Manarz Gmar, on Wednesday evening, made her last appearance on
our Italian Opera stage. Her leave-taking was an interesting scene. The audience were in a state of high excitement, and gave vent to their feelings by the most vehement demonstrations of admiration and regret, while she herself was evidently overcome by her emotions, and when she at length disappeared from our sight, her face was bathed in tears. It was plain to every one that her agitation was as real as, under the circumstances, it was natural. She might well have said, borrowing the language of Quin,
"Alas! I feel I am no actress here."
During the evening she had exerted herself as if she were determined to make the audience feel and appreciate the greatness of their loss. She appeared in the first act of Norma, and in the first and third acts of the Huguenots, sustaining her two greatest characters with a power and beauty which recalled the days when her sun was in its meridian and when every other luminary grew pale beneath its lustre. Were she to continue thus, it might well be asked, why leave us now ? But she cannot continue thus, and to leave us now when her setting is so bright and glorious, is true wisdom.
Seven years ago we witnessed a scene precisely similar, on the same stage, and of which she, too, was the heroine. She then took her leave of the stage, thinking (we have every reason to believe), as well as the public did, that her farewell was final. There was the same excitement on the part of the public, and the same tearful re- gret on hers. But the remembrance of that evening has had no effect in damping our feelings now. It is true that, notwithstanding her adieux, she returned to us the very next season; but how glad we may be that she did so, for how much pleasure has she given us during these seven years, which we otherwise should have lost ! The truth is, that her retirement at that time was hasty and premature —now it is deliberate and timely. She is much younger than might be inferred from the length of her career. When she appeared, almost simultaneously in Paris and London, in 'the year 1834, she shone out like the comet the other evening, suddenly and unexpect- edly ; and from that time her course has been one glorious day of seven-and-twenty years long. She was then a girl of eighteen, whose name had scarcely been heard of even in her own country. Had she retired seven years ago, it would have been at the age of eight- and-thirty; even now she is only forty-five, an age far below those which many great actors and singers have reached with unimpaired faculties. But still she does well to retire as she is doing; and we believe we may affirm, on good grounds, that her resolution is fixed and irrevocable.
She will, therefore, be seen and, heard no more in London. But she has still to take her leave of the English public ; and this, we observe, she is to do, in the first place, by means of a great " fare- well performance" next Wednesday at the Crystal Palace, and after- wards by means of a tour through the provinces during the ensuing autumn, in the course of which she will visit every city and town in the United Kingdom, London only excepted. This will most positively be her farewell to England, and the termination of her professional life.
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