Mdlle. NINA SONTAG.
No one of these must be ranked as a first-rate singer, but all are tolerably respectable. Mad. PIRCHER seems to find it necessary to strain her voice, which is not strong, which sometimes renders her intonation rather faulty. She, however, sings with feeling, and appears to understand what she is about. Madlle. NINA SONTAG is just what she was,—inanimate, both in singing and acting, and inoffensive, unless great frigidity and slowness can offend.
M. BINDER is the best of the party; he wants little of being a very good tenor. He was suffered to introduce a song, not one by Weber, for which the management is more censurable than the singer. We believe that it was one by that prince of modern composers, Pacini! M. BLUME, with a good base voice, is a respectable actor.
M. HUMMEL is the conductor of this corps; but, seated at the piano-forte, he appears to greater advantage than when flourishing the baton. His times of the Freischütz were all quicker than those of the composer, as he gave them at Covent Garden. Which of the two is most likely to be right, we leave our readers to determine. The choruses went off extremely well; but in other respects the German Opera this season is much inferior to that of last; nevertheless, M. LAPORTE’s terms of admission are increased. He has, however, already found out that one hundred at seven shillings are not quite so profitable as five hundred at a crown; yet the prices are not reduced. Up to the present moment the speculation has proved a very losing one, and we do not hear of any new opera being in readiness.
DRURY LANE THEATRE.
A new ballet-opera, a term quite new to our stage, was brought out at this house on the 16th ult., entitled The Maid of Cashmere, made up from La Bayadère Amoureuse, SCRIBE’s very popular piece; the music by AUBER.
The principal characters are—
Brama
Mr. WOOD.
Olifour, the Grand Judge