The Royal English Opens at Covent Garden closes this day
week, by which time Mr. Gye will require the theatre in order to prepare for com- mencing the Royal Italian Opera season on the 2d of April. Mr. Harri- son is to have his benefit on Monday next, when Flotovr's Martha will be given, with a new Ballet. Miss Louisa Tyne has her benefit on the closing night. The production of any new opera is now of course out of the question; and _Rip Van Winkle, said to have been in rehearsal, must stand over as a " remanet" till next season.
The Monday Popular Concerts, since they assumed a classical form, have been more and More successful. Last Monday evening, St. James's Hall was crammed to the very doors, to hear a performance selected en- tirely from the works of Beethoven, and consisting of refined and severe- mime, which a few years ago would have been deemed suitable only to an audience of conndisseurs. The English public have long been ac- customed to applaud frivolous and vulgar music; and they do so still, for such is the music they are generally treated with. Rut ere them first- rate music executed by first-rate performers, and they never fail to ap- preciate its beauties. The Musical Union—the Society formed by Mr. Ella some fifteen years ago for the performance of chamber instrumental music—has done much to educate the taste of the fashionable classes by whom it is chiefly supported. His first soiree of this season was given at St. James's Hall on Tuesday. The principal pieces performed were, Mozart's Quintet in G minor, for two violins, two violas, and violoncello; Rubinstein's grand pianoforte Trio in B flat; Haydn's Quartet in B fiat, No. 76; and Beet- hoven's Duet in G minor for the piano and violoncello. M. Balaton was first violin ; Signor Piatti, violoncello ; and Herr Panels piano. The only vocal music was a couple of part-songs, sung by the "Orpheus Glee Union." The Hall was full, and the audietice as fashionable as usual.
At the Anniversary Festival of the Royal Society of Afusicians on Thurs- day week, among the donations of the evening there was a sum of a hun- dred guineas from Messrs. Cocks the eminent music-publishers, and fifty gui- neas from Messrs. Broadwood, a house whose contributions to the Society exceed twelve hundred pounds. This Institution has existed 120 years, and numbers Handel among its founders. It spends an income of about three thousand pounds a year on its benevolent objects; and—s thing worthy of all praise—its affairs are managed, and its purposes accomplished, at an annual cost of less than 2001.
Miss Victoire Balfe, whose debut at Turin we lately mentioned, goes on with increasing success. Her sixth appearance in the Sonnambida was even a greater triumph than her first. -The theatre is crowded every night she performs ; and the Italians show their enthusiasm by calling her before the curtain six or seven times of an evening.
A comic opera in three acts called La Fee Carabosse, was produced at the Paris Theatre Lyrique on Monday last with considerable success. The li- bretto is by Messrs. Lockroy and Cognitird, and the music by M. Victor Masse. The subject, as the title imports, is taken from a nursery fairy tale, and is lively and fantiful : the music is said by l'arisian crafts to contain pretty things, but to be sometimes more noisy than melodious.
The receipts of the Parisian theatres, concerts, balls, and spectacles of all kinds, during the month of January last, amounted to 1,707,344 fl-Sees- about 68,0601. sterling.
Meyerbeer's Robert lc Diable has been produced with the most brilliant success at Barcelona. The characters of Alice and Bertram were performed by Mademoiselle Spezia and Signor Vieletti, two favourite 'members of Mr. Lumley's late company at Her Majesty's Theatre.
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