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In 1825, Sir Walter Scott found himself beleaguered
by fans: [I begin] to be haunted by too much company of every kind.
But especially foreigners. I do not like them . . . they are seldom long of making
it evident that they know nothing about what they are talking of excepting having
seen [Rossini’s] Lady of the Lake at the Opera (Scott Journal 13). Scott’s
complaint encapsulates the tensions that surrounded his success. His works played
a crucial role in smoothing the troubled seams of Scotland’s union to England.
Political contention receded into a legendary past, craggy landscapes acquired
picturesque beauty, and hints of the supernatural at once thrilled readers and
confirmed their rational superiority.[1]
Yet this romanticized picture did not remain confined to Britain or even to Scott’s
originals.[2] Publishers,
translators, dramatists, and composers eagerly reformatted his writings for a
multitude of new languages and mediums.[3]
This spread of Scott vaulted Scotland to the top of travel itineraries and hordes
of tourists arrived, eager to acquire both country and author as souvenirs. To
Scott’s chagrin, though, these travelers often gazed through a distorted foreign
lens. So dense had the layers of reworkings and translations become that they
often obscured Scott from view, even when visitors stood face to face with him
on his own soil. -
This unsettling personal confrontation played
out on a larger scale, for not only foreign opera lovers, but foreign Scott operas
themselves crossed the channel. La Donna del Lago, La Dame blanche,
Ivanhoé, and Lucia di Lammermoor all appeared on British bills.[4]
Significantly, they did not initially penetrate into Scotland itself, but landed
in London, where Scott’s works had already appeared in a myriad of English dramatizations.[5]
This applied a further layer of translation, as English audiences hovered uneasily
between difference and identity with their northern neighbor. Ultimately, they
proved as ambivalent to these operatic guests as Scott to his foreign visitors.
By enshrining Scott and Scotland as emblems of a romanticized other, these operas
uncomfortably reminded the English of their own status as fellow consumers of
this idealized picture. In reinterpreting Scott’s works for new contexts, and
in reducing him to exotic symbol, these operas also jarred Englanders’ more serious
political and social investment in Scott’s portrayal. Closing ranks against foreign
assimilation, the English folded Scott into a protected role as "national" author.[5]
-
Nowhere did these tensions erupt more fiercely than when La
Dame blanche (1826) came to London. Although our own knowledge of foreign
Scott operas has dwindled primarily to one representative—Donizetti’s Lucia
di Lammermoor—La Dame blanche dominated the operatic landscape
during Scott’s lifetime. An amalgamation of Guy Mannering (1815) and The
Monastery (1820) by composer Adrien Boieldieu and librettist Eugène Scribe,
La Dame blanche racked up over a thousand performances in Paris and captivated
continental Europe.[6]
Not so in London. Two separate translations, at Drury Lane (1826) and Covent Garden
(1827), fizzled. The opera’s unexpected failure perfectly illustrates the tensions
that arose when foreigners re-appropriated an author so crucial to fledgling British
identity. La Dame blanche -
The first problem with La
Dame blanche was its drastic departure from Scott. A master of the opéra
comique genre, librettist Eugène Scribe had freely distilled Scott’s novels
into one of his characteristic "well-made" plots.[7]
Gone is the sprawling sweep of Scottish history, the panoply of idiosyncratic
Scottish characters. Instead, Scribe focused interest squarely where Scott often
faltered: the central love story between Georges Brown, lost heir of Guy Mannering,
and Anna, an orphan loosely modeled on Mary Avenel from The Monastery.
Scribe carefully redirected "Scottish flavor" into two conduits. First, beautiful
scenery, happy peasants, and native folk tunes provided the traditional, generalized
markers of couleur locale.[8]
Second, the essential signifier of Scotland, the supernatural, devolved not on
the prophetic gypsy Meg Merrilies from Guy Mannering, but on the White
Lady from The Monastery, a spirit who aids the Avenel family. Blander and
more ethereal than Meg, the White Lady could serve double duty: marker of prototypical
Scottish superstition on the one hand, clever plot device on the other. For the
White Lady did not stay otherworldly for long. Blending supernatural flavor with
the well-worn rescue plot, Scribe revealed the White Lady as a disguise for Anna,
who masquerades as the spirit to help Georges reclaim his ancestral estate. As
was his forte, Scribe directed all of these plot elements toward one, culminating
scène à faire: the auction of the ancient castle. Almost an offstage aside
in Scott, this became one of the most striking portions of the opera. Not only
did the libretto inexorably lead to this scene, but Boieldieu, in a tour de
force, set all of the quotidian action to music. Overall, La Dame blanche
blended Scott’s novels and Scottish tunes into a kind of exotic covering for the
established framework of opéra comique. -
La Dame blanche’s
inexorably logical plot, blend of catchy Scottish tunes and novel ensembles, and
carefully circumscribed supernaturalism enchanted Parisians at the première on
10 December 1825 and soon swept through continental Europe.[9]
In London, however, the only opera house did not follow suit. The King’s Theatre
imported most of its casts, operas, and taste directly from Italy, to the extent
that it was often called "The Italian Opera House." Exceptional non-Italian operas
occasionally broke through this hegemony, but only when considerable effort had
been expended to Italianize them.[10]
French operas battled additional barriers. Despite political tensions between
the two countries, French imports occupied a well-established realm: the light
ballet that rounded out the double bill. At a theater where "opera" meant Italian
and "French" meant ballet, opéra comique remained a stranger, and La
Dame blanche did not prompt an exception. -
La Dame blanche
did, however, intrigue London’s biggest playhouses, Covent Garden and Drury Lane.
Ostensibly the bastion of spoken drama, in reality these theaters attempted to
amuse their more socially heterogeneous audience with a mix of music and speech.
Shakespearian tragedies sported bolstered musical scores, for example, while English
operas were essentially plays with songs and choruses.[11]
With its spoken dialogue, an opéra comique such as La Dame blanche easily
transitioned to these conventions, and indeed a large number of French plays and
operas regularly immigrated to these playhouses.[12]
An even larger number of operas of all nationalities were destined to arrive,
for in 1824 Der Freischütz had achieved such astounding success that managers
scurried to import any successful foreign opera (Fuhrmann, "Continental Opera").
A piece based on Scott possessed further allure, for popular English dramatizations
of his works already proliferated at the playhouses.[13]
French, operatic, successful, and based on Scott, La Dame blanche fit seamlessly
into established patterns of importation. As music aficionado William Ayrton proclaimed,
"no doubts need be entertained" of the opera’s success in London (The Harmonicon,
July 1826, 154). The White Lady -
Yet, managers did
entertain doubts. In the first London production, The White Lady at Drury
Lane on 9 October 1826, librettist Samuel Beazley and composer/singer Thomas Cooke
deviated drastically from the opera (Beazley, Cooke). Beazley’s changes clearly
stemmed from a desire to re-translate the opera not only back into its original
language, but back into a closer approximation of Scott. For readers more familiar
with Scott’s exact words, Beazley reverted to original character names, repopulated
the plot with additional figures from Scott, and in a few instances even replicated
Scott’s actual text. Similarly, Beazley tried to reverse Scribe’s drastic fusion
of Guy Mannering and The Monastery by instead pairing The Monastery
with its sequel, The Abbot. As Beazley well knew, Londoners had read and
re-read Guy Mannering with particular delight, and numerous English stage
versions had distilled the novel into a core of key characters and incidents that
Scribe’s version dangerously lacked. Not as popular, The Monastery and
The Abbot offered ground less densely layered with previous adaptations.[14]
In a broader sense, Scribe’s melding of the two novels mixed different settings,
characters, and eras into a rather indiscriminate mass of Scottish exotica. For
those more familiar with Scotland’s geography and more invested in Scott’s retelling
of its history, Beazley tried to disentangle these fused strands. -
Most strikingly, Beazley radically altered the element most closely associated
with Scotland: the supernatural. Where Scribe presented the White Lady as a clever
disguise for the heroine, Beazley returned her to her original otherworldly realm.
This allowed Beazley to reinstate links between Scotland and the supernatural
and to weave his translation back into the original, as his White Lady intones
lines verbatim from The Monastery. Her appearances also showcased Drury
Lane’s considerable scenic resources. One can imagine the stage tricks and eerie
lighting for directions such as the following: "the figure of the Spirit is seen
in the midst of the Waters of the Fountain which gradually subside leaving the
White Lady . . . in the centre of the Spring with the moonlight upon her" (Beazley
21v). -
Yet, as Beazley probably realized, foregrounding The
Monastery and the White Lady foregrounded some of Scott’s most problematic
productions. Indeed, English critics overwhelmingly pronounced The Monastery
a flop and pointed to the White Lady as the primary reason. The problem lay in
her supernatural status, which crossed the fine line between superstition as titillating
marker of Scottish difference and superstition as disturbingly real possibility.
English critics embraced mortal, socially peripheral figures who encapsulated
supernatural possibility without requiring belief. Meg Merrilies of Guy Mannering
epitomized this type of character, and writers praised "the spirit of that indefinable
being, tinged with melancholy, clothed with fierce grandeur, and breathing prophecy"
(The London Times, 13 March 1816). In unflattering contrast, the unabashedly
unreal White Lady jarred the realistic historical backdrop and obliged readers
to adopt beliefs ascribed to the incredulous and uneducated. The Monthly Review
scorned "ghosts, and kelpies, and white ladies" as "weeds which will flourish
in a coarser soil, and are ill-exchanged for the exquisite creations on which
[the author’s] fancy has heretofore been occupied" (April 1820, 426). The paranormal,
much like Scotland itself, could offer a pleasing, temporary escape from the quotidian.
Embracing superstition as reality, however, dangerously erased class lines and
overthrew rationality. Too blatantly transgressing the circumscribed purview allowed
to both Scotland and the supernatural, the White Lady rankled readers, and Scott
all but eliminated her from The Abbot. -
Beazley tried to
patch these potential leaks as well. First, he relegated the White Lady to a peripheral
plot agent. Her advice to the hero is essentially to follow on his present course,
and the materialization of her statue in its rightful place only confirms what
legal documents have already proven. Beazley further marginalized supernaturalism
by juxtaposing these actual instances with several simulated ones. Unlike Scribe,
however, Beazley redirected ghostly disguises away from the virtuous heroine and
toward either villainous or comic characters. To evil Julian and his henchman,
Christie of the Cluithill, superstition provides a convenient cover-up for crime.
They lodge Roland in the White Lady’s chamber since, "being reported to be haunted,
whatever happens, it will be laid to the Spirit" (Beazley 25v). Christie then
enters the chamber, disguised as the White Lady, to murder Roland. They are thwarted,
however, by another disguised White Lady, this time of the comic variety. Drawing
on the amusing qualities of Father Philip’s watery encounter with the White Lady
in The Monastery, Beazley crafted a comic scene in which village women,
dressed as spirits, frighten Father Philip into relinquishing papers that prove
Roland’s legitimacy. -
Father Philip’s burlesqued downfall points
to another problematic area: the portrayal of the Catholic clergy. To move La
Dame blanche closer to The Monastery and The Abbot, Beazley
could not avoid the religious strife that lay at the core of these novels. Yet,
he had to navigate both strict censorship of religious references onstage—even
"for heaven’s sake" did not survive the censor’s pen—and increasing tension
over "the Catholic question," which culminated some two years later in the passage
of the Emancipation Bill (Connolly; Stephens, Censorship). Beazley tried
to diffuse potential concerns by shedding an ambiguous but ultimately lighthearted
light on monastic life. Most of the monks are like naughty children, prone to
ogling women and colluding with criminals, but ultimately so foolish that they
are easily foiled. Yet, to balance this portrayal, the Abbot is a wise, strong
leader who rights his subordinates’ wrongs and helps the hero. This stance clearly
draws on Scott, but trades his harsher critiques and more intense religious battles
for a fairly innocuous portrayal. -
While Beazley labored to realign
Scribe to Scott, Thomas Cooke tried to recompose Boieldieu for playhouse listeners.
As noted earlier, opera at the playhouses meant a heterogeneous mix of native
products and foreign imports, all appearing in a fairly equal blend of song and
speech. As an opéra comique, La Dame blanche already contained spoken
dialogue and joined a steady stream of importations from this genre. Yet, as Cooke
knew, London audiences could rarely swallow these translations whole. Song and
speech did not simply mix on the playhouse stage, they mixed in such a way that
dialogue propelled the action, while music provided decoration and reflection.
Bravura solos highlighted star singers, touching ballads elicited tears, and catchy
choruses swelled the thriving sheet music market. Extended ensembles that melded
music and action occupied the bottom rung in this aesthetic. Scott himself voiced
the prevalent sentiment: "complicated harmonies seem to me a babble of confused
though pleasing sounds. Yet songs and simple melodies especially if connected
with words and ideas have as much effect on me as on most people" (Scott, Journal
7). Many foreign imports therefore needed significant reworking to fit playhouse
proportions, and radical adaptations abounded. At the same time, however, the
success of Der Freischütz in 1824, coupled with a growing interest in a
more work-oriented approach, began to realign attitudes to foreign imports. The
late 1820s saw the beginnings of a move from transformation to relatively straight
translation (Fuhrmann, "Adapted"). -
Cooke’s version of La Dame
blanche hovered between these two practices. On the one hand, Cooke added
virtually nothing to Boieldieu. On the other, he kept only a drastically reduced,
reworked portion of the original score. What Cooke discarded or changed pinpoints
the fissures that still separated London playhouse from continental opera house.
Easiest to retain were Boieldieu’s quotes of Scottish tunes. Scottish melodies
provided an aural counterpart to Scott’s romanticized picture of Scotland, and
they proliferated in both sheet music collections and English Scott dramatizations.[15]
More problematic was the score’s sheer length and complexity. Cooke excised almost
half of the numbers outright and extensively curtailed many others. Ensembles
disappeared disproportionately. Cooke preserved virtually all solos, but eliminated
over half of the ensembles, and pruned those remaining to their briefest, most
melodic moments. The auction scene, with its lengthy combination of everyday action
and dramatically responsive music, grated most egregiously against the English
operatic aesthetic. The only solution seemed to be to avoid it altogether, and
Beazley’s plot changes did just that, neatly solving both dramatic and musical
dilemmas. Overall, from a lengthy score in which massive musical conglomerates
melded with the action, Cooke culled a restrained smattering of appealing solos
and tuneful choruses with a hint of Scottish coloring. -
In only
one instance could Cooke not reformat Boieldieu’s raw material into the necessary
shape. At the point where Beazley deviated most from Scribe—the supernatural
White Lady—Cooke too could no longer enlist Boieldieu. In the operatic encounter,
Georges seems half to suspect it is Anna, and the touch of the "White Lady" makes
him more amorous than awestruck. Boieldieu’s duet, consequently, is a rather lighthearted
piece full of flexible vocal display. This would not mesh with the spectacular
visual effects of the White Lady at Drury Lane, and Cooke supplied a new setting
with an eerily monotone vocal line and solemn organ chords. -
Ultimately,
something quite different from all "originals"—opera and novels—appeared
at Drury Lane. Trying to serve many masters, Beazley rushed now to satisfy Scott
purists, now to preserve the basic outline of Scribe, now to offer eye-catching
display and comic relief, now to preserve and yet mitigate the White Lady’s ghostly
status. Cooke’s score, meanwhile, reads almost like sheet music excerpts from
the opera, carefully enclosing Boieldieu’s most marketable tunes in packages easily
separated from the action. The White Lady shows the strain of crafting
an acceptably British amalgam of Scott and his operatic offspring. The White
Maid -
Covent Garden hoped to rout this conglomerate with
their own, more faithful version of the French opera. Delays, however, deferred
it to January, some three months after The White Lady had already come
and gone. Rehearsals had been proceeding in November when the first blow struck:
leading lady Mary Ann Paton, a celebrated Scottish soprano, refused to continue.
A tangle of accusations and counter-accusations muddy a clear reason for her desertion.
Librettist John Howard Payne, in his newspaper The Opera Glass, painted
her as a shallow prima donna. In his view, Paton had not wished to be compared
to the other female star, Eliza Vestris, or had wreaked petty revenge for being
refused free tickets (The Opera Glass, 4 and 11 December 1826). In a rebuttal
in The Times, Paton herself blamed the "melodramatic and pantomimic business,"
as well as having to sing a song as if she were old Meg Merrilies.[16]
Yet, according to The Opera Glass and The Times, Paton had
insisted on appropriating this very song, originally assigned to a lesser character.
Telling "anecdotes of her early life in Scotland," and saying that she had "observed
the very action in question (something about a spinning-wheel)," Paton declared
that she was "the only actress on the stage capable of giving the situation the
effect of which it was susceptible" (The Opera Glass, 4 December 1826,
repr. The London Times, 7 December 1826). One wonders whether, amidst political
infighting, nationalistic issues may have colored Paton’s decision. Paton clearly
felt strong ties to her heritage. She "sang with wonderful power and pathos her
native Scotch ballads" (Kemble 98) and, as the above reports show, evidently felt
her nationality gave her particular insight. Although Paton appeared in several
English Scott adaptations, perhaps disagreements over this foreign portrayal played
into her refusal.[17]
-
Whatever the reason, the management had to replace Paton with
a lesser singer, Miss Cawse. Just as they cleared this roadblock, another surfaced.
This one stemmed from mezzo-soprano Eliza Vestris who, interestingly, played the
leading male role. Women often played young boys or female characters who
assumed male disguise, but few assumed a romantic male lead. Vestris, however,
was an unusually shrewd, popular, and charming woman who made something of a specialty
of "pants" roles.[18]
Her allure, her considerable singing and acting abilities, and the lack of comparably
strong tenors on the roster made her a clear choice for this demanding role.[19]
One wonders whether Paton might have withdrawn because she had to view Vestris
as both potential female rival and male stage lover. Critics, however, used to
Vestris’s mutation into a man, seemed to enjoy the physical display of the substitution
and to glide over its gender disturbances. One seemed unconcerned that Vestris
"captivat[ed] the hearts of the ladies" (The Theatrical Observer, 28 March
1827) in this apparel, for example, while another blithely mixed gendered praises:
she "bore the belle" by looking "manly and . . . handsome" (The Literary Chronicle,
6 January 1827). Vestris’s appearance as a man thus apparently caused little concern,
but her health was another matter, for in mid-December she fell ill. The winter
weather and tiring performance schedule may have claimed Vestris. Illness, however,
was sometimes a theatrical byword for perfect health, as performers used physical
ailments to protest financial or political ones.[20]
Perhaps not coincidentally, Paton became unwell soon after Vestris recovered.
One wonders whether protestations of poor health masked power struggles between
the two women, uneasiness over their roles as romantic leads, or continued conflicts
with the management. -
Vestris did recover, however, and the opera
finally opened in early January. Still, circumstances hardly looked propitious.
The opera had Vestris, but it did not have Paton, long delay had either heightened
or dissipated anticipation, and Christmas pantomime audiences wanted Harlequin’s
antics, not complex operas.[21]
In the midst of these setbacks, Payne and Covent Garden clung to what they hoped
would be their trump card: fidelity. Increasingly, fidelity entered the fierce
battlefield of theatrical competition. A growing interest in authorial autonomy
and a "work-oriented" aesthetic pervaded theatrical criticism.[22]
Responding to these trends, musically well-equipped theaters such as Covent Garden
began to use fidelity to distinguish their versions, especially when, as in this
case, tardiness left them little other recourse. Advertisements boasted that "[t]he
whole of Boildieu’s music will be introduced exactly as at Paris, for the purpose
of giving the British public an opportunity of appreciating the merits of the
most celebrated work of one of the greatest masters" (The Theatrical Observer,
24 November 1826). -
Although the music is no longer extant,
it seems this was no empty rhetoric. A reconstruction of the probable score shows
that, in stark contrast to Cooke’s concessions to playhouse taste, composer G.
H. Rodwell only minimally mediated Boieldieu’s music. Indeed, so closely did The
White Maid follow the contours of the original score that librettist Payne
felt obliged to apologize for the resulting awkwardness of his poetry (The
Morning Chronicle, 3 January 1827). Significantly, however, even within such
a circumscribed context for change, Payne still attempted to reconcile Scribe
to Scott. Unable to follow Beazley’s drastic leap back to The Monastery,
Payne inched the text back toward Guy Mannering. When he could not reintroduce
Scott’s actual characters, he slipped in passing references to them. The farmer’s
wife is now Dandie Dinmont’s daughter,[23]
for example, and one scene is reset in Dominie Sampson’s old library. Most strikingly,
Payne tried to reroute Scottish superstition away from the troublesome White Lady
and back to its primary—and much applauded—vehicle in Guy Mannering,
gypsy Meg Merrilies. Even beyond the grave, Meg’s prophesies shape the plot, while
her otherworldly aura re-infuses the White Maid with supernatural possibility.
It was crossing her advice that led to Brown’s kidnapping, her efforts that avoided
his murder, her prophesy that heralded his return, her deathbed confession that
proves his identity, and even her memory that entwines with the legend of the
White Maid. The heroine’s old nurse suggests "some think [Meg] the real guardian
spirit of the Castle and will have it that she’s not dead, but had only
put on the gypsey . . . , and . . . has returned into her original form of the
white lady" (Payne 169). Bound by Boieldieu’s score to retain Scribe’s problematically
mortal White Lady, Payne clearly tried to compensate by resurrecting a proven
conduit of Scottish supernaturalism. These were subtle concessions, though, and
overall The White Maid did live up to its billing as the "actual" La
Dame blanche. Critical Responses -
Neither drastic
grafting nor modest pruning, however, could save these transplants. Copious newspaper
reviews provide our primary route to understanding why. At the beginning of virtually
every review sits the main bone of contention: the mutation of Scott’s novels
into foreign operatic form. Critics, often literary and political correspondents
first, theatrical reviewers second, bemoaned the necessary slippage between novel
and dramatization. Even Daniel Terry’s immensely popular staging of Guy Mannering
in 1816, sanctioned by Scott himself, had not overcome this barrier: "scarcely
any degree of skill in the adaptation of [the novel] to the stage, or of genius
in the principal actors, could transfer to the play even a faint resemblance to
that fervid and ungovernable interest which agitates us through so many pages
of the history itself."[24]
-
La Dame blanche hit this sensitive nerve full throttle.
Scribe not only transferred novel to stage, he freely combined different novels
and time periods into an indiscriminate conglomerate of "otherness." Scott’s picture
of Scotland was too crucial to burgeoning British identity, and Scott himself
too valued as a source of nationalistic literary pride, for reviewers to accept
this heterogeneous reworking. Even Beazley’s version, so painstakingly re-infused
with Scott, met with virulent dismissal. Edward Sterling insisted on severing
the connection to Scott: "from the title we were led to suppose that the piece
was founded on one of the tales of the "Great Unknown," but the plot bears no
affinity to any of them" (The London Times 10 October 1826). Tellingly,
the Literary Gazette writer incorrectly—and xenophobically—shifted
blame to French ignorance: "the resemblance it bears to [The Monastery]
is so very slight, that it is, in all probability, a close translation of the
French opera" (14 October 1826). -
If Beazley’s stew of Scribe
and Scott evoked little sympathy, Payne’s careful preservation of Scribe drowned
in protest. Critics railed at the nonchalant mixture and alteration of works ingrained
in British cultural consciousness. Scribe had casually renamed or omitted characters
so familiar that they had "acquired a species of historical existence" (The
Examiner, 7 January 1827). He had blithely mixed distinct historical periods,
re-appropriating Britons’ reality as a kind of malleable fiction: "this may do
very well in France—the names, times, and places, may be there romantic—with
us they are more often common-place" (The Theatrical Observer, 3 January
1827). Reviewers painstakingly pointed out every departure and anachronism, distancing
Scott as far as possible from foreign assimilation. Payne’s vaunted fidelity did
not assuage the outrage. Indeed, it only exacerbated it, for, as Beazley had only
too painfully found, one could not remain faithful to both "originals." John Payne
Collier chastised: "to say that the story is taken from Sir Walter Scott, is merely
absurd . . . In this respect, and in this country, such a defect might and ought
to have been remedied; for if the music were to be sacredly preserved, there is
no reason why equal homage should be paid to the ignorance and incongruities of
the French writer" (The Morning Chronicle, 3 January 1827). -
Some held out hope of a direct link between fidelity to Scott and success.
Thomas Noon Talfourd counseled that "[a] more interesting drama might have been
framed with closer adherence to the original [The Monastery], which, though
unequal and unsatisfactory as a whole, contains passages of great beauty" (The
New Monthly Magazine, 1 November 1826). Others, however, recognized that fidelity
to Scott’s "unequal and unsatisfactory" original formed part of the problem. As
the Literary Chronicle writer admitted, "The Monastery, by Sir Walter Scott,
is one of his most unpopular works; and . . . we think [Boieldieu’s] White
Lady will be quite as unsuccessful as her predecessor" (14 October 1826).
-
As explored earlier, perhaps the most pressing problem in the
Monastery was the White Lady herself. One critic felt Beazley’s version
improved Scott’s novel. "This supernatural creation, in the romance, sports a
something between tragedy and comedy, and has not been deemed a very happy conception;
but in the drama it is grave, and altogether devoid of humour, as a spirit of
quality ought to be" (The Examiner, 15 October 1826). All other critics,
however, found the White Lady either dissatisfactory or unworthy of comment. -
William Ayrton pointed to the probable reason: "[t]he superiority of the French
over the English story, as a drama, will be readily admitted: the one is satisfied
with natural events; the other, for the sake of a little scenic effect, has recourse
to supernatural agency . . . and confesses its inherent weakness by thus addressing
itself to the tastes of the vulgar" (The Harmonicon, November 1826, 230).
Although other writers balked at praising the "natural" preferences of the French,
virtually every review rehashed the second objection. The supernatural equaled
the spectacular, and spectacle raised the most hoary rhetorical specter of early
nineteenth-century dramatic criticism: the alleged decline of the drama.[25]
Deeply concerned that Britain’s Shakespearian heritage seemed to be dying, critics
toiled to understand the causes. Many concluded that the financial need of bigger
theaters necessitated flashy, "safe" shows—more often than not already proven
popular abroad—that could draw the large, socially heterogeneous crowds
necessary for high box office receipts. Typically, such shows fell into the much-maligned
genre of melodrama. Most prevalent in the less reputable "minor" theatres and
concerned with gesture, performance, and visual show over author and text, melodrama
seemed to be choking the educated basis of Britain’s dramatic heritage. Even literature
seemed infected. With his penchant for supernatural coloring, his creation of
vast, sweeping plots, and his reliance on intense, dramatic tableaux at
pivotal points, Scott sometimes drew reprimands for a dangerously theatrical,
melodramatic vein. By its nature, an operatic version brought these tendencies
into full flower. Critics repeatedly pointed to theatrical, performance-based
elements as the most striking aspects of the London adaptations. As Edward Holmes
quipped, "[t]he scene-painter, as is often now the case, had shown more talents
than the scene-writer . . . In time, Old Drury will be called the Dramorama"
(The Atlas, 15 October 1826). This last jab encapsulated the pervasive
fear: that Drury Lane and Covent Garden would meld with the largely lower-class
pleasures of dioramas and melodramas, erasing any space for national drama. -
Nobody employed this rhetoric more vigorously than Payne. In his mouthpiece,
The Opera Glass, he relentlessly discredited the Drury Lane adaptation
and carefully primed the audience for his own. He tied Beazley’s version to lesser,
minor theater productions: it was "more like a chef-d’œuvre of the minor
stage, than fit for a national theatre." He played into critics’ growing preference
for fidelity and their disdain for mercenary motives: "[i]n purporting to be the
Dame Blanche of Boieldieu, . . . it commits the reputation of a very admirable
work and composer, in a way equally disingenuous and sordid. It exposes his talent
to be utterly unappreciated for the beggarly advantage of a few paltry pounds"
(The Opera Glass, 16 October 1826). He deliberately planted worries that
his own faithful, non-spectacular version would fail: "Whether John Bull will
bear a couple of hours of mere music, without either ghosts, or broad fun, or
red fire, or roaring seas, or dancing devils, we shall be able to tell better
next week" (The Opera Glass, 21 December 1826). -
Unfortunately
for Payne, however, his version endured even harsher criticism than Beazley’s.
Although William Ayrton, a staunch supporter of the opera, thought the White Maid’s
disguise showed "more good sense" (The Harmonicon, February 1827, 38) on
the part of the French, all other reviewers insisted on linking the disguise to
the most incomprehensible absurdity. Edward Sterling railed: "The White Maid,
who performs all sorts of impossible things . . . to not the slightest possible
purpose, is no witch, nor "White woman," nor goblin after all; but only a young
lady, with six yards square of thin muslin thrown over her head, playing the fool,
for what object no human intellect can arrive at" (The London Times, 3
January 1827). Critics may not have wanted supernatural beings willfully to alter
the course of events, but neither did they want the essential Scottish aura of
otherworldly possibility to be stripped bare by mortal disguise. Nor, perhaps,
did they wish the supernatural to meld with the sexual, as otherworldly beings
turned out to be alluring mortal women in flimsy garments. Music added a final
element to this disturbing overexposure. The fleshly nature of the "spirit" simply
could not be denied when she sang onstage for long periods or joined with others
in ensembles. As the Examiner critic spelled out, "[t]he notion of a spirit,
or pretended spirit, singing, ten minutes at a time, in the midst of a multitude
of people, is ludicrous in the extreme" (7 January 1827). -
Music
played a crucial role in critical appraisals. After all, it was Boieldieu’s music
that had required a libretto diluted from its literary sources, Boieldieu’s music
that had lent the piece success despite its variance from Scott, and Boieldieu’s
music that had helped entice London theater managers to import the work. Yet again,
critics embraced neither Cooke’s mediated version nor Rodwell’s faithful transmission.
Cooke’s exertions drew praise from most reviewers, but few seemed able to understand
the French frenzy over the score. Edward Holmes granted that the music "has been
much celebrated in Paris," but did not think it would "hit the English taste"
(The Atlas, 15 October 1826). Similarly, John Payne Collier condescended
"[t]he music certainly does not seem to merit the extravagant praises given to
it in some of the French Papers, but a part of it is pretty and appropriate" (The
Morning Chronicle, 10 October 1826). Neither of these writers elaborated on
their opinion, however, and indeed critics seemed at a loss to explain their lukewarm
interest in the music. -
One senses that nationalistic reticence
may have informed these guarded appraisals. Underlying resentment at a French
takeover of Scottish themes and tunes seems to tinge many reviews. The Literary
Gazette critic, for example, admitted that the score, "principally
by Boieldieu," excited French critics, but noted that English audiences did not
encore a single piece. S/he then agreed with speculation that the work succeeded
in Paris chiefly because of a "spirit of rivalry" with Rossini, and because of
the Scottish tune "Robin Adair."[26]
In other words, this may be the best the French can oppose to Rossini, but its
appeal lay in what was not "principally" by Boieldieu, and what was
British property: the borrowed Scottish melody. For French ears, these novel sounds
could serve as uncomplicated markers of Scottish identity. For the English, however,
the tunes were neither novel nor uncomplicated. Suitably domesticated in numerous
sheet music arrangements, the melodies perpetuated a view of Scotland as an aural
landscape comfortably similar to England, yet distinguished by a few characteristic
rhythms and turns of phrase. A simplistic French connection between Scottish song
and Scottish character jolted this nuanced agenda, yet also uncomfortably pointed
up the similarly naïve English desire to typify Scotland in song. -
Critics’ guarded praise may also have sprung from the knowledge that they heard
only selected bits of Boieldieu, and interest in Covent Garden’s full version
therefore increased. Perhaps, as Payne so urgently hoped, hearing all of Boieldieu’s
score would reveal its appeal. In the event, however, only the Theatrical Observer
writer embraced the music without reservation: "[t]he music is delightful; by
its sole power it interested an unmusical audience—it possesses a . . .
theatrical art never, perhaps, surpassed. The opening reminded us of the celebrated
haram-chorus in [Carl Maria von Weber’s] Oberon . . . the auction scene
almost surpasses praise" (3 January 1827). -
These exact points
elicited the opposite reaction from most critics. Far from "interesting an unmusical
audience" or "possessing theatrical art," the score seemed overgrown with exactly
what English playhouse audiences least enjoyed: long, complex ensembles intertwined
with the action. Such a dense score precluded beloved encores, complicated the
extraction of individual numbers for sheet music sale, and befuddled an understanding
of the plot. This last proved particularly egregious, since not only were listeners
confused, but the connection to Scott further obscured. Tellingly, Edward Sterling
tried to use only the dialogue between musical numbers to discern the derivation
from Scott: "[a]s far as may be guessed from the expression of a few disjointed
speeches which are uttered between the dances, and chorusses, rushings on of mobs,
&c., . . . either the French author of the piece, or the translator, would
seem to have selected a single incident, or character, from every one of the Waverley
novels" (The London Times, 3 January 1827). In yet another strike against
it, the "reminder" of Weber, along with the Scottish tunes, weakened the score’s
originality. As the Examiner writer politely waffled, "the music . . .
certainly exhibits no small portion of spirit and science. For originality, we
cannot say quite so much; a fact which may possibly arise from . . . certain Scottish
melodies which are altogether familiar to British ears. There is also a striking
imitation of the style of Weber in the chorusses, which are however spirited and
effective" (7 January 1827). -
Finally, few felt that the auction
scene "surpassed praise." Indeed, most struggled with this challenge to the usual
boundaries for musical subjects. Edward Sterling found the musical auction ludicrous,
more suited for burlesque than serious opera, and worried about the precedent
it set: "certainly there is that merit no future composer ever can hope to surpass;
unless he were to ‘set’ the Vagrant Act—or a Road Bill—or the Chancery
Report—or a Chief Justice’s Charge in a case of libel" (The London Times,
3 January 1827). Here, Sterling seems concerned not only that a ridiculous sense
of realism might puncture theatrical illusion, but that this trend might spiral
into a dangerous introduction of political material into the operatic sphere.
Defenders of the scene foundered for counterarguments, insisting that comedy had
been intended, or that one could not "deem it more absurd than many other subjects
which have been musically dramatised" (The Examiner, 7 January 1827). -
Here lay the heart of the matter. As the Atlas critic ruminated,
Story, dialogue, and sense, are . . . so wholly secondary to music in an Opera,
that we, perhaps, have no business to find fault; the more especially as at Drury
Lane they preserved the White Lady of the romance, and left out the music—at
the other theatre, they have abandoned the story of the novelist, and preserved
the work of the musician; and the fact is this, that we were not in the least
pleased at the former house—while, on the contrary, at Covent Garden, where
sense was sacrificed to sound, we listened with great pleasure. (3 January 1827) Music
possessed an unsettling power to palliate even the most questionable libretto.
As such, it seemed part of the decline of drama, another unworthy, sensory aphrodisiac
that weaned audiences away from intellectual, literary value. Some tried to split
sound from sense, excusing the deviation from Scott as a necessary element of
a lesser genre. As Thomas Noon Talfourd instructed, "[t]he . . . poetry of operas
is rarely of any value whatever; nor is coherency of plot much more important,
if there be situations . . . capable of suggesting the sentiment of the music"
(The New Monthly Magazine, 1 February 1827, 54-55). Others tried to enshrine
Boieldieu’s score in a learned sphere, on a par with literary excellence in elevating
listeners’ taste. Hoping that the English would learn from the foreign model,
William Ayrton lectured "[s]ome of the concerted pieces are very long—and
(as is the good custom of French operas) carry on the business of the piece, and
are not mere excrescences upon it" (The Harmonicon, June 1826, 111). Yet,
as the Atlas critic admitted, opera evaded efforts to separate music from
sensory pleasure or to resist this pleasure, even when it beguiled one into enjoying
mutated Scott. Conclusion -
Ultimately, neither Beazley’s
sweeping alterations nor Payne’s careful reproduction succeeded. The former ran
only nine nights, the latter thirteen. Exasperated, Payne exclaimed: "the language
of music is universal; the self-same sounds have been heard throughout all Europe
with uniform success, . . . and there must be something ‘more than natural’ in
the dogmatism which . . . would reverse [audiences’] decision, and treat them
and the rest of the connoisseurs as blunderers" (The Opera Glass, 13 January
1827). In the same article, Payne laid blame squarely at critics’ feet: "[t]he
tone adopted in some instances about this production, was too ferocious for its
motives to be mistaken by those at all acquainted with the mysteries of the press."
Indeed, The Morning Chronicle and The Times, especially,
ran such virulently negative reviews that one suspects some larger power play
at work.[27] Their
criticism compounded the aggravations outlined earlier: Paton’s desertion; Vestris’s
illness; and the unfortunate timing of its premiere during Christmas pantomime
season. Even at Drury Lane, illness—or, as Payne suggested, insufficient
time to learn the piece—delayed the premiere.[28]
Worse, once The White Lady had premiered, the manager apparently withdrew
it early so that he would not have to pay Beazley any further.[29]
-
Vindictive critics, capricious performers, tightfisted managers,
untutored audiences, uneasiness at French appropriation of Scottish themes—were
they responsible for La Dame blanche’s relative failure? Some more subtle
combination of these surely contributed. Yet, in search of an answer, we might
digress to those Italian Scott operas better-known today: Rossini’s La Donna
del Lago (1819) and Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor (1835).[30]
Undoubtedly two of the most popular Scott operas, both received a respectable
but only moderate response in London. Reading critics’ comments, one almost imagines
oneself back with La Dame blanche. Again, anxiety at the musical mutation
of Scott pervaded reviews. Of La Donna del Lago, Thomas Massa Alsager complained
that "[a] story so familiar to an English audience [was] thus made ridiculous
by want of taste or parsimony" (The London Times, 19 February 1823), while
the Musical World writer found Lucia di Lammermoor "a sort of rhythmical
assassination . . . of Sir Walter Scott’s charming ‘Bride of Lammermoor,’ . .
. scarcely one point, either in the libretto or the score, presenting a recognizable
feature of the original" (The Musical World, 26 January 1843). Again, the
score elicited either grudging praise or outright condemnation: Rossini’s music
was "flat, stale and unprofitable," Donizetti’s "tame, cold, and spiritless" (The
Literary Gazette, 18 February 1823 and The Atlas, 7 April 1838). Thus,
rhetoric against foreign musical reworkings of Scott stretched essentially unchanged
over at least two decades, pointing to larger reasons for lukewarm showings. -
Reviewing an English version of Lucia, the Morning Chronicle
critic teased out the concerns that plagued these attempts to re-assimilate foreign
Scott opera: Lucia di Lammermoor, though a vile burlesque
of the most exquisitely pathetic of Walter Scott’s tales, may be tolerated on
the Italian stage, because, when we see a set of Italian actors gesticulating
after their own fashion, and hear them declaiming in their own tongue, and tickling
our ears with the delicate trickery of their ‘most sweet voices,’ the whole thing
is so exotic, so foreign, that it may be listened to from beginning to end without
once putting anybody in mind of Scott or his beautiful story. But the familiarity
of an English performance alters the case; the likeness becomes apparent, and
the poverty and meanness of the copy are the more perceptible, because contrasted
every moment with the richness and beauty of the original. (20 January 1843)
Here, one can see the tangles of exoticism that choked these return visits.
Both Scott’s novels and foreign operas provided romanticized escapes for English
audiences. Scott reshaped Scotland as a mysterious, picturesque, yet unthreatening
other, while foreign opera transported listeners away from everyday speech with
an enchanting alien tongue and vocal "trickery." A foreign Scott opera translated
into English destroyed all of these illusions. Stripped of the protective coating
of foreign singing, divergent views of Scott and competing needs for his "exoticized"
picture of Scotland collided. -
Ultimately, any attempt to re-import
these operas ran aground fundamental problems of what national identity and national
theater should be. An Italian or French opera on Sir Walter Scott in London was
something akin to, say, a Russian opera on Mark Twain in New York. So ingrained
was Scott in British consciousness, so closely tied to how Britons wished to fashion
Scottishness, that foreign attempts to reinterpret him seemed at once misguided
and threatening. La Dame blanche met with the most resistance because it
violated what Britons most cherished in Scott. Scribe melded problematic novels,
tossed aside historical accuracy, and recast the supernatural as mortal disguise.
Equally disturbing, Boieldieu appropriated national tunes to create a score opposed
to the basic values of the national stage. Even the very genre of opera fed into
Britons’ resistance. Music both necessitated and palliated the condensed libretto,
and thus seemed linked to the perceived decline of drama into the realms of sight
and sound. Clearly aware of these pitfalls, adapters struggled to fold the opera
back into Britons’ perceptions of Scott. But, just as Scott recoiled from foreign
tourists who claimed to know him through musical mediation, Britons resisted these
disturbing operatic portraits of themselves. Ultimately, nationalistic, theatrical,
and musical divides made the White Lady one citizen the British could not repatriate. |
