Grove's dictionary of music and musicians

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SPONTINI 651
was again revised, the changes this time being
in the airs for Olympie and Cassandre, the duet
for the same in the first act, and a new scene
with terzetto in the third. As this last is not
included in the printed edition it looks as if the
final form of the opera had not even yet been
attained. Schlesinger of Berlin published a complete
pianoforte-score in 1826.' The opera was
again put on the stage in Paris, Feb. 28, 1826,
and by March 15 it had already been played
six times. 2 Each time it pleased more, and at
last Spontini was able to count it among his
great triumphs. It was, however, only in Berlin,
where he settled in 1820, that it kept a permanent
place in the repertory. It had a short
run at Dresden and Darmstadt in 1822, and
was proposed at Vienna, but the performance
did not take place. The opera has now completely
disappeared from musical life, a fate it
shares with Chembini's Medee." That no
'
attempts have been made to revive it must be
attributed partly to the enormous demands
which it makes on the dramatic and scenic
resources of a theatre, and also to the fact
that Spontini's operas are of an individual type
and require a peculiar style of representation.
The few living musicians who remember the performances
of Spontini's operas in Berlin between
1820 and 1830 know the kind of interpretation
he used to give of them—one which by no means
lay on the surface. Dom, in his BecoUeclvms,^
says that at Leipzig in 1829 the final chorus in
the second act of the Vestale ' ' was ridiculed as
a mere waltz-tune. When Dom undertook the
direction of the opera, and had to conduct the
'Vestale,' he made such good use of his recollections
of the way in which it was conducted
by the composer, that the chorus in question
was scarcely recognised, and all adverse comments
were silenced. Another fifty years,'
'
continues he, and ' the Spontini traditions will
have disappeared, as the Mozart traditions have
already done.' It would be more correct to say
that loth have disappeared. The Spontini traditions
might possibly have lived longer had his
work in Germany been more successful than it
was. But there is enough to account for this,
and more, in the unsettled condition of all stage
matters in Germany for many years past.
'
Olympie ' and ' Agnes von Hohenstaufen '
witten ten years later—stand alone among
operas of the 19th century for grandeur of conception.
True, in isolated scenes of the ' Huguenots
' and the ' Prophete,' Meyerbeer approached
his predecessor, but he never succeeded in creating
a whole of such magnificent proportions.
The unity of design is remarkable, each act
seems to be cast in one mould ;
and this from
the fact that musically the several scenes of each
act run into each other in a much more marked
manner than in ' Cortez ' or the Vestale. ' ' There
'
A full score, in 3 vols, was published by Erard at Paris.
2 Marx's Berliner AWiem. Mus. Zeitung for 1826, p. 104.
3 Aus meinem Leben-Erinnerunffen (Berlin, 18iO), p. 131 et seq.
is also, throughout, the closest connection between
the music, the scenes on the stage, and
the development of the plot—the cachet of the
true dramatic artist. The principal characters
are well defined, and the tone assigned to each
at the start is skilfully maintained. The first
entrances, always the most important moment
in opera for fixing the character of a part, are
always very significant. For instance, it is interesting
to observe the entirely diH'erent nature of
the music at the entrances of Olympia and of
Statira. The latter, the principal character in
the piece, has no rival, unless it be Cherubini's
' Medee, ' or perhaps Gluck's ' Armide. ' A sorrrow
ful woman, burdened with horrible memories
and burning for revenge, she is yet a Queen from
the crown of her head to the sole of her foot,
and a heroine, as all must acknowledge, worthy
of Alexander the Great. Bearing in mind the
grandeur of the subject, and its background of
history, the composer's choice of material does
not seem exaggerated.
But these great qualities are accompanied by
considerable detects. Apart from the falsified
history of the plot, which might easily disturb
a cultivated spectator in these days of accuracy,
the happy conclusion weakens the interest in
the fate of the chief characters. The part of
Statira, at any rate, was far more consistent
and homogeneous when the ending was tragic.
The music, undeniably grandly sketched as a
whole, lacks charm in the details. Spontini was
not an instrumental composer. His overtures,
dances, and marches, are in all cases music
without any independent existence, simply intended
to introduce or accompany. Instrumental
music, froifl its immense plasticity and
variety, is the best possible school for developing
all the rich resources of the musical art ; but
in this school Spontini had never been properly
disciplined, and the neglect makes itself felt in
his larger dramatic forms. These are monotonous
and wearisome, while his basses are poor, and his
accompaniments wanting in variety. It seems
strange that with his great reverence for Mozart
—the great model in this respectalso—he should
never have been aware of this want in himself.
His melodies lack plasticity, that bold free movement
which is absolutely essential if the melody
is to remain dominant over all the accumulated
masses of sound. He has not sufficient command
of language to have always ready to his hand
suitablemeans of expression for the rapid changes
of sentiment in the coui\se of a scene. Nor has
he the power of assigning the instrumental music
its due share in the dramatic development. If
all the work is done by the singing and acting,
one is tempted to ask what is the object of all
this overwhelming apparatus in the orchestra ?
The important part played by the instrumental
music in an opera, that of preparing and elucidating
the sentiments, making them subjectively
moi'e credible, and objectively clearer, this