Works of Honore De Balzac

by Honoré de Balzac

  “Confess now,” said Massimilla, at the moment when Moses, lifting his rod, brings down the rain of fire, and when the composer puts forth all his powers in the orchestra and on the stage, “that no music ever more perfectly expressed the idea of distress and confusion.”

  “They have spread to the pit,” remarked the Frenchman.

  “What is it now? The pit is certainly in great excitement,” said the Duchess.

  In the finale, Genovese, his eyes fixed on la Tinti, had launched into such preposterous flourishes, that the pit, indignant at this interference with their enjoyment, were at a height of uproar. Nothing could be more exasperating to Italian ears than this contrast of good and bad singing. The manager went so far as to appear on the stage, to say that in reply to his remarks to his leading singer, Signor Genovese had replied that he knew not how or by what offence he had lost the countenance of the public, at the very moment when he was endeavoring to achieve perfection in his art.

  “Let him be as bad as he was yesterday — that was good enough for us!” roared Capraja, in a rage.

  This suggestion put the house into a good humor again.

  Contrary to Italian custom, the ballet was not much attended to. In every box the only subject of conversation was Genovese’s strange behavior, and the luckless manager’s speech. Those who were admitted behind the scenes went off at once to inquire into the mystery of this performance, and it was presently rumored that la Tinti had treated her colleague Genovese to a dreadful scene, in which she had accused the tenor of being jealous of her success, of having hindered it by his ridiculous behavior, and even of trying to spoil her performance by acting passionate devotion. The lady was shedding bitter tears over this catastrophe. She had been hoping, she said, to charm her lover, who was somewhere in the house, though she had failed to discover him.

  Without knowing the peaceful course of daily life in Venice at the present day, so devoid of incident that a slight altercation between two lovers, or the transient huskiness of a singer’s voice becomes a subject of discussion, regarded of as much importance as politics in England, it is impossible to conceive of the excitement in the theatre and at the Cafe Florian. La Tinti was in love; la Tinti had been hindered in her performance; Genovese was mad or purposely malignant, inspired by the artist’s jealousy so familiar to Italians! What a mine of matter for eager discussion!

  The whole pit was talking as men talk at the Bourse, and the result was such a clamor as could not fail to amaze a Frenchman accustomed to the quiet of the Paris theatres. The boxes were in a ferment like the stir of swarming bees.

  One man alone remained passive in the turmoil. Emilio Memmi, with his back to the stage and his eyes fixed on Massimilla with a melancholy expression, seemed to live in her gaze; he had not once looked round at the prima donna.

  “I need not ask you, caro carino, what was the result of my negotiation,” said Vendramin to Emilio. “Your pure and pious Massimilla has been supremely kind — in short, she has been la Tinti?”

  The Prince’s reply was a shake of his head, full of the deepest melancholy.

  “Your love has not descended from the ethereal spaces where you soar,” said Vendramin, excited by opium. “It is not yet materialized. This morning, as every day for six months — you felt flowers opening their scented cups under the dome of your skull that had expanded to vast proportions. All your blood moved to your swelling heart that rose to choke your throat. There, in there,” — and he laid his hand on Emilio’s breast, — ”you felt rapturous emotions. Massimilla’s voice fell on your soul in waves of light; her touch released a thousand imprisoned joys which emerged from the convolutions of your brain to gather about you in clouds, to waft your etherealized body through the blue air to a purple glow far above the snowy heights, to where the pure love of angels dwells. The smile, the kisses of her lips wrapped you in a poisoned robe which burnt up the last vestiges of your earthly nature. Her eyes were twin stars that turned you into shadowless light. You knelt together on the palm-branches of heaven, waiting for the gates of Paradise to be opened; but they turned heavily on their hinges, and in your impatience you struck at them, but could not reach them. Your hand touched nothing but clouds more nimble than your desires. Your radiant companion, crowned with white roses like a bride of Heaven, wept at your anguish. Perhaps she was murmuring melodious litanies to the Virgin, while the demoniacal cravings of the flesh were haunting you with their shameless clamor, and you disdained the divine fruits of that ecstasy in which I live, though shortening my life.”

  “Your exaltation, my dear Vendramin,” replied Emilio, calmly, “is still beneath reality. Who can describe that purely physical exhaustion in which we are left by the abuse of a dream of pleasure, leaving the soul still eternally craving, and the spirit in clear possession of its faculties?

  “But I am weary of this torment, which is that of Tantalus. This is my last night on earth. After one final effort, our Mother shall have her child again — the Adriatic will silence my last sigh — ”

  “Are you idiotic?” cried Vendramin. “No; you are mad; for madness, the crisis we despise, is the memory of an antecedent condition acting on our present state of being. The genius of my dreams has taught me that, and much else! You want to make one of the Duchess and la Tinti; nay, dear Emilio, take them separately; it will be far wiser. Raphael alone ever united form and idea. You want to be the Raphael of love; but chance cannot be commanded. Raphael was a ‘fluke’ of God’s creation, for He foreordained that form and idea should be antagonistic; otherwise nothing could live. When the first cause is more potent than the outcome, nothing comes of it. We must live either on earth or in the skies. Remain in the skies; it is always too soon to come down to earth.”

  “I will take the Duchess home,” said the Prince, “and make a last attempt — afterwards?”

  “Afterwards,” cried Vendramin, anxiously, “promise to call for me at Florian’s.”

  “I will.”

  This dialogue, in modern Greek, with which Vendramin and Emilio were familiar, as many Venetians are, was unintelligible to the Duchess and to the Frenchman. Although he was quite outside the little circle that held the Duchess, Emilio and Vendramin together — for these three understood each other by means of Italian glances, by turns arch and keen, or veiled and sidelong — the physician at last discerned part of the truth. An earnest entreaty from the Duchess had prompted Vendramin’s suggestion to Emilio, for Massimilla had begun to suspect the misery endured by her lover in that cold empyrean where he was wandering, though she had no suspicions of la Tinti.

  “These two young men are mad!” said the doctor.

  “As to the Prince,” said the Duchess, “trust me to cure him. As to Vendramin, if he cannot understand this sublime music, he is perhaps incurable.”

  “If you would but tell me the cause of their madness, I could cure them,” said the Frenchman.

  “And since when have great physicians ceased to read men’s minds?” said she, jestingly.

  The ballet was long since ended; the second act of Mose was beginning. The pit was perfectly attentive. A rumor had got abroad that Duke Cataneo had lectured Genovese, representing to him what injury he was doing to Clarina, the diva of the day. The second act would certainly be magnificent.

  “The Egyptian Prince and his father are on the stage,” said the Duchess. “They have yielded once more, though insulting the Hebrews, but they are trembling with rage. The father congratulates himself on his son’s approaching marriage, and the son is in despair at this fresh obstacle, though it only increases his love, to which everything is opposed. Genovese and Carthagenova are singing admirably. As you see, the tenor is making his peace with the house. How well he brings out the beauty of the music! The phrase given out by the son on the tonic, and repeated by the father on the dominant, is all in character with the simple, serious scheme which prevails throughout the score; the sobriety of it makes the endless variety of the music all the more wonderful. All
Egypt is there.

  “I do not believe that there is in modern music a composition more perfectly noble. The solemn and majestic paternity of a king is fully expressed in that magnificent theme, in harmony with the grand style that stamps the opera throughout. The idea of a Pharaoh’s son pouring out his sorrows on his father’s bosom could surely not be more admirably represented than in this grand imagery. Do you not feel a sense of the splendor we are wont to attribute to that monarch of antiquity?”

  “It is indeed sublime music,” said the Frenchman.

  “The air Pace mia smarrita, which the Queen will now sing, is one of those bravura songs which every composer is compelled to introduce, though they mar the general scheme of the work; but an opera would as often as not never see the light, if the prima donna’s vanity were not duly flattered. Still, this musical ‘sop’ is so fine in itself that it is performed as written, on every stage; it is so brilliant that the leading lady does not substitute her favorite show piece, as is very commonly done in operas.

  “And now comes the most striking movement in the score: the duet between Osiride and Elcia in the subterranean chamber where he has hidden her to keep her from the departing Israelites, and to fly with her himself from Egypt. The lovers are then intruded on by Aaron, who has been to warn Amalthea, and we get the grandest of all quartettes: Mi manca la voce, mi sento morire. This is one of those masterpieces that will survive in spite of time, that destroyer of fashion in music, for it speaks the language of the soul which can never change. Mozart holds his own by the famous finale to Don Giovanni; Marcello, by his psalm, Coeli enarrant gloriam Dei; Cimarosa, by the air Pria che spunti; Beethoven by his C minor symphony; Pergolesi, by his Stabat Mater; Rossini will live by Mi manca la voce. What is most to be admired in Rossini is his command of variety to form; to produce the effect here required, he has had recourse to the old structure of the canon in unison, to bring the voices in, and merge them in the same melody. As the form of these sublime melodies was new, he set them in an old frame; and to give it the more relief he has silenced the orchestra, accompanying the voices with the harps alone. It is impossible to show greater ingenuity of detail, or to produce a grander general effect. — Dear me! again an outbreak!” said the Duchess.

  Genovese, who had sung his duet with Carthagenova so well, was caricaturing himself now that la Tinti was on the stage. From a great singer he sank to the level of the most worthless chorus singer.

  The most formidable uproar arose that had ever echoed to the roof of the Fenice. The commotion only yielded to Clarina, and she, furious at the difficulties raised by Genovese’s obstinacy, sang Mi manca la voce as it will never be sung again. The enthusiasm was tremendous; the audience forgot their indignation and rage in pleasure that was really acute.

  “She floods my soul with purple glow!” said Capraja, waving his hand in benediction at la Diva Tinti.

  “Heaven send all its blessings on your head!” cried a gondolier.

  “Pharaoh will now revoke his commands,” said the Duchess, while the commotion in the pit was calming down. “Moses will overwhelm him, even on his throne, by declaring the death of every first-born son in Egypt, singing that strain of vengeance which augurs thunders from heaven, while above it the Hebrew clarions ring out. But you must clearly understand that this air is by Pacini; Carthagenova introduces it instead of that by Rossini. This air, Paventa, will no doubt hold its place in the score; it gives a bass too good an opportunity for displaying the quality of his voice, and expression here will carry the day rather than science. However, the air is full of magnificent menace, and it is possible that we may not be long allowed to hear it.”

  A thunder of clapping and bravos hailed the song, followed by deep and cautious silence; nothing could be more significant or more thoroughly Venetian than the outbreak and its sudden suppression.

  “I need say nothing of the coronation march announcing the enthronement of Osiride, intended by the King as a challenge to Moses; to hear it is enough. Their famous Beethoven has written nothing grander. And this march, full of earthly pomp, contrasts finely with the march of the Israelites. Compare them, and you will see that the music is full of purpose.

  “Elcia declares her love in the presence of the two Hebrew leaders, and then renounces it in the fine aria, Porge la destra amata. (Place your beloved hand.) Ah! What anguish! Only look at the house!”

  The pit was shouting bravo, when Genovese left the stage.

  “Now, free from her deplorable lover, we shall hear Tinti sing, O desolata Elcia — the tremendous cavatina expressive of love disapproved by God.”

  “Where art thou, Rossini?” cried Cataneo. “If he could but hear the music created by his genius so magnificently performed,” he went on. “Is not Clarina worthy of him?” he asked Capraja. “To give life to those notes by such gusts of flame, starting from the lungs and feeding in the air on some unknown matter which our ears inhale, and which bears us heavenwards in a rapture of love, she must be divine!”

  “She is like the gorgeous Indian plant, which deserting the earth absorbs invisible nourishment from the atmosphere, and sheds from its spiral white blossom such fragrant vapors as fill the brain with dreams,” replied Capraja.

  On being recalled, la Tinti appeared alone. She was received with a storm of applause; a thousand kisses were blown to her from finger-tips; she was pelted with roses, and a wreath was made of the flowers snatched from the ladies’ caps, almost all sent out from Paris.

  The cavatina was encored.

  “How eagerly Capraja, with his passion for embellishments, must have looked forward to this air, which derives all its value from execution,” remarked Massimilla. “Here Rossini has, so to speak, given the reins over to the singer’s fancy. Her cadenzas and her feeling are everything. With a poor voice or inferior execution, it would be nothing — the throat is responsible for the effects of this aria.

  “The singer has to express the most intense anguish, — that of a woman who sees her lover dying before her very eyes. La Tinti makes the house ring with her highest notes; and Rossini, to leave pure singing free to do its utmost, has written it in the simplest, clearest style. Then, as a crowning effort, he has composed those heartrending musical cries: Tormenti! Affanni! Smanie! What grief, what anguish, in those runs. And la Tinti, you see, has quite carried the house off its feet.”

  The Frenchman, bewildered by this adoring admiration throughout a vast theatre for the source of its delight, here had a glimpse of genuine Italian nature. But neither the Duchess nor the two young men paid any attention to the ovation. Clarina began again.

  The Duchess feared that she was seeing her Emilio for the last time. As to the Prince: in the presence of the Duchess, the sovereign divinity who lifted him to the skies, he had forgotten where he was, he no longer heard the voice of the woman who had initiated him into the mysteries of earthly pleasure, for deep dejection made his ears tingle with a chorus of plaintive voices, half-drowned in a rushing noise as of pouring rain.

  Vendramin saw himself in an ancient Venetian costume, looking on at the ceremony of the Bucentaur. The Frenchman, who plainly discerned that some strange and painful mystery stood between the Prince and the Duchess, was racking his brain with shrewd conjecture to discover what it could be.

  The scene had changed. In front of a fine picture, representing the Desert and the Red Sea, the Egyptians and Hebrews marched and countermarched without any effect on the feelings of the four persons in the Duchess’ box. But when the first chords on the harps preluded the hymn of the delivered Israelites, the Prince and Vendramin rose and stood leaning against the opposite sides of the box, and the Duchess, resting her elbow on the velvet ledge, supported her head on her left hand.

  The Frenchman, understanding from this little stir, how important this justly famous chorus was in the opinion of the house, listened with devout attention.

  The audience, with one accord, shouted for its repetition.

  “I feel as if I were
celebrating the liberation of Italy,” thought a Milanese.

  “Such music lifts up bowed heads, and revives hope in the most torpid,” said a man from the Romagna.

  “In this scene,” said Massimilla, whose emotion was evident, “science is set aside. Inspiration, alone, dictated this masterpiece; it rose from the composer’s soul like a cry of love! As to the accompaniment, it consists of the harps; the orchestra appears only at the last repetition of that heavenly strain. Rossini can never rise higher than in this prayer; he will do as good work, no doubt, but never better: the sublime is always equal to itself; but this hymn is one of the things that will always be sublime. The only match for such a conception might be found in the psalms of the great Marcello, a noble Venetian, who was to music what Giotto was to painting. The majesty of the phrase, unfolding itself with episodes of inexhaustible melody, is comparable with the finest things ever invented by religious writers.

  “How simple is the structure! Moses opens the attack in G minor, ending in a cadenza in B flat which allows the chorus to come in, pianissimo at first, in B flat, returning by modulations to G minor. This splendid treatment of the voices, recurring three times, ends in the last strophe with a stretto in G major of absolutely overpowering effect. We feel as though this hymn of a nation released from slavery, as it mounts to heaven, were met by kindred strains falling from the higher spheres. The stars respond with joy to the ecstasy of liberated mortals. The rounded fulness of the rhythm, the deliberate dignity of the graduations leading up to the outbursts of thanksgiving, and its slow return raise heavenly images in the soul. Could you not fancy that you saw heaven open, angels holding sistrums of gold, prostrate seraphs swinging their fragrant censers, and the archangels leaning on the flaming swords with which they have vanquished the heathen?