5 MARCH 1864, Page 15

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THEATRES still continue to prosper to an extent unexampled for years, indeed the public avidity for play-going is almost too great to be conducive to managerial activity, and a definite verdict in favour of a play once given seems to ensure for it a career extend- ing over a number of nights for which the unit of calculation is one hundred. There is no doubt, however, that this state of things is really owing in great measure to the merits of many of the pieces recently produced, the appearance of several brilliant and highly original actors, and to real signs of a tendency amongst actors in general to abandon some of the most offensive of the mannerisms and conventionalities which were beginning seriously to alienate people from the theatre. Within the last week or two the most marked advances have been made in a most important department of the English stage—that of English opera. At one of our lyric theatres, " a grand opera" of the highest class has been performed with eminent success by a company of English singers, threeof whom hive established an incontestable right to be classed amongst the best interpreters of three most arduous parts. At Covent Garden Miss Pyne and Mr. Harrison have signalized what is unfortunately the close of the last season of their management by the production of an opera which will conduce more, both by its character and its musical merit, to the establishment of a really distinctive school of national opera than anything of the kind produced for years past. She Stoops to Conquer is a genuine English comic opera, and Mr. Macfarren's music is as genuinely and unaffectedly English as the original comedy. We wish we had not again to complain of the redundancy of the ballad element, so hard to be eradicated from English opera under existing influences, and we heartily regret having to record again as librettist the name of Mr. Fitzball, who has surpassed himaPlf in the supreme absurdity of his interpolated " poetry." But there is so much that is good in the design and creditable in the execution of the whole opera that these drawbacks are far more than compensated for. Excepting these ballads, there is not a passage in the opera which does not give scope 'for good acting as well as singing, and further, there are few which do not obtain it with the present cast.

At Drury Lane one of the most gorgeous and successful pan- tomimes of late years is on its last legs, and Mr. Phelps resumes his arduous task of reciting Manfred to splendid scenery and crowded houses on Monday next. In the meantime, in order, perhaps, to correct any wild imaginative tendencies which a long course of Byron might have, he has been laying in a good stock of practical worldy wisdom, and delighting old play-goers and attract- ing young ones in the time-honoured character of Sir Pertivax Macsycophant. That Mr. Phelps should confessedly be the sole competent representative on the stage of two such characters as Byron's gloomy hero and Macklin's powerfully drawn " Man of the World" betokens a range of talent seldom met with even in great actors. A grand revival of the first part of Henry IV. is promised next month. At the Adelphi Miss Bateman still attracts full houses, and as nearly the whole of Mr. Webster's Company is of favourites would otherwise have been unemployed, he has pro- vided an arena for them at the St. James's Theatre, where Mrs. Stirling, in conjunction with Mr. and Mrs. Charles Mathews, is converting the Silver Lining, a very effective piece, adapted from the French, into a marked success, while our—their—everybody's old friends, Messrs. Bedford and Toole, are not withdrawn from the admiring gaze of Londoners. As Mr. Charles Mathews also appears in As Cool as a Cucumber, the attractions at the theatre are naturally very great.

Nothing is yet positively announced with regard to the Italian season now rapidly drawing nigh. Mr. Mapleson promises new operas, new singers, and new instrumentalists, while there is no more definite authority than rumour for the forthcoming produc- tion by Mr. Gye of Gounod's last work, Mirielle. There is, in- deed, a story afloat that the production of the mystery-surrounded l'Africaine will be entrusted to English hands, but it is very far from being authenticated. If Madlle. 'Miens fails to come up to M. Meyerbeer's standard for a prima donna, it is to be feared that Europe will have to wait a long time for CAfricaine.

The Monday Popular Concerts have been continued as usual since the Christmas interval, and with even more than usual uni- formity of merit. If one could be singled out of a long series of admirable concerts for especial attraction, that given in commemo- ration of the birthday of Mozart, on February 1st, would perhaps be the one. The performance of the exquisitely beautiful sestet of the same composer on a subsequent occasion, and the judiciously selected programme of the " Mendelssohn night," were both pro- ductive of an overflowing hall. The Crystal Palace Concerts, a series which worthily take rank, as orchestral concerts, with the St. James's Hall series for chamber music, have also followed each other in uninterrupted succession, under the management of the indefatigable M. Manna, whose most efficient orchestra performs more music of the highest class, and who produces more new or little known compositions in one year, than all the so-called "great musical societies" are likely to do in ten.

AMATEUR.