4APORTE has closed a brief campaign, the great success of
which he owes -chiefly to the attrations of the unrivalled Mans. This great aCtress Seeing to have felt as much at home and to have been almost as well understood on the boards of Covent Garden, as on the stage of her -own Theatre Francais. PAGANINI, too, the modern Orpheus—theApollo of the fiddle—" Lord of the golden bow"—has charmed the gods to silence, and made the catcalls mute. Then there has been TAGLIONI, so betwitchifig us by the ease, grace, and beauty of her motion. The ballet Of La Sylphide, in which she, and her brother and sister, (worthy to be the satellites of this " bright particular star") appeared, is one of the prettiest plebes of stage fancy that we have seen. TAGLIONI is the Sylph, of course ; and. she glides up stairs, 4ind down from high windows up chhnnies, and through the floors, in the Most fairy-like Style. She is in love with a young Highlander, be- trothed to a mortal Maiden, -whose charms prevail over the fascinations of the Sylph. She hovers around her lover at every turn, vanishing as suddenly as she appears ; until, just on the eve of the wedding, she spirits off the bridegroom in a most unspiritlike style, fairly dragging him off to- her sylvan retreat. The scene here is like a description in Sylphs are Seen reclining upon a green sloping bank, shaded with trees, with a lake in the distance, fringed with wood. At every turn of this umbrageous solitude, the youth is met by wood-nymphs, who gently compel him to remain. He is environed in a maze of sylphid creatures, who, dancing, encircle him with gauze scarves ; and the. Sylph Woos him with the most seductive blandishments. He is about to 'yield to her charms, when a scarf given by a Sorceress (admirably looked and played by LAPORTE) is thrown round the Sylph. Her wings drop Off; she dies ; and is borne up into the clouds, an airy corpse, covered with a rosy minding-sheet, and attended by a cortege of sylphs forming a flying pageant. This is in far better taste than all the splen- dours of gold and finery with which it is too much the custom to "mount" ballets : and then, how mach more delightful it is to see a wood nymph come bounding in, and around, and out of the scene, as though enjoying her senti-volant existence, than to have a dancer strut on to the centre of the stage' and commence a pedal exercise, which, however extraordi- nary it may be, is little better than posturing to music.
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