FRENCH PLAYS AT THE HAYMARKET.
THESE performances seem to have attracted less attention this year than usual; and we, who are very fond of them in general, made only our first visit for the season on Wednesday, when LAPORTE had his benefit. The house was so poorly filled, that we are afraid M. L APORTE, like his countryman whom we have men- tioned above, would be disposed to ask where was his bentYice 7 The coil's dramatique consisted of much the same persons as for- merly, and there was one powerful attraction in Madame ALBERT: but the dirty and dingy house, the slovenly stage management, and the disregard of propriety of costume (to which the French ac- tors arc usually attentive), indicated no great anxiety to please an audience that could not certainly be called brilliant or fashion- able, and which the actors did not seem to think worth a great deal of consideration. The performance, which the bills said was to commence at a quarter past seven, did not begin till past eight; and during the interval, films were constantly peeping out from behind the curtain, to see how the house was filling. The people present did not relish the manifest injustice of paying such defer- ence, at their expense, to those who did not think it worth while to conic in good time as they had done ; and when the curtain rose at last, it was amidst a storm of hisses. This kind of greeting oc- curred three or four times during the evening, in consequence of the insufferable delays between the acts of the pieces. On one of these occasions, after the impatience of the pit had become ungo- vernable; the orchestra began to exorcise the evil spirit by music, and actually got through nearly the whole of the overture to Il Barbiere. The costumes were ridiculously absurd and incon- gruous. In MOLIERE'S Dt:pit Amoureux, one of the lovers was attired in a fashionable military undress of the present day, while his rival was in a full-dress suit of a century ago; and LAPORTE himself, in the valet, was equipped exactly like the merry-andrew of a puppet-show. All these divag-remens tended to injure the effect of some ad- mirable acting and singing. Madame ALBERT is a very pretty woman, and an excellent actress.. Though not equal tOLEONTINE FAY, she is not far behind that great performer in the power of ex- pressinor' violent emotion. Her husband is an actor of no mean merit. The rest of the performers were our old acquaintances ST. ANGE, PELISSIE, GAISIARD, &C. Madame CINTI DAMOREAU ap- peared in a little part that merely served to introduce some airs, which she sung (accompanying them on the pianoforte) with a graceful ease and brilliancy of execution not to be surpassed even by SONTAG. In short, the evening was made up of many excel- lent things, forming, by bad management, a most unsatisfactory tout ensemble.
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