Sir George Alexander Macfarren, His Life and His Operas

Sir George Alexander Macfarren: his life and his operas 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. 1 Sir George Alexander Macfarren: his life and his operas 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. 2 Sir George Alexander Macfarren: his life and his operas 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. 3 Sir George Alexander Macfarren: his life and his operas 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.. 4 Sir George Alexander Macfarren: his life and his operas 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).

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