DRURY LANE THEATRE.
WHAT properly is called the English stage is at its last gasp. Covent Garden is closed except to foreign performers: its company has been obliged to seek refuge in a theatre which most of our provincial towns would scoff at. Mr. Arnold has prudently withdrawn from the Adelphi, and his performers are doing what they can for themselves; that is, just keeping that small house open three times a week. Mr. Morris feels the necessity of closing his doors when the two national theatres, the legitimate, the patent theatres, are opened by foreigners, and nothing but German, or Italian, or French productions heard therein. A Sunday paper of the 5th ult. well observes, speaking of the banishment of the English drama from Covent Garden theatre,—‘This feared event has, at length come to pass. What Laporte means to do with Covent Garden we have not heard; but he is in treaty with Paganini, and we suppose that he will resort to some other foreign performances. It is a singular fact, and it can hardly fail to produce its effect, that OUR NATIONAL DRAMA was finally expelled from one of our great theatres, while “a native of France was its lessee.” What would have been said by the French, if an English actor had been director of the Théâtre Francais, and had adopted measures by which the plays of Corneille, Racine, and Moliere were driven to the Port St. Martin?’ And with what show of reason do certain writers in our journals exclaim against the salaries of English stars, as they are called, when they know, but are silent, that Madame Devrient receives nearly three times as much per night, and Madame Malibran more than seven times, what our first and best performers could ever obtain? Farren, Braham, and Liston, it is said, have, or had, twenty pounds a night: Madame Devrient has at least fifty; and Madame Malibran one hundred and fifty, though she does draw enough to pay her own salary!
On the 1st of May, the Italian opera of BELLINI, La Sonnambula, with English words adapted to it, was produced at this theatre, for the debut of Mad. MALIBRAN. The drama is well known to our readers; the music is of the most flimsy kind, and worthless in every sense of the word, whether as relates to art, or to the theatre. Our English operatic composers have not much distinguished themselves of late, and the undoubted superiority of the German and French schools has generated a taste among all classes in London for foreign music; but this is no reason why anything so feeble as the work now under notice should be patiently listened to, nay applauded. However, we will not waste our reader’s time by further notice of so inferior a production. The acting of Mad. MALIBRAN as the somnambulist, is of a very mixed kind; sometimes she surprises by traits of extraordinary genius, and occasionally she exhibits extravagancies that prove a want of any real knowledge of the first principles of the histrionic art. As a singer, she certainly is much more perfect. Nature has bestowed on her a voice rarely equalled, and education has made her an excellent musician. Her natural taste we believe to be good, but, following the fashion of the day, it has become vitiated, and her ornaments are so redundant as often to be ridiculous. These however, are so nicely executed, that they seduce even the best critics, and lead them to applaud what in their sober senses they could not but disapprove.
Mad. MALIBRAN has since appeared in the English opera The Devil’s Bridge, as Count Belino, and if her roulades, her admirably performed freaks, are absurd in Italian arias, how much more so in English songs! She entirely failed in this attempt, and though the opera was performed a second time, the public, prejudiced though they now are in favour of foreigners, whatever their pretensions, could not be brought to witness another such performance.
Beethoven’s Fidelio has been produced here, Mad. SCHRŒDER DEVRIENT and M. HAITZINGER in the characters they sustained so well last year at the King’s Theatre. The number of subscription and benefit concerts which we feel it a duty to attend, have prevented our yet being present at the performance of this opera at Drury Lane.
THE MUSIC OF THE PRESENT NUMBER.
WHO the composer is of the trio, ‘Like a bright cherub,’ has long been a matter of dispute, and the point most likely will never now be settled by any decisive proof. The question, however, lies in a narrow compass, for it is agreed that to either Handel or John Christopher Smith[57] the work belongs. Prevailing opinion ascribes it to the former, and we believe correctly, judging from internal evidence as well as traditional testimony. Gideon, the oratorio of which it forms a part, was a pasticcio, a selection of music by various authors, adapted to a dramatic poem by Smith, but when and where performed the most diligent inquiry has not enabled us to ascertain; in fact, no record whatever of it seems to be in existence; it was never published, and we cannot learn that a copy of it remains. The trio now inserted is the only part of it that ever came under our view, and was printed some fifty years ego by Birchall, about the time when sung at the Ancient Concerts. The sweet melody of this, and its effective simplicity when the three parts come together, ought to recommend it to private musical parties.
The aria by Mozart is No. 20 of his thirty Gesaenge, or detached airs not appertaining to any of his operas, published by Breitkopf and Härtel, at Leipzig.