# A message from the past



## Gualtier Malde (Nov 14, 2010)

I'd like to share with you some (I think) hilarious quotations that I found in a book about opera that must have been published around 1912 (by R.A. Streatfeild, but that doesn't seem a household name today). I've removed the names, so you could take guesses as to the identity of X, Y, Z, if you want to (all three have received much attention in this forum, but it's probably too difficult without further hints).

(1) _Inferior even to the slightest of the minor composers [...] was X, whose [opera] nevertheless has survived to our time [...]; the fact that performances of such a work as [opera] are still possible in London gives an unfortunate impression of the standard of musical taste prevailing in England._

(2) _[This] is a convincing proof that if he had been permitted to exercise his talent in a congenial way, Y would be entitled to rank with the most successful followers of Cimarosa and Paisiello, instead of being degraded to the rank of a mere purveyor to the manufacturers of barrel-organs._

(3) (my favorite) _It would be too much to assert that Z has risen to the level of this noble subject, but parts of his score have a fervor and a dignity which might scarcely have been expected from the composer of [opera]._

I think two lessons can be learned here:
(a) Operas and composers (and other things too) go in and out of fashion.
(b) The noble art of the elegant insult has been all but forgotten during the last 100 years.


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## rgz (Mar 6, 2010)

I'll guess that Y is Rossini


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## Almaviva (Aug 13, 2010)

It's hard to guess. Every opera in the repertory has suffered harsh criticism from someone. All we can conclude from these fragments is that this particular critic was very hard on some works/composers. It happens all the time. To tell you the truth I don't think that these insults are that elegant. Most of these things irritate me, I always think - "OK, Mr. Critic, let's see if you can compose any better." As a rule, critics can be facile with words, but are much less talented than the people they are criticising.


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## Gualtier Malde (Nov 14, 2010)

rgz said:


> I'll guess that Y is Rossini


Good try and close, but sorry, no, the candidate does not score.


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## Gualtier Malde (Nov 14, 2010)

Almaviva said:


> It's hard to guess.


Yes, I agree, I'll perhaps post some more quotes from the same book with more information as hints.



> To tell you the truth I don't think that these insults are that elegant. Most of these things irritate me, I always think - "OK, Mr. Critic, let's see if you can compose any better." As a rule, critics can be facile with words, but are much less talented than the people they are criticising.


OK, but if nothing else, it makes for entertaining reading (if you're not the one elegantly insulted, that is).


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## Almaviva (Aug 13, 2010)

Gualtier Malde said:


> OK, but if nothing else, it makes for entertaining reading (if you're not the one elegantly insulted, that is).


True. Especially when you happen to agree. But if this guy is targetting some of my favorites, I'll be mad!


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## Gualtier Malde (Nov 14, 2010)

Alright, more on Z:

(3') _We may smile now at the trio between A and his two victims, in which the extremes of fury and indignation are expressed by a lilting tune in 9/8 time, but it is impossible to deny the truth and beauty of [can't tell] and in several other scenes there are evidences of real dramatic feeling, if not the power to express it._

Seems quite doable now to me, this should be enough to get Almaviva to the extremes of fury and indignation.


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## Almaviva (Aug 13, 2010)

Gualtier Malde said:


> Alright, more on Z:
> 
> (3') _We may smile now at the trio between A and his two victims, in which the extremes of fury and indignation are expressed by a lilting tune in 9/8 time, but it is impossible to deny the truth and beauty of [can't tell] and in several other scenes there are evidences of real dramatic feeling, if not the power to express it._
> 
> Seems quite doable now to me, this should be enough to get Almaviva to the extremes of fury and indignation.


I think I don't even want to solve it! It certainly will upset me!:scold:


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## Gualtier Malde (Nov 14, 2010)

And more on X:

(1') _X was a German by birth, but his music is merely a feeble imitation of the popular Italianisms of the day. [...] The two couples soon fall in love with each other, but various hindrances arise which serve to prolong the story into four weary acts._


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## Almaviva (Aug 13, 2010)

X - Meyerbeer?


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## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

X - Handel?


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## Almaviva (Aug 13, 2010)

I thought of Handel but it would be too outrageous if it's Handel.


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## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

I think the point is that it's _supposed _to be outrageous.


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## Almaviva (Aug 13, 2010)

It looks more like Handel because Meyerbeer's operas always have five acts.
The nerve! He's putting Handel down??? I told ya I'd be upset!


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## Gualtier Malde (Nov 14, 2010)

No, Handel and Meyerbeer are both not X (X is somewhat less famous than these gentlemen, but of course not unknown here).

In fact, I just checked, and [opera] is not in the TC top 100 yet, but this seems an unforgivable oversight.


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## Herkku (Apr 18, 2010)

X could be Friedrich von Flotow and the opera "Martha" with its "The Last Rose of Summer" and "Ach, so fromm!".


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## Almaviva (Aug 13, 2010)

Herkku said:


> X could be Friedrich von Flotow and the opera "Martha" with its "The Last Rose of Summer" and "Ach, so fromm!".


Good thought! I bet that's what it is!


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## Herkku (Apr 18, 2010)

I found "Y" and it's really outrageous!


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## Herkku (Apr 18, 2010)

"Z" even more so!!!


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## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

Go on go on, tell us.


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## Delicious Manager (Jul 16, 2008)

Almaviva said:


> I always think - "OK, Mr. Critic, let's see if you can compose any better." As a rule, critics can be facile with words, but are much less talented than the people they are criticising.


This is a ridiculous thing to say. I know the difference between a fine wine and a bottle of plonk, yet I couldn't make wine myself. I also know when my car is not working as it should, but I am no mechanic and certainly could not build my own car.

Similarly, I know the difference between good and bad music, even though I am not a composer myself.


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## Herkku (Apr 18, 2010)

I would like to give you guys a chance, too!  But I can assure you that the belittling comments made about "Y" and "Z" feel incredible! 

Finding the answers had nothing to do with my knowledge of opera, but everything to do with searching the Net!


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## Almaviva (Aug 13, 2010)

Delicious Manager said:


> This is a ridiculous thing to say. I know the difference between a fine wine and a bottle of plonk, yet I couldn't make wine myself. I also know when my car is not working as it should, but I am no mechanic and certainly could not build my own car.
> 
> Similarly, I know the difference between good and bad music, even though I am not a composer myself.


Oh well, I'm a guy with a number of ridiculous opinions, but what can I do? They're my opinions. I saw them growing since they were baby opinions and I'm kind of fond of them.


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## Herkku (Apr 18, 2010)

Gualtier Malde wrote that some additional hints might be coming...


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## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

Gualtier Malde said:


> (1) _Inferior even to the slightest of the minor composers [...] was X, whose [opera] nevertheless has survived to our time [...]; the fact that performances of such a work as [opera] are still possible in London gives an unfortunate impression of the standard of musical taste prevailing in England._


That statement is so generic that it could apply to just about any operas performed in London within general reasoning. It could be a Baroque composer or it could be a contemporary one. "Survived to our time" doesn't imply anything about duration of years.

If it is Baroque, and if it is English, then I would go for _The Beggar's Opera _ by *John Gay* (1685 - 1732). Whether or not this turns out to be the correct piece of the puzzle, I think this work certainly fits the statement anyway!


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## Herkku (Apr 18, 2010)

Well, I already know that von Flotow's Martha is "X".

Since there have not been any comments from Gualtier Malde, I give one about "Y".

He composed a comical opera in which we are given to understand that beating your wife is quite OK! The character that sings an aria about this has traveled all the way from Canada (!) to Switzerland (!). The two men in the opera play cards to see, who is going to have to live with the only woman in the opera, both trying to lose...

I might add that the opera was never performed during the composer's lifetime. The music is agreeable, though!


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## Gualtier Malde (Nov 14, 2010)

First of all kudos to Herkku! (He can also give hints I never could have come up with.)

X = Flotow, opera = Martha is correct (how about a last minute effort to get this most minor of all composers into our TC top 100, guys?).

As for Y, Z, I thought there is now some material available to work with; Y was not Rossini, but that wasn't too far off either. You could also ask yourself the question what school of opera was out of fashion until its relatively recent revival and thus likely to induce unflattering comments during its hibernation period.


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## Almaviva (Aug 13, 2010)

Y = Donizetti


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## Almaviva (Aug 13, 2010)

By the way, I found a link to the free digital version of the book.

http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?...d=nyp.33433082248117;page=root;seq=15;num=iii


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## Gualtier Malde (Nov 14, 2010)

Almaviva said:


> Y = Donizetti


Correct!



Almaviva said:


> By the way, I found a link to the free digital version of the book.
> 
> http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?...d=nyp.33433082248117;page=root;seq=15;num=iii


Yes, thanks for the link, that's how Herkku did it. I stumbled on the (free) book on the amazon Kindle site (just so you know that I spend my money on opera DVDs and not elegant insults).


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## Gualtier Malde (Nov 14, 2010)

Alright, so we need another bel canto composer for Z, shouldn't be so difficult.

And to wrap it up, for reasons of balance and fairness, here's an assessment of my own favorite opera _Der Rosenkavalier_ from another (free) book from around the same time (but by a different author):

_The novelty [= Rosenkavalier] [was] dressed as sumptuously and prepared with as lavish an expenditure of money and care as if it were a work of the very highest importance. [...] So much of its story as will bear telling can be told very briefly. [...] The opera comes to an end after three and a half hours of more or less unintelligible dialogue poised on waltz melodies. [...] [The music] is a relief to those listeners who go to the opera oppressed with memories of Salome and Elektra. It is not only that their ears are not so often assaulted by rude sounds, they are frequently moved by phrases of great and genuine beauty. Unfortunately, the Straussian system of composition demands that beauty be looked for in fragments._

Curiously, I can more or less agree with some of these points, but they don't seem to bother me so much.


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## Herkku (Apr 18, 2010)

I can also understand that Salome and Elektra must have sounded awfully modern at first. So Der Rosenkavalier was something more palatable, even if the most beautiful moments don't last long compared to the lenght of the whole opera. The pandemonium that ensues in Act III must still have sounded pretty wild!

I have often wondered, what caused Strauss to change his style towards something more conventional after Elektra.


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## Gualtier Malde (Nov 14, 2010)

Herkku said:


> I have often wondered, what caused Strauss to change his style towards something more conventional after Elektra.


I don't have any definite answers, of course, but here are some random thoughts based on bits and pieces I read here and there:

First of all, it's of course not the case that everything Strauss wrote up to Elektra was cacophonous and noisy and everything that came later was mellow and easy on the ear. (I don't think you wanted to suggest this, I'm just saying it to have it on file.) For example, Don Juan doesn't tax the ear at all, and quite a few of the Lieder he wrote early in his career are unassuming melodious little gems; the four last songs, on the other hand, which of course came much later, seem more like soundscapes than discernible melodies to me.

As for more specifically the operas, I almost get the impression that from Rosenkavalier on, Strauss and Hofmannsthal met somewhere in the middle. Hofmannsthal was constantly trying to push Strauss towards sonorous, flowing melody, and succeeded to some extent, but I very much doubt that he was particularly happy with the extended parlando passages with no vocal melody and the leitmotif wizardry.

But I'm of course just guessing around.


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## Almaviva (Aug 13, 2010)

Gualtier Malde said:


> I don't have any definite answers, of course, but here are some random thoughts based on bits and pieces I read here and there:
> 
> First of all, it's of course not the case that everything Strauss wrote up to Elektra was cacophonous and noisy and everything that came later was mellow and easy on the ear. (I don't think you wanted to suggest this, I'm just saying it to have it on file.) For example, Don Juan doesn't tax the ear at all, and quite a few of the Lieder he wrote early in his career are unassuming melodious little gems; the four last songs, on the other hand, which of course came much later, seem more like soundscapes than discernible melodies to me.
> 
> ...


I have read a simpler, cynical explanation.
Some people think that Strauss was just after money.
He was obsessed with getting rich.
He figured that Modernism wouldn't make him rich.
Then he abandoned it, and went back to melodious, easy-selling music.
And he did indeed get rich.
I for one don't see anything wrong with a composer trying to get rich, and I love both his styles - the modern one in Salomé and Elektra, and the old-fashioned melodious one in Der Rosenkavalier, Arabella, Daphne, etc.

In my opinion, R. Strauss was a really talented musician who could compose any way he wanted, and he left us masterpieces in different genres (lieder, tone poems, modernist operas, romantic operas).


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## Gualtier Malde (Nov 14, 2010)

Almaviva said:


> I have read a simpler, cynical explanation.
> Some people think that Strauss was just after money.
> He was obsessed with getting rich.
> He figured that Modernism wouldn't make him rich.
> Then he abandoned it, and went back to melodious, easy-selling music.


Hmm, that somehow doesn't sound too plausible to me, for various reasons. For instance, did he really need to write two sordid, noisy operas to find out that this isn't what the mass market wants? And then, was the post-Elektra stuff really so melodious, easy-selling? I would still very much call it an acquired taste, and in fact I'd be prepared to call everyone a liar who told me he's just listened to Rosenkavalier for the first time and loves it.

But of course we can't really know. (Very often people also just do things, and not always for a reason.)


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## Almaviva (Aug 13, 2010)

R. Strauss' preoccupation with pleasing the masses in order to make money is well documented by biographers. And he got what he wanted: he got filthy rich - apparently he was one of the most financially successful composers in history. Whether or not this is really what made him abandon modernism, is speculation. But certainly he made a lot more money than the folks who continued on the modernist track.

I don't think that Salomé and Elektra are sordid and noisy. They are daring, courageous, innovative operas for his time, exquisitely orchestrated. They are really hot stuff!

My point is, R. Strauss gave extensive proof that he could compose in very different styles at will. It's sheer talent. If you put Arabella side by side with Elektra and you expose them to a person who doesn't know them and doesn't know who composed them, I think the person will have enormous trouble believing that they were composed by the same guy.

So, I don't think it's too far fetched to suggest that with time he figured what the market wanted and adapted himself to the market. Still, it's speculation. Nobody ever heard from his mouth the words "Well, I'm getting neo-romantic instead of modernist because I want to make money." But it's not exactly impossible that this is what happened.

On another note, you'll have to call me a liar, then. I loved Der Rosenkavalier from the first time. How can someone not love the Presentation of the Rose scene, and the final trio? And the Marshallin is such an extraordinary character! And what about the tone painting? The opera opens with an orgasm! It has a wild mixture of slapstick comedy and romanticism. I think it's not too hard to realize right away that we are in the presence of a masterpiece. Its première in Dresden in 1911 is reported as having been an astouding triumph. Were all the attendees liars? So, indeed many love it at first sight.


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## Gualtier Malde (Nov 14, 2010)

Almaviva said:


> I don't think that Salomé and Elektra are sordid and noisy.


I of course wasn't pronouncing an artistic judgment here, that would have been a bit premature since I don't know these operas (yet), except for short excerpts. We were talking about Strauss's compositional styles and possible motivations, not the value of his works, that was the context of my _sordid and noisy_ (you are passionate about operas you like, and I think that's great, but I really wasn't attacking anything here, quite on the contrary, praising Strauss to me would be preaching to the choir).


Almaviva said:


> They are daring, courageous, innovative operas for his time, exquisitely orchestrated. They are really hot stuff!


Right, that's roughly what I said. 



Almaviva said:


> On another note, you'll have to call me a liar, then. I loved Die Rosenkavalier from the first time. How can someone not love the Presentation of the Rose scene, and the final trio? And the Marshallin is such an extraordinary character! And what about the tone painting? The opera opens with an orgasm! It has a wild mixture of slapstick comedy and romanticism. I think it's not too hard to realize right away that we are in the presence of a masterpiece. Its première in Dresden in 1911 is reported as having been an astounding triumph. Were all the attendees liars? So, indeed many love it at first sight.


Ultimately, I can of course only speak for myself. But I'm also assuming that you had already had a fair amount of exposure to similar works before you approached Rosenkavalier and probably also a pretty good idea of what to expect. I would still expect that if you expose an opera novice to, say, Le nozze di Figaro and Rosenkavalier, our hypothetical novice will like exactly one of these two works.

Anyway, my own personal Rosenkavalier reception history is quite different from yours: I started out with the old Karajan, Schwarzkopf, Ludwig etc. CD with excerpts, after reading in my opera guidebook that Rosenkavalier is a masterpiece. My first reaction was: I have wasted my money, where's the melody! I then got the libretto, and then it already made more sense when I discovered that he always stays very close to the text with his music. I then started to really like it, and I was really looking forward to seeing the whole opera when it was finally performed at my local opera house. The performance (admittedly a not very good one, and ridiculously eurotrashly staged) was a huge disappointment: I liked exactly those excerpts I already knew, the rest seemed incredibly boring and meaningless. Apparently, I wasn't the only one that night who felt this way, after each intermission the audience was roughly one half of what it was before, and the final trio was presented to just a select few.

OK, and now it's my favorite opera, but as you can see, it didn't happen in an instant.


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## Almaviva (Aug 13, 2010)

Gualtier Malde said:


> I really wasn't attacking anything here


I was just expressing my own opinion of Elektra and Salomé. Even if you *were* attacking them, it would have been your right to do so. I wasn't criticizing *you* for your opinion.


> I would still expect that if you expose an opera novice to, say, Le nozze di Figaro and Rosenkavalier, our hypothetical novice will like exactly one of these two works.


It is unpredictable. A novice might hate both, love _Der Rosenkavalier_ and hate_ Le Nozze di Figaro_, or the other way around, or love both. _Der Rosenkavalier_ is not exactly hard to get (musically, and plot wise), it's rather accessible. It's not _Lulu_ or _Moses und Aron_ or _Siegfried_. Recently I attended a performance of it with a complete novice, and she loved it. Besides, there are so many factors involved in this situation, it would depend on the staging, the singers, the orchestra, etc.
Like you said in your other paragraph, you saw a boring, Eurotrashy staging and you didn't like it. 


> where's the melody!


 Erm... it's there. Some passages are extremely melodious. It's sublime music for sopranos. Don't you think, for example, that when Sophie responds to Octavian in the rose scene, her voice soars in the most beautiful and delicate of melodies?


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## Gualtier Malde (Nov 14, 2010)

Almaviva said:


> Don't you think, for example, that when Sophie responds to Octavian in the rose scene, her voice soars in the most beautiful and delicate of melodies?


Absolutely, this line "wie himmlische, nicht irdische, wie Rosen vom hochhei-hei-heiligen Pa-aradies" is gorgeous, and if I'm not missing something, it just returns one single time, in the orchestra a little later in the same duet (others would have written a 10 minute aria on nothing but this theme). Such an embarrassment of riches!

Every time I watch this, my heart rate goes up to 150 or so when this spot approaches, in anticipation of the high note (of course, live it would be even more thrilling).


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## Herkku (Apr 18, 2010)

I had only listened very few operas, Mozart and Verdi, and was disappointed by Der Rosenkavalier at first. Yes, there were those beautiful moments (in the case of the Presentation of the rose, literally), but what was all that crap surrounding them? Only when I got acquainted with the libretto, I learned to like it and love it. All those comical elements!


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## Gualtier Malde (Nov 14, 2010)

Gualtier Malde said:


> (3) (my favorite) _It would be too much to assert that Z has risen to the level of this noble subject, but parts of his score have a fervor and a dignity which might scarcely have been expected from the composer of [opera]._


I don't think anyone is still interested or rather those who were have figured it out by themselves, but to tidy up this thread and bring it to a conclusion, here's the solution:

Z = Bellini, opera = La Somnambula ("noble subject", "score" refer to Norma)


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