THE ITALIAN OPERA.
Poor r, as well as his wife, demands a more significant notice than we have ye r bestowed on either ; and we have rather waited in the hope that something might be forthcoming at her Majesty's Theatre fit for her Majesty's music-loving subjects to hear ; but " hope told a flattering tale " ; and we bad the alternative between a second dose of Beatrice di Tenda, on Saturday, and Lucrezia Borgia, on Tuesday. We chose the latter—not as better, but for mere variety's sake. FEEZZOISNI and POGGI are an accomplished pair, and fitted to grace any European theatre. The compass of the former is abundant, and her tone, when not goaded by COSTA'S relentless baton, and the consequent rattle and roar of his troops, mellifluous and pure. P000x has a fine, manly, rich tenor, which he pours out with delightful ease and freedom,—a perfect and most welcome contrast to the tremu- lous and shifty organ of RUBIN; whose tricks and schemes to hide his natural and acquired imperfections always excited the especial ecstacy of his accustomed hearers. Such singers make us more than ever desire to witness some return to the Italian opera in the days of its beauty and strength—some display of what it really is, in place of - the vulgar and feeble abortions which are now its miserable substi- tute. Is it necessary to repeat that the authors of such trash would in those days have been booted from the lowest theatre in any Italian state, and would hardly have been considered as fit to hold the name of composers ? Unable to effect the composition of a song, the structure of a work like an opera is altogether be- yond their grasp. "Instead of an opera," says an acute and ex- perienced critic,* " we have a libretto (such as it is) cut up into pezzi concerted, or long singing conversations, which present a tedious succession of unconnected, ever-changing motivos, having nothing to do with each other : and if a satisfactory air is for a moment stumbled upon, of which a composer at all skilled in his art would make effective use, it is broken off by a sudden and capricious change of time, melody, and key, and recurs no more ; so that no impression is made and no re- collection preserved. Single songs are almost exploded." These, so correctly delineated, features of the present Italian opera, have their origin not in fashion, in taste, in the love of novelty, but in sheer unmitigated poverty. A man who has no conception of the unity of design, which is one essential of every great work of art, and is unequal to view it as a whole, must construct it piecemeal; as an ignorant fellow about to build a house would first raise his kitchen, then his parlour, then a bed-room, then another, and so on. As well might we call such a conglomeration of bricks and mortar a house, as the jumble of phrases and sounds which DoNizErrl throws into a mass, an opera.
• Lord MOUNT-EDGECDEBE.
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