KING’s THEATRE.
THIS theatre has passed, as we predicted, out of the hands of the be-puffed Mr. Mason, into those of the be-praised M. Laporte, and opened on Saturday the 16th of February, with nearly the weakest of Rossini’s operas, therefore one of the greatest favourites with Italian singers, La Cenerentola. In this appeared for the first time in England, Madame BOCCABADATI, who recently was presented to Parisian audience, but with no very flattering result; she therefore was not extremely reluctant to accept an engagement at our Italian Opera House, where anything is tolerated, provided the manager is a Frenchman, and the boxes are let at the moderate price of 300 guineas for about fifty nights.
Madame Boccabadati possesses a soprano voice, of that kind which makes its way into the house, though it sometimes forces people to make their way out. This potent quality is a piercing thinness, and, as commonly happens with a vocal organ of such description, is accompanied by an apparently total absence of all feeling. As counterbalances, however, her intonation is good, and she sings with that firmness, that self-confidence, which leads one to suppose that she understands music,—at least the modern opera music, for the chances are that this lady never sang, never dreamt of, any other. In person Madame B. is much shorter than her name, but what is wanting in height is made up in breadth. As to age, a well-bred critic would guess her at half of that allotted by the Psalmist to man: the less polite manager of an office for insuring lives, would add seven or ten years to this, and be much nearer the mark.
With the exception of DONZELLI as Ramiro, and perhaps DE BEGNIS as the Magnifico, the opera was got up in a manner highly gratifying to those who wish to see this kind of amusement put down by force of public opinion. If a Puritan by any unaccountable accident found himself in the house, he most have chuckled exceedingly at the performance. But what he would say to the theatre remaining open till nearly three o’clock on Sunday morning, we can hardly guess.
What is the prelate of London about?—What the magistrates of Middlesex, who, if they hear a fiddle or a fife in a public-house after the eleventh hour, go crazy with the fear that law and religion are rapidly approaching their final overthrow?