ON THE STATE OF OUR THEATRES, CHIEFLY AS RELATES TO THE OPERA DEPARTMENT.

THAT we are on the eve of great changes in our patent winter theatres is a fact now too obvious to admit of doubt. That their size must be diminished if it be intended any longer to represent what is called ‘the legitimate drama,’ and that the prices of admission must be reduced if the lessees do not mean to be ruined, are equally clear. It is also past dispute that very considerable alterations must be made in the nature of the performances, as well as in the general system of management; and that not only in those vast establishments, but in all other theatres, the rights and emoluments of authors and composers must be so secured and augmented as to induce men of superior intellect and attainments to devote their labours to the service of the public.

In a work like ours, it would be exceeding the prescribed bounds to enter on the subject of the drama generally, otherwise we would endeavour to show that the taste for tragedy, except of the splendid historic kind, is rapidly declining; that though the public will occasionally crowd to hear the fresh production of some celebrated writer, or to see a new and talented or much-extolled performer, yet, as they are beginning to discover that real scenes of misery, enough for all the possible purposes of excitement, are to be witnessed in great abundance, they will not much longer seek those that are fictitious. The salutary truth is now opening to their view, that relief from painful or laborious thought,—or, in a word, amusement, is, in most instances, the only rational object of a visit to the theatre, and that this cannot be extracted from a Jane Shore dying in the streets from inanition, or a Beverley expiring in the arms of his wife from the effects of poison.

Comedy amuses while it instructs; but this admits of very little increase of the voice beyond its ordinary speaking powers; and who can make himself heard in our vast theatres without exerting his lungs in a manner quite destructive of the ease so indispensably necessary to the finished performance of genteel comedy?—Opera, melodrama, and dancing remain, to which Covent Garden seems already driven; and Drury Lane is on the point of following the example of the rival patent temple of legitimate drama!

Opera will most likely take the lead decidedly, and when we shall have selected everything good from foreign repertories, which are almost exhausted, what will be our resource? Are we always to look abroad for fresh supplies, or to trust for assistance to our native composers? Let us hope that a country which has given birth to a Lock, a Purcell, an Arne, a Linley, a Shield, an Arnold, and a Storace, will yet produce successors to them, who may become their rivals in melody, and, profiting by the improvements for which we are indebted to the German school, surpass them in harmony and in richness of accompaniment. In concerted music they could hardly fail to excel their predecessors, at least those of the last century, who rarely turned their thoughts to it, the stage during their time affording no means of executing such compositions in a manner at all likely to do them justice.

Let it not be supposed that we are overlooking, or intentionally passing by unregarded, the merits of Mr. Bishop. He has supplied our theatres, principally Covent Garden, with much that will transmit his name to posterity; and had he continued to write in the style which he at first adopted—an improved English style—he might have established a school, the foundation of which was well laid by Arne, nearly a hundred years ago; but, allured by the applause bestowed on Mozart, Rossini, and Weber, he became an imitator, since when his success has not been equal to that which attended his former efforts; and latterly almost everything he has produced for the stage has failed; owing in part, no doubt, to his music having been united to dramas which possessed little, if any, claim to public favour. But he has plenty of time before him, and as we have been among the number of his warm admirers, so we shall be the first to hail his return to a path which led to fame and to profit.

Formerly the copyright of a successful opera would sell for three, four, or five hundred guineas; nay, a thousand, and even twelve hundred, has been the price demanded and paid. But now no publisher will buy an entire work; for a popular song or two out of it, or perhaps a duet, he will offer a sum, not enough, however, to remunerate the composer for the labour of a single week, and the theatres pay him nothing, be his success what it may. The managers find that they are conferring a favour by accepting the music of an opera, and plenty of composers, or pseudo-composers, press forward to be obliged. The consequence of this is so apparent to all, that we may be spared the ungracious and disagreeable task of pointing it out.

To what, then, is the present inferiority of most of our dramatic composers to be imputed?—Is the want of encouragement a cause or an effect?—Certain it is, that what is called the fashionable world will hardly listen to the music of an English composer, while almost any trash of a foreigner, especially if an Italian, (for even Germans are not in very good odour with them,) is received with favour. But the people of fashion do not now carry their influence into the English theatres: some other reason, therefore, must be assigned for the preference given to music by continental composers, and we fear that its superiority is the real cause. Hence springs another question,—from what does this superiority arise? Our belief is, that it is chiefly owing to difference in education. The English composer is commonly not so well instructed, either professionally or otherwise, as the German or French one; he is neither so well grounded in his own art, nor is his mind equally enlarged by the acquisition of other knowledge: he too frequently knows nothing but music, and that often rather imperfectly, because he has not been enabled to study it systematically, and because no one art can be thoroughly understood without the aid of that collateral knowledge which education supplies, but which he has not had any opportunity of acquiring. Another cause is, the necessity he is under of giving lessons,—of travelling from school to school, from house to house, teaching, in three cases out of four, music of the most trivial kind, not from choice, but because such is suited to the taste of the great majority of learners. Hence his own mind is occupied with what must weaken it, and even his taste in the art is in danger of becoming depraved by the examples of what is feeble, if not actually bad, that are hourly before him.

There are, no doubt, exceptions to this rule, and what we have advanced on the subject is to be understood as applying generally, and not pointed at any individual whatever, living or dead. That education, by which we mean the expansion of mind which results from it, is as essential to the composer as to the professor of any other liberal art or science, will not be disputed by those who give the matter anything like serious consideration: that in most cases the English composer has not the advantages which are to be derived from it, few will be hardy enough to deny. A still smaller number, we believe, will venture to question the fact, that the daily occupation of teaching children to play, must deaden the imaginative faculty, and consequently very much tend to disqualify for all the higher branches of composition.

We shall close this article by an authorised account of the ‘Receipts of Covent Garden Theatre, in each season, from 1809–10, to 1831–32,’ as given in the Appendix to the Parliamentary Report on Dramatic Literature.

£.

1809–10

77,575

1810–11

98,110

1811–12

88,703

1812–13

69,929

1813–14

83,765

1814–15

89,972

1815–16

80,091

1816–17

70,529

1817–18

72,968

1818–19

72,115

1819–20

53,591

1820–21

68,168

1821–22

58,171

1822–23

52,318

1823–24

60,496

1824–25

72,160

1825–26

51,017

1826–27

53,032

1827–28

55,212

1828–29

41,029

1829–30

57,431

1830–31

49,248

1831–32

43,318

The following are the ‘Comparative Dimensions of various Theatres, furnished by Samuel Beazley, architect,’ also printed in the Appendix above-mentioned.

Feet.

In.

Drury Lane, 1799

From curtain to front box

Across the pit

—— , 1812

From curtain to front box

Across the pit

—— , 1832

From curtain to front box

Across the pit

Covent Garden

From curtain to boxes

Across the pit

Haymarket

From curtain to boxes

Across the pit

Late English Opera House

From curtain to boxes

Across the pit

Pantheon, 1791

From curtain to front box

Across the pit

Italian Opera

From curtain to box

Width of pit

Olympic

From curtain to box

Width

Garrick’s Theatre, Goodman’s Fields

From curtain to front box

Width

Dublin, 1829

From curtain to front box

Across the pit

Tottenham-street Theatre

Curtain to front boxes

Across the pit