14 FEBRUARY 1829, Page 8

THE ITALIAN OPERA,

La Donna del Logo is not an opera that we admire, and we went to hear it. «ritliout any expectation of pleasure ; but. PISARONI and DoereeLLI S0011 turned our indifference to interest and gratification. The latter has, without any exception, the finest tenor voice we re- member to have heard,—full and flexible ; and his style seems well suited to his natural endowments. There is the energy of conscious strength in it, not wanting the government of taste.

PISARONI is a wonder. Her ugliness is of the most eminent and distinguished kind, but the beauties of her art triumph over it ; and as we listen to her voice, we learn even to look at her with plea- sure,—a pleasure resulting from the contemplation of talent con- quering the unkindness of Nature. If PASTA was the SIDDONS of the lyric stage, PISARONI is the KEAN. She has to surmount a host of outward disadvantages by the force of the merit that is within : and she will accomplish the task, or we are greatly mis- taken,—though our public has so much more eye than ear, and is mightily addicted to looking at the merits of. singers. There is, however, such beauty in music, that it is surely a wantonness of luxury to require its association with personal loveliness ; it is in- deed gilding refined gold, and adding perfume to the violet. If the public had a genuine and healthy taste for the art they professed to love, they would regard professors chiefly with relation to their excellence in it. Eyes and eyebrows, mouth and teeth, nay foot and ankle, would not of necessity enter into the popularity of a vocalist. It were better that the stage picture were handsome than ugly ; but the beauty should be hailed as a lucky accident, and not accounted an essential. Shall we prefer jays, with their screaming voices, to nightingales with dull plumage ? Loveliness, voice, and skill, sometimes concur, as in the instance of that bird of paradise, Madame RONZI DI BEGNIS, who united in herself every form of excellence—delightful as a singer, and as an actress an O'Neie or a .JORDAN, as the serious or the comic happened to be the part allotted. Such cases are rarities ; and all the natural en- dowments and talents of the plain are left uncultivated, because it is known that the public make comeliness an ingredient in their musical judgments. Now as there are in the world more women without beauty than with it,—and the probability is that the greater amount of musical capacity is to be found in the greater number,—our prejudices obviously betray us into very bad economy. We are forbidding the growth of the corn because the land does not bear roses. The example of PISARONI—and as it is an extreme one, so it is the more serviceable—may cure us of this bad habit of judgment ; and the day of St. Cecilia may arrive, when the beauty of a vocalist may be as little thought of as the beauty of Mr. BROUGHAM, and the artist be considered only with relation to the art. The voice of PISARONI is a contralto, not without some touch of harshness. If we were ignorant of the person from whom it proceeded, we should doubt whether it were masculine, after having decided that it was not feminine. Her manage- ment of this voice of doubtful gender is excellent. Awkward as PISARONI is in person, her acting nevertheless is animated by an intelligence which redeems it from the ungainly, and renders it almost interesting. When making this observation, it must not be denied that we probably saw her to peculiar advantage in the part of Malcolm Grceme, as she presents that hard-favoured visage which would seem proper to an inhabitant of the High- lands. There is a topical and therefore dramatic fitness in .her countenance in this character. But in whatever else she appears in, her personal disadvantages should be flung into the scale of her merits, for in conquering the vulgar effect of them she has given the strongest manifestation of her powers. Of MONTICELLI we have little to say. She is, as the Italian witness phrased it, " more good than bad ;" and hears just so much resemblance to RONZI DI BEGNIS as renders the advertised compa- rison especially impolitic. The likeness is about that between a bead and a pearl. There is, however, a pleasing propriety about all she does.

The Ballet, we rejoice to say, is greatly improved this vear. The stage is well tilled with gracefully-moving figures; and the scenery, dresses, and decorations, are not those with which we have been familiar for the last hundred years. Mademoiselle PAULINE LERONS' pantomime, in the very pretty ballet of La Somnambule, is particularly excellent ; and, we think, superior to MISS KELLY'S in a similar part. The French, in these trifles, have much nature in their art, while we have much art in our nature.

The house may have been cleaned, but is not embellished. It looks as shabby as usual. The pit is improved in several respects. It is raised, and the entrance is one of descent from the centre of the line of the pit tier of boxes. The passage, is, however, too narrow; and the Lord Chamberlain should insist on such an opening as would offer a chance of escape in the event of an alarm of fire. At present the audience has to thread the eye of a needle. Fop's Alley appears to us to have been narrowed ; and we miss'the ragged mat, foul with the dust and dirt of a hundred generations of beaux. The pit benches are new-covered, and do not break down with one ; which, from the opposite custom in former times, we thought odd. We know not whether they have carried this im- provement into the boxes ; but we remember last year having sat in one with a friend, and done nothing but. tumble through the chair the whole evening. Ours—originally rush-bottomed, as we argued from certain indications, rather than evidence—was literally not worth a rush ; and our friend's had the accommodating quality of folding up like a chapeau bras on the slightest provocation. The stalls will not quite warrant rebellion ; but the passage between them and the public seats is ill-contrived, as the loungers therein intercept the view of the sitters in the first two rows be- hind them. The floor should in this place have been sunk a couple of feet. After the dismissal of the Catholic question, Mr O'CONNELL will take in hand the question of Exclusion in the Opera pit, and advocate the admission of the suffering half-guinea visitors to equal rights.

The orchestra, notwithstanding all that has been said and written, and the immorality of M. BOCHSA, is fair enough;, and we saw with pleasure SPAGNOLETTI reinstalled in his old place of leader.

Altogether, it strikes us that there is promise of a considerable improvement in the administration of operatic affairs.