In short, everything was made tributary to that marvelous art of song in which these singers excelled. Nothing was ever permitted which could mar its perfection.
It was an interesting state of musical art, the age of simplicity, of receptivity, of public juvenility. But it could not last. Sophistication was bound to come, and even if the public was willing always to eat candy, the composers were not satisfied to remain mere confectioners. It was not in Italy, however, that the change made itself visible first. France must have the credit, if credit it be, of having led the movement toward a return to the dramatic ideals of the inventors of opera.
Lulli, a transplanted Italian, with a political spirit and a meagre share of musical invention, sought to impart influence to his operas by setting the text to an imposing style of musical declamation. He never had a grasp of the lucid aria form of the Italians; his mind was too poor in melodic ideas. Neither could he deal happily with voices in mass. His choruses are as thin as the easy unisons of Verdi’s earlier works, and his duets are only dialogues. But, on the other hand, he sincerely tried to make his music convey the feeling of the text, and he made his choruses appropriate to the general tone picture.
Rameau, who worked about a century later than Lulli, was much farther along the road toward dramatic verity. In fact, Rameau had just what Lulli lacked, namely, musical invention. Hence in plasticity of form and variety of expression his operas were far in advance of the earlier master. They were farther than the lapse of time alone could have carried them. Gluck, who was a younger contemporary of Rameau, was deeply influenced by him, and struck out a new path toward dramatic truth in operatic music. But all of these composers were the slaves of the innate Gallic love of refinement and elegance in art. They gradually lessened the amount of purely ornamental singing in opera, but they did not rob the music of its polish and its fluency. Musical form was preserved at all cost, and the aria came again into its own.
Gluck, with all his originality and sincerity, did not know how to escape its domination. But the old-fashioned roulades, the shakes and jumps of the early masters and mistresses of vocal technic, now became few and far between. The broad, noble, classic style, which was withal as cold as it was statuesque, was developed by these composers. The battle between their ideas and those of the Italians was fought out on Parisian ground. The great singers of the Italian school carried the public with them. For a time, indeed, the master works of Gluck overcame all opposition, and the public confessed to a perception of their greatness. But it could not last. The desire for mere amusement won, and with the advent of Rossini Europe went back to the old strumming airs of the popular Italian style.
Yet singers had been influenced by the modifications which had been made. The mere fact that a composer had compelled a public to accept his ideas of opera showed that temporarily at any rate the domination of the singer had ceased. ‘The vocal artists had been led to modify their style to suit the requirements of the operas, and something of the wonderful finish of the early days gradually gave way to energy of manner and vivacity of articulation. Of course there was no chronological line drawn between the two styles. They existed side by side for a period.
In the early years of the nineteenth century Angelica Catalani, the Melba of her day, ravished the ears of Milan, Lisbon, and Paris with her exquisitely beautiful voice, her wonderful compass, which ranged to the high G (Sybil Sanderson’s “Eiffel Tower” note), and her dazzling brilliancy and accuracy of execution. At the same period Pierre Jean Garat, the tenor idol of Paris, showed how beauty of voice and perfection of technic could be united with-
