DRURY LANE THEATRE.
WE have been unable, until this week, to report on MALIBRAN'S appearance at Drury Lane. We regard her as the first singer in Europe : her range of voice and of style is more comprehensive than that of any of her contemporaries; if the manager of this theatre had known how to employ such an artist, she must have been a source of profit to him. But he possesses that extraordi- nary power of alchymy, the gift of turning gold into lead ; and has actually so contrived as to render even the talents of this extraor- dinary woman available only to increase the amount of his losses. We have heard many stupid operas in the course of our lives, but La Sonnambula is the most stupid of all. It has no single ingre- dient to render it palatable ; neither melody nor harmony. The orchestral effects would disgrace the Surry or the Coburg. We are haunted by the key of A flat from beginning to end ; and the somniferous influence upon the audience is just what might be ex- pected. BELLINI has no power of exciting his audience : they sit like statues, in silent despair.
MALIBRAN contrives, by her extraordinary cleverness as an actress, to infuse some interest into the part ; and by the splen- dour of her voice and the magic of her art, to give -us now and then a glimpse of what she can do: but all that is good is hers; every thing that belongs to her author is bad—as bad as it is pos- sible to conceive. With almost any other foreign singer, the lan- guage would have been an impediment to the production of a good opera, either of native growth or translated into English : but with her no such difficulty exists. On the contrary, her enuncia- tion was much more clear and articulate than that of either Miss Bern or Miss CAWSE. Therefore the managers were free to select wherever they pleased. What a Euryanthe, for instance, would she have made, supposing this opera to have been adapted to the English stage instead of La Sonnambula! But with "all the world before them where to choose," they have pitched upon BELLINI ; and " they have their reward," in the contempt of every musician, and the empty benches of the theatre.
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