33insir.
The performances at Covent Garden of Belle's new opera, Bianca, the Bravo's Bride, interrupted by the production of the pantomime, have been resumed. On Thursday evening, this opera was given before the pantomime, and the result was a house crowded to overflowing. The piece has undergone considerable curtailment, which has done it good, by the removal of portions which were somewhat prolix and heavy, and thus increasing the rapidity of the dramatic action and the animation of the whole performance. Nothing could be warmer than its reception; and it promises now to have a long and successful run.
M. Vieuxtemps, the celebrated violinist, has revisited England after an absence of eight years, and appeared at the last Monday Popular Concert. He played, with the usual performers at those concerts, two fine quartets of Schubert and Haydn, and accompanied Miss Arabella Goddard in Beethoven's great sonata in C minor for the piano and violin. He is as great a performer as ever; and if there is any one, it is Joachim alone who is able to contest the palm with him.
The Paris journals speak with enthusiasm of the revival of Guillaume Tell, and of Carlotta Marchisio's performance of the character of Mathilde. Rossini, who, though he never goes to a theatre, has taken a great interest in the success of this young lady, had made her study the part under his own instructions. The four hundredth performance of Rossini's chef d'ceuvre at the Grand Opera took place last week.
A. new decree has been published relative to the rights of authors and composers at the Opera Imperial. If an opera or ballet occupies the whole evening, the authors receive five hundred franca, divided between the dramatist and composer ; in the case of a ballet, the sum is divided into three equal parts—to the composer of the music, the author of the plot, and the inventor and arranger of the dances.
Verdi's opera, Un Ballo di Maschera, it is said, is about to be produced at the Theatre Italien. This piece, though it has never been produced in England, is spoken of as one of Verdi's best works. The subject is the same with that of Auber's Gustavus the Third—the assassination of the King of Sweden by Ankerstroem at a masked ball. The popularity of the works of Richard Wagner in Germany, notwith- standing the hostility of critics, may be estimated by the fact that, during the past year, at the Karntnerthor Theatre of Vienna, Tannhauser was performed twelve times, and Lohengrin and the Fliegender Hollander eight times each. These operas are now stock pieces at every great musical theatre in Germany. In the present scarcity of new works, Mr. Gye or Mr. Smith, we should think, might find it worth while to tro- duce one of them.
Mademoiselle Jetty Treffz, who was so great a favourite here a few years ago, is about to revisit England during the approaching season. The public will be glad to hear once more those German ballads which she used to sing with such charming grace and naiveté.
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