As is usually the case when an art-form has in the course of time crystallized into conventional formulas, a revolution of some sort was imminent in Italian opera at the beginning of the nineteenth century. In France Gluck had already banished from his scores the dreary _recitativo secco_, and extended the use of the chorus. The _opéra comique_ had come to stay, finding its most notable exponents in Grétry, Méhul, and Boieldieu. Cherubini’s nobly classic but cold and formal scores gave enjoyment to a capital which has at nearly all times been independent and self-sufficient. Mozart, in _Zauberflöte_, had already unlocked for Germany the sacred treasures of national art, and Weber,[66] following the general trend of German poetry and fiction, had inaugurated the romantic opera, a musical complement of the romantic literary movement, to which he gave its finest and fullest expression. Utilizing fairy tale and legend, he had secured for opera ‘a wider stage and an ampler air,’ and no longer relegating the beauties of Nature to the background, but treating them as an integral part of his artistic scheme, he laid the foundation upon which was eventually to rise the modern lyric drama.
But in Italy, beyond innate refinement of thought and grace of style, the composers whose names are identified with what was best in opera during the closing years of the eighteenth century had nothing to say. Cimarosa, Paesiello, Piccini (the one-time rival of Gluck) were prolific writers of the sort of melodious opera which had once delighted all Europe and still enchanted the opera-mad populace of Naples, Florence, Rome, and Venice. They had need to be prolific at a time when, as Burney says, an opera already heard was ‘like a last year’s almanac,’ and when Venice alone could boast thirteen opera houses, public and private. Each had to compose unremittingly, sometimes three or even four operas a year, and it is hardly surprising that their works, for all their charm, were thin and conventional in orchestration, and had but scant variety of melodic line. The development of the symphonic forms of _aria_ and _ensemble_ by Mozart, the enlargement of the orchestra, and the exaggerated fondness for virtuoso singing encouraged these defects, and gave these Italian composers ‘prosaically golden opportunities of lifting spectators and singers to the seventh heaven of flattered vanity.’ There was little or no connection between the music and its drama. Speaking generally, the operatic ideals of Italy were those of old Galuppi, who, when asked to define good music, replied: ‘_Vaghezza, chiarezza e buona modulazione_’ (vagueness, tenderness, and good modulation).