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Page 17
things fall from his lips. And finally, he is always the perfect
artist without reproach; there is nothing wanting and nothing in
excess; as he himself said on one occasion, his scores contain exactly
the right number of notes. This is "Don Giovanni" as one may see it a
century after its birth: a faultless masterpiece; yet (in England at
least) it only gets an occasional performance, through the freak of a
prima donna, who, as the sage critic said of Mozart, is undoubtedly "a
little _pass�e_ now."
After all, this is hardly surprising. Perfect art wants perfect
listeners, and just now we are much too eager for excitement, too
impatient of mere beauty, to listen perfectly to perfect music. And
there are other reasons why "Don Giovanni" should not appeal to this
generation. For many years it was the sport of the prima donna, and
conductors and singers conspired to load it with traditional
Costamongery, until at last the "Don Giovanni" we knew became an
entirely different thing from the "Don Giovanni" of Mozart's thought.
Not Giovanni but Zerlina was the principal figure; the climax of the
drama was not the final Statue scene, but "Batti, batti"; Leporello's
part was exaggerated until the Statue scene became a pantomime affair
with Leporello playing pantaloon against Giovanni's clown. Such an
opera could interest none but an Elephant and Castle audience, and
probably only the beauty of the music prevented it reaching the
Elephant and Castle long ago. So low had "Don Giovanni" fallen, when,
quite recently, serious artists like Maurel tried to take it more
seriously and restore it to its rightful place. Only, unfortunately,
instead of brushing away traditions and going back to the vital
conception of Mozart, they sought to modernise it, to convert it into
an early Wagner music-drama. The result may be seen in any performance
at Covent Garden. The thing becomes a hodge-podge, a mixture of drama,
melodrama, the circus, the pantomime, with a strong flavouring of
blatherskite. The opera _is_ largely pantomime--it was intended by
Mozart to be pantomime; and the only possible way of doing it
effectively is to accept the pantomime frankly, but to play it with
such force and sincerity that it is not felt to be pantomime. And the
real finale should be sung afterwards. Probably many people would go
off to catch their trains. But, after all, Mozart wrote for those who
have no trains to catch when this masterpiece, the masterpiece of
Italian opera, is sung as he intended it to be sung.
The Requiem is a very different work. There is plenty of the gaiety
and sunshine of life in "Don Giovanni." The Requiem is steeped in
sadness and gloom, with rare moments of fiery exaltation, or
hysterical despair; at times beauty has been almost--almost, but never
quite--driven from Mozart's thought by the anguish that tormented him
as he wrote. While speaking of Bach's "Matthew" Passion, I have said
it "was an appeal, of a force and poignancy paralleled only in the
Ninth symphony, to the emotional side of man's nature ... the �sthetic
qualities are subordinated to the utterance of an overwhelming
emotion." Had I said "deliberately subordinated" I should have
indicated the main difference as well as the main likeness between
Bach's masterwork and Mozart's. The �sthetic qualities are
subordinated to the expression of an overwhelming emotion in the
Requiem, but not deliberately: unconsciously rather, perhaps even
against Mozart's will. Bach set out with the intention of using his
art to communicate a certain feeling to his listeners; Mozart, when he
accepted the order for a Requiem from that mysterious messenger clad
in grey, thought only of creating a beautiful thing. But he had lately
found, to his great sorrow, that his ways were not the world's ways,
and fraught with even graver consequences was the world's discovery
that its ways were not Mozart's. Finding all attempts to turn him from
his ways fruitless, the world fought him with contempt, ostracism,
and starvation for weapons; and he lacked strength for the struggle.
There had been a time when he could retire within himself and live in
an ideal world of Don Giovannis and Figaros. But now body as well as
spirit was over-wearied; spirit and body were not only tired but
diseased; and when he commenced to work at the Requiem the time was
past for making beautiful things, for his mind was preoccupied with
death and the horror of death--the taste of death was already in his
mouth. Had death come to him as to other men, he might have met it as
other men do, heroically, or at least calmly, without loss of dignity.
But it came to him coloured and made fearful by wild imaginings, and
was less a thought than an unthinkable horror. He believed he had been
poisoned, and Count Walsegg's grey-clad messenger seemed a messenger
sent from another world to warn him of the approaching finish. As he
said, he wrote the Requiem for himself. In it we find none of the
sunshine and laughter of "Don Giovanni," but only a painfully pathetic
record of Mozart's misery, his despair, and his terror. It is indeed a
stupendous piece of art, and much of it surpassingly beautiful; but
the absorbing interest of it will always be that it is a "human
document," an autobiographical fragment, the most touching
autobiography ever penned.
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