year war about Crete, one of the Republic’s oldest possessions.21 The defeat was publicly presented as a success, in pictures of valour and heroism.

Rather than crushing Venice, the Turks headed north. In 1683, led by ‘the scourge of mankind’,22 Grand Vizier Kara Mustapha, they ravaged a large area of Hungary and Austria, and committed dreadful atrocities. An army of 200,000 men besieged Vienna for 60 days. Other Christian countries felt threatened. So, an alliance led by the King of Poland defeated the Grand Vizier, who was renowned for his cruelty and appetites: he possessed 1,500 concubines who were guarded by 700 black eunuchs.23 But, no more; he was strangled; his head was chopped off and sent back to the Sultan in Constantinople.

The frontier between Christian and Infidel was in the Balkans, a short distance across the Adriatic from Venice. It was settled with Serbian Christian refugees,24 bred to resist the Turk. Territory in the Balkans, particularly the area around Belgrade, changed hands frequently and ferociously.25 One glorious Christian victory was celebrated by Vivaldi with a cantata, Judithatriumphans.26 But the Turkish problem persisted and continued to destabilise Europe until, in 1922, the British finally picked up the last expense account of Sultan Mehmet VI, amounting to £484.7s.4d.27 The legacy has remained.

The unpleasant realities of life in Venice, as in Italy generally, were relieved by Carnival, a bacchanalian relic of pagan times, meaning ‘farewell to flesh meat’.28 It ran for around eight weeks from the day after Epiphany, 7 January, until midnight on Shrove Tuesday, the day before the fasting season of Lent began. Carnival was a time for entertainment such as opera; there were races on the canals; bets could be placed at twenty different casinos. There were masked balls. Addison observed: ‘These Disguises give occasion to abundance of Love-Adventures … and I question not but the secret History of a Carnival would make a Collection of very diverting Novels.’29

ROME

While those on the Grand Tour went to Venice for Carnival, amusement and sex, they went to Rome for culture. ‘Whoever beholds the ruinous remains of ancient Rome may well say “Rome is no more”; but whoever turns his eyes towards the splendid palaces of new Rome, may justly say “Rome still flourishes”.’30 Grasping their classical texts, such as those by Horace, Virgil and Ovid, the visitors would gaze at a temple ‘parcelled into several divisions and let out by the Apostolic chamber to graziers as an inclosure for their bullocks &c.’, or at some granite object in the Forum, now used ‘for a drinking trough for sheep and oxen’.31 The visitors could languidly criticise the administration for allowing the inside of the decayed Coliseum to be ‘overrun with grass and weeds’.32 They could admire St Peter’s and moralise about the splendid palaces of the rich nobility, such as the Colonna and Barberini families, who were related to previous popes. They could speculate about the amount of Rome’s pecuniary wealth contributed by Roman Catholics in far-off lands.

Rome, like Venice, was smelly and unpleasant. The water of the River Tiber was ‘so thick and foul that it is not fit for horses to drink till it has been in flood two or three days’.33 In the summer months, when the heat was insufferable, most people stayed indoors during daytime. There was a saying at the time: ‘None but dogs, idiots and Frenchmen walk the streets in the day-time.’*34

To distract the masses, Rome also had its Carnival. This tended to be confined to the week before Lent. One could watch the horses being raced riderless along the Corso. A great prelate, such as Cardinal Ottoboni, would have operas performed in his private theatre, to which he allowed public access. The Popes took an ambivalent attitude to the lewder aspects of Carnival. One, at the end of the 16th century, raised gibbets and whipping posts to overawe his subjects. On the other hand, Pope Clement IX wrote librettos and authorised the building of a large theatre. In the 1720s, Benedict XIII, a reforming Pope, found it easiest to turn a blind eye to it all and shut himself up in a monastery for the season.35

FLORENCEAND NAPLES

In the magnificent city of Florence, there were fewer inhibitions: it was said of Cardinal Gian Carlo de Medici that ‘if there was a beautiful woman to be had in Florence, he was determined to enjoy her favours at any time and cost’.36 Although this might cast doubt on the proposition that ‘the old Medici line was spent’,37 the descendants of Lorenzo the Magnificent, who had recently brought the scientist Galileo to Florence, were actually reaching the end of the road. The prim Grand Duke Cosimo III now aped King Louis XIV, with whom he had nothing in common, ‘being arrogant, pretentious, extravagant and not very intelligent’.38 The only bright spot was his homosexual son,39 Ferdinando, a connoisseur and composer, whose patronage attracted several musicians to Florence, including Alessandro Scarlatti, his son Domenico and Handel.40

Naples was praised for its grandeur, ‘the Beauty of its Pavement, the Regularity of its Buildings, the Magnificence of its Churches and Convents’.41 There were few antiquities of any value to be seen because the Roman remains at Pompeii and Herculaneum had yet to be discovered, and anything good had been sent back to Spain.42 But tourists could marvel at the Bay of Naples and go on an expedition up Vesuvius. They were advised to carry firearms in Naples: ‘few cities are more dangerous after dark’ and many of its people were ‘trained up to rob and murder’.43 The Neapolitans were anyway a disputatious lot, and the city was full of lawyers. Addison tells of a Pope asking a Neapolitan marquis ‘to furnish him with thirty thousand Head of Swine’; the marquis answered ‘that for his Swine, he could not spare them, but if his Holiness had occasion for thirty thousand Lawyers, he had them at his Service’.44

Among the unattractive aspects of Italy, none was more noticeable than the poverty. In Naples, it was exacerbated by high taxes, levied particularly regressively on the coarser meat eaten by the poor. Addison observed that the people in Parma and Modena ‘would live in great Plenty amidst so rich and well cultivated a Soil, were not the Taxes and Impositions so very exorbitant; for the Courts are much too splendid and magnificent for the Territories that lie about them’.45 He also said that ‘this Desolation appears no where greater than in the Pope’s Territories’.46 He continued: ‘His State is thin of Inhabitants, and a great Part of his Soil uncultivated. His subjects are wretchedly poor and idle, and have neither sufficient Manufactures nor Traffick to employ them.’47 For a good Protestant and Englishman, this could readily be blamed on a Church which ‘shuts up in Cloisters such a Multitude of young and lusty Beggars, who instead of increasing the common Stock by their Labour and Industry, lie as a dead Weight on their Fellow-Subjects, and consume the Charity that ought to support the Sickly, Old and Decrepid’.48 Brigandage was obviously attributable to the many pilgrims, that is, foreigners.

GERMANY: THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIREAND THE HABSBURGS

Whereas Italy may appear to have been fragmented, Germany was kaleidoscopic: it comprised around 360 individual states, 1,800, if all the estates of the Imperial Knights of the south-west are included.49 This agglomeration was ruled by bishops and abbots, dukes, margraves and counts, and the like. Lands were often divided between sons, rather than being bequeathed to the eldest. Thus, by 1618, in the little state of Anhalt, itself hardly larger than Essex, there were four principalities,50 one of which was Cöthen, where Bach would spend over five years of his life.

Germany was held together by the ‘Holy Roman Empire’, which goes back to the coronation of Charlemagne in Rome in 800 AD, and which became a national political entity around the time of the first millennium. Centuries later, it was to be described by the French writer and wit Voltaire as neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire. By the 1600s, the Emperor* was elected by three spiritual princes, the Archbishops of Mainz, Cologne and Trier, together with four secular princes from Bohemia, the Palatinate, Brandenburg and Saxony.

The Elector of Bohemia, the area within a hundred miles radius of Prague, was a Habsburg. He was also Archduke of Austria and, in his capacity as King of Hungary, he had the right to exercise a veto in the conclave which chose the Pope.5l The Elector of the Palatinate, based in Heidelberg, ruled territories on the upper reaches of the Rhine and Danube; the Elector of Brandenburg, whose chief city was Berlin, had recently inherited Prussia with its fine city of Königsberg (today, Kaliningrad); and the Elector of Saxony resided in Dresden. There were two 17th-century electoral creations, the Elector of Bavaria, in 1620, and the Elector of Hanover, in 1692.

The Empire came under the sway of the Habsburgs who controlled it by using already well-honed techniques, particularly the careful choice of appointments, a euphemism for cash, and the residual threat of force. The Habsburgs, whose family tree can be found on page 970, ran a kind of global family property concern, whose managers were focused on growth and on passing the group of subsidiaries and related companies to the next generation. The family had concluded some acquisitive marriages in the 15th century.** These brought in Burgundy with the Netherlands, Castile and Aragon in the Spanish peninsula, and Hungary. Naples and Granada were conquered, as were swathes of America.53

France was beyond the Habsburgs’ control, regrettably. But they surrounded it, a factor which might be said to have affected the French psyche until today. The French Bourbons (whose family tree may be found on page 969) stood in the way of the Habsburgs getting from their southern territories in the Mediterranean to their northern territories. The Habsburgs had to go round the outside, hence the strategic importance of the Alpine route through the Grisons in Switzerland, the Rhineland and Bavaria. The French impediment then suited other countries, such as England, which was concerned with maintaining the delicate, fragile balance of power in Europe.

In 1556, the mighty Emperor Charles V retired to a monastery (for us, to re-emerge three centuries later in Verdi’s opera Don Carlos). He divided his vast possessions.* The Netherlands, Italy and Spain went to his ascetic son Philip II, who had recently married, as his second wife, ‘Bloody’ Mary Tudor. He gave the Holy Roman Empire to his brother Ferdinand and his descendants.

Occasionally, family concerns like the Habsburgs face a crisis, as they did when Emperor Matthias died childless in 1619. This event unleashed religious differences and a struggle for power. The three other secular electors were by then Protestant, as was much of the nobility of Bohemia, while the Habsburgs were Catholic. The family backed one of their members, Ferdinand of Styria,** on the understanding that he would permit Spanish troops to pass through his lands on their way north. The Jesuit-educated Ferdinand refused to guarantee the arrangements for Protestant worship in Bohemia, and his legates were thrown out of the window of Prague castle, only to be saved almost miraculously by landing on the soft dung-heap outside. The Elector of the Palatinate was then given the crown of Bohemia by the Protestant rebels, but his forces were defeated by Ferdinand at the Battle of the White Mountain, near Prague. It was a bloody business: for a week after the battle, Ferdinand’s troops were given licence to do what they wanted. At the behest of the Jesuits, there was then a massive expulsion of Protestants.†

THE THIRTY YEARS WAR

So began the Thirty Years War, one of the most devastating wars in the history of Germany.55 Onto the stage stepped generals whom we would now regard as no better than thugs. There was Ferdinand’s predatory henchman, a Jesuit-educated convert from Protestantism, Adalbert von Wallenstein. He was known for ‘his ungovernable temper, his disregard for human life, his unsteady nerves, his immutable chastity, his faith in astrology’.56 There was Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, the golden king, the Lion of the North, laying waste as he went, in order that the land could not support another army. And there was the cruel Bernard, Duke of Saxe-Weimar, a part of Germany that was to figure prominently in the lives of Bach and Liszt.

There are stories of Ferdinand’s troops slaughtering children in the cellars, throwing women out of the upper windows of the houses, and boiling a housewife in her own cauldron; stories of the Swedes sprinkling gunpowder on their prisoners and setting fire to their clothes; of the Bavarians shutting the gates of a town, firing the walls, training guns on the gates and shooting at the people as they tried to escape the flames. Both sides made it their business to burn everything they passed in hostile country. One of the worst atrocities was at Magdeburg, on the River Elbe: fire destroyed the city even though its burghers had wished to surrender it. Only about 5,000 of its 30,000 inhabitants survived, mostly women whom the victors had abducted to their camp.* With war came dreadful disease, particularly bubonic plague.58

The peace congress at Westphalia in 1648 at which the Thirty Years War was eventually concluded had been sitting for nearly a year when the delegates found that they were still unclear about the reasons for the war. When a treaty was finally agreed, Germany experienced the consequences of demobilisation: the Swedes, for example, had to demobilise nearly 100,000 soldiers, mainly Germans without hope for the future. On the Habsburg side, about 200,000 men and women were robbed of their sole means of existence. In some cases, the soldiers took to the hills and formed robber bands.59

While the religious wars lasted, music could not prosper. Heinrich Schütz, arguably the leading figure in 17th-century German music, had been recruited to Dresden after studying in Venice with Giovanni Gabrieli. He managed to escape to work in Denmark at various times during the war. Other distinguished composers whose lives were severely disrupted were Samuel Scheidt at Halle, and Johann Hermann Schein at St Thomas’ Church in Leipzig. Leipzig was besieged six times and it was occupied four times by hostile troops. There was so little food for the choristers that they had to be sent home.60

The limited scope for culture in Germany at this time is perhaps illustrated by Heinrich Schütz’s ‘boss’, Elector Johann Georg of Saxony, whose main form of relaxation was to carouse, box his dwarf ’s ears, gorge homely foods and swill beer. If necessary, he would pour the dregs of his tankard over a servant’s head as a signal for more.61

The Habsburgs in Vienna, however, were cultured and musically talented; this boded well for the future. Emperor Ferdinand III, who ruled from 1637, in the second half of the Thirty Years War, wrote instrumental music and opera. His son, Emperor Leopold I, wrote an oratorio, and his Sacrificio d’Abramo established the form for the oratorio used in Holy Week. Both emperors are accorded the accolade of ‘Master’ by a 20th-century expert on baroque music.62 Leopold’s son Charles VI, it was said at the time, ‘not only plays on several instruments, but is also a perfect master of the rules of composition’.63 His family, possibly the most important patrons of music, were unlikely to be well-disposed towards ‘taking any nonsense’ from some ‘upstart’ like Mozart.64

SOME ASPECTSOF MUSICIN THE ‘LATE BAROQUE ’

Even at the risk of considerable oversimplification, it is helpful to appreciate some of the features of the music of the late 17th century which distinguish it from earlier music. In Palestrina’s Missa Papae Marcelli, written in the 1560s, or the Miserere of Gregorio Allegri, written half a century later, we hear equally balanced lines being played or sung in an ensemble: the rhythms are very subtle and the music seems almost to float. Later, in the works of Corelli and Vivaldi, there is more obvious propulsion: the bass propels the music forward and both treble and bass provide an increased sense of key.65

In this later period, we often hear separate groups of musicians, perhaps string bands or trumpets, sometimes located in different galleries, echoing each other, alternating, even competing with each other. It is said that the term concerto is derived from the Italian word ‘concertare’, to compete. By the time of the classical concerto, the virtuoso soloist and orchestra converse back and forth about the same themes.66

Also, in this new style, each composition or number, such as an aria, was intended to reflect a single, specific and usually somewhat exaggerated emotion or feeling. As well as being consistent with the pathos of the baroque visual arts, this mood provided a sense of unity without which the music risked becoming diffuse and unco-ordinated.* The single mood might portray, say, violent pain, deep sorrow, exuberant joy, passionate love or anger. Individual instruments were associated with certain moods: there were pompous horns, proud bassoons, harsh cornets, modest flutes, heroic kettledrums, flattering lutes, grumbling bass fiddles.68

Unity was also provided by the use of imitation, the repetition of a melody. Although this technique was not new, the imitation now became more structured, as in the fugue, in which the same ‘subject’ enters in each voice successively and is then developed further. Occasionally, composers used considerable ingenuity in writing ‘canons’ in which the same theme may perhaps be played lengthened, shortened, backwards or upside down, or backwards and upside down, by different voices or instruments all at the same time.69 Bach was particularly skilled at exhausting all the imitative possibilities and usually, at the same time, producing a beautiful work.70

Contrast was often provided by combining different movements, perhaps slow and fast, together in one overall work. Dances would be assembled in one suite. The French suite was a free anthology; the German suite contained only three basic movements, the allemande, the courante and the sarabande, with the gigue appearing optionally.71

Many of these aspects are found in the instrumental works of Vivaldi. The virtuoso violin would alternate with repeats of similar material played by the string orchestra. He used this structure for the outer movements, recognisable for their drive and verve, and he placed a slow movement in the middle. He was himself perhaps the first virtuoso violinist, amazing his listeners with his skill, playing ‘at unbelievable speed, astonishing everyone’.72

Vivaldi is best known to us by his concertos which he called The FourSeasons.* They are descriptive and portray something non-musical, such as a hunt, a storm, the murmuring of waves, the blowing of zephyrs, or sleep. Vivaldi preceded each of the four concertos by a short poem in which he described the images and events depicted.**73

Claudio Monteverdi, or perhaps Antonio Stradivari / Antonio Vivaldi

ITALIAN OPERA – THE BUSINESS

Some might say that the development of opera was the most important achievement of the Italian composers of the time. Opera received considerable support from the authorities. It is ‘the most easily assimilable of musical genres and can be enjoyed without the need for any great appreciation of music’.74 It was thus a suitable means of entertaining royalty and the aristocracy; he who pays the piper calls the tune.*

Opera was also politically correct, because tragedy taught virtues such as obedience, heroism, loyalty; comedy ridiculed misbehaviour. Indeed, the shape of the opera house reinforced the social structure. The theatre of St John Chrysostom, the largest in Venice, had five tiers of 35 boxes for the upper classes, the floor below being filled with the middle class and visitors. Venice was the first city to allow admission just on payment for a ticket. Gondoliers were admitted free of charge to the empty seats on the floor.76

By 1700, Venice had at least six opera houses; apparently 1,274 operas were performed there during the 18th century.77 The ambitious court of Hanover, whose elector would eventually become King of England, even maintained a permanent box at the opera in Venice. The other main centre for opera was in Naples. Rome had a leading opera house until Pope Innocent XII, against the protestation of his cardinals, razed it in 1697.

The opera performance usually began at 7 pm and ended at 11 pm. In Venice, the audience was often attired in cloaks and masks, so there was usually no need to dress up. At Carnival or Ascension-time, many would go on afterwards to a masked ball.

A special charge was made for the printed libretto, which was sold with a little candle to enable the buyer to read it in the darkened theatre. The opera would usually begin with an energetic first movement, or overture, to notify the audience that the opera was about to start. But watching the performance was ancillary. ‘Every lady’s box is the scene of tea, cards, cavaliers, servants, lapdogs, abbés, scandal and assignations.’78 Thus, there was no point in composing a work which demanded constant attention; it was better to write one during which two or three arias grabbed attention and stopped conversation. Some opera houses had other purposes. Naples’ Teatro della Pace had to be closed in 1749 because it was deemed a threat to public morals.79

An opera house was usually leased by a nobleman to an impresario who took the considerable commercial risk of promoting operas and managing all the artistic and business aspects. The box-office receipts rarely covered more than 75 per cent of the outgoings, so the operating loss had to be financed by sales of merchandise.80 An important source of revenue was the casino business run in the front of the house.

Whereas the composer was comparatively poorly paid, the impresario had the chance to make a fortune, as Vivaldi found and did, becoming vain and conceited in the process. Equally, the impresario could lose the lot, as Vivaldi also discovered when, laden with financial commitments to stage managers and others, he quite suddenly ceased to be popular. When he was spurned and his productions were cancelled or flopped, he blamed the disaster on his reputation for being a lapsed priest, and his reputed affair with his prima donna, Anna Girò, who had ‘a very slim waist, beautiful eyes, lovely hair, a charming mouth’.81 However, an equally probable cause of his downfall was the bane of the entertainment world, fashion. Vivaldi had been superseded in Italy by Johann Adolph Hasse, Il Sassone (the Saxon), husband of the international soprano Faustina Bordoni. Hasse commuted between Dresden, Naples and Vienna.

ITALIAN OPERA – THE CONTENT

What was Italian opera like at that time? The opera consisted of arias using expressive melody, known as baroque bel canto, which enabled the different qualities of the voice to be demonstrated and the mood and sentiment of the character to be expressed. Sometimes there was an instrumental section called Sinfonia which depicted a storm or provided a funeral march. Speech-like recitative, often very beautiful, was used to take the action forward. The chorus, an ensemble of soloists, was usually restricted to the finale.*

Sometimes sections were borrowed from other operas by the same composer, or other composers. And some operas, known as pasticcios, had each act or section composed by a different composer.

The story usually involved heroes drawn from Greek, Roman and Biblical history and legend, such as those portrayed by the French dramatists Corneille and Racine, and the Flemish painter Rubens.** The players were often transported through the air by expensive machinery which was also essential for simulating apparitions, sea storms, conflagrations and miracles. The English dramatist John Gay jeered in his spoof, The Beggar’sOpera, saying ‘an opera must end happily … no matter how absurdly things are brought about’.83 A ‘deus ex machina’ would appear suddenly in the final act and bring about the happy conclusion.

The singers were desperate to grab the attention of the noisy audience. They did this by demonstrating virtuosity in three styles: the cantabile, the grazioso and the bravura. Thus, the music tended to reflect standard moods, such as rage, triumph, or jealousy, rather than the personality of the character being portrayed.84

The opera soon degenerated into something like a costume concert. The voices competed with flute or cornet in virtuosity; a scene would be ended with an ‘exit aria’, aimed more at creating an opportunity for applause than at unfolding the drama. If a singer did not approve of an aria, he or she simply substituted another from the repertory, regardless of its irrelevance. In the 1700s, a leading poet, Pietro Metastasio, and the slightly older Zeno, began to institute improvements. But Metastasio’s dramas nevertheless still ‘swarm with impossible heroes of magnanimity and renunciation … heroic sons and daughters; intriguers and conspirators, who are inevitably pardoned; with attempts at suicide as invariably frustrated’.85

Addison protested: ‘The Poetry of ’em is generally so exquisitely ill, as the Musick is good. The Arguments are often taken from some celebrated Action of the ancient Greeks and Romans, which sometimes looks ridiculous enough, for who can endure to hear one of the rough old Romans squeaking thro’ the Mouth of an Eunuch.’86

THE STARSAND THE CASTRATI

The works were often specifically tailored to individual ‘famous’ singers, stars, who operated internationally. They were paid spectacular sums and had correspondingly inflated egos.87 Once the particular star had moved on, the opera was shelved, because the work was no longer relevant or a commercial proposition.