MISS BYFIELD IN ROSINA.
How delightful it is to get back to an honest old opera! With the venerable patriarchs of English composition, a simple story begat simple melodies ; Colin sat with Daphne upon a flowery bank, under " the broad beech's shade," both equally enviable, amiable, straw-hatted, lazy, and loving. Happy times they were for composition, when an event at once so pastoral and insipid could inspire a good air ; for since the stage composers have excited their imaginations with banditti, and such mustachio'd ferocities, melody has been gradually quitting the scene, and now in many a new piece not once shows her face. England has never produced a composer of a more melodious vein than SHIELD. He may be said more truly, to have given a cha meter to English songs than any other musician, from the quantity as well as quality of what he has written. SHIELD sought to embody in the air itself the sentiment which he wished to express ; and therefore his accompaniments scarcely ever share attention with the voice, but are mere supports to it. The great excellence of his composition was, that he could go on with a succession of unbroken melodies—varying each so happily, that at the end of his opera the hearer was unfatigued. Our theatrical composers have now a dexterous manner of filling up a vacancy of thought with a bit of trombone, or horn—or some very queer harmony, which is always at hand to puzzle the hearer. This resource is, however, the abuse of what is in itself a great advantage to the musician. God forbid that such writers as WEBER or SPOHR, who have melodies at will, should go back to the simplicity of SHIELD. In Rosina we are contented with pure nature, and that of a kind which when we cease to like, we 'shall have little love left for art. The style has one great advantage—that it is an in--fallible test of a singer. Nothing shows the heart and soul more transparent than the ballad. We of course speak of the best of the species in saying this. Miss BYFIELD pleases us more and more : she has the feeling requisite to make a fine singer: her voice is particularly sweet, and her ornaments are musician-like and refined. Her forte is evidently, like STEPHENS'S, shown in grace and pathos. -Although Miss BYFIELD is no wholesale dealer in roulade, yet when passages of execution occur in the text of the composer, she gives them with agility and neatness. Her shake is perfectly liquid and close, and is always introduced as it ought to be, in bringing the close nicely round. The whole of her part in Rosina, Miss BYFIELD sustained with an equality of talent. She has before her, if she takes pains, the highest prospects in her profession. Woon sang pretty well on Wednesday, but with the feebleness of indisposition.
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