Parepa-Rosa English Opera: Water Carrier

“On Saturday evening the lovers of pure classical music had a rare treat. Cherubini’s opera, ‘The Water Carrier’—better known, perhaps, under its original French title, ‘Les Deux Journées’—was produced for the first time in New York. Much interest was excited in musical circles at the announcement of the presentation of a work by the contemporary of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, and the teacher of Auber, Boieldieu and Halévy. Also the fact of the work being seventy-two years old, and belonging to a school of Italian music which unhappily has no living representatives, served to increase the interest of the public. It is the chaste, ancient school of Italy, refreshed and decorated with the harmony of modern times. It is music that will not command the attention of a public whose taste has been long vitiated by the extravagances and vagaries of the schools of the present day; but it will always secure the admiration of musicians, who can recognize in it extreme purity of style and a grandeur of thought united to a dignified severity in the expression of that thought. In glancing over the admirable pamphlet written on this opera by Mr. Howard Glover, formerly a leading composer and critic in London, and now a member of the orchestra of the Parepa-Rosa troupe, we find the cast of the first representation of this opera. It is a singular circumstance that during those terrible days of the first revolution in France, when the guillotine was crimsoned with blood, that an Italian composer should produce for the first time in the capital, which was but a human shambles, one of his loveliest works. Yet such was the fact. The new opera by Citizen Cherubini was given at the Theatre de la Rue Feydeau. The story is very interesting, something like an episode from ‘Les Trois Mousquetaires,’ of Dumas, or rather the sequel ‘Vingt Ans Après.’ The tyranny of Richelieu’s successor, the swarthy, cunning, avaricious, cowardly Italian, Mazarin, was a grateful subject of ridicule for the men that overthrew the dynasty that upheld such a monster. Count Armand, friend of the people, enemy of Mazarin and President of the Parliament, attempts to escape from Paris, a price being set upon his head by the unscrupulous Minister of Louis Quatorze. He and his wife are assisted in escaping by a water carrier, named Micheli, and his family. The story is very cleverly constructed and its themes are just what the times demanded (the first revolution), heroic patriotism, gratitude and woman’s constancy. The music is of that severe mathematical order, so entirely exempt from sensation or startling affectation that it possesses few elements of popularity. Its most striking points are the excellence of the concerted music, than which nothing can be finer. It we take the sestette in E flat major, which forms a glorious finale to the first act, the chorus of Mazarin’s musketeers in the beginning of the second act, and the delicious pastorale in the third act, we find specimens of contrapuntal as well as intense dramatic writing such as the operatic stage seldom hears nowadays. The solos are not remarkable for melodious beauty, and the instrumentation is rather devoid of those startling effects which seem to find favor at the present day. The cast was very strong, consisting of such artists as [see above]. We trust that some of the other works of this composer will be brought out by Mr. Rosa. Such works as ‘Medea’ and ‘Ali Baba’ would repay the expense and trouble of rehearsals and production.”

“Last Saturday night Cherubini’s ‘Water Carrier’ was listened to by a large and interested audience. The music is quaint and in its way masterly. There is an old-fashioned flavor about it which suggests the harpsichord, the spinnet, powdered wigs, ruffles and knee-breeches, while the recurrence of occasional Handelian phrases further aid in producing an effect of antiquity. The music, which is entirely concerted—there being no distinctly-elaborated solos—is rather sparsely scattered through a great waste of dialogue, but the play itself is rather interesting and was well acted by the members of the Parepa-Rosa troupe—Mr. Cook, in particular, deserving commendation for his very clever personation of the shrewd yet honest water-carrier. Several of the concerted pieces were warmly applauded, and the march of the last act proved very melodious.

The superiority of modern over old opera music was, however, proved by the enthusiastic applause which followed Madame Rosa’s rendering of an air by Gounod—a broad, massive composition, in which the resources of modern orchestration were brought into action, and which found an able interpreter in the prima donna of the evening. As a musical curiosity Cherubini’s ‘Water Carrier’ cannot fail to gratify the musical amateur, but our public will scarcely care to go back to the operas any more than they would to the costumes or mechanical contrivances, of the last century.”

“Citizen Cherubini was one of those men whom Napoleon I hated with a curious, causeless, and inexplicable hatred. Consequently citizen Cherubini had rather a hard time of it, for though Apollo smiled it was of little consequence, so long as Napoleon frowned. And this he always did so far as the poor composer was concerned, and in fact was so exceedingly small a great man that he went out of his way to insult the artist, and to inform him that he considered Zingarelli greatly his superior as a composer. But the whirligig of time brings its revenges and Cherubini’s shade must contemplate with peculiar exultation, if a shade may exult, the end of all things Napoleonic and the performance of the composer’s masterworks in another tongue than his own and before a new people and in a new hemisphere. Admirably performed too, better probably than in the author’s own day when Italian opera was almost in its infancy and all things pertaining to it were in a somewhat crude and formative condition.

The distribution of characters requires two good sopranos, two tenors, and two basses; and these are found in [see above]. The music is Cherubini’s own—not paraphrased from this or that other composer, but essentially original. Of course no man goes far away from his own day and generation, and the methods that Cherubini resorted to in working out his concerted pieces, taking voice against voice in passages of imitation, for instance, as in the [illegible] of the first act, are the same methods that Mozart used so constantly in his operatic compositions. But Cherubini’s ideas, if not his methods, are his own. It is an opera that should afford delight to all who hear it, for the music is unqualifiedly good. It is not weighted with Verdi’s feverish intensity, nor [illegible] by the sentimentality of Balfe, but it is strong, earnest, artistic, and [illegible] the work of a man who profoundly [illegible], and who commanded the esteem of the musicians of his own day, as to the honor of art, [illegible] those of our own.

Mr. Carl Rosa and Madame Rose have done well in bringing this work before the public and in giving it so admirable a cast.”

“It is not so pleasant a task as Mr. Carl Rosa frequently sets us, to write concerning the latest performance his efforts have supplied. The pen must vibrate between the praise to which a revival of so scholarly a work as Cherubini’s ‘Water-Carrier’ is entitled, and the words of regret that so Quixotic an outlay of energy must call forth. As long as pure harmonic and contrapuntal writing shall be studied, Cherubini’s productions will be admired. But there is not the slightest danger that a modern composer will cast aside the resources a century has developed, to imitate a style which, whether from an increased knowledge, or from a change of fashion in music, is now of the past. Nothing can be more honeyed than the strains of the score. The melodies are graceful and fluent, the handling of the themes is full of science; there is not, in brief, one incorrect or inelegant bar in the whole three acts. Of the frothy music in some of Rossini’s operas, of the wretched fillings-up with which Verdi’s happiest inspirations are disagreeably varied, of the common-places which even the consummate skill of Ambroise Thomas’ treatment of the instruments does not always conceal. Cherubini’s opera is free. But it is devoid of the expression of deep emotions, of the vigorous contrasts without which dramatic impressiveness is unattainable, and of the gorgeous coloring with which the orchestra of Meyerbeer, of Gounod, and of Wagner gives eloquence to the librettist’s canvas. After the march from ‘Il Profeto,’ the third act of ‘Faust,’ and the overtures to ‘Tannhauser,’ ‘Lohengrin’ and ‘Rienzi,’ the public cannot be expected to long for the sweet simplicity of the achievements of the author of ‘Medea.’ Mr. Rosa is to be thanked for the opportunity afforded to become acquainted with an opera which has its place in the history of art, and was assigned it seventy years ago. He is to be reminded, at the same time, that the indifference of dilettanti of the present to his well-meant attempt, is not exactly wonderful or reprehensible. The capital rendering of ‘The Water Carrier,’ on Saturday evening, was the only incentive to approval or applause. We cannot, we think, better characterize the story and music of ‘The Water Carrier’ than by applying to both the word naiveté in its right sense. The plot runs thus: [synopsis follows]. Out of the numbers of the work a few are relatively conspicuous. The overture is a delicious selection for a concert programme, and is often given with the French name of the opera—‘Les Deux Journées’—appended to it. The Savoyard’s song in the first act is tuneful, touching and appropriate; the finale is remarkable for its elaborateness and for its fine graduation to a forceful climax; the soldiers’ chorus at the outset of the second act is striking as well as excellently well arranged. The third act is admitted to be so weak that an air from Gounod’s ‘Reine de Saba’ is introduced during its progress. The audience, on Saturday, derived much gratification from the representations of the work. Mme. Parepa-Rosa, as Constance, showed herself a vivacious actress as well as an eminent songstress, and executed the aria in the last act with a breadth of delivery which resulted in an imperative demand for a repetition. Miss Clara Doria personated with rare intelligence, Marcellina. Mr. W. Castle was Armand, Mr. Tom Karl sang with infinite taste his song in the first act, and Mr. Aynsley Cook, as Micheli, furnished a personation which could not be excelled in histrionic and vocal merit. The remaining roles were allotted to Messrs. Hall, Ryse, Bartleman and Seguin. The exceedingly difficult concerted pieces were done with unimpeachable precision and finish; we never witnessed a rehearsal in which so much talent, industry and earnestness were displayed in a more ungrateful cause.”

“The production of Cherubini’s Water Carrier on Saturday evening was an effort in the right direction, and greatly to the credit of the combined enterprise and discretion which have characterized the management of the Parepa-Rosa Opera Company. Resisting the temptation held out by the evanescent novelties of the day, and believing that among the stores of classic opera there is yet much valuable material, which would and should be interpreted, and made acceptable to our public, they have gone back to one of the great composers of the past for a work, which, though well known and admired abroad, has hardly ever gained a hearing on our own stage. They have in this all the more merit that in producing the ‘Water Carrier’ they trusted little to meretricious and superficial brilliancy of score or drama, and relied mainly on the sober second thought of their auditors, and the deliberate appreciation of discreet and sincere lovers of music. The audience was, as had been expected, not numerous, but gave signs of intelligent enjoyment, which, it is safe to say, will be more warm, frequent, and judicious at succeeding interpretations of the work.

The plot is simple, intelligible, romantic, and the action both interesting and well sustained [several sentences of synopsis follow]. The score presents many noticeable points of difference from the conventional repertoire of the day. It contrasts with the artificial and florid technicality of much of the modern Italian school, on the one hand, as with the sentimental melancholy and mystic symbolism of the new lights on the other. The melodic construction is, to the ear, noticeably simple, honest, and direct. It has more of feeling than passion. The whole tone is fresh, bright, and healthy, and continually reminds the hearer by little whiffs of suggestion, almost amounting to reminiscence, of the heary naïveté of Handel or the perennial warmth and sweetness of Mozart. The orchestration, on the other hand, suggests the symphonic skill of Beethoven. It is less heavily massed and shaded, less elaborate, so far as may be judged on a first hearing, in construction, but exquisitely delicate, fanciful, and sympathetic.

Noticeably good numbers are the trio of the first act, ‘Our brave preserver,’ in which the three characters, Armand, Constance, and Mikeli, successively take up the same spirited musical theme, with the necessary contrapuntal variations, before blending in the concerted music of the trio—the beautiful sextet ‘Whom do I now behold’ at the end of the act—the finale of the second act, and that of the third, in which the theme of the opening trio is reproduced. Constance’s beautiful air at the opening of the third act, is borrowed from Gounod’s ‘Reine de Saba,’ and supplies in some degree the deficient element of passion in the opera. It would not do to overlook the symphonic movements in the entr’actes, or preludes to the rising of the curtain, which are warm in color, imaginative and expressive, in a high degree.”

“…and in the evening, for the first time in this city, the ‘Water-carriers’ constituted the programme for the remainder of the week. In the latter opera Aynsley Cook gave a touching and powerful piece of acting as Michael. M’Me. Rosa appeared to much advantage as Constance, and her magnificent voice was heard to the best advantage. Those two artists carried off the honors of the evening. Miss Clara Doria was satisfactory as Marcellina. Neither Mr. Castle, as Count Armand, nor Tom Karl, as Antonio, had their artistic abilities severely taxed. The choristers were well drilled and the orchestra was under the thorough control of Carl Rosa.”

“The representation of three really good operas (two of which are new to most of us) in one week, is certainly a subject for congratulation, and this is what the Parepa-Rosa troupe has done, besides giving us three works of ordinary merit.

‘La Gazza Ladra,’ ‘The Marriage of Figaro,’’ ‘The Water Carrier’—all are so beautiful that I can only make use of the expression once applied to Dickens’ novels and say, ‘the best is the one I last heard.’ [reviews of the first two operas]

This brings us to the ‘Water-Carrier,’ the analysis of which was recently published in your columns. This noble work (and here again Mr. Rosa should be thanked) was produced last Saturday evening. One hearing of such a work can convey but a faint idea of its merits, although the overture and one of the entre-actes are not new to me. 

No better interpretation could be desired than that which Mme. Rosa gave to such music as fell to her share, and in her only solo she was most heartily encored. 

Some fault might be found with the chorus, and the want of a good tenor was painfully apparent in this, as in all the representations during the week. The orchestra was too loud, thus marring the effect of the first number (Savoyard’s Song, G minor), but this is apt to be the case. The other representations given during the week, were…

The audience was good throughout the week.”