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Updated: May 4, 2025
In music, also, she seems more really moved by her own emotional nature than purely by the music; how, otherwise, should she have been disappointed at hearing Masaniello, while admiring German music, when Auber's grand opera has had the highest admiration from the chief German musicians?
And, standing very close to him, she watched his eager face, hoping to see presently in it the expression that she loved. "Did he see you, Ruffo?" "Ma si, Signora. I was with my poor mamma." "Your mother! I wish I had met her!" "Si, Signora. I was with my mamma in the Piazza of Masaniello. We had been eating snails, Signora, and afterwards watermelon, and we had each had a glass of white wine.
You who think otherwise, remember that Verdi's name six months ago was the watchword of the Italian revolutionists; remember that certain operas are forbidden now to be played in Naples, lest they should arouse the countrymen of Masaniello; remember, or learn, if you did not know, how in New York, last June, all the singers in town offered their services for a benefit to the Italian cause, and all the habitues, late though the season was, crowded to their places to see an opera whose attractiveness had been worn out and whose novelty was nearly gone.
On learning of her brother's death she unites the hands of Alphonso and Elvira, and then in despair throws herself into the burning lava of Vesuvius. "Masaniello" made Auber's fame at the Grand Opera, as "Fra Diavolo" made it at the Opera Comique. It has no points in common with that or any other of his works. It is serious throughout, and full of power, impetuosity, and broad dramatic treatment.
Do they sing, Behold how brightly breaks the morning with Masaniello? Do they laugh at Ulysses and skip ashore to the Syrens? Has Mesrour, chief of the Eunuchs, caught them with Zobeide in the Caliph's garden, or have they made cheese cakes without pepper? Friends of my youth, where in your wanderings have you tasted the blissful Lotus, that you neither come nor send us tidings?
I repeat again, I do not believe that Salvator had any share in Masaniello's bloody deeds; on the contrary, I think it was the horrors of that fearful time which drove him from Naples to Rome, where he arrived a poor poverty-stricken fugitive, just at the time that Masaniello fell. Somehow or other, he didn't exactly know how, he wandered as far as the Piazza Navona.
But we must remember that the thing had been quite as well done by Auber in Masaniello: even the energy is not the true Wagnerian energy divine: it does not show itself through the stuff of the music, but in the common rumty-tumpty rhythms of the day, often offensively vulgar, and in the noisy instrumentation.
Whilst at Rome in 1647, endeavouring to obtain a dispensation to enable him to secure the hand of Mademoiselle de Pons, the Neapolitans, having revolted against the Spaniards under Masaniello, elected him as their leader, and gave him the title of generalissimo of their army.
We can believe that Mr. Benedict was quite sincere in telling them he had not conducted a better orchestra in Europe. The other Overture to Masaniello was also splendidly played, but the composition is, to our taste, too hackneyed to fill out the programme of a Jenny Lind before the largest audience in the world.
Weber he admired; but Weber's power lay in the beauty and picturesqueness of his music: in Masaniello the music made its effect because of the theatrical skill with which it was used. The same thing he felt in William Tell. These two men, Auber and Rossini, were masters of the art of writing effectively for the theatre.
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