Otatrto nut Zitoir.
Though the vocal company at Drury Lane is so strong that Mr. Bunn has been able to bring out a grand opera and a comic opera, both of a high
class, with two entirely different sets of performers, yet he has been 111 as much trouble within the last two weeks—there have been as many disappointments and consequent storms in the house, as if his troupe had ,
been formed upon the smallest possible scale. The old theatrical nuisance "sudden indisposition" has been the cause of all this turmoil. On Thum--
day last week the operatic season was to have commenced with Fre Diavolo ; but Mrs. Sims Reeves was "suddenly taken ill," when it was too late to give the public any notice of this lamentable fact. The manager consequently had to get up a makeshift entertainment, which the audience would not accept till they had poured the vials of their . wrath on his devoted head. On the following night, Robert the Devil was produced with fair success • and all was right. On Saturday, Fra Diavolo was performed, Mr. andMrs. Reeves being perfectly well ; and all was right again. The second performance of Robert the Devil, on Monday, was prevented by the indisposition (but not the sudden in- disposition) of Mr. Drayton, who, during his performance of Bertram an
the Friday, was labouring under a painful malady, so much aggravated by his efforts to prevent the public from being disappointed, that a serious
surgical operation became necessary next day. Of course the public had due notice of the change of performances and its cause. On Thursday was to have been the second performance of Fra Diavolo ; but, this time,
Mr. Reeves himself Was "suddenly indisposed,"—a fact not made known
till the theatre was filled by a crowded audience. This time Mr. Bunn was able to offer a satisfactory substitute, Robert the Devil; but people came to see Fra Diavok and hear Reeves • and the consequence was a second row, worse than the first. At length, however, the storm sub- sided, and Robert the Devil was peifinined with even more success than before.
There are, no doubt, bond fide "sudden indispositions," creating in- avoidable disappointment. But it is notorious that they are often the reverse and the public have grown suspicious about them. In the case
of the first performance of Fra Diavolo, we are positively informed that there was no occasion for changing it on account of Mrs. Reeves's indis--
position ; for Mr. Bunn had another lady—Miss Poole, a favourite of the
public too—able and ready to take the part of Zerlina : but Mr. Reeve& would have nobody but his wife and positively refused to sing. As to
Mr. Reeves's indisposition on Thursday last, it may have been as sudden as it was said to have been, for anything that we know to the contrary ; but there are on-dits of green-room heartburnings and jealousies among the prima donnas, inflamed by the sudden rise of the new star, Miss Crichton,—a young girl who, unheralded and unknown, achieved a triumph, on her very first appearance on the stage, which has not been equalled in an English theatre for many years.
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