curtain. If some remedy be not adopted, we shall soon lose sight of the “merry” baritone altogether, and find nothing in his place but a stereotyped stage-villain, angry and full of solos, with a singular habit of falling in love with other people’s wives, and running away with them. Is it not curious that no attempt should have been made to introduce Sir Creswell Creswell upon the stage (in the shape of a sturdy basso), and thus put an end to the atrocity? Tenors and baritones have been at loggerheads long enough, and it is high time that a separate lady should be provided for them. They should be made to shake hands. Toujours perdrix is a sickly dish; and no amount of skill on the part of the composer can atone for this perpetual recurrence of the same scenes.
Here are a few instances from some of the most popular operas of the Italian school.
Enter the baritone of the “Puritani,” one Sir Richard North, holding converse with his friend Brown (Bruno), on the miseries of unrequited affection.
“Where shall I fly to?” says the baritone, “where shall I hide my frightful torments? These rejoicings come to my heart like the sound of some funeral dirge. Oh, Elvira! amiable object of my sighs, without hope or love, what remains to me in this world?”
Bruno replies (rather sententiously), “Thy country and Heaven!”
“What voice?” cries Sir Richard. “What dost thou say? Ah! it is true.”
At which the other exclaims:
“Unbosom thyself to friendship. Thou wilt there find consolation.”
“It will be vain,” cries Sir Richard. “However, I will satisfy thee.”
And he forthwith tells him that the father of Elvira had promised him the hand of that young lady, and that, at an advanced hour of the night, he flew to him full of delightful ideas.
“What did he say?” roars Bruno.
“Elvira sighs for another!” cries the baritone, “sighs for the Cavalier Talbot, and a father’s love cannot command the heart.”
“Be calm, my friend,” thunders the other.
“My sorrow can only be calmed by the tomb,” exclaims the mourner, and forthwith sings in a very lusty manner the celebrated cavatina: “Ah! per sempre io ti perdei.”
The reader need not be informed that the persons referred to in this dialogue are the tenor and soprano; who, after their usual fashion, have fallen in love with each other, and thereby incurred the eternal odium of the baritone.
The customary dénoument takes place.
“You ought to save your rival,” says an old Puritan Captain (Signor Giorgio, a basso profondo), “and you can.”
“I cannot,” cries the baritone.
“Say, you will not,” shouts the other.
“No!” repeats the baritone.
“Thou must save him,” exclaims the other, in a tenderer key.
“He shall perish!”
And perish he does. Nothing can keep him alive in such a dilemma, and the infatuated prima donna kills herself by taking a dose of poison.
In “Lucrezia Borgia” it is the same old story.
The heroine is alone with her husband in the Ducal palace. Gennaro, ignorantly in love with his own mother (Lucrezia), and fancying himself loved by her in return, has been taken away by the guards. The baritone thus addresses the soprano:
“You love him” (referring to the tenor).
“What do I hear?” cries Lucrezia.
“Yes,” repeats the Duke, “you love him;—you have followed him from Venice.”
“Great Heaven!”
“Even now, in your countenance I read your guilty love.”
“Duke Alfonso!”
“Be calmed,” cries Alfonso.
“I swear!” cries Lucrezia.
‘Do not stain yourself with a fresh perjury.”
“Duke Alfonso!”
“It is time,” cries Alfonso, “for me to take a dreadful revenge.”
“Mercy, Alfonso!”
“The worthless man shall die!”
And he dies accordingly, and the soprano with him, and the baritone has the gratification at the end of the opera of knowing that he has once more triumphed over his old enemy, the primo tenore.
But Verdi’s baritones go a step further. The baritone of Donizetti in the opera just quoted had a reasonable motive for his proceedings, and the baritone of Bellini has the excuse of being a Puritan captain, while his rival (the hated tenor) was a Royalist leader. Let us see how Verdi has conducted the “old story.”
The tenor and soprano of the “Trovatore” have just sung their opening songs, and the invidious baritone has detected their attachment.
Count di Luna (the baritone), to Manrico (the tenor):
“Thy last hour is nearer perhaps than thou thinkest! Villain, draw thy sword.”
“Count!” cries the soprano.
“To my rage the victim—here will I destroy him,” exclaims the boastful Count.
“Heaven,” cries Leonora, “pray stay him!”
“Follow me,” says the baritone.
“I will,” says the tenor.
“What shall I do?” says Leonora. “Pray hear me!”
“No,” cries the Count. “The fury of a despised love rages within my breast! Thy blood, unhappy man (to the tenor), can alone quench it.”
And after some bantering, the rivals retire with their drawn swords, the lady falling senseless on the ground.
The dénoument is precisely what might have been expected. The soprano poisons herself, the tenor is brought in chains before the baritone, and the baritone exclaims in an exultant voice:
“She has deceived me then, and for him chosen to die; let him be taken to the block!”
The scene closes, the curtain falls, and the baritone is left to his triumph. Were we not right in saying that the baritone is the cause of all the
