sir george alexander macfarren: his life and his operas
TRANSCRIPT
Sir George Alexander Macfarren: his life and his operas
1
Sir George Alexander Macfarren:
his life and his operas
Russell Burdekin
(Article first published in British Music,
Volume 32, 2010, pp. 84-108)
When the English Opera House reopened at the Lyceum Theatre in
1834, the lessee, Samuel J. Arnold, advertised it as for ‘the
presentation of English operas and the encouragement of
indigenous talent’1. This initiative, together with the founding of
the Society of British Musicians, was concrete evidence of a
growing musical nationalism, articulated the previous year in a
polemic by George Rodwell2. These various efforts grew out of the
lack of opportunities for British music and the common
presumption that only continental music had real worth, most
obviously seen in the continuing dominance of Italian opera.
Arnold commissioned Edward Loder’s Nourjahad (1834)
followed shortly afterwards by John Barnett’s The Mountain Sylph
(1834) whose success ‘opened a new period for music in this
country, from which is to be dated the establishment of an English
dramatic school’3. This era of English opera was to last for about
30 years and to witness the creation of around 100 works from
nearly 40 composers4, the most notable of these being Michael
William Balfe, John Barnett, Julius Benedict, Edward James Loder,
George Alexander Macfarren and William Vincent Wallace. Of
1 Stanley Sadie, ed., The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, Vol. 1 (London: Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1992), p.213. 2 George Rodwell, Letter to the Musicians of Great Britain; Containing a Prospectus of Proposed Plans for the Better encouragement of Native Musical Talent, and for the Erection and Management of a Grand National Opera in London. (London: James Fraser, 1833). 3 George A. Macfarren, “Barnett, John”, in ed. John F. Waller, The Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography, Vol. 1 (London: William Mackenzie, 1863), p.389. 4 George Biddlecombe, English opera from 1834 to 1864 with particular reference to the works of Michael Balfe (New York: Garland Publishing, 1994), pp.331-337.
Sir George Alexander Macfarren: his life and his operas
2
these, Macfarren5 had the longest musical career, of well over 50
years, and wrote the widest range of compositions. He wrote
prolifically on music and gained senior positions in the academic
world with a knighthood as recognition, achieving all this despite
being blind for over half of his career, a quintessential example of
Victorian perseverance and industry. In common with the other
five, he achieved operatic success only to find, in his case even
during his lifetime, that his operas were almost totally forgotten.
Although Arnold’s venture lasted less than four years, it did
inspire others to try, notably Alfred Bunn at Drury Lane, but all
enjoyed, at best, short-lived success. The aristocracy and
established wealthy classes were only willing to support Italian
opera with its star singers and social cachet, while the dubious
moral reputation of the theatre, inherited from the Georgian era,
severely handicapped the possibility of support from the newer
moneyed classes, who were often strongly religious and considered
orchestral music and oratorio more proper6. Appeals for public
subsidy, predictably, were given short shrift7 so that companies
providing operas in English, either those composed to an original
English libretto (henceforth in the article referred to as English
opera) or English translations of continental opera, depended solely
on the box office and thus were always mindful of audience
appeal. In such circumstances, it is hardly surprising that the new
wave of English opera stayed close to many aspects of the
Georgian model in its use of dialogue interspersed with songs and
dances, in the importance of spectacle and in its styles of drama.
However, the balance of the latter shifted away from the comic8 to
5 References to “Macfarren” denote George Alexander Macfarren; references to other Macfarrens carry the relevant first name. 6 Nicholas Temperley, “Introduction” in The Lost Chord, ed. Nicholas Temperley (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1989), p.10. 7 E.g., Bunn had appealed for a subsidy to Sir Robert Peel in 1832 and been rebuffed, Choragus, “Opera in English”, Music and Letters, Vol. XIII, No.1 (January 1932), p.2. 8 Theodore Fenner, Opera in London (Carbondale and Edwardsville, USA: Southern Illinois University Press, 1994), p. 348 and p. 584 shows that comic works were much the most popular in the Georgian era.
Sir George Alexander Macfarren: his life and his operas
3
sentimental melodramas, romantic9 in a popular, superficial sense
with lovers thwarted, women in peril and villains eventually getting
their comeuppance leaving the rest to live happily ever after, even
in Balfe’s Joan of Arc. The most significant change from the
Georgian era was that the music was largely original rather than
culled from other sources and became the focus of the work rather
than an adjunct, its position further reinforced by the disappearance
of non-singing actors10
.
The form and longevity of English opera over this period owed
much to Balfe, whose career spanned it and who provided around a
quarter of its works. The sentimental plots fitted his gift for
poignant melody and the dialogue and song model, being
essentially a collection of parts with little sense of overarching
musical structure or sustained characterisation, could be assembled
and rehearsed quickly, which suited the theatre conditions of the
time. The self-contained musical numbers also met the needs of the
music publishing industry that was striving to provide a rapidly
increasing repertoire of scores for the burgeoning domestic music
market. Prime amongst these offerings was the ballad with its
repetitive melody usually wrapped around nostalgic or uplifting
verse that was easy to remember and straightforward for amateurs
to sing, at least in a simplified form, but difficult to fit coherently
into the action of an opera and usually with little attempt made to
do so. Balfe’s efforts were, in the main, very successful and thus
reinforced the use of a model that managers and performers felt
comfortable with and hence that other composers sought to
emulate. Macfarren, however, was an exception in two respects. He
stayed mainly with the comic rather than the melodramatic and
sought to use English plots and music, ‘the pioneer of English
musical nationalism’11
, while the others, for the most part, looked
9 This period is sometimes labelled English Romantic Opera, although it had none of the intellectual background of the Romantic movement, e.g. an interest in nature, imagination or individualism, such as found in German Romantic Opera. 10 E.g., Weber’s Oberon (1826) had had six non-singing roles. 11 Nicholas Temperley, “Musical Nationalism in English Romantic Opera” in Nicholas Temperley, ed., Op.Cit., p.156.
Sir George Alexander Macfarren: his life and his operas
4
to the continent even though they eschewed the tragic ending12
that
had become firmly established in continental opera by that time.
George Alexander Macfarren13
was born on 2 March 1813 in a
house off the Strand in London, the eldest of six children but,
despite the name, there was no immediate Scottish ancestry on his
father’s side, although there was on his mother’s. His father,
George Macfarren, was a successful dramatist, journalist and
dancing master and unsuccessful theatre manager. All three of his
surviving sons inherited his
poor eyesight, and operations
to correct it were tried on the
young Macfarren while still at
school, but there was no
permanent cure and by the mid
1860s he was completely blind.
In 1829, Macfarren entered the
Royal Academy of Music
(R.A.M.), an organisation that
he was to be associated with for
much of his life. However,
Macfarren, unlike his friend
William Sterndale Bennett, did
not pursue further training on
the continent, but already had
started writing music for the
theatre as well as orchestral
compositions. One result was that he remained very conservative
musically, with Mozart and Beethoven as his ideals while also
admiring Mendelssohn.
12 Bunn originally envisaged a tragic ending for Balfe’s best known opera, The Bohemian Girl (1843), but it was changed, George Biddlecombe in the booklet to Michael William Balfe, The Bohemian Girl, National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, Richard Bonynge, Decca 433 324-2, 1992, CD, reissued, without the article, on Decca 473 077-2, 2002, CD. 13 Henry C. Banister, George Alexander Macfarren: his life, works and influence (London: George Bell and Sons, 1891) is the main source for the facts on Macfarren’s life and career. Banister was a professor at the R.A.M..
Sir George Alexander Macfarren: his life and his operas
5
He wrote two unperformed and probably uncompleted operas14
while at the R.A.M, both to librettos by his father and both using
the traditional dialogue and song model. Only some of the vocal
items, but no dialogue, survive from his first, The Prince of
Modena (1833)15
, two items of which were performed publicly: the
opening ballad ‘When moonlight stole o’er the silent stream’ 16
and
a fairy chorus, ‘Elves and elfins, trip it lightly’17
, obviously
inspired by ‘Light as fairy foot can fall’ from Weber’s Oberon. For
Caractacus (1835)18
, George Macfarren concocted a rather startling
plot that included the Empress Agrippina turning out to be
Caractacus’s long lost daughter. George hoped that such inventions
would be forgiven due to his wish to ‘introduce a beloved son to
the public as the composer of an original English opera’19
, but the
censor was not so charitable and the opera was banned for
historical inaccuracy20
. Again only some of the vocal items survive
so that we do not know whether it ended with the draft libretto’s
rousing chorus ‘Britannia’s isles shall be free, the home of liberty’,
prescient of a similarly patriotic, but anachronistic, finale in Elgar’s
Caractacus (1898). Shortly before leaving the R.A.M. in 1836,
Macfarren wrote the music for Planché’s play Chevy Chase but, as
he was not acknowledged on the credits, he abruptly removed the
overture score from the theatre21
. Such precipitous actions occurred
occasionally throughout his life and, although portrayed as matters
14 A list of his operas with dates of composition and, where applicable, dates and places of first performances are given in the Appendix. 15 George A. Macfarren, The Prince of Modena. MS score (August 1833), Cambridge: Fitzwilliam Museum, MU MS 1082. 16 Published as George A. Macfarren, O Beware! Lady Fair (London: Mori & Lavenu’s New Musical Subscription Library, no date). Macfarren’s sister, Ellen (Sophy), sang it at one of the Nobility’s Concerts. 17 Performed at a R.A.M. concert, Anonymous, “Royal Academy of Music”, The Times (26 May 1834), p.5. 18 George A. Macfarren, Caractacus. MS score (1835), Cambridge: Fitzwilliam Museum, MU MS 1060. 19 Afterword to George Macfarren, Caractacus. Draft libretto (1835), Cambridge: Fitzwilliam Museum, MU MS 1089. 20 Henry C. Banister, Op.Cit., p.37. 21 Henry C. Banister, Op.Cit. , p.39.
Sir George Alexander Macfarren: his life and his operas
6
of principle, give credence to the description of him at this time as
‘hot-headed’22
.
Macfarren claimed that his decision to leave the R.A.M. was
due to his determination ‘to become a mainstay of his family rather
than a burden’23
, a reference to his father’s continuing money
troubles. However, not only did he leave the R.A.M. but he also
turned his back on London, despite having had success with his
music for, at least, four plays24
and had his work performed by the
Society of British Musicians, including their opening concert. For
no apparent reason, he took up a teaching post on the Isle of Man,
which he soon regretted: ‘what a wretched thing is it to live in an
infernal place like this’25
. Perhaps such a distant move was a bid
for greater independence, for, although he had a generally happy
family life, his father was a very dominant personality26
sometimes
jealous of Macfarren’s friendships, while his mother seemed to
have been a difficult woman to please27
.
Macfarren’s sojourn on the Isle of Man lasted about a year after
which he returned to London to become Professor of Harmony and
Composition at the R.A.M.. While on the Isle of Man, he had
begun El Malhechor that was accepted by the English Opera House
but was not performed for want of a baritone, perhaps a sign of the
lack of depth in English opera singing. Alfred Bunn at Drury Lane,
John Barnett and Morris Barnett at the St James’s Theatre and
Balfe’s National English Opera, which had taken over the Lyceum,
then took it up in turn, but, symptomatic of the precarious viability
of English opera, all failed in turn and the opera was never
22 Henry Davison, ed., From Mendelssohn to Wagner: Memoirs of J.W. Davison (London: W.M.Reeves, 1912), p.41. 23 Henry C. Banister, Op.Cit., p.37. 24 Genevieve (1834), I and my Double (1835), The Old Oak Tree (1835) and Innocent Sins (1836). 25 Letter to James W. Davison, quoted in Henry Davison, ed., Op. Cit., p.33. 26 For example, Henry C. Banister, Op.Cit., pp. 4, 56, mentions that in 1840, George proposed writing The Emblematic Tribute for Queen Victoria’s wedding and firstly by “a strong power of magnetism” got the Drury Lane management interested and then “deaf to my protest”, cajoled Macfarren, “never strongly self-reliant” , into providing the music. 27 Macfarren’s boyhood letters and later writing to his brother, Walter “You must be very good and kind to mamma, for you know this is … the only way to make her happy”, Walter C. Macfarren, Memories (London: The Walter Scott Publishing Co. Ltd., 1905), p.298. He also gave a hint of other tensions commenting “that my father found consolation in the love of [his dead fiancée’s] sister is a psychological problem not to be discussed”, Henry C. Banister, Op.Cit., p.8.
Sir George Alexander Macfarren: his life and his operas
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performed. El Malhechor (1837)28
was the name of an evil spirit
that was said periodically to visit Majorca bringing devastation in
its wake. However, the plot was essentially about a group of
wreckers, a father driven mad by his daughter’s secret marriage and
disappearance, the daughter’s discovery of her lost husband when
his ship is deliberately wrecked and her restoration of her father’s
sanity with a song. As before, George Macfarren wrote the libretto
using the usual dialogue and song model, although Macfarren,
again taking a lead from Weber29
, introduced an extended scena of
recitative and more lyrical passages when describing Azora’s
reaction to seeing a ship wrecked, which built the music much
more powerfully to a dramatic climax. Typical of the Georgian
theatre’s love of spectacle, the libretto required that during this on
stage ‘a desperate hurricane is portrayed, the ship topped by the
waves driven on the shore, the false beacon fired, the wreck,
signals of distress and a man seen struggling in the waves’ 30
.
Although the English Opera House could not perform El
Malhechor, the management promised to mount an alternative
opera if it employed their current company, including Wieland,
famed for his ‘diabolical and zoological impersonations’31
. The
Devil’s Opera32
was the result, which was first performed at the
English Opera House on 13 August 1838. Despite being written,
rehearsed and produced in about ten weeks33
, it had considerable
success, running for 80 nights over two seasons34
and was even
performed as late as 188835
. The plot concerns Count Posillippo’s
28 George A. Macfarren, El Malhechor. Manuscript score (1838), Cambridge: Fitzwilliam Museum, MU MS 1067. 29 E.g., “Ocean! thou mighty monster” from Weber’s Oberon. 30 George Macfarren, El Malhechor. Libretto (1838), Cambridge: Fitzwilliam Museum, MU MS 1091. 31 Henry C. Banister, Op.Cit., p. 47. 32 George A. Macfarren, The Devil’s Opera. Manuscript score & sketches (1838), Cambridge: Fitzwilliam Museum, MU MS 1062. Libretto included in Benjamin Webster, ed., The National Acting Drama. (London: Chapman & Hall, 1838). 33 Henry C. Banister, Op.Cit., p.51 states that it was all done within one month but there is a sketch dated 29 May 1838 and the overture score says sketched June 1838, begun June 1838 and completed 12 August 1838, one day before the performance, George A. Macfarren, Op.Cit.. 34 Walter Macfarren quoted in “Facts, Rumours and Remarks”, The Musical Times, Vol. 38, No. 653 (1 July 1897), p.454. 35 In Taunton. The music was considered out of date but the performance successful, Anonymous, “Brief Summary of Country Notes”, The Musical Times, Vol. 29, No. 547 (1 September 1888), p.559.
Sir George Alexander Macfarren: his life and his operas
8
desire to resurrect a dead body following instructions from
Professor Herman, to whom, if successful, Posillippo promises the
hand of his daughter, Medora, who is actually in love with Villardi.
A convenient dead body, that of a thief, is found and revived but
re-emerges as Diavoletto. General mayhem ensues with Posillippo
being hauled off to prison until the whole business ends happily
after being revealed as a hoax and that Diavoletto is Villardi’s
black slave whom, at the end, he frees.
The Musical Times was sceptical about the opera’s claims ‘to
satirize the mania, caught from mystic Germany, for the
improbable and the supernatural’36
, although it clearly drew on
those ideas. Thomas D. Rice’s comedy, The Virginia Mummy
(1837)37
, which featured a black waiter in a similar hoax, was
probably the immediate source. Quite why George Macfarren used
a black protagonist, and a slave to boot, is not obvious. Initially, it
may have been with the idea of including some of Rice’s blackface
‘Jim Crow’ routines38
, then at the height of their popularity,
although there is no evidence of their use. Possibly, it was intended
as an anti-slavery comment post the abolition of slavery in the
British Empire but at a time when there was agitation for its
abolition elsewhere. The libretto was derided as ‘sad trash’39
but
gave plenty of scope for slapstick and numerous fireworks.
The music was generally praised although Macfarren, probably
drawing on his symphonic work but showing his lack of practical
operatic experience, was thought on occasion to have used too
serious a style for the lightweight text40
and to have been over
36 Anonymous, “Theatrical Summary”, The Musical World, No. 127, (16 August 1838), pp. 262-263. Anonymous, “English Opera House”, The Morning Chronicle (14 August 1838), p.3 thought the idea a dull joke. 37 In it, Captain Rifle persuades a black waiter, Ginger Blue, to disguise himself as an Egyptian mummy to be brought back to life by an elixir devised by an antiquarian doctor, whose daughter Rifle wants to meet, Hazel Waters, Racism on the Victorian Stage (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p.104. 38 E.g. Balfe’s Diadeste (17 May 1838) had included a black servant that exploited “the black minstrel” fashion of the day, William Tyldesley, Michael William Balfe: his life and English operas, (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 2003), p.74. 39 Anonymous, “English Opera House”, The London Dispatch and People's Political and Social Reformer (19 August 1838), p.805. 40 Michael Williams, Some London Theatres past and present (London: Sampson Low et al., 1883), p.157.
Sir George Alexander Macfarren: his life and his operas
9
ambitious in his handling of orchestra and chorus41
. As in all his
work, he used a standard orchestra of wind, brass, strings, timpani
and percussion with, in this instance, a harp, probably around 30-
4042
in all. The opera mixed a variety of styles: German orchestral
writing43
and Italian and English vocal models. Thus, Posillippo is
a buffo role with one, or possibly two44
, patter songs, whereas
Herman’s ‘Oh blame me not’45
, is a traditional nostalgic English
ballad, although Macfarren was unable to provide the sort of
touching melody at which Balfe and Wallace were particularly
adept. Some felt that Macfarren had wasted time ‘on things called
scenas, which would have been much more profitably bestowed on
the creation of simple songs and melodies’46
. In fact, only one
scena was included by that title, that of Pepino’s, Posillippo’s page,
‘My state forlorn’, with its onstage recollections interrupted at
intervals by an offstage chorus of gondoliers47
. The success of The
Devil’s Opera led to the commission of a new opera, Don Quixote,
which was completed in 1841 but suffered from the collapse of
Balfe’s National Opera Company and was not performed until
1846.
At this time, Macfarren was very much the carefree man about
town, ‘ardent and romantic’48
, and part of a group that admired
Shelley, who was still considered beyond the pale in many quarters.
As well as setting some of Shelley’s verses, Macfarren also took up
41 Anonymous, “Music and the Drama”, The Athenæum, (18 August 1838), p. 589. Anonymous was Henry F. Chorley who had become The Athenæum’s music critic in 1833. 42 Balfe’s orchestra at Drury Lane was around 43 and much the same for his operas at Covent Garden in the 1850’s, private communication from Basil Walsh, author of Michael W. Balfe (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2008), 1 April 2009. However, the Lyceum might well have used fewer, partly because it was smaller and partly because this was an obvious area for economy. For a revival of Macfarren’s Charles II at the Haymarket in 1851, the orchestra was only “nearly thirty strong”, Anonymous, “Music”, Daily News (18 November 1851), p.2. Victorian Opera Northwest’s 2010 recording of Robin Hood used 38. 43 George Biddlecombe, Op.Cit., p.153 sees the strong influence of Mozart and Beethoven in the overture and elsewhere. 44 The manuscript score includes a patter song as an alternative in Posillippo’s trial scene, possibly a reaction to Macfarren’s first effort being seen as too serious. 45 George A. Macfarren, “Oh blame me not”, The Devil’s Opera (London: Ashdown & Parry, c.1838). 46 Anonymous, “English Opera House”, The Musical World, No. 127, (16 August 1838), p. 263. 47 Possibly suggested by Donizetti’s Marin Faliero with its onstage gondoliers interrupted by an unseen voice that had been given in London in 1835. 48 Henry Davison, ed., Op.Cit., p.37 stresses these qualities even after Macfarren had become a professor at the R.A.M..
Sir George Alexander Macfarren: his life and his operas
10
some of his ideas including vegetarianism and, seemingly,
atheism49
, even though he was to compose a considerable amount
of religious music. Encouraged by his father, Macfarren was
already keenly interested in English music at a time when many
ignored it. For him, English music covered a wide spectrum from
folk song and ancient dances through Elizabethan madrigals to
music of the 17th
century before it had become infected by the
‘corrupt morals brought hither from France by the Merry Monarch’
and the ‘classical affectation of the Georgian era’50
. However, he
praised Henry Bishop for keeping some aspects of older music
alive, notably the glee51
. Macfarren wrote52
of his frustration with
‘the low esteem in which English music [was] held by English
people’ and of the ‘sovereign contempt’ shown by the Queen for
British musicians, but that he had ‘spirit red-hot for the cause’. He
made a point of using the traditional tune Chevy Chase in the
overture to Planché’s play, mentioned above, and provided
harmonies for Chappell’s Collection of National English Airs
(1838). However, both in the Chappell and in the various Purcell
and Handel scores that he edited around this time, his belief that by
modernising them he was improving them53
led to his versions
being superseded. Already in the 1830s he had been active in the
founding of the Society of British Musicians and, in the 1840s, he
and James W. Davison, the future editor of The Musical World and
music critic of The Times, inaugurated a series of chamber music
concerts, both initiatives aimed at encouraging new British works.
In 1842, he caused controversy by hissing a performance of the
49 Many years later, following the death of his librettist, John Oxenford, he commented “Poor J.O.! Poorer all of us who have no faith in which to die” in a letter to James W. Davison in 1877, Henry Davison, ed., Op.Cit., p.321. 50 George A. Macfarren, “The National Music of our Native Land”, The Musical Times, Vol.14, No.335 (1 January 1871), p.744. 51 George A. Macfarren, “The English are not a Musical People”, Cornhill Magazine, Vol.18, No.105 (September 1868), p.360. 52 Letter to the editor, The Musical World, No. 220 (11 June 1840), pp. 364-365. 53 Not only did he use modern harmonies but his lack of sympathy was shown by his assertion, in George A. Macfarren, “The Accompaniment of Recitative”, The Musical Times, Vol. 15, No. 358 (1 December 1872), p.689, that the richer tone and fuller resonance of the piano or organ was to be preferred to the harpsichord or string bass. He later regretted some of the accompaniments he had added to Handel, George A. Macfarren, “On Editing”, The Musical Times, Vol. 16, No. 382 (1 December 1874), p.708.
Sir George Alexander Macfarren: his life and his operas
11
pianist, Thalberg, in protest against the Philharmonic Society’s lack
of support for British music54
. Meanwhile, he began his prolific
writing and critical career55
, which, by his death, was to eclipse his
reputation as a composer56
.
Although Bunn had set up a new English opera company at
Drury Lane in 1843, Macfarren did not respond to this opportunity
probably because the death of his father in that year took away the
driving force behind his earlier operas. No doubt, he was further
distracted by his marriage, in 1844, to his pupil, a 17-year-old
singer, Clarina Thalia Andrae, who became better known later as
the opera translator and editor, Natalia Macfarren. The following
year, he became the musical director of Covent Garden and
conducted the music written by Mendelssohn for a production of
Antigone. Its staging caused considerable mirth57
and led to a
comic version being performed at the Strand Theatre that gives a
glimpse of Macfarren. He was impersonated entering ‘with bustle
and importance, and draws on a pair of white gloves with a
pompous display of dignity, while his long hair hangs about his
head after the manner of his accomplished prototype. His
burlesque gestures with the baton, in imitation of the energetic
conductor, are too like to be mistaken; and he telegraphs to the
band and the chorus just as oddly and just as wildly’58
. There then
occurred a further example of the quixotic and unyielding side of
Macfarren’s personality. In 1838, he had made the acquaintance of
Alfred Day, who had advanced a new theory of harmony, which he
had published59
, at Macfarren’s urging, in 1845. It found little
54 Henry Davison, ed., Op.Cit., pp.41-42. 55 An article on Mendelssohn’s “Scottish” Symphony for The Musical World, No. 24, Vol. 17 (16 June 1842), pp. 185-187. 56 George Bernard Shaw, London Music in 1888-89 (London: Constable & Co., 1950), p.106 wrote that Macfarren was like Cherubini in that, because of his reputation as a pedant, “it was almost forgotten that he had once been a composer”. 57 Punch published some drawings that Mendelssohn found particularly amusing, Anonymous, “Mendelssohn and His English Publisher, Some Unpublished Letters”, The Musical Times, Vol. 46, No. 743 (1 January 1905), pp.20-23. 58 Anonymous, “Strand Theatre”, The Northern Star and National Trades’ Journal (8 February 1845), p.8. The Morning Chronicle (4 February 1845) reckoned that the conductor being imitated was Louis Jullien. The Theatrical Journal (February 1845), p.45 said that it gave “Macfarren and Jullien in daguerreotype”. 59 Alfred Day, Treatise on Harmony. (London: Cramer, Beale & Co., 1845).
Sir George Alexander Macfarren: his life and his operas
12
favour with the musical establishment but Macfarren started to use
the book at the R.A.M. and, when he refused to stop, was forced to
resign.
Macfarren’s Don Quixote made its belated appearance on 3
February 1846 at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. It was based on
the episode from Cervantes’ novel concerning the thwarting of
Quiteria’s pending marriage to Camacho, previously used by
Mendelssohn, although the Macfarrens treated it differently. Once
again, George Macfarren’s libretto was heavily criticised but the
music was held to have overcome its difficulties. There seems to
have been no Spanish element in the staging60
and disagreement as
to whether there was any in the music61
but Macfarren made an
effort to characterise the Don using ‘roulades, trills and falsetto
effects’62
. While the music clearly owed something to other
composers63
, it was felt ‘highly creditable…but not an inspiration
of genius’64
and showed ‘the hand of a musician of refined taste,
well practised in his art’65
. The opera was claimed to have met with
a rousing reception66
, but it seems to have only run for nine
performances67
, so that The Connoisseur68
might have been nearer
the mark with its sour appraisal of the ‘insipid’ music and the
‘miserable mediocrity’ of the singers.
The loss of his modest payments from the R.A.M. and the
appearance, finally, of Don Quixote did not spur him into new
operatic composition, even though he had become too blind to
conduct and now had a son, George Theodore, to support. Instead,
60 Anonymous, “Drury Lane Theatre”, The Observer (8 February 1846), p.5. 61 Anonymous, “Music and the Drama”, The Era (8 February 1846), p.5 asserted that the song “Alas! A Thousand Secret Woes” was rife with Spanish feeling while Anonymous, “The Theatrical Examiner”, The Examiner (7 February 1846), p.85 saw the opera as “certainly deficient” in Spanish character but not necessarily any the worse for that. 62 George Biddlecombe, Op.Cit., p.154. 63 E.g., Weber’s influence in the overture and Mozart and the Italian masters (presumably including Rossini) elsewhere, Anonymous, “Theatricals &c”. Lloyd’s Weekly London Newspaper (8 February 1846), p.10. 64 Anonymous, “Drury Lane Theatre”, The Morning Chronicle (4 February 1846), p.5. 65 Anonymous, “The Theatrical Examiner”, The Examiner (7 February 1846), p.85. 66 Anonymous, “Theatricals &c”, Lloyd’s Weekly London Newspaper (8 February 1846), p.10 67 Anonymous, “Princess’s Theatre”, The Times (29 October 1849), p. 8. 68 C.J. “The Opera of ‘Don Quixote’”, The Connoisseur, Vol. 2, No.12 (March 1846), p.51-52.
Sir George Alexander Macfarren: his life and his operas
13
he relied on his wife’s earnings69
from singing until, in 1847, they
decided to go to New York. Various reasons were given: that he
was going for treatment for his eyes70
(unsuccessful in the event),
that it was to further his wife’s career71
and that it was because he
was unable to make a living in Britain72
. However, little was
achieved, no doubt partly because of the great personal upheaval
they faced while there with the death of George Theodore and the
birth of a daughter, Clarina Thalia, who was to survive them.
Another son, also named George Theodore, was born in 1852 but
he died 8 months later. Otherwise, Macfarren mainly spent his time
writing and composing Charles II 73
, which was premièred at the
Princess’s Theatre on 24 October 1849, after the Macfarrens’ return
to London.
The opera’s libretto, by Desmond Ryan, deputy editor of The
Musical World, was based on a Georgian play called The Merry
Monarch (1824)74
and revolved around efforts by Rochester to
fulfil a promise to the Queen to keep Charles II on the straight and
narrow. Unusually for English opera, it was almost completely
through-composed using recitative rather than the usual dialogue75
,
although Balfe had tried that format unsuccessfully in Catherine
Grey (1837) and rather more successfully in The Daughter of St.
Mark (1844). The text is typically extravagant; for example. the
page, Julien, singing of his love, Fanny, is given lines like ‘The
violet sheds within her eyes, its tender hues and deep’ning dyes’.
The Manchester Times was goaded to ask why Macfarren had
69 Anonymous, “Death of Lady Macfarren”, The Times (12 April 1916), p.9. 70 Henry C. Banister, Op.Cit., p.171. 71 The Musical World, No. 32, Vol. XXII (7 August 1847), p.513 said she had been engaged for the New York Festival. 72 His friend Davison suggested this in an article to which Macfarren responded angrily that there was “no reason to cast the aspersion of beggary on me for trying to make all the money I can”, Henry Davison, ed., Op.Cit., p.89. 73 George A. Macfarren, King Charles II, Manuscript score (1849), Cambridge: Fitzwilliam Museum, MU MS 1078. 74 Anonymous, “Music”, Daily News (29 October 1849), p.6. The play was by John Howard Payne & Washington Irving. 75 The manuscript score seems sufficiently coherent without dialogue but Anonymous, “Princess’s Theatre”, The Observer (4 November 1849), p.7 mentions “brief passages of dialogue”.
Sir George Alexander Macfarren: his life and his operas
14
bestowed ‘time and genius upon the rubbish of such a text’76
. In the
past, haste and respect for his father might have excused the poor
libretti but here Macfarren was the leading partner and had had
many months in New York to reflect on what he was setting.
The opera was a considerable success77
, any shortcomings
overcome by the comic business, the staging and the music. One
reason was its use of a plot based on English history at a time when
Balfe and the others mainly still looked abroad for their settings78
.
Macfarren took the opportunity to emphasise the Englishness with
an unaccompanied pseudo-Elizabethan madrigal ‘Maidens never go
a wooing’, which was particularly acclaimed, and Morris, maypole
and hornpipe dancing to music ‘redolent of England in the
[seventeenth] century’79
. The music garnered praise for its charm,
its melodies, its instrumentation and simple and picturesque vocal
music notwithstanding some reservations about over elaboration
and ‘a vast quantity of music’ that lacked animation80
.
It was the only opera in which Macfarren wrote a part for his
wife, the role of the page Julien, which included ‘She shines before
me like a star’, ‘the model of what a ballad ought to be’81
.
However, its main feature seemed to be to show off her ability to
drop an octave and a half , although to no dramatic purpose.
Macfarren’s acquiescence in the commercial priorities of English
opera is also seen in the ballad ‘Nan of Battersea’82
; its irrelevant
appearance justified by the line ‘I must e’en drone a song to keep
76 Anonymous, “Theatre Royal”, Manchester Times (23 October 1850), p.4. Not surprisingly given Ryan’s position, The Musical World, No. 42, Vol. XXV (26 October 1850) p.692 excised these comments when it included this review. 77 “the finest and most complete operatic work of a native musician ever produced on the stage”, part of a review quoted in Henry C. Banister, Op.Cit., p.196. 78 Balfe’s Catherine Grey (1837) and Barnett’s Fair Rosamond (1837) had both used English plots and Barnett had made use of English forms and music but both efforts had quickly failed and the approach had not been repeated. 79 Anonymous, “Music”, Daily News (29 October 1849), p.6. 80 Anonymous, “The Theatrical Examiner”, The Examiner (3 November 1849), p.694. 81 Anonymous, “Princess’s Theatre”, The Times (29 October 1849), p.8. 82 “a vapid piece of Dibdenism”, Anonymous, “Norwich Musical Festival”, The Morning Chronicle (25 September 1852), p.4. Nevertheless, it “seemed to please the audience, but sounded rather oddly amid the music that surrounded it”, Anonymous, “The Theatrical Examiner”, The Examiner (3 November 1849), p.695.
Sir George Alexander Macfarren: his life and his operas
15
myself from winking’. The opera ran for 50 nights in succession83
and was performed intermittently until March of the following year
when it toured. Newspapers84
disagreed about the success of its
revival in London in 1851, but, in any case, it has not been given
since.
The text for his next opera, Allan of Aberfeldy85
, was by John
Oxenford86
, who became Macfarren’s librettist for many of his
future vocal works. A year older than the composer, Oxenford was
also steeped in the Georgian theatre and Macfarren had written
music for one of his farces, I and my Double, as far back as 1835.
Although incomplete, the opera appears to have been, for once, a
sentimental melodrama in the predominant style of English opera
of the time except that it had little or no dialogue. Unusually, the
lead female, Edith, was a mezzo role, presumably designed for his
wife. However, the opera was abandoned when Bunn went gave up
the Drury Lane lease in 1852. Perhaps it was these uncertainties
that led Macfarren to rejoin the R.A.M., who accepted him
notwithstanding his continued adherence to Day’s system. For
much of the remaining decade Macfarren concentrated on
composing cantatas, arranging and editing music and writing,
including Little Clarina’s Lesson Book based on his piano lessons
to his daughter, ‘to remove difficulties from whose course is the
best pleasure in life’87
. This charming sentiment contrasts with his
truculent behaviour towards Richard Wagner on the latter’s visit to
London in 1855 when he conducted Macfarren’s Chevy Chase
83 This may be an overestimate, as it was claimed 10 years later, Anonymous, “Her Majesty’s Theatre”, The Morning Chronicle (15 October 1860), p.3. 84 According to Anonymous, “The Drama, Music, &c”, Reynolds’s Newspaper (23 November 1851), p.9 the houses were thin and the production poor. However, Anonymous, “Theatricals, etc.”, Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper (23 November 1851), p.11 and Anonymous, “Music”, Daily News (18 November 1851), p.2 were unstinting in their praise, although the latter mentions the orchestra of less than 30, so hardly a sumptuous production. 85 George A. Macfarren, Allan of Aberfeldy, Manuscript score (c.1850), Cambridge: Fitzwilliam Museum, MU MS 1058. 86 John Oxenford combined a number of careers including playwright, mainly of comedies and farces, drama critic of The Times and translator and editor of various German philosophical works, as well as librettist. 87 Preface to George A. Macfarren, Little Clarina’s Lesson Book, Part 1 (London: Rust & Co., 1853).
Sir George Alexander Macfarren: his life and his operas
16
overture, of which he was quite complimentary, although
describing Macfarren as a ‘pompous and melancholy Scot’88
.
The establishment of the Pyne and Harrison and the Smith and
Mapleson companies in the late 1850s gave new opportunities for
English opera, during which Macfarren wrote Robin Hood (1860)
for the Smith and Mapleson company. It was during its
composition that Macfarren’s eyesight became so bad that he
started regularly to use an amanuensis and, by 1865, he was
completely blind. The opera opened at Her Majesty’s Theatre on 11
October 1860 and became Macfarren’s most popular opera, wags
suggesting that it should be renamed ‘Robbin’ Harrison’ because of
the losses that it caused the rival Pyne and Harrison company. The
first production ran for 37 nights and the production by Pyne and
Harrison in 1861 for a further five89
.
Robin Hood, along with King Arthur, was a continuing source
of inspiration for the arts90
in Victorian times by harking back to a
Saxon past that was seen as the true England91
, crystallised in
fiction in Scott’s Ivanhoe. The plot for Macfarren’s Robin Hood
was original and comic. Maid Marian is the daughter of the Sheriff,
who is happy for her to marry the man whom he and she know as
Locksley, but who is actually Robin Hood, provided that he wins
the archery contest. The nasty character is the Sompnour, the tax
collector, who is robbed by Robin Hood but who, eventually,
captures him. However, as Robin awaits execution, a pardon
arrives from King Richard. Macfarren and Oxenford turned back to
a more traditional dialogue and song model, no doubt to underline
the Englishness and, for once, the libretto was praised92
. The
88 Richard Wagner, My Life, edited by Mary Whittall & translated by Andrew Gray (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), p.522. Perhaps Wagner was as mistaken about the truculence as about him being a Scot. 89 David Eden, “Macfarren’s Robin Hood”, in ed. David Eden, Sullivan’s Ivanhoe (Saffron Walden, UK: Sir Arthur Sullivan Society, 2007), p.130.
90 Thus, with regard to music in the previous few years, Robin Hood had appeared in Macfarren’s May Day (1856), Sterndale Bennett’s The May Queen (1858) and in a number of ballads in Chappell’s Popular Music of the Olden Time (1858). 91 Stephanie L. Barczewski, Myth and National Identity in Nineteenth Century Britain: The Legends of King Arthur and Robin Hood. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, chapter 4, pp. 124 - 161. 92 E.g., “one of the very few good original libretti in the English language”, quoted in Anonymous, “The Carl Rosa Opera Company”, Birmingham Daily Post (29 November 1877), p.5.
Sir George Alexander Macfarren: his life and his operas
17
‘thoroughly English’93
words and music included such numbers as
‘Englishmen by birth are free’ and ‘The grasping, rasping Norman
race’, as well as unaccompanied partsongs that were seen as
traditionally English notwithstanding their use in German opera94
.
Once again Macfarren included scenas, one for the Sheriff that
seems to have excited little interest, one for Robin and one for
Marian that follows Weber even more closely than in El
Malhechor, but this time modelled on Der Freischütz. It was duly
noted as less purely English than much of the rest of the opera95
. In
‘Hail! Happy Morn’, Marian, like Agathe in ‘Leise, Leise, fromme
Weise’ 96
, sees her future happiness depending on the skill of her
intended in a forthcoming contest. She begins with a recitative
where hopes are reflected in the state of nature, followed by a
prayer, the hymn-like ‘Power Benign’, then growing anticipation of
happiness mingled with apprehension and finally an exclamation
‘Oh joy’, as she thinks she sees her lover. Macfarren prefaces this
recognition by changing the tempo four bars ahead and having the
whole orchestra combine before a short rest in a manner
reminiscent of the dramatic vocal entrance in Beethoven’s 9th
symphony. Marian’s excitement then comes through in the florid
conclusion. Such characterisation was not consistently used for
Marian, although music from her ballad, ‘True Love’, is used as a
motif elsewhere in the opera. The scena for Robin gives depth to
his song in prison with singing offstage first from a chorus, rather
as Macfarren did in The Devil’s Opera, and then from Marian
singing ‘True Love’. However, it is business as usual with Robin’s
‘My own, my guiding star’, ‘a very good ballad…for the
publishers’, which, rather pointlessly, interrupts the finale of the
93 Anonymous, “Robin Hood”, The Musical World, (20 October 1860), p.666. 94 George A. Macfarren, “The English are not a Musical People”, Cornhill Magazine, Vol.18, No.105 (September 1868), p.360 stated that German partsongs were reproductions of those sung in England 250 years previously. 95 Anonymous, “Her Majesty’s Theatre”, The Times (15 October 1860), p.12. 96 Anonymous, “Her Majesty’s Theatre”, The Morning Chronicle (15 October 1860), p.3 was careful to point out that Macfarren had not plagiarised it but just written it “after the manner” of the scene.
Sir George Alexander Macfarren: his life and his operas
18
second act 97
. The repeat of the first line at the end of each verse
must have almost invited the audience to join in.
Robin Hood, Act II,
The Illustrated London News, 24 November 1860
The opera reaped considerable critical acclaim, being described
as ‘the most masterly…work of an Englishman ever heard on the
English stage’98
and ‘superior to any works of Verdi or Donizetti’99
and The Era100
published its libretto as a supplement. There were a
few reservations as to its ‘want of melody’101
, the ‘marrying of
modern instrumentation to antiquated melody’102
and the music
97 Anonymous, “Her Majesty’s Theatre”, The Morning Chronicle (15 October 1860), p.3. 98 Anonymous, “Her Majesty’s Theatre”, Loc. Cit.. Anonymous, “Macfarren’s Robin Hood”, The Musical World (27 October 1860), p 686 contented itself with declaring it the greatest work for the English musical stage since Purcell. 99 Anonymous “The Theatrical and Musical Examiner”, The Examiner (27 October 1860), p.677 100 Supplement to The Era, (21 October 1860). 101 Anonymous, “Her Majesty’s Theatre”, The Observer (14 October 1860), p.6. Otherwise, it was a favourable review. 102 Anonymous, “Her Majesty’s Theatre”, The Morning Chronicle (15 October 1860), p.3.
Sir George Alexander Macfarren: his life and his operas
19
‘falling off materially’ in the third act103
. Even George Bernard
Shaw was not completely dismissive when he saw a rather
threadbare revival in 1889104
. The Morning Chronicle105
saw the
opera as more likely to be ‘a powerful influence on the fortunes of
the national dramatic music of England’ and to offer a better
example than that of the ‘mawkish, sentimental school’, i.e. Balfe
and Wallace. However, in a sale of Cramer & Co. copyrights in
1871106
, Robin Hood yielded £263, about a tenth of that for
Wallace’s Lurline, also from 1860, showing that it failed to live up
to those hopes. The Carl Rosa company revived the opera for its
1877 tour, but, although it was advertised in their repertoire for
some years, they do not seem to have repeated it. James W. Turner,
who was a member of the company at that time, although he
probably did not sing the title role107
, seemed to have taken quite a
liking to the opera, for, when he started his own company, he
included it on many tours from 1889, the performance Shaw saw,
until the early 1900s. Since then there have been no performances
until the recent recording by Victorian Opera Northwest that is
planned for release in early 2011.
Robin Hood also gives a good indication of the sheer amount of
published material resulting from a popular opera. Not only were
the libretto and the complete vocal full score published but, at least,
36 separate items, several repeated in a transposed key108
or
without the chorus, as well as 19 assorted piano arrangements with
others in preparation109
. As a way of trying to balance the needs of
the opera with the wish to produce independent items for general
performance, some were published with an additional verse not
103 Anonymous, “Her Majesty’s Theatre”, The Saturday Review, Vol.10, No.260 (20 October 1860), p.85 but otherwise a good review. 104 George Bernard Shaw, London Music in 1888-89. (London: Constable & Co., 1950), pp.106-109 compared it favourably to Cellier’s Doris in that the “music generally advances matters” and praised the unaccompanied partsong. He also noted that the string section had five violins, one viola and two cellos. 105 Anonymous, “Her Majesty’s Theatre”, The Morning Chronicle (15 October 1860), p.3. 106 Anonymous, “Art and Literary Gossip”, Manchester Times (15 April 1871), p.120. 107 Fred C. Packard was advertised as Robin. 108 E.g., The most popular ballad “My own, my guiding star” was published in D flat, B flat and G. 109 List included with John Oxenford, Robin Hood. Libretto (London: Cramer, Beale & Chappell, 1860), pp. iii & iv.
Sir George Alexander Macfarren: his life and his operas
20
used in the opera. The complete score was priced at £1 5s 0d,
whereas individual items were priced between two and four
shillings showing that these formed the main market.
Two Macfarren operas were performed at Covent Garden in
1864. The first was She Stoops to Conquer110
based on Goldsmith’s
play with a libretto by Edward Fitzball, an experienced librettist
who had written for Barnett, Balfe, Loder and Wallace. The score
states that it was sketched in August 1863, begun in September and
completed on 31 January 1864, less than two weeks before its
première at Covent Garden on 11 February 1864. Once again, this
underlines the haste with which many English operas were
assembled with little time for reflection or reworking, particularly
considering all the writing was done through an amanuensis and
that Macfarren had an academic post.
The number of characters in Goldsmith’s play was reduced,
most notably the role of the bemused but openhearted Squire
Hardcastle fused with that of the scheming Mrs Hardcastle, leading
to a rather confused character for the Squire. It used dialogue and
song, although most of Goldsmith’s dialogue had to be replaced in
order to fit in the musical items and other additions, including a
scene of a village green with a cricket match, ‘one of the most gay
and animated scenes’ seen on the opera stage111
. Such tinkering
with a classic of the theatre inevitably invited unfavourable
comparisons112
but many reviewers, including a more recent
mention by Michael Hurd113
, felt that Fitzball made a reasonable
job of the libretto. As with Robin Hood, the music was deemed
‘thoroughly English’114
and generally praised with the orchestral
and ensemble items, including the usual unaccompanied partsong,
preferred to the solo items, some of which were thought more to
110 George A. Macfarren, She Stoops to Conquer, Manuscript score (1863), Cambridge: Fitzwilliam Museum, MU MS 1087. 111 Anonymous, “Royal English Opera”, Daily News (13 February 1864), p.3. 112 E.g. Anonymous, “Royal English Opera”, The Observer (14 February 1864), p.6 and Anonymous, “Royal English Opera”, The Musical Times, Vol. 11, No. 253 (1 March 1864), pp.239-240. 113 Michael Hurd, “Opera: 1834-1865” in The Romantic Age, 1800-1914, ed. Nicholas Temperley (London: The Athlone Press, 1981), p.322. 114 Anonymous, “Royal English Opera”, The Musical Times, Vol. 11, No. 253 (1 March 1864), p.239.
Sir George Alexander Macfarren: his life and his operas
21
show off the singers rather than to establish the characters115
. The
reception seems to have been enthusiastic, ‘the event of the
season’116
, although it was suggested117
that this was partly fostered
by claquers, probably employed to encourage the sales of the
scores of certain numbers118
. The opera was unlucky in that it
opened less than six weeks before the Pyne and Harrison company
folded in London, although they toured the opera shortly after that.
There do not appear to have been any revivals119
.
The Royal English Opera was reconstituted under new
management in July 1864 following the demise of the Pyne and
Harrison company and its first new English opera was Macfarren’s
Helvellyn120
given on 3 November 1864 at Covent Garden. It was
based on Hermann S. Mosenthal’s play Der Sonnenwendhof 121
but
with the action moved to the Lake District in the 18th
century. It
was Macfarren’s only completed attempt at the type of melodrama
common to English opera of this period, but, even so, Macfarren
and Oxenford could not resist including a harvest home scene
whose choral music had probably ‘never been surpassed in rural
hilarity’122
. From the score, it appears that the work was started in
1861123
, Macfarren and Oxenford, presumably, aiming to follow
the success of Robin Hood. One might surmise that it was not taken
up at that time because the opera management thought the plot too
complex particularly as the original play was unknown in Britain
and its intelligibility was further hampered by recitative being used
rather than spoken dialogue. Perhaps, the new Royal English Opera
115 Particularly Louisa Pyne as Kate Hardcastle, Anonymous, “Royal English Opera”, The Times (3 March 1864), p.10. 116 Anonymous, “Royal English Opera”, Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper (21 February 1864), p.8. 117 Anonymous, “Royal English Opera”, The Observer (14 February 1864), p.6. 118 Anonymous, “Grand National Concerts”, The Times (16 November 1850), p.5 and Anonymous, “The Theatrical Examiner”, The Examiner (26 March 1864), p.200 both refer to this practice. 119 The report in Anonymous, “Music”, The Graphic (12 July 1890), p.34 that the Carl Rosa company were going to tour it in 1891 proved, not unexpectedly, to be unfounded. 120 George A. Macfarren, Helvellyn. Manuscript score (1864), Cambridge: Fitzwilliam Museum, MU MS 1075. 121 The libretto calls it Der Sonnwendhof, although it was more usually titled Der Sonnenwendhof. 122 Anonymous, “Royal English Opera”, The Observer (6 November 1864), p.6. 123 The manuscript score states that it was begun 19 April 1861, although the introduction is dated 4 January 1861. Acts 2 and 3 also carry 1861 dates and a duet before the Act 4 finale is dated 9 January 1862.
Sir George Alexander Macfarren: his life and his operas
22
management decided to take a chance on the opera in order to
establish their credentials.
Some years before the stage action starts, Ralph had died in the
explosion of a local armoury, which he was thought to have set
alight, but his young daughter, Hannah, who was with him
survived. In fact, a local ne’er-do-well, Luke, had started the fire.
Through a rather far-fetched series of happenings involving Luke’s
sister-in-law, Mabel, and her foreman, Martin, Hannah and Luke
meet again and she eventually realises that Luke was the arsonist,
causing him to flee when accused. Coming to a ravine he clings to
a tree, which snaps when hit by lightning plunging him below and
thus providing a spectacular moment before the happy ending.
Macfarren sought to explain the background story through the
novelty of a ‘Tableau Vivant’124
with an offstage chorus during the
overture, whose music Macfarren intended125
, ambitiously but
unsuccessfully, should depict events such as ‘the dispersion of the
hundreds who were dependent on the foundry, and rendered
destitute by its destruction’.
The première could not even raise a full house126
, evidence of
Macfarren’s and English opera’s failing attraction, but the
reception seems to have been enthusiastic, although, again, doubts
were raised about its genuineness127
. The critics were often
favourable128
but there were complaints about its length129
, its
complexity130
and the indifferent libretto. As so often, Macfarren’s
124 Macfarren’s description quoted in Anonymous, “Macfarren’s Helvellyn”, The Orchestra, No. 59 (12 November 1864), p.105. Henry C. Banister, Op.Cit., p.205, claimed it was abandoned on grounds of cost but this appears to be wrong as Anonymous, “Royal English Opera, Covent Garden”, Daily News (7 November 1864), p.2 described the “pantomimic action” during the overture. Interestingly, George Macfarren had proposed putting on such “tableaux vivants” as the staple offering at the Strand Theatre when he took it over in 1836, reported in Jackson's Oxford Journal (16 January 1836). It is not clear whether he actually did so. 125 Quoted in Anonymous, “Macfarren’s Helvellyn”, The Orchestra, No. 59 (12 November 1864), p. 105. 126 Anonymous, “Covent Garden”, The Era (6 November 1864), p.10. 127 “As obviously spurious as these manifestations usually are on a first night”, Anonymous, “Royal English Opera”, The Observer (27 November 1864), p.5. 128 Anonymous, “Helvellyn”, The Musical Standard, Vol.3, No.58 (November 1864), p.162, sums up several critiques of it. 129 E.g. Anonymous, “Royal English Opera”, The Observer (6 November 1864), p.6 complained of “four hours of new music, unrelieved by a word of spoken dialogue, tortures rather than refreshes the general listener”. 130 Anonymous, “Royal English Opera”, The Times (14 November 1864), p.8.
Sir George Alexander Macfarren: his life and his operas
23
music was not felt to be immediately attractive131
but ‘improves
upon acquaintance’132
and some of his ideas were reckoned to be
drawn from other composers, in the critic Henry Chorley’s opinion
ranging from Arne to Verdi133
. It was said that sometimes the
music ‘hardly rises with the situations’134
, that some of it was
‘written merely to get over the ground’135
, and unfavourable
comparisons were made with Verdi136
. Once again, the orchestral
sections, which included use of a church bell and an organ, and
ensemble pieces were more highly praised than the solo items,
which, as so often, were seen as having ‘an eye to the music
shop’137
. However, rather broader criticisms were also raised. The
Times138
, presumably his erstwhile friend Davison, wrote that
Macfarren’s ideas were too shaped by ‘old English melody’ and
that his orchestration was becoming influenced by this ‘peculiar
monomania’. Furthermore, Macfarren was trusting too much to his
first inspirations139
, which in this instance were ‘often less happy
than in previous operas’. Helvellyn ran for no more than 20
performances140
and was never revived141
. In 1889, all rights to it
were sold for 25 shillings142
.
Interleaved with these last two operas were two opere di
camera, often referred to as operettas, for the Gallery of
Illustration. This venture was founded in 1855 by Thomas and
131 “[P]ortions are … highly interesting, if not positively exciting”, The Queen, quoted in Anonymous, “Helvellyn”, The Musical Standard, Vol.3, No.58 (November 1864), p.162. 132 Anonymous, “Royal English Opera, Covent Garden”, Daily News (7 November 1864), p.2. 133 Henry Chorley, “Music and the Drama”, The Athenæum, No. 1933 (12 November 1864), p. 642 included Meyerbeer, Weber, Verdi, Arne, Auber, Halévy and Chappell. The Queen, quoted in Anonymous, “Helvellyn”, The Musical Standard, Vol.3, No.58 (November 1864), p.162 cited Beethoven, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer, Gounod and Verdi. 134 Anonymous, “Covent Garden”, The Era (6 November 1864), p.10. 135 Henry Chorley, “Music and the Drama”, The Athenæum, No. 1933 (12 November 1864), p. 642. 136 Anonymous, “Royal English Opera, Covent Garden”, Daily News (7 November 1864), p.2. 137 Anonymous, “Royal English Opera, Covent Garden”, Loc. Cit.. 138 Anonymous, “Royal English Opera”, The Times (14 November 1864), p.8. 139 Interestingly, Macfarren had made much the same criticism of Balfe in John F. Waller, ed., The Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography, Vol. 1, (London: William Mackenzie, 1863), p.385 where he had written that Balfe was content “with the first idea that presents itself , regardless of dramatic truth”. 140 Henry C. Banister, Op.Cit., p.205. 141 As with She Stoops to Conquer, there were rumours that the Carl Rosa company was going to resurrect it, Anonymous, “Musical Notes”, Liverpool Mercury (7 January 1886), p.6. 142 Anonymous, “Facts, Rumours and Remarks”, The Musical Times, Vol. 30, No. 559 (1 September 1889), p.539.
Sir George Alexander Macfarren: his life and his operas
24
Priscilla German Reed to present comic works that would attract a
wide audience including those who objected to the regular theatre
on principle143
. They performed a broad range of comic pieces
including chamber operas by Macfarren, Balfe and Sir Arthur
Sullivan using a handful of (often young) singers, no chorus, only
one or two sets and with piano and sometimes harmonium
accompaniment. Macfarren and Oxenford wrote two works for
them, Jessy Lea and The Soldier’s Legacy, both of which were
orchestrated initially, perhaps because there was a chance of
performance in that form144
, and then arranged for piano145
by
Edward Rimbault.
Jessy Lea146
, premièred on 2 November 1863, was the first such
work to be presented at the Gallery. It had a plot similar to
Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore but was set in England, with a
‘charming view of Dungeness’147
. The Musical Times148
was
supportive of the Gallery’s simple approach given the unity of the
overall work and found the music ‘more spontaneous’ than any
previous work. Others deemed it ‘his best dramatic effort, although
constructed on a small scale’149
. The opera was retained for some
months as well as touring the provinces150
and was performed in
New York in 1868151
. Students of the R.A.M. eventually gave it
with full orchestral accompaniment in 1886, over 20 years after its
original composition. It got a cool critical reception, partly because
the students were not up to it, but mainly because it was deemed
143 “German Reed Entertainment”, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. VII, 11th ed., 1911, p.800. 144 E.g. Sullivan and Burnand’s Cox and Box was first given with orchestra at the Adelphi and later with piano at the Gallery. 145 In Macfarren’s case, the piano was played, on occasion, by his wife, his brother, Walter and his sister-in-law, Emma. 146 George A. Macfarren, Jessy Lea. Manuscript score (1863). Cambridge: Fitzwilliam Museum, MU MS 1076 and George A. Macfarren, Jessy Lea. Vocal Score by Edward F. Rimbault (London: Cramer, Wood & Co, 1863). 147 George A. Macfarren and John Oxenford, Jessy Lea. Libretto (London: Mr. German Reed, 1863). 148 Anonymous, “Gallery of Illustration”, The Musical Times, Vol. 11, No. 250 (1 December 1863), pp.176 & 183. 149 Anonymous, “The Opera in London”, Musical Monthly and Repertoire of Literature, the Drama and the Arts, Vol.1, No.4 (April 1864), p.54. 150 Anonymous, “Miscellaneous Intelligence”, The Musical Times. Vol. 11, No. 255 (1 May 1864), p.286. 151 Alfred Loewenberg, Annals of Opera, 1597-1940, 3rd ed. Revised (London: John Calder, 1978), p. 965.
Sir George Alexander Macfarren: his life and his operas
25
‘feeble’152
, ‘its Donizetti-Bellini roulades and square-cut
sentimental ballads already [sounding] old-fashioned’153
.
However, a performance four years later with professionals yielded
a more sympathetic response154
as did that by Morley Opera155
in
1988, the only staged performance of a Macfarren opera in recent
times, when the partsong finale made the greatest impression.
Less than a year later on 10 July 1864, The Soldier’s Legacy156
was performed. The plot is less tidy than Jessy Lea, hinging on an
oath by Jack Weatherall to stay single so that he can look after
Charlie, the child of his dying comrade Dick Firebrace. Charlie is
eventually revealed to be Charlotte, so enabling Jack to fulfil his
oath by marrying her. Christopher, an itinerant fiddler, who
originally intended to marry Charlotte himself, and a widow, whom
he marries in the end, make up the four. The plot was not new157
and included elements, such as a ‘yes-no’ routine that harks back to
the folk song Oh no, John!. Macfarren used folk tunes for numbers
involving Christopher, presumably reflecting his trade158
. For the
rest, he provided his own music, although numbers such as the
‘Widow’s Ballad’ have a folk song feel to them. He also used a few
motifs, such as a phrase for Jack’s vow159
, that were repeated when
referred to in the text, although he would have vigorously denied
any influence of Wagner160
. Despite The Athenæum’s complaint
152 Anonymous, “Music and Drama”, Glasgow Herald (15 February 1886), p.8. 153 Anonymous, “Haymarket Theatre”, The Musical Times, Vol. 27, No. 517 (1 March 1886), p.142. 154 Anonymous, “Miscellaneous Concerts, Intelligence, &c”, The Musical Times, Vol. 31, No. 568 (1 June 1890), p. 361. 155 Dilys Hartog, “Jessy Lea and Ages Ago”, Opera, Vol. 39, no. 8 (August 1988), pp. 1010-1011. 156 George A. Macfarren, The Soldier’s Legacy. Vocal Score by Edward F. Rimbault (London: Cramer, Wood & Co.) 1864. George A. Macfarren, The Soldier’s Legacy, Manuscript score (1871), Cambridge: Fitzwilliam Museum, MU MS 1088 only has 4 numbers and, given its date, may be a copy of an earlier version. 157 Anonymous, “Royal English Opera”, The Observer (23 October 1864), p.6, mentions a French vaudeville called Son and Daughter, which had recently been playing at some minor theatres. 158 Nicholas Temperley, “Musical Nationalism in English Romantic Opera” in The Lost Chord, ed. Nicholas Temperley (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1989), pp.152-155, identifies all but two of them. 159 Nicholas Temperley, ed., Op.Cit., pp.151-152. 160 Macfarren criticised Wagner’s claims for the novelty of the leitmotif by equating it wrongly with the repetition of a theme harking back to a previous episode, a well established composition device, George A. Macfarren, “The Lyrical Drama”, Proceedings of the Musical Association, 6th Session (1879-1880), pp.137-139.
Sir George Alexander Macfarren: his life and his operas
26
that there was ‘not a grain of sparkle’ in the music161
, the press,
more generally, and audiences were once again enthusiastic about
both text and music and Macfarren deemed to have been guided by
‘the desire to let the characters talk and act through the aid of
music’162
. The opera continued to be performed the following year
and was given in Boston around 1877163
, but there do not appear to
have been any further performances despite Macfarren’s attempt to
encourage them by temporarily giving up his performance rights164
.
Macfarren and Oxenford had probably found their metier in this
genre, which offers the obvious starting point for anyone interested
in staging Macfarren’s work, and one can see why Arthur
Jacobs165
considered them one of the two main influences on
Sullivan. Despite these successes in the early 1860s, Macfarren
wrote no more English operas and for a few years produced very
little music of any sort.
The collapse of the Royal English Opera in 1866, the deaths of
Wallace and Loder, Balfe’s retirement and the pursuit of other
musical interests by Barnett and Benedict led to a decade with no
new English opera until Frederick Cowen’s Pauline in 1876 for the
Carl Rosa company. It was perhaps more surprising that Macfarren
did not compose anything further for the Gallery of Illustration166
.
The rather derisory fees167
might have been one reason but he may
have felt that writing comic works, particularly for a minor theatre,
was incompatible with his desire for a reputation as an academic
and serious musician, an attitude that was later to trouble Sullivan.
When, in 1868, Macfarren again started composing major works,
they were all of a serious nature, including his four oratorios. The
161 Henry Chorley, “Music and the Drama”, The Athenæum, (5 November 1864) p. 606. 162 Anonymous, “Gallery of Illustration”, The Musical Times, Vol.11, No.261 ( 1 November 1864), p.388. 163 Anonymous, “The Late Sir George Macfarren”, The New York Times (2 November 1887), p.2 refers to it being given in Boston some 10 years previously. 164 For both opere di camera until 1890, Anonymous, “Miscellaneous Concerts, Intelligence, &c.”, The Musical Times, Vol. 26, No. 514 (1 December 1885), pp. 738. 165 Arthur Jacobs, Arthur Sullivan: A Victorian Musician (Portland: Amadeus Press, 1992), p.51. 166 Henry C. Banister, Op.Cit., p.204 implies that this was because the German Reeds’ “scheme does not appear to have been a success” but this was not the case, e.g. their production of Sullivan and Burnand’s Cox and Box in 1869. 167 The German Reeds offered Sullivan and Burnand £50 for the rights to 25 performances of Cox and Box, which Sullivan rejected in no uncertain terms, Arthur Jacobs, Op.Cit., p.54.
Sir George Alexander Macfarren: his life and his operas
27
English emphasis was also much less in evidence, perhaps for the
same reasons, although, for a time, he continued to write strongly
about it, as in his article ‘The English are not a Musical People’168
.
Then, in 1879, he embarked on the composition of his final
opera, Kenilworth, in response to an offer from Ernest Gye, the
manager of Covent Garden, whose policy required that it should be
in Italian. This was very much a volte face on the part of
Macfarren, who defended his actions by claiming always to have
thought ‘Italian … the best language for singing’169
notwithstanding his strident opinions in ‘The Italian Language: Its
evil influence upon music’170
. No doubt he recognised that this was
his last chance to gain an operatic reputation despite the incredibly
arduous work involved that all had to be done through an
amanuensis and all for a rather miserly fee171
. Firstly, Macfarren set
out Scott’s novel as a play in English, which an Italian, Farinelli,
then translated into Italian stanzas taking his guidance from
Macfarren as to how many lines any particular episode should take.
Macfarren then set these to music preparing them in his head and
dictating each page line by line, usually starting with the vocal
line172
. In the event, Gye decided not to take it173
. Although
unperformed, the work has received the most detailed analysis of
any Macfarren opera174
, whose conclusion was that the occasional
‘wonderful passages’ were submerged in ‘pages and pages of less
interesting, rather lackluster craftsmanship’175
.
Macfarren became Professor of Music at Cambridge and
principal of the R.A.M. on the death of Sterndale Bennett in 1875,
168 George A. Macfarren, “The English are not a Musical People”, Cornhill Magazine, Vol.18, No.105 (September 1868), pp. 344-363. 169 Henry C. Banister, Op.Cit., p.408. 170 The Musical Times, Vol.14, No.313, (1 March 1869), pp.7-10. 171 £50 on delivery, £50 on 1st representation, £100, £50 and £50 for the next three years provided the opera was retained, Ernest Gye, Letter to George A. Macfarren (11 October 1879), Cambridge: Fitzwilliam Museum, MU MS 1074. 172 Henry C. Banister, Op.Cit., pp. 311-314. 173 Ernest Gye, Letter to George A. Macfarren (27 July 1879), Cambridge: Fitzwilliam Museum, MU MS 1074, stated that the opinions of it from his conductor, Bevignani, and his wife, the singer Emma Albani, did not justify the risk and expense and that they were no longer prepared to mount an opera unless they had already seen it on the stage. 174 Jerome Mitchell, More Scott Operas (Lanham: University Press of America, 1996), pp.206-221. 175 Jerome Mitchell, Op.Cit., p.220.
Sir George Alexander Macfarren: his life and his operas
28
retaining both posts until his own death in 1887. During his tenure,
the R.A.M. continued to grow and maintained its independence in
the face of a possible amalgamation with what was to become the
Royal College of Music, but it was still considered a rather
hidebound institution176
. His final years were dogged by ill health
but he continued to compose and to carry out his duties
conscientiously up to the end, finding ‘distraction or relief only in
the intensity of unceasing work’177
. For many he was a distant
figure but, even so, the depth of dislike surprised Corder178
, who
put it down not only to Macfarren’s intransigence179
but also to his
blindness that forced an over-reliance on subordinates, including
his wife, ‘an all-powerful factor in the control of the institution’180
.
Yet Macfarren’s concern for the students shines through his annual
eve of the academic year speeches181
. In 1883, he was inveigled
into accepting a knighthood as a distinction for music, having
already refused it previously because he set more store by the title
of Professor. Macfarren died on 31 October 1887 and, after a
memorial service at Westminster Abbey, was interred in
Hampstead Cemetery.
Macfarren was a man of contradictions, personally and
artistically, perhaps partly reflecting the tension between the
freewheeling, humorous, Georgian and the stoic, serious, Victorian.
In his youth, he had been lively and impetuous and retained that
176 For example, the pianist Busoni doffed his hat whenever he passed the R.A.M. in what Sir Henry Wood assumed was “derision of the antiquated methods of the Macfarren regime”, Henry J. Wood, My Life of Music (London: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1938), p.141. 177 C.A. McIrone,. “Professor Sir George Alexander Macfarren – A Personal Reminiscence”, The Argosy (January 1888), p.29. 178 Frederick A. Corder, A History of The Royal Academy of Music from 1822 to 1922 (London: F. Corder, 1922), p.78. 179 This was perhaps not only his dogmatism but also his uncertain temper, e.g. Joseph Bennett, Forty Years of Music (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd, 1908), p.89 talks of Macfarren foaming at the mouth as he struggled to bring order to the proceedings at an Eisteddfod. Henry C. Banister, Op.Cit., pp.368-369 paints the incident in a more positive light. Bennett, who was the music critic of The Daily Telegraph, recorded, p.88, that his first impression of Macfarren as “hard and harsh” changed over time as he realised the emotionalism and sensitivity that lay behind that façade. 180 Lawrence Gilman, Edward Macdowell (London: John Lane, The Bodley Head, 1909), p.24. She was instrumental in rejecting the composer Edward Macdowell for a post at the R.A.M. because he had studied with “that dreadful man Liszt”. 181 They are included in George A Macfarren, Addresses and lectures (London: Longmans, Green, 1888).
Sir George Alexander Macfarren: his life and his operas
29
warmth in private to the end182
, but there was a prickliness and
severity about him that became more evident with age and was
hardened by his increasing academic authority and the isolation of
his blindness. Part of the reason possibly lies in his admission of
being ‘never strongly self reliant’183
, leading him to seek protection
in dogma and finding support in the strong personalities first of his
father and then of his wife. His obsession with music theory and his
enumeration of ‘numerous and stringent rules’184
may well have
reflected a need to shore up a lack of confidence in his musical
gifts. He may even have supposed that, by applying them, he was
composing music of proven worth, but rather, ‘his imagination …
fettered by rule and rote’185
, it resulted in him becoming ‘a great
musician without being an inspired composer’186
. Yet he could also
hold that ‘no one [could] conscientiously teach by a prescribed and
fixed system’187
.
He combined a deep technical proficiency with a vast
knowledge of musical works ranging from folk songs and dances,
through Elizabethan madrigals up to the latest continental
composers, including Wagner. Thus, he had the ready means,
consciously or unconsciously, of bolstering the musical inspiration,
which, although on occasion quite striking, was too weak to
support the amount of music that he wrote and it is difficult to
disagree with Chorley, even though hardly a sympathetic
commentator, when he describes Macfarren’s music as ‘made up of
many manners’188
. As mentioned above, even in Marian’s scena
182 C.A. McIrone,. Op.Cit., p.30, relates his joking when she met him in the street a few days before his death. 183 Henry C. Banister, Op.Cit., p.56. 184 Henry C. Banister, “The Life and Work of Sir G. A. Macfarren”, Proceedings of the Musical Association, 1887-1888, p.84. 185 Anonymous , “Mr Macfarren’s ‘Robin Hood’”, The Athenæum (15 June 1872), p.760. The writer was not Chorley as he had died earlier that year. 186 The view of an unnamed critic rather surprisingly included in a piece of hagiography about Macfarren, who was one of the composers included in James Mason, “Evenings with our great living composers”, The Girl's Own Paper, (29 September 1883), pp.827-828. 187 George A Macfarren, Addresses and lectures (London: Longmans, Green, 1888), p.27, the inaugural address for 1879-80. 188 Chorley’s review of Macfarren’s Helvellyn, “Music and Drama”, The Athenæum (12 November 1864), p. 642. The Queen, quoted in Anonymous, “Helvellyn”, The Musical Standard, Vol.3, No.58 (November 1864), pp.162, talks of Macfarren not being able to “shake off reminiscences”.
Sir George Alexander Macfarren: his life and his operas
30
from Robin Hood, written in his maturity, one can detect obvious
references to at least two composers. Macfarren may have had his
own position in mind when, shortly after Mendelssohn’s death, he
wrote at some length189
defending the originality of Mendelssohn’s
work, which he saw as stemming from what he called the
archetype, the larger structure, rather than its individual parts, some
of which might be ‘accidental coincidences’ that could be seen in
even the greatest composers. Despite such criticisms, there was
always respect for his compositional skill and ‘good solid
writing’190
, an aspect appreciated by more modern critics, such as
Edward Dent 191
and Michael Hurd192
.
Looking back over his operatic career, his early operas, even
though encumbered by his father’s weak librettos, show Macfarren
as a thoughtful composer, not just after easy popularity193
but
making an effort to use music to further the dramatic action,
although still constrained within the framework of the traditional
dialogue and song model. However, other than introducing English
themes, his later operatic practice hardly advanced at all and, in
fact, there seemed a greater willingness to compromise with the
commercial practices of English opera. While it might be argued
that the conditions of the day forced him into this position194
, he
gave no impression, either in practice or in print, that he deprecated
the overuse of the ballad or any of the other weaknesses of English
opera that were pointed out by critics of the day. The most regular
189 George A. Macfarren, “Mendelssohn”, The American Whig review, Vol.8, Issue 3 (September 1848), pp.305-310. 190 Anonymous, “The Opera in London”, Musical Monthly and Repertoire of Literature, the Drama and the Arts, Vol.1, No.4 (April 1864), p.54. This was despite the occasional “hardness and unnaturalness” of his melody. 191 Dent suggested reviving Robin Hood because he considered it the best of the pre-Sullivan Victorian operas, Nicholas Temperley, “Musical Nationalism in English Romantic Opera” in The Lost Chord, ed. Nicholas Temperley, (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1989), p.151. 192 Hurd’s good opinion of She Stoops to Conquer, Michael Hurd, “Opera: 1834-1865” in The Romantic Age, 1800-1914, ed. Nicholas Temperley (London: The Athlone Press, 1981), pp.322-323. 193 Speaking of Macfarren’s Don Quixote, Anonymous, “Music”, Daily News (17 February 1846), p.7 said that he derived “no meretricious attraction from the gewgaw tinsel and trickery to which English audiences have been so much accustomed”. 194 The opera management “have neither the taste or feeling to comprehend the necessity for something better”, Anonymous, “Theatre Royal”, Manchester Times (23 October 1850), p.4 regarding the text of Macfarren’s Charles II.
Sir George Alexander Macfarren: his life and his operas
31
complaint was the hopeless librettos with their tenuous dramatic
coherence and obligatory happy ending, usually realised in clunky
verse. While Macfarren was certainly not oblivious to the general
thrust of the plot and, in contrast to Balfe on occasion, attempted to
represent it in his music, he had Balfe’s cavalier attitude195
to the
actual text. Thus, in ‘The Lyrical Drama’196
, he wrote that the
music was paramount and that the text should always be altered to
fit its requirements197
, despite the success of continental operas,
particularly Verdi and Wagner, which increasingly emphasised the
importance of text to the overall drama.
Macfarren benefited enormously from the audiences and press
support built up by the other popular English opera of the time,
although, in turn, he also contributed to that groundswell. It was to
his advantage that he was the only one of the six major English
opera composers of the time to concentrate on comic operas so that
he provided an alternative to the mainstream melodramas, while the
stage fun also masked the cooler appeal of his music. His liking for
the comic perhaps resulted from its popularity in the Georgian era
but it also fitted his temperament for the active and the vigorous
over the reflective, the emotional and the lyrical and his talent for
arresting rhythms, harmonic piquancy and instrumental interest
rather than memorable melody, something noticed even at the
beginning of his career198
. This bias also comes through in his
oratorios199
and is evident in the recordings of his best-known
195 Dion Boucicault, the leading playwright of the day, refused to collaborate with Balfe when Balfe sketched out the plan that the libretto had to comply with, Basil Walsh, Michael W. Balfe (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2008), p.145. Lina, Balfe’s wife, summed it up succinctly, “Nobody cared a straw for the words”, quoted in The Daily News, (11 April 1890), p.2. 196 George A Macfarren, “The Lyrical Drama”, Proceedings of the Musical Association, 6th Session (1879-1880), pp.125-140. 197 The composer should feel free to alter “a stereotyped libretto” and the librettist should “[vary] his text according to the musician’s casual requirements”, George A. Macfarren, Op.Cit., p.126. 198 The Morning Post (28 October 1834) in its review of his symphony in F (no. 4), which inaugurated the first concert of the Society of British Musicians, suggested that he should regard “melody more and harmony less” 199 Maxwell W. Pettitt, “Sir George Alexander Macfarren; the Compleat Victorian”, British Music Society Journal, Volume 8 (1986), p.31 commenting on Macfarren’s oratorios noted that he was at his weakest in the obligatory sentimental and moralising pieces, which halted the action, wanting to proceed instead with the drama.
Sir George Alexander Macfarren: his life and his operas
32
work, the overture Chevy Chase200
, his best-known song, ‘Pack,
clouds away’201
and his Fourth and Seventh symphonies202
. It is
also reflected in a critique of Wagner made during an address by
him at the start of the R.A.M. 1883-4 academic year203
. In it, he
complained, clearly with Der Ring in mind, of what he called ‘the
vice of “keeping the stage waiting”’, of no action and of people
‘delivering a lesson … rather than performing a living character’204
,
which echoed a previous dismissal of Handel’s ‘airs that embody
no dramatic action’205
.
The demise of Macfarren’s operas is hardly surprising when one
considers that only a handful of the most tuneful English operas of
this period survived into the following century and that melody was
his weakest attribute. The change in tastes that was partly
responsible for this rapid decline can be judged by the reaction,
when J.W. Turner’s English Opera Company toured Macfarren’s
Robin Hood in Liverpool in 1890, that ‘Robin Hood was not an
opera’ but just a collection of isolated items206
. Macfarren’s
attempt to fashion a new model for English opera using old English
forms and melodies realised through a classical musical language
and usually within the dialogue and song model was too limited a
foundation and insufficiently attractive to audiences of the day to
invite emulation and he himself eventually abandoned it. However,
the ambition to create a distinctive English opera never entirely
died - for example Sullivan’s Ivanhoe - but it was not until the 20th
century that it achieved a successful and publicly acknowledged
fruition.
200 Victorian Concert Overtures. English Northern Philharmonia, David Lloyd-Jones, Hyperion CDH 55088 (2002), CD. It is given its alternative name Chevy Chace. 201 British Music Society. Sixty Glorious Years. Concert organised by the B.M.S.. BMS 42 (1998), CD. 202 George A. Macfarren, Symphonies nos. 4 & 7, Queensland Symphony Orchestra, Werner A. Albert, CPO 999 433-2 (1998), CD. 203 1883-4 inaugural address, 29 September 1883, George A. Macfarren, Addresses and lectures (London: Longmans, Green, 1888), p. 100. 204 George A Macfarren, Op.Cit., p.100. 205 This was one of the reasons why Macfarren stated that Handel’s operas would never be performed, George A. Macfarren, “The Italian Language: Its evil influence upon music”. The Musical Times, Vol.14, No.313 (1 March 1869), p.7. 206 Anonymous, “The Theatres”, Liverpool Mercury (29 October 1890), p.7.
Sir George Alexander Macfarren: his life and his operas
33
The first draft of this article was done as part of the Opera Studies
degree course at Rose Bruford College. The author wishes to thank
Dr. Bill Fawcett and Mr. Ray Walker, Chairman of Victorian
Opera Northwest (victorianoperanorthwest.org), for providing the
illustrations and musical excerpts from Macfarren’s works.
Appendix – Details of Sir George Alexander Macfarren’s
Operas
The following gives the details of the librettist and, where relevant,
the première date and place of all Macfarren’s operas. Information
on the casts and short summaries of the plots can be found at
www.victorianenglishopera.org. Many manuscript scores and
other material are held at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge,
UK.
The Prince of Modena, Librettist – George Macfarren. 2 acts.
August 1833, unperformed.
Caractacus (or The Oak Leaf), Librettist – George Macfarren. 2
acts. 1834-5, unperformed.
El Malhechor, Librettist – George Macfarren. 2 acts. 1837-8,
unperformed. (also called El Malechor)
The Devil’s Opera, Librettist – George Macfarren. 2 acts. First
performed on 13 August 1838 at the English Opera House
(Lyceum Theatre).
Don Quixote. Librettist – George Macfarren. 2 acts. Written 1841
but first performed on 3 February 1846 at the Theatre
Royal, Drury Lane.
King Charles II. Librettist – Desmond Ryan. 4 acts. First
performed on 27 October 1849 at the Princess’s Theatre.
Allan of Aberfeldy, Librettist - John Oxenford. Incomplete. 1850-
52, unperformed.
Robin Hood. Librettist – John Oxenford. 3 acts. First performed
on 11 October 1860 at Her Majesty’s Theatre.
Sir George Alexander Macfarren: his life and his operas
34
Jessy Lea. Librettist – John Oxenford. 2 acts. First performed on 2
November 1863 at The Gallery of Illustration.
She Stoops to Conquer. Librettist – Edward Fitzball, 3 acts. First
performed on 11 February 1864 at Covent Garden.
The Soldier’s Legacy. Librettist – John Oxenford. 2 acts. First
performed on 10 July 1864 at The Gallery of Illustration.
Helvellyn. Librettist – John Oxenford. 4 acts. First performed on 3
November 1864 at Covent Garden.
Kenilworth, Librettist – A. Farinelli. 3 acts. 1879, unperformed.
Macfarren also contributed music to the following stage works:-
Genevieve, or The Maid of Switzerland, operetta, Mrs, C. Baron-
Wilson, 1832.
I and my Double, farce, J. Oxenford, 1835.
The Old Oak Tree, ?, 1835.
Innocent Sins, or Peccedilloes, operetta, G. Macfarren, 1836.
Agnes Bernauer, the Maid of Augsburg, romance, T.J.Searle, 1839.
Emblematical Tribute on the Queen’s Marriage, masque, G.
Macfarren, 1840.
The Sleeper Awakened, serenata, J. Oxenford, 1850.
Freya’s Gift,, allegorical masque, J. Oxenford, 1863.