Notwithstanding our war—to say nothing of our want—we have had the OPERA this winter; had it in great variety and perfection, and, as many a reader can testify, with by no means thin houses. Grau has been busy—the most courteous and indefatigable polyglot and active of impresarios, with the good-natured Gosche, heralding a troupe of all the stars, D'Angri, Hinckley, Kellogg, Brignoli, Susini, and all the rest, including divers new singing birds. Maretzek has led, and we have had a range from Mozart to Verdi, which was, on the whole, well-chosen. We have had Brignoli singing, if possible, better, and acting, if possible, worse than usual—a nightingale imprisoned in a pump; Mme. D'Angri, with her embonpoint voice, pouring forth like an inexhaustible fountain of Maraschino; Miss Hinckley, pleasant and pretty as ever, steadily singing her way star-ward; and Susini, who combines German strength with Italian fire—a true Tedesco Italiana-zato. Something, too, we would say of Mancusi, whose clear and rapid execution, in Figaro, and whose real Spanish majo rollicking style of acting were quite spirited enough, even for that very spirited part. Formes was indeed under the impression that he himself was the Figaro Figarorum, the incarnate half-Spanish ideal of that wonderful barbaresque conception; but then, the Formes Figaro was 'developed from the depths of his subjective moral consciousness,' whereas the Figaro of a Southern European is the thing itself—like Charles Mathews playing the part of Charles Mathews, or like the Greek comedian's imitation of a pig's voice, by pinching a veritable pork-let, which he bore concealed within his mantle.
Perhaps no character is so little appreciated by Anglo-Saxon audiences as this of Figaro. To them he is little more than a buffoon. To Southern Europe, he is the bold, prompt, shrewd, popular ideal, suiting himself by craft to every superior, regarding all things with a shoulder-shrugging, quizzical philosophy; a democratic Mephistopheles; a lurking devil, equalizing himself, and the people with him, by wit and insolence, with nobility itself. Among the Latin races, as in the East, such Figaros often rise, like Oliver le Daim, to power, and the people understand it.
Fast-Day, in Boston, was operatically fêted with 'the light and melodious Martha,' by that arch-thief of melodies, Flotow. Would not—considering the day in question—I Puritani have been more appropriate for 'a day of fasting and prayer'? It has already been discovered (by the sagacious Ullman, we believe) that the Huguenots was appropriate to sacred concerts. A friend suggests that Masaniello for high mass, and Don Giovanni for St. John's day would be a great advance in these dramatic unities.
* * * * *
We are indebted to a new contributor for the following sketch:
We are all familiar with Hayden's dinner-party, and the Comptroller of Stamps, and Charles Lamb's 'Diddle diddle dumpling,' and 'Allow me to look at the gentleman's phrenological development.' I am always reminded by it of a circumstance which occurred between the Rocky and Alleghany mountains. A certain witty professor of a certain Western college, had been invited to deliver a poem before the Phi Beta Society of Athens—not the capital of Greece, nor the Athens of America, but a sort of no-town, without even the advantages of an established groggery, or mutual admiration society. The poet, not having attained that celebrity which is incompatible with keeping one's word with small towns, small lyceums, and small profits, and the roads not being stopped up, in short, 'Providence permitting, and nothing happening to prevent,' the poet made his appearance at the proper hour, like any ordinary mortal, and acquitted himself with such rhythmical eloquence, such keen, silvery humor, as brought the house down, and himself vice versa.
The audience having dispersed in a state like the afflatus of laughing-gas, the poet and a privileged clique proceeded to the house of the Baptist elder, to prolong the night with metaphysical wassail. From the froth of poetry, they rose to a contemplation of the old classics; Homer, Euripides, Sophocles, Virgil, rising grandly from their dust, ensphered in vibratory eloquence.
The elder, whose, education had been accomplished simply by a New Testament and three-inch rope, sat, or rather twisted through the rhapsody, as a dunce twists through his Greek roots, and at the first pause, drawing himself erect with the self-complacent air of a man who applies the clincher, ejaculated, with the Western twang: 'What do you think of Hi-awathy?' The professor, giving him one look, to be sure of his sanity, and a second to be sure of his obtusity, answered gravely, above a convulsion of laughter: 'Hi-awathy was a genius!'
Athens has since then grown to be some town, with an aristocracy composed of a few old maids, who attain the distinction from being the oldest inhabitants, and a poet of its own. The latter has immortalized himself by a poem in the Chatterton obsolete style, on 'Ye Cobwebs in my Attick,' supposed to be an 'Allegory on my Brain,' and from having once astonished one of the very élite of the aristocracy by requesting her to lend him her book, 'On the Dogs of Venice.' Her ladyship assured him that she was not in possession of the volume; but, on his insisting, conducted him to her library, (six shelves, one and a half by four,) where he seized upon a moth-eaten volume, illustrated on the front page by a man of obesity, clad in very flowing robes, and an immense crown, in the act of casting a ring into a black little stream ornamented by six rushes and two swans, with this inscription beneath: 'Venice wedding the Adriatic through the person of her Doge.' A wit having suggested to this votary of the muse that he should compose an epic on the royal canine of Venice, he is now zealously devoting himself to the task, as the literary public are respectfully invited to observe.
The Athenians were not long since electrified by the patriotic eloquence of an itinerant Methodist evangelist, who wound up a burst of rhapsodical patriotism with this, climax: 'If this glorious Union is dissolved, what will become of the American Eagle, that splendid bird with 'E Pluribus Unum' in his bill, the shafts of Peace in his talons, and 'Yankee Doodle' tied to his tail?'