Mademoiselle Wagner has appeared at Her Majesty's Theatre in a
second diameter—Lucre:an Borgia—which she performed for the first time on Saturday last, and repeated on Tuesday. It has not strength- ened the impression made by her previous performance of Romeo, which, indeed, it resembles both in its merits and its detects. In both, the strong point is her acting, the weak point her singing. But evenher acting, though often intelligent, energetic, and powerful, is liable to the objection that it smells too much of the lamp. Acting cannot be too artistic, but it may be too artificial. Whatever it really is, it ought to have the semblance at least of spontaneity—it ought to seem the warm- effusion of feeling, and not the cold result of study and preparation. In that highest effort of supreme art Wagner falls short; she fails to excite the audience strongly, because she fails to deceive them into the sympa- thetic belief that she herself is strongly excited. And this defect is the more palpable in her second character because it presents a contrast to the fire and passion of Grisi. As to her singing in this opera, it is suf- ficient to observe that the music is not only of a school different from her own, but that it is written for a different description of voice, laying her under the necessity of making alterations which are always in- jurious. She is about to appear immediately, we understand, in a third Italian part—Taneredi—which seems better suited to her vocal powers than Lucrezia ; but her character as a singer cannot be fully tested till she has been heard in some of the master-works of her own national stage.
Mr. Charles Braham, who made his debut as Gennaro, has a fine tenor voice and he sang agreeably ; but he was null as an actor. Madame .Amadei, in Orsini, was a great falling-off from Brambilla, from Alboni, and even from Didiee.
The Piccolomini furore goes on crescendo. For the last performance of the Traviafa, on Thursday, almost every box and every stall were dis- posed of days before, and not a place to be had on any terms.
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