Abstract
Bellini and Meyerbeer took great care to get the best possible terms in the contracts they signed, trying to avoid having to compose their operas in a short period of time as happened with other composers. Bellini regarded opera as a business that would allow him to live well and maintain relationships with the most important people of his time. Meyerbeer, who did not have financial problems since he came from a wealthy family, was very interested that his works should endure and be appreciated in the future. After analysing the resources obtained from the composition of their operas, the chapter also studied other sources of wealth, especially those of financial origin, and how Meyerbeer tried to use the claque and the press for his own benefit, that is, to prevent his operas were a failure on the day of their premiere. Finally, the political and economic aspects of Meyerbeer’s Le Prophète (1849) are also discussed.
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Notes
- 1.
Approximately 2,170 euros. For the conversion into current euros of the different currencies see the introduction to this book.
- 2.
The scholarship established that if, after his training Bellini did not live in Catania, he would have to return the money. Rosselli (2013, p. 21) indicates, this condition was never demanded.
- 3.
Bellini was convinced that he provided operas of high quality and that they were appreciated by the public, which, from his perspective, allowed him to be demanding in the contractual conditions, thinking that the impresarios should accept them without discussion.
- 4.
It is worth mentioning the 2 louis d’or he gave to the musical director, Neithardt, and the 19 thalers to the cathedral choir as thanks for the performance of one of his cantatas (Meyerbeer 2002, p. 166).
- 5.
In 1828, he commented to his friend Florimo in his letter dated 9th of June 1828 (Florimo 1882, p. 329) that, although he was bored with idleness, he had rejected the offer of Count Ferreri, who presided the Direzione del Teatro di Torino, to compose an opera for 3,500 francs, as Bellini demanded 4,000 francs.
- 6.
He devoted great importance to the subject matter of the libretto. As he tells Florimo in a letter dated 1st of December 1828 (Bellini 1943, p. 177), he refused to write the music for the Cesare in Egitto libretto, claiming that it was old-fashioned. Specifically, he said that it was a subject “older than Noe”.
- 7.
This idea is expressed to Andrea Monteleone in her letter of 17th of September 1829 (Bellini 2017, p. 196) when he states that Pacini must write three operas for a single carnival, so his music will not be of quality.
- 8.
Meyerbeer proudly acknowledged that the payment for Le Prophète was the highest amount ever paid.
- 9.
Meyerbeer recorded in his diaries the payments he received monthly, which he called “droits d’auteur”. The figures became very high some months, exceeding 4,000 francs; the last entry in his diary on this item corresponds to 19th of January 1864, four months before his death, saying that he was entitled to 1,766.10 francs (Meyerbeer 2004, p. 339).
- 10.
This figure does not agree with the one offered by Rossini in his letter to Santocanale, Bellini’s lawyer and friend, written four days after Bellini's death, which indicates that it is 30,000 francs.
- 11.
The risk of non-payment of the bonds was used by Dumas, in his serial The Count of Monte Cristo, whose plot takes place between 1815 and 1834. The Spanish bonds are bought by Baron Danglars, one of the characters the Count wants to take revenge on, which makes him bankrupt.
- 12.
Apparently, the father said: “my daughter will never marry a poor piano-banger” (Galatopoulos, 2002, p. 56).
- 13.
Blaze de Bury (1865, pp. 202–203), writer and music critic, in his book on Meyerbeer describes Gouin as a person who takes care of the composer's affairs and who can do so thanks to his position as administrative director of the Paris postal service, a position that only occupies four hours a day and that never refers to the composer as Meyerbeer, but as the master.
- 14.
He was the owner of the Journal des Débats.
- 15.
Balzac’s description (1837, p. 470) of the claqueurs in his work Les illusions perdus (Lost illusions) is not so positive of the claqueurs, Balzac points out that “all of them wearing caps, seedy trousers, threadbare coats, (…) muddy, scraggy faces, with long beards and ferocious and insinuating eyes at the same time: a horrible crowd which lives and swarms in the Paris boulevards, who sells safety chains and gold jewelry in the morning for a franc and a half, and in the evening claps its hands under the theater chandeliers; which, finally, adapts itself to all the muddy exigences of Paris”.
- 16.
Balzac (1837, p. 468) in his Lost illusions, in describing the head of the claque named Braulard, gives a very similar description of the income earned by Auguste: “Braulard has twenty thousand francs of income, and all the dramatic authors of the boulevard are in his controls, and have a standing account as if he were a banker. Author’s tickets and favor passes are sold. Braulard sells this merchandise (…) author's tickets alone bring him in about four thousand francs every month, that is forty-eight thousand a year. Suppose he losses twenty thousand francs, for he cannot always sell his tickets”, because “the people who pay for their tickets at the box-office are sold in competition with the complementary tickets, which there are not reserved seats. In addition, the theater retains its booking rights. There are days with good plays and evenings with poor plays. So Braulard earns perhaps thirty thousand francs a year in this way. He has his claqueurs besides, another industry”.
- 17.
In a letter from Giuseppe Pasta, agent of his wife, the soprano Giuditta Pasta, to Bellini dated on the 2nd of May 1835, it is noted that it is a loan at 5% interest (Amore 1894, p. 146).
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Méndez-Picazo, MT., Galindo-Martín, MÁ. (2023). Vincenzo Bellini and Giacomo Meyerbeer: Shifting Markets (From Belcanto to the Grand Opera). In: Baumert, T., Cabrillo, F. (eds) On Music, Money and Markets. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43226-2_6
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