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by the force of feeling and conception, intensify some poor song, so as to give it the semblance of emotion (and who has not heard this, that is familiar with modern Italian opera?) so the admirable feeling of the conductor in question, for the situation, enabled him to carry the sympathies of his orchestra with him: and, it may be said without absurdity, to make it sing-with an impassioned and melancholy fitfulness-with a tear in every string, a sigh of yearning in every note breathed-so as to produce an effect inconceivable to those who have not heard it.—I recollect nothing so perfect by way of concerted instrumental expression-save one in the antipodes of the world of music-a certain performance of the Funeral March in Beethoven's Eroica Symphony, under Herr Hiller's direction, heard a year or two later at the Whitsuntide Musical Festival at Cologne.

Such a conductor could almost carry off the inferiority of his singers: and the prima donna, Signora Pozzi, though utterly insignificant, was harmless -restrained by her excellent ruler from enacting

any

violences. The other members of the company were beneath mediocrity. An opera by Signor Pedrotti (who is considered one of the most promising masters of young Italy,) "Tutti in Maschera❞—given in a new little theatre which just then had been opened in the thickly-peopled suburb

"L'ULTIMO GIORNO DI SULI." 289

of San Pier d'Arena, beyond the lighthouse had been prepared by the same careful and competent hand,* -and thus stood a better chance of success than it could have got anywhere else.-More, of course, nothing was to be expected from the singers :—the music struck me at the time as containing something more like honest composition than we have been used of late to find in Italy: especially a finale in which a couple of different subjects are ingeniously wrought together.

That same year I heard a posthumous opera by one Signor Ferrari, "L'Ultimo Giorno di Suli," a violent piece of rant, violently ranted through in the handsome Canobbiana Theatre at Milan, by singers, whom to avoid giving pain I will not name:—and "Crispinoé Comare," a feeble work by one of the Riccis, at a minor theatre in the Lombard capital. It was given a few weeks later in

* I cannot resist reminding the reader of what, though not utterly unknown in London, is still, as yet, too little known here the choice and expressive beauty of Signor Mariani's songs.-Though something of the bright and artless fancy of the elder Italian melodists be wanting to them-though in the more ambitious among them, there may be too obvious a strain after the vocal effects of Signor Verdi, and the instrumental accompaniments in which M. Meyerbeer delights, the best of them have a beauty and a charm, which place them by the side of, and in point of solidity and science above, the Tuscan songs of Gordigiani,-that Schubert of Italy.

VOL. II.

U

290

CARIGNANO THEATRE.

London, by a fourth-rate company, brought hither with the mistaken notion of establishing the novelties and the singers of modern Italian opera buffa. The insipidity of the music was only equalled by the badness of the performers: one alone of whom stood out, as not merely endurable, but showing a certain promise in the guise of ready humorous exaggeration, which he has since, in some measure, followed out.- This was Signor Ciampi, who has still, happily, time in abundance before him to ripen into a clever and original buffo singer: and who, happily for his good chances, has exchanged Italy for England.

My last Italian experience of 1857 was gathered in the splendid Carignano Theatre at Turin, then gorgeous, and looking as if lined from vaulted roof to pit with cloth of gold. There I heard Signor Verdi's "Aroldo," an altered, and, it was said, an improved, version of his "Stifellio;" on a story not clear to understand, save that it was truculent and mysterious in no common degree: that there are in it tyrants, assassins, I think—I am sure a raving prima donna-and abundance of church music behind the scenes.-I find in my notes, too, mention of an agreeably consistent overture to this violent story, in the form of a Galoppe, and of the utterly disproportionate predominance of the brazen instruments.-" Aroldo," then, I think

must take its place among its writer's weaker works (ridiculous though the epithet seems, after the foregoing description.) The fury of the heroine Madame Gariboldi-Bassi-and of the lover, Signor Negrini-was not less whimsically at variance with the indifference of the Piedmontese public. The work, however, for aught I know, may since have righted itself: for I have never heard an opera more furiously hissed than was "Viscardello" (the Papal version of "Rigoletto") at Rome, in the year 1851: although that unequal work is now everywhere. So, also, "La Traviata" failed on the night of its birth.

In truth, the impression which must be more and more forced on everyone the deeper that examination goes, amounts to this—that Italian connoisseurship is defunct; that the necessity for excitement, which in Music has been growing up for the past thirty years with the rapidity of the faëry bean stalk, has brought the public into that state in which good and bad have no longer a meaning or a distinction. But enough of a long, and not a very cheerful, postscript.

THE YEAR 1858.

HER MAJESTY'S THEATRE.

PRINCIPAL OPERAS.

"La Zingara."*-Balfe. "Don Pasquale."-Donizetti. "Les Huguenots."— Meyerbeer.

Giovanni."

"Le Nozze,"

"Don

Mozart. "La Serva Padrona."

Paisiello. "Il Trovatore," "Nabucco,' ," "Luisa Miller,"*.

Verdi.

Principal Dancers.

Mdes. Alboni. Piccolomini. Sannier.* Tietjens.* Ortolani. - MM. Giuglini. Belletti. Vialetti. Rossi. Belart. Aldighieri. Beneventano. Castelli.*

ROYAL ITALIAN OPERA.

PRINCIPAL OPERAS.

"Fra Diavolo."—Auber. "Norma."-Bellini. "Lucrezia.” -Donizetti.

66

"Martha,"*-Flotow. Zampa.”—Herold. "Les Huguenots,"-Meyerbeer. "Don Giovanni,”— Mozart. "La Traviata," "Il Trovatore.”—Verdi.

Principal Singers.

Mdes. Grisi. Bosio. Parepa. Nantier-Didiée. Marai.— MM. Mario. Tamberlik. Gardoni.

Neri-Baraldi. Gra

ziani. Ronconi. Tagliafico. Polonini. Zelger.

DRURY LANE.

"La

PRINCIPAL OPERAS.

Sonnambula."-Bellini. "Lucrezia."-Donizetti.

"Don Juan."—Mozart. "Il Barbiére,"-Rossini. "I Trovatore," "Rigoletto."-Verdi.

Principal Singers.

Mdes. Fumagalli.* Gassier. Salvini-Donatelli.* Viardot. Laura Baxter.* Vaneri.* Persiani. Rudersdorff.—MM. C. Braham. Naudin.* Badiali.*