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Page 19
Being a glorification of woman--German woman, although Leonora was
presumably Spanish--"Fidelio" has inevitably become in Germany the
haus-frau's opera. Probably there is not a haus-frau who faithfully
cooks her husband's dinner, washes for him, blacks his boots, and
would even brush his clothes did he ever think that necessary, who
does not see herself reflected in Leonora; probably every German
householder either longs to possess her or believes that he does
possess her. Consequently, just as Mozart's "Don Giovanni" became the
playground of the Italian prima donna, so has "Fidelio" become the
playground of that terrible apparition, the Wifely Woman Artist, the
singer with no voice, nor beauty, nor manners, but with a high
character for correct morality, and a pressure of sentimentality that
would move a traction-engine. I remember seeing it played a few years
ago, and can never forget a Leonora of sixteen stones, steadily
singing out of tune, in the first act professing with profuse
perspiration her devotion to her husband (whose weight was rather less
than half hers), and in the second act nearly crushing the poor
gentleman by throwing herself on him to show him that she was for ever
his. A recent performance at Covent Garden, arranged specially, I
understand, for Ternina, was not nearly so bad as that; but still
Ternina scared me horribly with the enormous force of her Wifely
Ardour. It may be that German women are more demonstrative than
English women in public; but, for my poor part, too much public
affection between man and wife always strikes me as a little false.
Besides, the grand characteristic of Leonora is not that she loves her
husband--lots of women do that, and manage to love other people's
husbands also--but that, driven at first by affection and afterwards
by purely human compassion, she is capable of rising to the heroic
point of doing in life what she feels she must do. Of course she may
have been an abnormal combination of the Wifely Woman with the heroic
woman; but one cannot help thinking that probably she was not--that
however strong her affection for Florestan, she would no sooner get
him home than she would ask him how he came to be such a fool as to
get into Pizarro's clutches. Anyhow, Ternina's conception of Leonora
as a mixture of the contemptible will-less German haus-frau with the
strong-willed woman of action, was to me a mixture of contradictions.
Yet, despite all these things, the opera made the deep impression it
does and always will make.
That impression is due entirely to the music and not to the drama.
Dramatic music, in the sense that Mozart's music, and Wagner's, is
dramatic, it is not. There is not the slightest attempt at
characterisation--not even such small characterisation as Mozart
secured in his "La ci darem," with Zerlina's little fluttering,
agitated phrases. Nor, in the lighter portions, is there a trace of
Mozart's divine intoxicating laughter, of the sweet sad laugh with
which he met the griefs life brought him. There is none of Mozart's
sunlight, his delicious, fresh, early morning sunlight, in Beethoven's
music; when he wrote such a number as the first duet, intended to be
gracefully semi-humorous, he was merely heavy, clumsy, dull. But when
the worst has been said, when one has writhed under the recollection
of an adipose prima donna fooling with bear-like skittishness a German
tenor whose figure and face bewray the lager habit, when one has
shuddered to remember the long-winded idiotic dialogue, the fact
remains firmly set in one's mind that one has stood before a gigantic
work of art--a work whose every defect is redeemed by its overwhelming
power and beauty and pathos. There has never been, nor does it seem
possible there ever will be, a finer scene written than the dungeon
scene. It begins with the low, soft, throbbing of the strings, then
there is the sinister thunderous roll of the double basses; then the
old man quietly tells Leonora to hurry on with the digging of the
grave, and Leonora replies (against that wondrous phrase of the
oboes). After that, the old man continues to grumble; the dull
threatening thunder of the basses continues; and Leonora, half
terrified, tries to see whether the sleeping prisoner is her husband.
Then abruptly her courage rises; her short broken phrases are
abandoned; and to a great sweeping melody she declares that, whoever
the prisoner may be, she will free him. These twenty bars are as
great music as anything in the world: they even leave Senta's
declaration in the "Dutchman" far behind; they are at once triumphant
and charged with a pathos nearly unendurable in its intensity. The
scene ends with a strange hushed unison passage like some unearthly
chant: it is the lull before the breaking of the storm. The entry of
Pizarro and the pistol business are by no means done as Wagner or
Mozart would have done them. The music is always excellent and
sometimes great, but persistently symphonic and not dramatic in
character. However, it serves; and the strength of the situation
carries one on until the trumpet call is heard, and then we get a
wonderful tune such as neither Mozart nor Wagner could have written--a
tune that is sheer Beethoven. The finale of the scene is neither here
nor there; but in the duet between Leonora and Florestan we have again
pure Beethoven. There is one passage--it begins at bar 32--which is
the expression of the very soul of the composer; one feels that if it
had not come his heart must have burst. I have neither space nor
inclination to rehearse all the splendours of the opera, but may
remind the reader of Florestan's song in the dungeon, Leonora's
address to Hope, and the hundred other fine things spread over it. It
is symphonic, not dramatic, music; but it is at times unspeakably
pathetic, at times full of radiant strength, and always an absolutely
truthful utterance of sheer human emotion. Wagner hit exactly the word
when he spoke of the _truthful_ Beethoven: here is no pose, no mere
tone-weaving, but the precise and most poignant expression of the
logical course taken by the human passions.
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