The sempstresses-room looks exactly like a large milliner's shop, and here we found a forewoman with eighteen assistants at work. Books of costumes are always at hand, so that a degree of historical accuracy is now attained in Opera costume, which materially assists the illusion; and no such anachronism is visible in Covent Garden as in a certain theatre across the Thames, where, instead of the Saracenic minarets of Cairo, this gorgeous Arab city is represented by pyramids, obelisks, and sphynxes. The painting-room of Covent Garden is a light and lofty apartment at the top of the house, and the name of Mr Grieve is a sufficient guarantee both for historical accuracy and artistic character. Scene-painting, as practised at Covent Garden, is a most systematic process: a coloured miniature of each scene is made on Bristol-board, and consigned to an album; then a larger miniature is made, and placed in a model of the Opera stage, on a large table, and from this the scenes themselves are executed. Near the painting-room is the working property-room, filled with carpenters, mechanists, smiths, painters, and other artificers—everything either before or behind the curtain being kept up, repaired, and altered by the people of the establishment.
We now proceeded to hear the rehearsal of the opera of Lucia di Lammermoor, and entering the stalls, found the orchestra full and nearly ready to commence, Mr Costa discussing a glass of port-wine and a sandwich, while the stage-manager was marshalling the people for the first tableau, the principal singers being seated on chairs at the side. What would most have struck those accustomed only to English theatricals, was the respectable appearance of the chorus, so different from the ragamuffin troop that fill up the back-ground of an English scene. The Covent Garden chorus includes, at rehearsal, a considerable number of well-dressed men in shining hats and new paletots, many of whom are good music-teachers, not the less qualified for that business by the opportunities they have in this establishment of becoming familiar with the way in which the best works of the best masters are executed by the best artists.
The rehearsal over, we turned our attention to the audience part of the house, more particularly the Queen's box, of the privacy and splendour of which even old habitués have no idea. In the first place, Her Majesty has a separate court-yard for entrance, in which she may alight, which is a check not only upon obtrusive curiosity on the part of the public, but upon the evil disposed; for although one might naturally suppose, that if there is any individual who ought to enjoy immunity from danger or disrespect, it would be a lady who is exemplary in her public duties as a constitutional sovereign, as well as in those of a consort and mother—experience has shewn the fallaciousness of the idea.
The staircase is very noble, such as few mansions in London possess. Passing through the vestibule, we enter the grand drawing-room, in the centre of which is one of those tables that formed an ornament of the Exhibition last year. The drapery is of yellow satin damask. The principal feature of this drawing-room is the conservatory, which is separated from it by one vast sheet of plate-glass, the gas-light being contrived in such a way as to be unseen by those in the room, although bringing out the colours of the flowers with the greatest brilliancy.
Adjoining the drawing-room is the Queen's dressing-room; and between the grand drawing-room and the royal box is the little drawing-room, the walls of which are hung with blue satin damask, relieved by rich gilt ornaments, mouldings, and bronzes, in the style of Louis Quinze. The royal box itself is fitted up with crimson satin damask, a large arm-chair at the extreme right of the front of the box being the one Her Majesty usually occupies; but when she visits the theatre in state, fourteen boxes in the centre of the house, overlooking the back of the pit, are opened into one, involving a large amount of expense and trouble, which, however, is no doubt amply compensated by the extraordinary receipts of the night.
A private and separate entrance is not the exclusive privilege of royalty. The Duke of Bedford, as ground-landlord, and Miss Burdett Coutts, who has likewise a box in perpetual freehold, have separate entrances, just under that of the Queen's box, with drawing-rooms attached, which are small and low-roofed, but sumptuously fitted up. Such were the principal objects appertaining to the audience part of the house.
Returning behind the scenes, the two principal public rooms are the manager's room and green-room, which both suggested recollections of old Covent Garden in its British drama-days. Unlike the audience part of the theatre, which has been entirely reconstructed, the stage part has only been refurnished—and yet not entirely refurnished—for in this very manager's room, where John Kemble used to play the potentate off the stage with as much dignity as on it, stands a clock with the following inscription: 'After the dreadful fire of Covent Garden Theatre, on the morning of September the 21st 1808, this clock was dug out of the ruins by John Saul, master-carpenter of the theatre, and repaired and set to work.' When we reached the green-room itself, what recollections crowded on me of the stars that glittered around the Kemble dynasty! In Costa, seated at the pianoforte, I saw the face of an honest man, who unites dogged British perseverance and energy with the Italian sense of the beautiful in art. A feeling of regret, however, came over me, to think that our British school of dramatic representation and dramatic literature, which dawned brightly under Elizabeth, and in the eighteenth century was associated with everything distinguished in polite letters and polite society, should have become all but extinct. But this feeling was momentary, when I reflected that our sense of the beautiful, including the good and the true, had not diminished, but had merely gone into new channels; and, more especially, that Meyerbeer and Rossini, in order to hear their own incomparable works executed in perfection, must come to the city which the Exhibition of last year has indelibly stamped as the capital of the civilised world.