OPERA AND DRAMA. BY RICHARD WAGNER. PART IL CHAPTER VII. THE language of tune is the beginning and the end of the language of words, just as the feelings are the beginning and end of the understanding; the mythos, the beginning and end of History; and lyrics, the beginning and end of poetry. The mediator between the beginning and the centre, as well as between the latter and the termination, is fancy. The course of this development is, however, of such a kind that it is not a return, but a progression towards the attainment of the highest human capability, and is worked out not only by mankind generally, but by every social individual, according to its essential attributes. Just as all the germs for the development of the understanding are contained in unconscious feeling, while the understanding itself contains the compelling power for the justification of the feelings, and man only becomes the reasonable man, when he justifies these feelings by the understanding; and just as, through the mythos justified by history, which sprang from it, in a similar manner, the really intelligible picture of life is first obtained; lyrics contain all the germs of poetry properly so called, and which finally and necessarily can only utter the justification of lyrics, and the work of this justification is precisely the highest work of human art, the perfect drama. The most primitive organ for the expression of the inward man is, however, the language of tune, as the most involuntary utterance of the inward feelings excited from without. A mode of expression similar to that still peculiar to animals was certainly the first human mode as well; and, we can, at any instant, picture it to ourselves according to its essential attributes, immediately we reject from our word-language the mute consonants, and retain only the vowels. In the latter, if we imagine them divested of the consonants, and fancy the manifold and increased change of inward feelings, according to their various painful or joyful purport, manifested in them alone, we obtain a picture of the first language of man's emotions, and one in which his excited and heightened feelings could certainly be communicated in a combination of vowels, that, completely as a matter of course, must have presented itself in the form of melody. This melody, which was accompanied by suitable gestures of the body in such a manner that it appeared simultaneously only as the suitable inward expression of an outward manifestation by means of gesture, and, therefore, from the changing motion of the gesture, borrowed its standard of time-in the rhythm-in such a way as to return it to the gesture, in the form of a melodically justified measure for its own manifestation-this rhythmical melody, which we-in consideration of the endlessly greater many-sidedness of man's power of emotion compared to that of animals, and especially because, in the reciprocal influence-possessed by no animal-between the inward expression of the voice and the outward one of the gesture, it can be endlessly heightened we should, from its beauty and effect, be wrong in estimating lowly -this melody in conformity with its origin and nature, was, of itself, so much the standard for the word-verse, that the latter appeared dependent upon it in such a degree as to be actually subordinate to it-a fact which is evident to us at the present day if we carefully examine any real song of the people, for we see in it the word-verse plainly conditional on the melody, and that, too, in such a manner, that it has frequently to adapt itself, even for the sense, to the arrangement most peculiar to the latter. * This circumstance exhibits to us very plainly the origin of *The animal that expresses its emotions most melodiously-the wood-bird-does not possess the slightest power of accompanying its song with gesture. language.* The vocalic sound of the pure language of the feelings endeavours to render itself distinctly recognizable in words, just as the inward feelings endeavour to distinguish the outward objects working on the emotions, with regard to them, and, finally, to render intelligible the inward impulse of this communication itself. In the pure language of tune, the feelings, when communicating the impression received, rendered only themselves intelligible, and were enabled to do this, seconded by gesture, through the most various raising and sinking, lengthening and shortening, increasing and diminishing of the vocalic sounds; but, in order to designate outward objects by their distinguishing features, the feelings were compelled, in a manner corresponding to the effect produced by the object upon themselves, and realizing this effect, to clothe the vocalic sound in a distinguishing garb, that they took from this effect and thus from the object itself. This garb was woven out of mute consonants, which it combined, either as initial or final sounds, or as both together, with the vocal sound, so that the latter was surrounded and retained by them as a definite, distinguishing manifestation, just as the object itself, thus distinguished, was outwardly displayed and isolated by a garb-the brute by its hide, the tree by its bark, etc. The vowels, thus clothed and distinguished by their garb, form the roots of language, out of the combinations and various arrangements of which the whole material edifice of our endlessly ramified language of words has been built. But let us now first note with what great instinctive prudence this language only gradually left the nourishing breast of its mother, melody, and her milk, the vocalic sound. Corresponding to the essential attributes of an inartificial view of Nature, and the desire for communicating the impression of such a view, speech combined only what was related and similar, for the purpose not only of rendering clear, in this combination, what was related, by means of its similarity, and explaining what was similar, by means of its relationship, but, also, by means of an expression, founded upon the similarity and relationship of its own points, for the purpose of producing a so much more definite and intelligible impression upon the feelings. The materially poetizing faculty of speech was here manifested: it had arrived at the power of forming points distinguished from each other in the roots of language by clothing in a garb of mute consonants, which was received by the feelings as the objective expression of the object, according to a quality taken from itself, the vocalic sound employed for an object-according to the standard of its expression-in the mere subjective expression of feeling. If speech combined such roots according to their similarity and relationship, it explained to the feelings in an equal measure the impression of the objects, as well as the corresponding expression, by the increased strengthening of this expression, and by this means depicted the object itself as strengthened, namely as manifold in itself, but, in conformity with its essential attributes, impressed, by relationship and similarity, with unity. This poetizing point of language is alliteration, or Stabreim in which we recognise the most primitive quality of all poetic language. In the Stabreim the roots of the language allied to each other are material ear so arranged that, just as they strike the as similar in sound, they combine similar objects in a joint picture, in which the feelings wish to express a conclusion regarding them. They obtain their materially recognizable similarity either from the relationship between the vocal sounds, especially when the latter have no initial consonant,t or the similarity of this very initial consonant, which characterises them as a something particular, corresponding to the object; or, also, from the similarity of the final sound (as assonance) closing the roots, immediately the individualising power lies in this final sound. The distribution and arrangement of these roots rhyming with each other takes place according to laws similar to those which decide us in every *I picture to myself the origin of language out of melody, not in chronological but architectonic order. "Erb und Eigen." "Immer und Ewig." "Ross und Reiter." "Froh und Frei." "Hand und Mund." "Recht und Pflicht." artistic tendency in the repetition, necessary for the understanding, of those motives on which we lay the greatest weight, and which, on this account, we so place among less important motives, presupposed again by themselves, that they knowably appear to be the presupposing and essential ones. Since, for the purpose of stating the possible influence of the Stabreim on our music, I must reserve till a future period the nearer consideration of this subject, I will here content myself with calling the reader's attention to the conditional relation in which the Stabreim, and the word-verse, included in it, stood to that melody which we have to understand as the most primitive manifestation of a more manifold human feeling, but again in its manifoldness separating itself to unity. Not only is the word-verse, according to its extension, but also the Stabreim determining that extension, according to its place, and particularly its quality, to be explained by us only by that melody, the manifestation of which was again dependent on the natural capability of the human breath, and the possibility of producing stronger intonations in one breath. The duration of an emission of the breath by the vocal organs determined the extension of one section of the melody, in which an important part of the same must be included. The possibility of this duration decided, also, the number of the particular intonations in the melodic section, which, if the several intonations were of passionate strength, was, by the quicker consumption of breath by them, lessened, or, if the intonations, being of less strength, required a less rapid consumption of breath, increased. These intonations, which agreed with the gesture through which they conduced to the rhythmical measure, were verbally condensed, around the root words in the Stabreim determining their number and place, just as the melodic section, conditional on the breath, determined the length and extension of the verse.-How simple a thing is it to explain and understand the length and extent of all metre, if we but take the reasonable trouble to go back to the natural conditions of all human artistic power, from which conditions alone, we can, again, attain real artistic productivity! Let us, however, at present, confine our investigations to the course of development pursued by the language of words, and reserve until later the melody it abandoned. and more completely from lyrics, sought another bond for its connection with the melodic breath passages, and procured such a bond in the final rhyme. The final rhyme, to which, also, on account of its position with respect to our modern music, we must return, was placed at the termination of the melodic section without being any longer capable of corresponding to the intonations of the melody itself. It no longer joined the natural bond of the language of tune and that of words, a bond, in which the Stabreim brought forward the rootlike affinities to the melodic intonations, intelligibly for the outward and inward sense, but merely fluttered loosely at the end of the bonds of the melody, with regard to which the word-verse fell into a more and more arbitrary and unbending relation. But the more complicated and mediating the course which the language of words was obliged to pursue in order to designate objects and relations, belonging only to social convention, and not to the self-defining nature of things; the more trouble language was obliged to take, in order to discover designations for ideas, which, of themselves diverted from natural facts, should be again employed for combinations of these abstractions; the more it was compelled to screw up the primitive signification of the roots to a double and treble one, artificially assigned to them, and only to be thought and no longer to be felt, and the more complicated the mechanical apparatus which it had to put together, for the purpose of moving and supporting the screws and levers, the more stubborn and strange did it become towards the primitive melody, of which it at last lost even the most distant recollection, when, breathless and tuneless, it was obliged to plunge into the grey turmoil of prose. (To be continued.) RACHEL. "THE success of Mdlle. Rachel at New York," writes a correspondent of the Moniteur Dramatique, "surpasses all expectaindeed, wherever she is seen. Marie Stuart, Adrienne Lecouvreur, tion. Every sort of ovation is paid to her at the theatre, and, Horace, Phèdre, have alternately created a furore. The GardesLafayettes and some other Frenchmen resident in New York entreated Mdlle. Rachel to sing the Marseillaise. The great artist, however, abstained, and replied to the solicitations addressed to her by the following letter:: "DEAR FELLOW-COUNTRYMEN-It is seven years since I sang the Marseillaise. At that time something, I know not what, had given me the semblance of a voice, and my health was still young. Now I am frequently prostrate after a representation, and I should really fear to compromise other interests than my own, if I added to my fatigues. You will believe the deep regret I feel in not venturing to promise what you ask of me, when I tell you that I loved to sing the Marseillaise as loved to play my best part in Corneille. Accept, &c., I "RACHEL." "Mdlle. Rachel," says the New York Herald, "is not only a great artist; she has already, on several occasions since her arrival among us, given proofs that she possesses a great heart. The following letter has just been addressed to the President of the Committee organised to receive subscriptions in favour of victims of the yellow fever :— Exactly in the same proportion that poetic invention, from being an activity of the feelings, became a matter of the understanding, the united, primitive and creative bond of the language of tune, gesture and words in lyrics was dissolved; the language of words was a child that left its father and mother to make its way alone in the world. As objects, and their relations to his feelings increased before the eyes of growing man, the words and combinations of words constituting language were, also, augmented, in order to correspond to the increased objects and relations. As long as man, in this process, kept Nature in his eye, and endeavoured to grasp her with his feelings, so long, also, did he discover roots of language, corresponding characteristically to the objects and their relations. But when, in the pressure of life, he at length turned his back upon this fructifying source of his power of language, his inventive faculty likewise dried up, and he was obliged to content himself in such a manner with the stock, now left him as an inheritance, but no longer a possession continually to be gained afresh, that he combined doubly and trebly, for supernatural objects, according to his requirements, the roots that he had inherited, and for the sake of this combination, again shortened and distorted them, especially by volatizing the euphony of their sounding vowels into a hasty sound of language, and sensibly drying up the living flesh of the language by heaping together the mute sounds necessary for the connection of roots not allied to one another. When language thus lost the involuntary understanding of its GIFTS TO THE FRENCH ARMY IN THE CRIMEA.-The house of own roots, which was only to be rendered possible by the feel- Pleyel in Paris has presented to Prince Napoleon, for the benefit ings, it could naturally no longer correspond in them to the of the French army in Sebastopol, a grand pianoforte in roseintonations of the nourishing mother melody. It either con- wood richly ornamented. Mad. Erard, widow of the late emitented itself, where-as in the times of Grecian antiquity-nent manufacturer, has forwarded to his Imperial Highness, for dancing was an indispensable part of lyrics, with clinging as tenaciously as possible to the rhythm of the melody, or where as is the case in modern nations-dancing was separated more "MONSIEUR THE PRESIDENT.-I have read in the morning papers an account of the terrible calamity which is afflicting Norfolk and Portsmouth, and am anxious to contribute something to alleviate so great a misfortune. To this end I transmit herewith the sum of 1000 dollars, which I beg you will add to the subscription. Accept, &c. "RACHEL." So that, after all, whatever Herr Richard Wagner may think proper to insinuate, the "Jews" are not altogether "purely egotistical." the same object, the splendid grand pianoforte, style Louis XV., value 25,000 francs (£1,000), which is now exhibiting in the nave of the Palace of Industry, in the Champs Elysées. REVIEW OF THE HISTORY OF MUSIC have been principally employed in the service of the church; the only direct application of music in which the two significations and the two-fold values, between which we have been labouring to point out the distinction, have met and become What then is a fugue? It is a musical proposition, which is identical. What musician has not felt the everlasting harmony unfolded simply or contradictorily, according as it has one or of the sublime church music with the sublime act which it more subjects, together with the arguments, which are deduced accompanies ? Hear those voices, rising one after the other solely from the relations of the harmony and of the counter-in slow and sustained tones; they intertwine and separate like point; a music, which plays in an ingenious and (so to say) the spiral wreaths of incense rising from the censer, while, now abstract manner with its elements. The end of the game is the higher and now lower, they continually echo the same comgame itself, and the fugue signifies, above all, just what it must plaining words. That is not the expression of a passionate grief, signify in its peculiarity as fugue. If it is good, it will be found one of those torturing agonies of flesh and blood: but it is good; require no more: you have already the sense of the work. the holy and poetic sorrow, which announces itself in the old This sense never lies in the text of the vocal fugue. The words cathedrals; it is the utterance of our common misery at the attached to it, are too few to help us to this sense, nor can the foot of the cross, ever repeated and evermore the same. The fugue itself derive much profit from them. They merely serve allegro of a jubilant fugue follows upon the andante. Is this to furnish syllables to the singers. Kyrie Eleison, Hosanna in the reverberation of a worldly festival, the martial sound of Excelsis, these are all the words, which the longest and most triumph, or the announcement through thousands of the people's thoroughly developed fugue requires. voices of some happy national event? Nothing of all that. This chorus expresses the solemnity of the Lord's day; it celebrates an altogether mystical feast; it sings in unison with all Christian souls, who, weary of the bustle of the world, have come to hear the hymns of the king of prophets and the concerts of the heavenly Jerusalem. It may be said that the contrapuntal style, by means of analogy, re-enacts the faculties and laws of the understanding on the domain of feeling. And indeed the arangement and studied (motivirte) sequence of musical thoughts, the beauty of the thematic development, corresponds to the deductions, proofs, and conclusions which a skilful logician knows how to draw from some fruitful proposition. The combination of two or more themes, contrasted in their melodic plan and in their rhythmical movement, gives a type of the approximation of two thoughts, which seem at first to have nothing in common with each other, but out of whose unforeseen contact a design suddenly becomes perceptible, which charms by its novelty and surprises by its clearness. In short, is not the unity of subject strictly adhered to and wisely connected with all the incidental and episodical details, alike a merit in the rhetorician and the contrapuntist? Arrangement, method, clearness, strength, and just combination, natural limits of the object, logic, in short, all such expressions may with equal propriety be used concerning works of music and works of the written or the spoken word. Does not the identity of the designations here prove the complete accuracy of the correspondence. ! It may have been remarked, that the stumbling blocks, commonly placed between works in the contrapuntal style and the majority of hearers, frequently seem not to exist in the church music; the ignorant appear to understand it about as well as the initiated. We have already given one of the reasons of this exception; but there is another, far more universal, since it operates without distinction upon hearers of all countries and communions. There is an acoustic reason at the bottom of it. The remarkable resonance, in buildings devoted to public worship, swells the volume of tone, rendering a multitude of details imperceptible; it in a manner simplifies the music and lends to the material effect a force, which is enough to shake the hearer, and that entirely without any assistance of the composition, supposing it to be well executed. Scarcely has the piece begun, when you surrender yourself with a shudder to that And yet, how strange! the more a composition through irresistible power of the accords produced by a hundred select analogy approaches that kind of eloquence which is called voices, strengthened by a crowd of symphonists, through which is deliberative or demonstrative, the less does the sense of the heard the harmonic storm of the organ roaring, making the work admit of verbal commentaries. Whence comes this? It whole sonorous building tremble. And you will say "It is follows from the fact, that between verbal and musical logic God's voice." Yes, it is the voice of God, making itself heard there always lies the difference between thinking and feeling. through one of the most adorable laws of his creation. The better a truth of abstract feeling has been analyzed and presented in the language of feeling, the less will the language of reason, or spoken words, affect this series of corollaries in notes, which prove nothing, unless they be resolved into an emotion of the heart or an enjoyment for the ears. Just so it is in another sphere, that of the pure mathematics, in which truths in the same way elude verbal logic, and can only be given through algebraical and numerical formulas. Among the works in the contrapuntal style there are doubtless many, of which the general character may be defined. There are gloomy and mournful fugues, and again there are others that ring out in jubilant and cheerful tones. But neither this mournfulness nor this joy have the positive, dramatic, and passionate expression, which they would necessarily have, if they were called forth by one of those external incitements, which occasion revolutions in the soul. You feel nothing casual in the psychological state expressed by the fugue; you easily perceive the soaring up of passion to its object. It is a disposition of the soul, which is either customary or voluntary, and which, in the want of outward nourishment, turns back upon itself and works through itself; a mixture of feeling and reflection, of dreams and inspiration; a state therefore, whose modifications, shades, and phases do not admit of analysis. When we reflect upon all these properties of music, some of which penetrate so far down into those depths of the soul that are most inaccessible to the understanding and to words, we see before all things, how much they approach the nature of the religious sentiment, and why the contrapuntal and fugued styles While the harmonic effects are thus rounded off and consolidated in great masses, the ear ceases to be much perplexed by details, which would have been quite bewildering, had they been more distinctly heard. So far is this the case, that a Mass when reduced to the simplest possible mode of execution and heard as a quartet or quintet in a chamber, is frequently no longer recognized by the very hearer who had been transported by it during divine service. These remarks explain many things in the past and in the present of music. We now know why the fugued counterpoint, which grew always more and more offensive and was gradually excluded from all profane compositions, after Bach and Händel found its last place of refuge in the temples; why it pleased in the church and displeased elsewhere; and why, since its reintroduction, the mass of the dilettanti have yet been able to perceive no gusto in it in the chamber music. If in our day we see many voluntary martyrs to the contrapuntal style, who impose upon themselves the penance of hearing a quartet worked off, it is because the title of dilettanti has become a sort of standing in the world, a card of introduction, opening many doors to one, which but for that would have remained shut against him. We are obliged to be kind and patient hearers of musicians who play gratis. One checks himself, when the tendency to gape comes over him too heavily, and utters ever and anon the exclamations: exquisite! wonderful! divine! like the sentinels: Who's there! to show that he is awake. How much easier living it is, on the contrary, in the Opera, in the land of musical freedom, where the listeners recover their 1 full natural independence! Every one is there for his money's worth; every one is sovereign judge of the satisfaction that he buys; and if the great multitude does not find this satisfaction there, then woe to the composer or the players! We have a right to abuse those who rob us. Here the public reigns despotic, and the taste of the many from of old has been the supreme law. In the theatre there is no appeal from the decision of the public; the sentence is executed the moment it is passed, and the condemned always have the worst of it. What should we think of a composer, who should be fool enough to multiply in his works the thoughts and forms of a style, which, he knows from positive experience, would be the surest means of utterly displeasing his supreme judges? Yet such a fool, whom we should suppose utterly impossible, has once existed. His name was MOZART. I have enlarged a good deal on the contrapuntal style; I have perhaps said too much about it. But I have done so for the reason, that celebrated writers seem to me to have spoken neither sufficiently, nor as they should have done, about it. But inasmuch as this branch of music is the most difficult, the least understood, the least explained and, more than that, the one of which I felt the most concerned to give a correct idea, I trust that my diffusiveness will be pardoned. The other style hardly requires the same amount of explanations. Melody is ground for everybody's feet. Whoever loves music loves melody, and for the human race en masse melody makes up the whole of music. Besides, I have already in a certain manner sought to enumerate its negative properties, in endeavouring to indicate the sphere and limits of the fugued style. All that this latter cannot do, melody, with the aid of harmony, reduced to mere accompaniment, can do. In this simplified form, if melody can move freely, she lends expression to all positive emotions, even to images of visible, imitated, or poetically felt phenomena; she interprets words and lends them thereby an unwonted power; in the theatre she kindles up within us all the passions, which she knows how to portray and excite; she furnishes the executive talents with the means of their triumphs; she pours out streams of rapture through the organ of a euphonious voice, or through the vibrations of an instrument, and transports a whole public into that enthusiasm, which is openly manifested on the arrival of a virtuoso of the first rank. Is it not melody again that conjures up the dearest shadows of the past, and with a few magic notes carries you back into the times of a bliss long vanished, or spans long distances and leads the sorrowing soul into his home? Is it not she, that sustains the courage of the warrior and inspires him in the hour of battle? She, that lends fervor to our most cheerful festivals! She that leads straightway to the fountain, whereat poor humanity most commonly drinks oblivion and consolation for its sorrows that speaks to us so gracefully of love, and makes us more susceptible thereof? It is still always melody. And if I cannot give myself up to love, says some one, I at least make music; and this at least marks excellently well the correspondence of these two occupations. This is what the rhetoricians call the sublime in thought. By the side of these attributes of the harmonico-melodic style, the delights of counterpoint seem very weak and very insignificent. But all things have their compensation in this world. If melody is an eternal principle for the rejuvenescence of music, so too it is an ever present cause of its corruption and its death. By the ease with which it assumes all colours and accommodates itself to all forms, by its subserviency to the most moody and transient influences, melody makes any given system of composition to appear, so far as the hearers are concerned, as either national or foreign, antiquated or new. It founds the momentary taste and it destroys it. The instability peculiar to this element of music became still greater with a superficial and almost primitive harmony, like that in the majority of the Italian operas of the eigteenth contury, At first, when it held sole sway, the power of the ruling melody was so much the greater; but it soon lost its attractive energy, since it had surrendered itself with too little reserve to the wishes of the Works in this style, called homophonic (one-voiced), that is to say purely melodic, generally soon wear out; we see them ear. in their decline follow the opposite progression from that indicated by their growing favour; the melancholy progress from indifference to satiety, and from satiety to loathing. They were loved more and more, because they were well known; and they ceased to be loved, because they were known too well. And then the music is no more than a dried up flower, which has outlived its colours and its fragrance; a noble wine, which has lost its fine aroma. This mournful type, and yet too true, of our enjoyments, gives the true measure for both styles of music, viewed from their opposition and their equipoise, since they both have a for and an against. The enjoyments, which melody creates, are incomparably more lively; those of counterpoint, on the contrary, far more enduring. The former are had gratis, the latter must be purchased by labour and study; like the pleasures of the mind, which they represent in music, so far as it is possible to represent them in that. In the analogies of the melodic style we find again all the expression and emotional power of speech, the passions, with their joys and sorrows. Counterpoint occupies the opposite psychological domain; its serious expressions do not harmonize much with sensuality; they touch the infinite on all sides; they address ineffable words to the soul; they talk with it the exalted language of Poesy, which flashes from the vaulted firmament in characters of fire; and the thought readily suggests itself, that, had the stars an audible as they have a visible voice, the mathematical laws, having become euphonious, would spread abroad the combinations of the fugue; and that the harmony of the spheres would then be a song of innumerable themes, as many as there are separate, and yet united worlds, to sing the praise of the Father of all worlds. [To be continued.] OPERA AT DRURY LANE. (From the Sunday Times.) Ir the opera season, now terminated at Drury Lane, be memorable for nothing else, it will, at least, have proved that the performance of English opera may be made a successful speculation. Success, however, in such matters as this, may be of three kinds-pecuniary and artistic combined; artistic, and not pecuniary; and pecuniary, and not artistic. The first of these, the Drury Lane success certainly is not; the second was, undoubtedly, never aimed at by the management; and the third, failing the other two, is precisely what has been achieved. There has been an almost undeviating succession of good houses, to an equally unvarying series of indifferent, or bad, performances. Now, as this fact goes somewhat against the grain of received opinion, it may be worth while to spend a few words upon it. The English public is generally said to be a clumsy judge of music in the abstract, but a veritable connoisseur in the matter of performance; and this we believe to be, in the main, correct. Thus, we find an audience accurately critical on the merits or defects of a singer, and yet quite contented to prefer Verdi's Trovatore to Beethoven's Fidelio. To an offence against this tendency of the public mind, all the failures of English operatic attempts have been, more or less, ascribed. The mistake has been committed of angling for a delicate stomach with a coarse bait; in other words, of expecting people to pay for an entertainment of a kind altogether beneath that which they were willing to accept. At Drury Lane, however, we have not observed this attributed delicacy of perception to interfere with public patronage. All sorts of operas have been played, in every possible way except the right, and yet the audiences have been abundant, and what is more, seemingly well contented with their fare. Night after night, the admirer of English opera has had a physical difficulty in procuring a seat in the theatre, and, if of tender ears must, we suspect, have experienced an equal moral difficulty in retaining it half an hour after the ascent of the curtain. The fact is, that a new element in operatic success has been discovered. The management has found out that there is a pounds, shillings, and pence direction, in which the public mind may be turned to such profitable account as to render any other consideration superfluous. The present musical venture at Drury Lane is, en in fact, the degenerate descendant of that rather hardy enterprise-to use a mild term-the Royal Opera. On the extinction of the latter becoming imminent, the lessee of the theatre was induced to risk its continuance, with the novel attraction of a scale of prices for which opera had certainly never previously been heard at least on this side of the Thames. With this pecuniary temptation, the public flocked in crowds to hear operas given by a more than respectable company of Italian artists, supported by a band and chorus at least large, if not excellent; and the attraction was well sustained by Madame Gassier and the clever troupe which surrounded her. But, in this case, crowded houses failed to do their usual work. The receipts did not and could not balance the expenditure. Wherefore, since raising the prices would have been an abandonment of the "cheap" principle at first so vaunted, the somewhat equivocal expedient of reducing the quality of the tertainment was substituted. The Italian singers gave place to such native talent as was procurable at the moment; the orchestral regiment, commanded by Mr. Tully, dwindled to a mere company, and the choral force suffered a similar reduction. Yet, with all this, the fact of "cheap opera" was established. The public still came in undiminished numbers, and a practical demonstration was afforded of the muchdenied possibility of good houses co-existing with bad performances. But this must by no means be taken to prove that operatic success is independent of artistic merit. It proves nothing of the kind. It simply proves that there are two classes of opera-going people available to a theatrical treasury-the first, wealthy and critical, and the second neither one nor the other. The Drury Lane performances were established for a special purpose, and they served it. The management played for, and won, the patronage of that section of the public which, loving music heartily-perhaps greedily, and certainly roughly is neither so thin-skinned as to be offended by an inferior performance, nor sufficiently long of purse to pay for a better. Far be it from our wish to interfere between any portion of the public and the possession of an entertainment suited to its taste, and within its pecuniary means; only we should prefer that that taste be indulged in some less important locality than Drury Lane Theatre. Nor can we have the slightest wish to deprive singers and orchestralists, as yet incomplete in their art, of the stage practice so essential to them; though we may suggest the propriety of the continental custom, which limits this necessary exercise to the provinces. We merely object to these very indifferent performances as specimens of English operatic capability, and more especially with the extra significance conferred by their taking place in one of our largest and finest theatres. By the foreign musician, they must, indeed, be taken in evidence of the art-poverty of our land. If it be said that they alone now represent English opera, and, therefore, better those than none, we can merely reply, on the contrary, better none than these. They can do no possible good. They cannot help the English musician a single step on his way. They can only serve to estrange him still more from the sympathies of his educated and influential countrymen, who will assuredly continue to regard English opera as an English disgrace, so long as it is only caricatured by performances which their experience tells them would not be tolerated in the smallest towns of France and Germany. In only one point of view can we have any satisfaction in contemplating the present operatic season at Drury Lane. It has been the means of introducing to public acquaintance Miss Lucy Estcott, a lady of whose talent we entertain a very high opinion. She is not yet a finished singer; yet, added to much physical and educational advantage, she has a force of musical organisation, and an amount of feeling, and intelligence, that, with anything like a due share of application, must ensure for her a brilliant future. THE REGISTRATION.-The Conservative Land Society has, this year, been again successful in establishing the claims for the freehold franchise on behalf of their members both in Middlesex and Hertfordshire. SPONTINI. (From the French of Hector Berlioz.) ON the 14th of November, 1779, was born at Marjolati, in the Marche d'Ancone, a child named Gaspard Spontini. All that I know concerning the earlier years of Spontini, and which I myself heard him relate, are confined to a few facts, which I will reproduce, without, however, attaching to them more importance than they deserve. When he was between twelve and thirteen years of age, he went to Naples to enter the Conservatorio della Pietà. Was it at the desire of the child that his parents opened to him the gates of this celebrated school of music? or did his father, doubtless reduced in circumstances, think, by entering him there, to open to him an easy as well as a modest career, intending, perhaps, to make him chapel-master to some convent or church of second rank? Which of these motives might have actuated him I know not. I somehow, incline, however, to the second hypothesis, having in view the disposition for a religious life manifested by the other members of the Spontini family. One of the brothers was the curé of a Roman village; the other, Anselmo Spontini, died a few years since in a Venetian monastery, if I recollect aright, and his sister also finished her days in a convent, where she had taken the veil. Be it as it may, Gaspard Spontini's studies were sufficiently fruitful at La Pietà to enable him to write, as many did, one of those follies, decorated in Italy, as elsewhere, with the pompous name of opera, which had for its title, I Puntiglie delle Donne. I do not know whether this first attempt was even represented or not. Nevertheless, it inspired its author with sufficient ambition and confidence in his own talents to induce him to fly from the Conservatory and repair to Rome, where he hoped to encounter less difficulty than at Naples in the production of his pieces on the stage. The fugitive was soon caught, however, and, under penalty of being re-conducted to Naples, was required to justify his escapade and the pretensions which had caused it, by writing a carnival-piece. He had given him a libretto, entitled Gli Amanti in Cimento, which he promptly set to music, and which was almost immediately after represented with success. The public behaved to the young maestro with the enthusiasm common to Romans on such occasions. Moreover, his age and the episode of his flight had disposed the dilettanti in his favour. Spontini was applauded, recalled, carried in triumph, and-forgotten in a fortnight. This brief success obtained for him at least his liberty. He was dispensed with from returning to the Conservatorio, and received a very advantageous offer to go and write, as they say in Italy, at Venice. Here he is, then, emancipated, left to himself, after a brief abode with the classes of the Neapolitan Conservatory. Here I think it most fit to attempt to clear up the doubt involved in the question which may naturally present itself:— "Who was his master?" Some say Father Martini, who died before the entrance of Spontini into the Conservatorio, and, I believe myself, before he was born. Others, a certain Baroni, whom he may have known at Rome; others still ascribe the honour of his musical education to Sala, to Traetta, and even to Cimarosa. I had not the curiosity to question Spontini upon this subject, and he never appeared disposed to speak about it to me. But Í have clearly recognised and received as an avowal in his conversation, that the real masters of the author of La Vestale, Cortez, and Olympio, were the masterpieces of Gluck, with which he first became acquainted on his arrival in Paris in 1813, and which he studied with passion. As to the author of the numerous Italian operas, the list of which I shall presently give, I think it of little importance to know what master taught him the manner of composing them. The manners and customs of the Italian lyric theatres of that time are faithfully observed, and the firstcome of the musicastres of his country might easily have furnished him with a formula which already at that epoch was the secret of comedy. But, to speak only of Spontini the Great, I believe that not only Gluck, but Méhul also, who had already written his admirable Euphrosine, and Cherubini, by his first French operas, developed in him the latent germ of his dramatic functions, and hastened its magnificent development. |