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Page 26
"A�da" is a different matter, though not so very different a matter.
Here we have the young Verdi--Verdi in his early prime, for he was
only fifty-eight; here also we have a story more likely to stir his
rowdy imagination, if not more susceptible of effective treatment in
the young Verdi manner. The misfortune is that the book is a very
excerebrose affair. The drama does not begin until the third act: the
two first are yawning abysms of sheer dulness. Who wants to _see_
that Radames loves A�da, that Amneris, the king's daughter, loves
Radames, that A�da, a slave, is the daughter of the King of the
Ethiopians, that Radames goes on a war expedition against that king,
beats him and fetches him back a prisoner, that the other king gives
Radames his daughter in marriage, that Radames, highly honoured, yet
wishes to goodness he could get out of it somehow? A master of drama
would begin in the third act, reveal the whole past in a pregnant five
minutes, and then hold us breathless while we watched to see whether
Radames would yield to social pressure, marry Amneris, and throw over
A�da, or yield to passion, fly with A�da, and throw over his country.
All this shows the bad influence of Scribe, who usually spent half his
books in explaining matters as simple and obvious as the reason for
eating one's breakfast. Verdi knew this as well as anyone, and used
the two first acts as opportunities for stage display. For "A�da" was
written to please the Khedive of Egypt; and Verdi, always keenly
commercial, probably knew his man. Now, when the masters of
opera--Handel, Gluck, Mozart, Weber--got hold of a bad book, they
nearly invariably "faked" it by getting swiftly over the weak points
and dwelling on the strong; and, above all, they flooded the whole
thing with a stream of delicious melody that hypnotises one, and for
the time puts fault-finding out of the question. Not so Verdi. He
wrote to please his audience, and he knew that what one can only call
dark-skinned local colour was still fresh in spite of "L'Africaine,"
and that the vulgar would find delight in a blaze of glaring banners
and showy spectacle. So he set the two first acts as they stood,
trusting to local colour and spectacle to make them popular; and, as
we know, at the time they were popular, and the populace exalted Verdi
far above such second-rate fellows as Mozart and Beethoven. But now,
when local colour has been done to death, and when it has had a
quarter of a century to bleach out of Verdi's canvases, what remains
to interest, I do not say to touch, one? Certainly not the expression
of Radames' or A�da's love, for here as everywhere Verdi fails to
communicate any new phase of emotion, but (precisely as he did in
"Falstaff" and "Otello") has written music which indicates that he had
some inkling of the emotion of the scene, and could write strains
calculated not to prevent the scene making its effect. That Verdi has
no well-spring of original feeling, perhaps explains why he is so poor
in the scenes with Radames, Amneris, and A�da. (Also, perhaps, it
explains why he has fallen back in his best period upon masterpieces
of dramatic art for his librettos. It is almost outside human
possibility to add anything to "Falstaff" or "Otello"; and such
success as Verdi has made with them is the result of writing what is,
after all, only glorified incidental music--music which accompanies
the play. To class these accompaniments with the masterpieces of
original opera is surely the most startling feat of modern musical
criticism.) Moreover, the plan of writing each scene in a series of
detached numbers--for, even where song might flow naturally into song,
the two are quite detached--breaks up the interest as effectually as
it does in "Traviata"; and the songs do not themselves interest.
Verdi's music is not based, like the masters', upon the inflexions of
the human voice under stress of sincere feeling, but upon figures and
passages easily executed upon certain instruments. The great composers
strove to make instruments speak in the accent of the human voice,
while Verdi has always tried to make the voice sound like an
instrument. His roulades and cadenzas, for example, sound prettier on
the clarinet than on the voice, as one hears when he sets the one
chasing the other in "Traviata"; and if only our orchestral players
would take the trouble to play with the same expression as the stage
artists sing, we might soon be content to have a repetition (with a
difference) of the feat of the old-world conductor who, in the absence
of the hero, played the part upon the harpsichord with universal
applause. The stock patterns out of which the songs are made soon grow
old-fashioned, and are superseded by fresh ones: hence Verdi's songs
are the earliest portions of his operas to wither. There are two
powerful scenes in "A�da"--the second of the second act, and the
final in the last act. The last is certainly terribly repulsive at the
first blush; but the weird chant of the priestesses in the
brightly-lit temple, where the workmen are closing the entrance to the
vault underneath in which we see Radames left to die, contrasts finely
with the sweet music that accompanies the declaration of A�da that she
has hidden there to die with him; and, while guessing at the splendour
of the music Wagner might have given us here, one may still admit
Verdi to have succeeded well in a smaller way than Wagner's. But on
the whole "A�da" is to be heard once and have done with, for save
these scenes there is little else in it to engage one. A�da is alive,
but Amneris is a hopeless piece of machinery--something between the
stage conception of a princess and the Lady with the Camellias, any
difference in modesty being certainly not in favour of Amneris. The
music very rarely rises above commonness--that commonness which is
proclaimed in every bar of Verdi's instrumentation, and in his
shameless Salvation Army rhythms; and it is sometimes (as in the
Priest's solo with chorus in the last scene of the second act)
odiously vulgar. "A�da" is more dramatic than "Traviata," has more of
Verdi's brusque energy, less of his sentimentality; but it has none of
the youthful freshness of his latest work. The young Verdi has already
aged--how long will the old Verdi remain young?
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