The Opera.—Immediately upon the departure of Jenny Lind, Mr. Maretzek opened the doors of the Astor Place Opera House for a short season, preparatory to his summer campaign in Castle Garden. Under his auspices Bosio has reappeared, and Bettini has made his bow. Bosio is so beautiful a woman, she has a voice so subtly sweet and sympathetic, a style of singing so simple and sufficient, and an instinctive feminineness of feeling fine enough to make her acting always agreeable, that her impression as a Prima Donna is the most symmetrical we have known in New-York. Her womanliness is her charm and her success. Even in characters of so grandiose proportions in the imagination, as Lucrezia, she never drops for a moment the interest of the spectator, although it is new to him to find a tender feeling in his regard for the Borgia. This tenderness, however, is not fatal to the artistic effect. It is that quality of feeling which he would have for a lost but lovely Magdalen. Bosio's Zerlina is another quite perfect representation. Its arch grace and sparkling beauty have never been surpassed by any Zerlina we have seen. Bosio, however, sketches rather than colors. Her acting is a suggestive outline which the imagination naturally fills—and, within the range of singers possible to us, we could select none so singularly fascinating as Bosio for the summer moonlight at Castle Garden.
Bettini is a young man, with a fresh, sweet, sympathetic tenor voice, which happily harmonizes with Bosio's. He has rather too magniloquent a style both of acting and singing, but is a very agreeable artist. We could lay in the shadows of his portrait delicately, yet deeply enough, by saying that he is young. He has made a decided hit upon the town, and the first evening at Castle Garden attracted an audience of not less than three thousand.
Donizetti's opera of Marino Faliero has been produced at Castle Garden, for the first time in America. It is only second rate music, but was admirably sung by the company. Marini looks the Doge and wears the ducal robe with great dignity and success.
NICHOLAS VON DER FLUE.
WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE BY THE AUTHOR OF "RURAL HOURS."
The fifteenth century proved an eventful and important period of Swiss history. The age which preceded it gave birth to the people, and brought them an independent existence and a name; but it left them at its close the mere skeleton of a political body, and it was not until a later day that their national constitution received fulness and development—it was not until the fifteenth century that the people acquired a clearly distinct character and position among the countries of Europe.
Several of the most celebrated battles in Swiss history, those which gave the confederates military fame with other nations, belong to this period. The battle of St. Jacques is altogether one of the most extraordinary on record. Thirty thousand French troops, chiefly from the free company of Armagnac, commanded by the Dauphin, afterwards Louis XI., marched to the defence of Zurich, which had revolted against the confederacy. They arrived at Basle in August, 1444. Fifteen hundred Swiss, from the cantons of Berne, Lucerne, Soleure and Basle, were dispatched to meet them. They found several thousand of the enemy in advance. These they attacked, repulsed, and pursued to the river Birs, and then, dashing into the stream after the flying enemy, and in face of a heavy cannonade, they actually assaulted the whole army of France in their camp on the opposite shore. The daring corps were soon divided, but they fought like lions. Five hundred were in an open meadow, exposed on all sides to the enemy; the remaining nine hundred threw themselves behind a garden wall. These last repulsed the enemy there several times, and made two attacks in their turn. Hundreds and thousands of the Armagnacs fell—man by man the brave Swiss were struck down. The battle lasted ten hours before the whole corps of Swiss had fallen, for then only could the enemy pause. Fourteen hundred and ninety of the confederates were numbered with the dead, ten men only escaping by flight. Thousands upon thousands of the French army lay piled about the dead Swiss. This defeat, if such a name be fitted to the battle of St. Jacques, produced all the results of a victory: the siege of Basle was abandoned, a peace was speedily concluded, and it was in consequence of this brilliant action that Louis XI., when he ascended his father's throne, concluded with the Swiss that close alliance which has lasted nearly to the present times.
It was in the fifteenth century also that Charles of Burgundy attacked the confederates with all the forces of one of the richest and most powerful princes of the age. On the third of March, 1476, twenty thousand Swiss marched from Neufchatel to meet the army of Burgundy near Granson, a force which, with its followers, numbered one hundred thousand strong. The battle began in the morning, and at night Charles the Bold was flying through the passes of the Jura, with five companions, his brilliant army dispersed to the four winds of heaven, his choicest treasures in the hands of the frugal Swiss. In the month of June of the same year Charles again appeared in Switzerland, at the head of an army still larger than that he had commanded at Granson. On the twenty-second of June he lay before the little town of Morat, which he had assaulted in vain. The Swiss, with thirty-four thousand men, advanced to meet him, and with their usual ardor rushed upon the whole Burgundian force. In a few hours they had again routed an invading army nearly four times their own numbers. Charles fled from the field, with a small escort, leaving fifteen thousand of his army dead on the battle ground, while thousands more were drowned in the adjoining lake.