And Metastasio brings his minute recommendation to an end only, he says, because he is tired; by no means because he has said everything. Doubtless subsequent conversations commented upon and completed this letter.
***
Let us sum up the advice here given. We shall note:
1. The supremacy of poetry over music. "The outlines of their features" refers to poetry. "Their garments and adornments" are represented by music. Gluck did not express himself very differently.
2. The importance given to the drama, the advice of the craftsman not to delay the actor's delivery so that there may not be gaps in the dialogue. This is the condemnation of the useless aria. The music is subordinated to the scenic effect.
3. The psychological character attributed to the orchestra. "The symphony which expresses the reflections, doubts and perplexities of Regulus" … The admitted power of good music to interpret not only the words, but the hidden soul, whose emotions often differ completely from the expression of them—in a word, the inner tragedy.
All this, I repeat, is in accordance with Gluck's ideas. Why then are Metastasio and his composers always represented as opposed to Gluck's reform of the opera? This letter was written in 1749, at a date when Gluck had not as yet the least presentiment of his reform.[1] We perceive from it that all
- ↑ Gluck began his career in 1742; he returned from England in 1746; and in 1749 he had not yet written—I will not say his dedicatory epistle to Alceste, which is dated twenty-years later (1769), but even his really significant Italian operas; the date of Ezio is 1750, and that of La Clemenza di Tito, 1752.
