In Lotus Eaters Bloom thinks, "Molly was in fine
voice that day, the Stabat Mater of Rossini." The day
is never specified, but Eumaeus confirms the location:
St. Xavier's church in Gardiner Street. In that chapter Bloom
tells Stephen that Molly scored "a hit, a veritable sensation,
he might safely say, greatly adding to her other laurels and
putting the others totally in the shade." The "others" would
be the other soloists: Rossini's great work features a
soprano, a mezzo-soprano, a tenor, and a bass, in addition to
the chorus and orchestra.
"Stabat Mater dolorosa" means "The grieving mother was
standing." These are the opening words of a medieval hymn
about the Virgin Mary standing at the foot of the cross where
her son was tortured to death: "The grieving mother stood /
weeping beside the cross / where her son was hanging...."
Through the course of 60 such lines the hymn calls on the
listener to feel Mary's anguish as a way of cultivating love
for Christ, the savior of mankind. The text is sacred, but
Rossini's musical setting is romantic: dramatic, melodic,
emotional, stirring, tender, soaring, haunting. Bravura vocal
performances are called for.
In Lotus Eaters Bloom recalls the words "Quis
est homo," which begin the third section of the
work: "Who is the man who would not weep / if he saw the
Mother of Christ / in such torment? / Who could not share her
sorrow, / seeing the loving mother / grieving with her son?"
Bloom's interest is not devotional but aesthetic and spousal,
because this section is a duet for soprano and mezzo, with the
soprano leading off. He thinks of the people in the church
waiting for Molly's first notes: "Could hear a pin drop. I
told her to pitch her voice against that corner. I could feel
the thrill in the air, the full, the people looking up: / Quis
est homo."
Rossini composed his piece in fits and starts from 1831 to
1841, and the entire thing was first performed in Paris on 7
January 1842. The audience was enthralled and called for
encore performances of three numbers. In Eumaeus Bloom
recalls Dubliners responding similarly: "there was a
generally voiced desire for an encore." The passion is
easy to understand: in this sacred work Rossini put his
extensive experience in writing operas to good use. Twenty
years later, after writing another great sacred work, the Petite
Messe Solennelle, he wrote on the manuscript, "Dear God,
here it is finished, this poor little Mass. Is this sacred
music which I have written or music of the devil? I was born
for opera buffa, as you well know. A little science, a
little heart, that's all. Be blessed, then, and admit me to
paradise."
Rossini here gently acknowledged the tension between
religious and aesthetic impulses that has sometimes troubled
composers setting sacred texts to music. This tension plays
between the lines of Lotus Eaters as Bloom regrets not
being able to get Molly "into the choir" of St. Xavier's,
unaware that Pope Pius X had banned
women from church singing as not having sufficient
spiritual authority. It surfaces once again as he thinks of
"Those old popes" being "keen on music," again unaware of the
reactionary impulses that led some of them to ban certain
kinds of composition and performance, "Palestrina for
example."
Not being dependent on papal patronage, Rossini did not
materially suffer from the conservative forces in the Catholic
church. But his plea to God on the pages of the little
mass ("Is this sacred music which I have written or music of
the devil?") shows him to have been keenly aware that in
making a devotional text ravishingly beautiful he might be
suspected of impiety. In an essay on Rossini, Heinrich Heine
noted that German critics regarded the Stabat Mater as
"too worldly, sensuous, too playful for the religious
subject." French audiences seem to have disagreed, and at
least one Italian composer followed Rossini's lead with deep
conviction. In his overwhelmingly powerful 1874 Requiem Giuseppe
Verdi likewise set a religious text to romantic music and, in
an unmistakable bow to Rossini, put a soprano, a mezzo, a
tenor, and a bass in front of a chorus and orchestra. That
splendid requiem mass, which has been criticized as being
overly operatic, is seldom performed in churches. Instead, it
is usually staged as a concert piece.
