Robert le Diable, the opera in which Jenny Lind made
her final exit in the midst of such a tumult of excitement, was performed two nights after- wards at Covent Garden. It was presented with a splendour and complete- ness not surpassed in its most palmy days at the Academie Royale; and the orchestral and choral music was very finely performed. But the en- tertainment was more satisfactory to the eye and the ear than to the in- tellect. No performer coming immediately after Jenny Lind could hope for success in Alice; and Madame Dorus Gras, though she showed the qualities of an excellent artist, failed to reach the ideal beauty of the cha- racter which the audience had been taught to expect. She performed the part on very short notice, in consequence of the sudden indisposition of Miss Hayes, who was prepared to appear in it. When the opera was re- peated on Tuesday, Madame Dorus Gras again performed Alice; and Miss Hayes complained, by a letter to the newspapers, that she was aggrieved in being deprived of a character which she had been prevented from per- forming only by a temporary indisposition. Salvi was respectable, and no more, in the part of Robert: it ought to have been performed by Mario, who has sustained it successfully on the Parisian stage. Marini's Bertram was coarse both in conception and execution. On the first evening the performance was preposterously long, lasting till past one °Week of the Sunday morning; but it was a good deal shortened on Tuesday.
The usual fine performance of Don Giovanni at this house took place on Thursday. Peraiani reappeared in her charming part of Zerlina,—the first of six final performances; after which she too bias adieu to the stage.
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