TIIE GERMAN OPERA.
Robert the Devil was produced at Drury Lane last night. We have had first an English version of this opera, then the original, and now a German one : but it is a work which in no shape will ever become po- pular in this country. It has admirers in Germany, but to the Parisians it was addressed, and in Paris alone will it excite any enthusiasm. MEYERBEER, with every early promise of excellence, has been seduced from the road to permanent fame, by the love of transient popularity. Captivated by Italian brilliancy, he renounced the school in which his early powers were nurtured, and was content to follow in the track of ROSSINI, until the French opera, with its dancing appendages, claimed and received his allegiance. He has thus sunk to the level of a copyist, when he might have fairly aspired to take his stand among the original writers of his own country. Many bright and beautiful thoughts occur in all his operas, and many evidences, also, of his early training ; but they are so mingled and hidden among baser and borrowed materials, that we wonder how they got there. "It is a thousand pities," said WEBER, " that Meyerbeer should have been seduced into the wrong path ; for he has a powerful and profound German genius, which, when we studied together under Vogler, tasked my efforts to their utmost stretch to keep pace with him." That WEBER was right in his opinion and advice to his fellow-pupil to adhere to his own school, is now ap- parent. The fame of WEBER'S operas is permanent and European—that of MEYERBEER'S most celebrated one, 11 Crociato, is past even in those countries where it was once most admired.
In some important respects the German version of Robert the Devil has been the most satisfactory representation of it in London. There was more uniformity of power and similarity of style among the singers than in the semi-French representation of it at the King's Theatre,— although the female characters were not so well sustained. The treble songs are designed for French singers ; and the sky-rocket passages in which Donus Guns and CINTI find the most fitting employment of their talents, were imperfectly executed by Madame SCHODEL; whose perform- ance in other respects was very satisfactory. TICHATSCHEK personated Robert with spirit and effect, and sang with his usual excellence : but STAUDIGL made Bertram the hero of the piece. His singing was mag- nificent, and may fairly rank with the finest displays of vocal talent ap- plied to dramatic performance that we ever witnessed. The opera was, very properly, curtailed—for five not very short acts of music is rather too much of a good thing. The house was well filled.
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