By this year's list of operas it will be seen that the ascendancy of Donizetti's music was on the increase. It was the first year in England of his “Lucrezia Borgia,” since so associated with the names of Madame Grisi and Signor Mario. The only other opera, unknown, though not precisely new, which was presented, was Signor Rossini's “Guillaume Tell” “Lucrezia” took hold of London from the first moment—though it is not Donizetti's best work. Signor Rossini's masterpiece has never done so, till this year of writing, (1861).

Such fact in no respect determines the value of the music accepted or rejected—merely figuring as one item, in a long list of similar cases. Dear as is Mozart's “Zauberflöte” to all musicians and lovers of melody, on the stage that opera has been only tolerated.—The reason, in both cases, is the same—the stupidity of the story.—It would appear, as I have remarked, as if the greatest of Italians had taken a despotic pride in choosing a subject, without reference to dramatic treatment, and without a leading female interest, always of the first importance to Opera, be the part long or brief.

The music, however, will grow, so long as Music lives and lasts. Year by year will be more and more seen the rare and characteristic beauty royally showered over the work, from its earliest to its latest note. In the long opening act—with no incident whatsoever till the finale is reached, and that incident (the flight of a culprit) one belonging to mechanist rather than to actor—the freshness and charm, and Swiss character of the music, sustain the opera—though such heroine as it possesses has not till then appeared.

The season of 1848 made it obvious that Mademoiselle Lind was an artist who exhausted as much as she assisted any theatre at which she sang.—Her own prestige was still great; but it became evident that she was not easily to be worked as a member of a company: that her repertory was very limited—and one in which, seemingly, she sought for undivided predominance. The additions to her list of characters this year were in “L'Elisir,” “Lucia,” and “I Puritani.” Seeing that in the second opera a strong tenor, as having “the last word,” must efface the effect of the soprano—there was only a graceful tenor to Mademoiselle Land's Lucia—and the opera pleased, as though it had been a pleasure taken by Lady Grace, “soberly”—in spite of a great and new excellence introduced into it by the heroine—already mentioned—her preparation for the catastrophe of The Bride's madness.

The misfortune to a theatre of a success so preternaturally forced as hers, is to destroy the chances of any who aspire to make a position beside the idol.—The two new ladies brought here to sing when she could not, were heard by the public with the most royal indifference; which, on grounds totally opposite, neither merited.—The first was a young singer then, of high promise; this was Mademoiselle Cruvelli;—the second was a lady who (if no longer in the bloom of her talent) had gained, deservedly, a universal Italian reputation,—this was Madame Tadolini.

”Massaniello” was, at last, creditably performed in London, with Signor Mario for its hero (singing and looking the Neapolitan fisherman delightfully)—for its Fenella, Mdlle. Leroux, and for its other two principal characters, Madame Dorus-Gras and M. Massol,—another proof how, year by year, our foreign musical theatres have had more and more to draw on other lands than Italy for their singers.—Madame Dorus-Gras, though never able to lay by her nationality so as to group well with her playfellows—and though deficient in that last elegance, which distinguished Madame Cinti and Madame Sontag—was, nevertheless, an excellent artist, with a combined firmness and volubility of execution which have not been exceeded, and were especially welcome in French music, heard in a concert-room. On the stage she pleased less.—Her appearance was not significant. She was lifeless as an actress. She never mastered Italian—having never mastered French, owing to her Low-Country extraction. For all this, her Alice in “Robert” was excellent. She sung the opening song, “Va dit elle” and the semi-Scottish romance, “Quand j'ai quittai la Normandie” more thoroughly in the metallic, exact style which M. Meyerbeer's music demands, than any other singer whom I have heard attempt the part.—M. Massol, an effective baritone, less thoroughly trained than the lady, was found useful, but not interesting.

We had a Greek lady, too—Mdlle. Angri—in the place of Mdlle. Alboni,—one to whose talent the epithet of eccentric must be applied. Her voice, a contralto, was unique in its quality,—even, easy, hollow, without lusciousness—a little hoarse, without much expression—but it was a voice that told.

Her Majesty's Theatre re-opened with every outward sign of prosperity. The house was crammed nightly—to all appearance the audience was delighted with the singers, good, bad, and indifferent; and one artist was brought forward, to reproduce the golden days of Mademoiselle Lind; and who absolutely did, for a short time, fascinate the foolish part of our opera public—into a belief that in her arrival a new revelation.

There had been the usual trumpets blown before-hand; with some variation in the tunes.—After tales of Swedish parson age-houses—after the coronetted book handed to “the Countess” to sing from—after the volume published in proof that Madame Sontag's return was an interposition of a special Providence, on behalf of a temple of Art fit object for such peculiar care—after the fac-simile of Madame Pasta promised in the daughter of her adoption and the inheritress of her secrets—invention could hardly have been easy; seeing, too, that it had already been tried in half a score of less prosperous forms. There had been the Viennese children, rescued, it was said, from the clutch of the Jesuits, in whose spiritual welfare virtuous sovereigns had been interested.—There had been a negro woman, with some of the inborn musical skill belonging to her race, paraded with the insulting title of The Black Malibran.

As regarded music, the Italian season of 1843 was dry and unsatisfactory.—The Opera-houses had come to an absolute dependance on Donizetti for novelties—the star of Signor Verdi not yet having risen on this side of the Alps. His name had reached England by the agency of an English woman—Mrs. Alfred Shaw—who had made her first appearance on the stage, in Italy, in his “Oberto” (I think his first opera), and whose letters home spoke of the maestro as a composer of promise; but, for the hour, there was no one to be heard, excepting Donizetti. He was then near the end of his creations—since, shortly after “Don Pasquale” was produced, his mind gave way (as has been told), and his life of incessant brain and fancy, and bodily indulgence, came to its painful solution in imbecility, and, not long afterwards, in death.

That “Linda” is a work which has not had its fair share of success among Donizetti's works, I feel, so often as the long list of them comes before me. It was written with a careful solidity, not tried for in many of the operas slightly flung off by him. The story, founded on a sentimental French drama, “La Grace de Dieu” (which Madame Albert used to act in London so pathetically), is balanced betwixt what is lachrymose and what is disagreeable, and fails to provide that direct appeal to the sympathies which another sentimental opera story, kindred to it in quality, (that of “La Sonnambula”), furnishes.

This was a season of splendid performances, memorable for many things. Year by year, the taste for grand Opera spread and increased in England. Year by year, the execution became finer and finer.

“Der Freischütz” in its Italian dress, and with recitatives excellently adjusted by Signor Costa, was relished by others more than by myself. German music and Southern words do not agree; nor has the experiment of translation ever succeeded, whether the work be one of Spohr's,—or “Fidelio,”—or this most German of German operas, a goblin tale. The terrors of the Wolf's Glen lose half their terror, when “done into Italian.” Neither is recitative introduced in place of spoken dialogue often happy. A certain lightness and proportion are sacrificed, without any compensation in the form of solidity or grandeur being added. I have found this in M. Auber's “Fra Diavolo”—in M. Meyerbeer's “L'Etoile:”—in every other work thus stiffened—but in no case so heavily as in the case of the ultra- German popular legend. A like essay was made at Paris, with the incomprehensible recitatives of M. Berlioz;—but there, the result was virtually the same as here.—At Covent Garden, however, “II Franco Arciero” enjoyed one advantage, in not being sung by Italian artists, Mdlle. Vera excepted.—The tenor, Signor Maralti, was Belgian.—The Caspar of Herr Formes has been always one of his favourite characters—the type of all he could do best in Opera, and with less left undone than in other parts.

This was a strange year:—in more than one respect important to the future of foreign Opera in England, however ruinous to the manager who adventured an amount of experiment so large as is shown in its table of contents. Not one in the list of Italian operas, old or modern, contented the public.—“L'Esule di Roma” made a certain mark in favour of Donizetti, because of a terzetto, which was found new; but the other novelties from the south fell dead in the hour of their appearance.—Spontini's grand French opera, “La Vestale,” has never been suffered to exist in England, never having been here prepared with care enough to harmonize the barrenness of certain portions of the composer's setting of M. Jouy's drama with the musical grandeur of his strong scenes.

No Italian prima donna of first-class appeared. Giuditta Grisi failed to enchant her public: a singer, however meritorious, with a harsh, limited voice, though with real dramatic intentions. Mde. Rosa Mariani, a contralto, who worked out her career on some five notes with great skill and small natural capability, came and went, and made no sign.

The leading woman of the Italian season, at its commencement, was a French lady, Madame de Meric; and later, the delicious artist born, Mademoiselle Cinthie Montalant, who sang in Italian opera as Mademoiselle Cinti, afterwards as Madame Cinti-Damoreau.

The Philharmonic Society of London was founded in the year 1813. It was projected by a small number of eminent professional musicians, with the view of promoting the cultivation of instrumental–and especially orchestral–music, which, in this country, had not received due attention, and was not in a condition corresponding to the generally advanced state of the Musical Art. The immortal symphonies of Haydn (some of them composed and first performed in London), those of Mozart, several of those of Beethoven, and a large body of the Quartets and other concerted instrumental music of the same great masters, had long been given to the world; but they were known to and appreciated only by musicians and amateurs (then a narrow circle), while they remained nearly a sealed book to the public, who were almost destitute of the means of hearing and acquiring a taste for them. Twenty years before, there was a promise of progress, when Haydn, brought expressly two several times from Vienna for that purpose, composed his twelve “Grand Symphonies” for Salomon's Concerts, and when they were performed in Hanover Square to applauding audiences. But the impulse to public taste given by that spirited impresario was not followed up, and Haydn's symphonies were heard no longer.

At the period when the Philharmonic Society was projected, there was not in London any orchestra formed for, and capable of, the performance of what is properly called orchestral music; – music, that is, intended to produce its effect wholly by the combination of instruments, independently of any connection with the voice.

What a change has passed over the foreign musical drama in England since the foregoing was the programme of London's Italian Opera season!—The orchestra in 1830 was, compared with what it is now, meagre and ill-disciplined;—the chorus was an ear-torment rather than an ear-pleasure;—the scenery and appointments were shabby to penury;—but “Guillaume Tell,” (desecrated as “Massaniello” had been, into ballet form), was new.—It was the year when Signor Rossini's formidable Italian rival (as the public has since learned to think) first was heard in England. It was the year of the first appearances here of Lablache, and of Mademoiselle Taglioni.—Each of the three events noted marks an epoch.

Though the predominance of the composer of “Il Barbiére” had as yet given way in no respect, there were other modern Italian composers whose works were worth trying. Signor Mercadante was little known; but the clever and level music of his early operas, in spite of their containing effective airs and concerted pieces, is too utterly devoid of freshness or individuality for them to have stood a chance of taking a permanent root here, so long as Signor Rossini was in the ascendancy.—With the temporary mitigation of that master's popularity they were sure to perish for ever, since their life amounted to his forms, reproduced second-hand.—It is not so with “Il Pirata.” Weak as that opera is (only containing a couple of tenor airs which are sung now), an individuality exists in Bellini's music. Whenever individuality is not mere eccentricity there is always interest in it—there is always a chance of that interest becoming a charm.

During the winter of 1836–7, an attempt had been made at the Lyceum Theatre to establish a Comic Opera. To this we owed the introduction in this country of Donizetti's “LElisir;”—an effort to make England like Signor Ricci's “Scaramuccia,” and Signor Coppola's “Nina Pazza,”—also the revival, after twenty years, of Mozart's “Le Nozze.” The speculation, though resumed in the early winter of 1837–8, was understood not to have been successful. The new Italian compositions were not relished.

Nor was this disregard unjust. The prettiness of Signor Ricci's comic music could not conceal its writer's want of style and science. The story he set is puerile—in the worn-out Italian taste; and, so far as I know, his name has already died away in Italy, except in those third-rate theatres, to listen to music in which gives a shock to every sense; where the singers are bad, the buffoonery is violent, and the audiences (to be lenient) want washing. The only one time when I was ever seduced into sleep at a theatre, was over an Opera of Ricci's at Florence :—and not because the Opera was poor; but because the vocalists were execrable, and the atmosphere of garlic and from crowding humanity amounted to a smell strong enough, as the Irishman said, “to hang one's hat on.”

Signor Coppola's “Nina” stood a still poorer chance with us. Though, for a while, it displaced the better “Ninas” of Paisiello and Dalayrac, and was even translated for the Opera Comique of Paris—there to bring out Madame Eugenie Garcia—even the simple prettiness of the story, and the scope afforded the actress, could not save music so utterly stale.

In the year 1835—the return of Lablache to Paris and London, completed that quartett of accomplished singers and artists, which for many following years was to present performances unprecedented in their evenness and finished concord.—The admirable union thus made up was improved to its utmost by the Parisian managers—always more courageous in catering for novelty than our London ones have been.—It was by them that Donizetti's “Marino Faliero,” and Bellini's “I Puritani” were commissioned from their composers—Signor Rossini having retired into the obstinate silence which no temptation could induce him to break.

The production of these two new operas, then, in London, was the event of the season. On such occasions there is always a success and a failure.—The public will not endure two favourites. In spite of the grandeur of Lablache as the Doge of Venice,—in spite of the beauty of the duett of the two basses in the first act of “Marino,”—in spite of the second act containing a beautiful moonlight scene with a barcarolle, sung to perfection by Ivanoff, and one of Rubini's most incomparable and superb vocal displays,—“Marino Faliero” languished—in part from the want of interest in the female character—a fault fatal to an opera's popularity.—On the other hand, from first to last note, “I Puritani” was found enchanting. The picture of Grisi, leaning against Lablache to listen, in the second scene—the honeyed elegance of Rubini's song of entrance—the bridal polacca in the first act—in the second, the mad scene, and the duett between the two basses (a feebler repetition of effects already produced in “Norma,”)—entranced “the town.”

In 1840 the Opera management, which for half-a-dozen years had gone on from strength to strength, began to change its plans, and to show symptoms of uneasiness, decomposition, and pretext. Since the day when Signor Costa took up the baton, its orchestra had steadily improved under his discipline, intelligence, and resolution to be contented with nothing short of the best. Then, the excellent company of singers, who moved from Paris to London, with the rare advantage of perfect mutual understanding one with the other, had shown in their performances an equality and finish unattainable under any other circumstances than those of habitual intercourse. It is true, that new compositions did not come forward, as in the time when Signor Rossini was pouring out his treasures, no less fluently than, in his world, Walter Scott had done. But our public was well satisfied; and, for once in its life, knew that it was content, and asked for no immediate change.

The spell of ruin, in the shape of litigation, complicated enough to bewilder the most cunning Chancery (or Chicanery) barrister, had hung, for years on years, over the Haymarket Opera-House. Season after season had the world been wearied by reports of this or the other trial in which the property figured, as yet one more of those cases displayed by our admirable modern novelist in his “Bleak House.”—It would seem to be an indispensable ingredient in operatic speculation, that it should be entered on without money, without foresight, without special knowledge, by way of sheet-anchor.—To meet the exigencies of law and debt, prices of admission were raised ; the season (formerly dependant on subscription) was shortened;—and, what was least supportable, an attempt was made to replace the good artists by others less good.

There is one only way in which a book like the following can be written, with any chance of its possessing some value.—This is by aid of faithfulness to recollection, and sincerity in offering opinion. In so much as either romance or suppression enter into the record, its worth is impaired.

Personality there must be—and such bias as is decided by individuality. If a judgment beyond appeal can be formed by human creature on any question—it is, surely, not on a question of Art.—In that imaginative world and its enjoyments, human sympathies will have their share, let Reason be ever so conscientious.—Then there is association; That which we have heard during those good moments (of which Life contains many for all who will have them)—That which we have been obliged to hear, when the heart has been sad and the attention unwilling,—can, in neither case, be altogether truthfully presented.—I have tried my utmost to be a fair witness.—If there be more of myself in these pages than under other circumstances would be graceful or self-respecting, such egotism has been allowed, for the express purpose of enabling those who may read,—to agree or to differ with me in proportion as they approve my predilections, or dissent from my prejudices.

It is impossible to execute a task like mine without speaking of artists still living, as well as of those who have vanished from every scene.

From this time forth—during some years—there were two Opera-houses. The secession of many artists, and of a large part of the orchestra and chorus, and that in the wake of their conductor, left Her Majesty's Theatre very bare.—Possibly it was an inevitable device, that, as provision for expected performances, there should be a provision of promises,—singular to recollect, now that their utterly unsubstantial basis is known. It was announced that M. Meyerbeer was to bring his “Camp de Silesie” to London—that opera which he has never allowed to travel beyond the barriers of Berlin,—aware, it may be fancied, of its weakness.—It was undertaken that Mendelssohn should, in the same season, produce his opera of “The Tempest.”—There was, thirdly, to be a new opera by Signor Verdi.

Of these three promises, the last alone was performed. It may be doubted whether anything beyond the merest preliminary negotiations had been entered into with the two great German masters. The subject of Shakespeare's delicious faëry dream had always attracted Mendelssohn. So long, ere this time, as the date of his residence in Dusseldorf, he had been in consultation with Herr Immermann on the best form of arranging Shakspeare's “Tempest” for music. I believe, that even there may have been one or two pieces sketched, if not composed by him, for the drama which never could come to pass.—But, in the autumn of this year in question, 1847, during the two memorable days I spent with him at Interlacken, a few weeks before his decease, he spoke with earnest displeasure at the unwarrantable manner in which his name had been traded on by the management of a particular theatre.