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She added to her repertoire this season the rôles of Susanna in Mozart's great comic opera, Elvira in "Puritani," Adina in "L'Elisir d'Amore," and Giulia in Spontini's "Vestale." As Giulia she reached her high-water mark in tragedy, and as Adina in "L'Elisir" she was deliciously arch and fascinating.
Spontini's training was Neapolitan, but his first visit to Paris showed him that there was no place upon the French stage for the trivialities which still delighted Italian audiences. He devoted himself to careful study, and his one-act opera 'Milton, the first-fruits of his musicianship, showed a remarkable advance upon his youthful efforts.
Spontini's unbending intolerance, however, at last undermined his musical supremacy, so long held good with an iron hand; and an intrigue headed by Count Brühl, intendant of the Royal Theatre, at last obliged him to resign after a rule of a score of years.
Spontini's stiff-necked and arrogant will kept him in continual trouble, and the Berlin press aimed its arrows at him with incessant virulence: a war which the composer fed by his bitter and witty rejoinders, for he was an adept in the art of invective. Had he not been singularly adroit, he would have been obliged to leave his post.
But it is impossible altogether to lose sight of the peasant in Beethoven and Gluck; Spohr had more than a trace of the successful shopkeeper; Spontini's assertion often became mere insufferable bumptiousness. Besides, they all won their positions through being the best men in the field, and they held them with a proud consciousness of being the best men.
There was a coal fire in an English grate; Razumov had never before seen such a fire; and the silence of the room was like the silence of the grave; perfect, measureless, for even the clock on the mantelpiece made no sound. Filling a corner, on a black pedestal, stood a quarter-life-size smooth-limbed bronze of an adolescent figure, running. The Prince observed in an undertone "Spontini's.
I do not remember in those days having gone deeply into my feelings about Spontini's exceedingly strange individuality, nor do I recollect having troubled to discover how far they were consistent with the high opinion I formed of him after I had got to know him more intimately.
Afterward Weber would groan, "Alas, why did I ever teach you the trick?" In 1821, there rose a famous operatic war between Spontini and Weber at Berlin. Caroline was prostrated with terror. Spontini's "Olympic" was given first with enormous success, and "Der Freischütz," in which Caroline had had so large a share, and which meant so much to the two, was forced into a dramatic comparison.
From Berlioz, who was at Spontini's deathbed until the end, I heard that the master had struggled most determinedly against death, and had cried repeatedly, 'Je ne veux pas mourir, je ne veux pas mourir! When Berlioz tried to comfort him by saying, 'Comment pouvez-vous penser mourir vous, mon maitre, qui etes immortel! Spontini retorted angrily, 'Ne faites pas de mauvaises plaisanteries! In spite of all the extraordinary experiences I had had with him, the news of his death, which I received in Zurich, touched me very deeply.
'La Vestale' was followed in 1809 by 'Fernand Cortez, and in 1819 by 'Olympie, both of which were extremely successful, the latter in a revised form which was produced at Berlin in 1821. Spontini's operas are now no longer performed, but the influence which his music exercised upon men so different as Wagner and Meyerbeer makes his name important in the history of opera.
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