31/ usir.
Mr. Balfe's new opera is running a successful course at Covent Garden, and promises to be profitable to the theatre ; a thing to be desired for the sake of Miss Pyne and Mr. Harrison, who deserve success by their spirited exertions in behalf of our national musical stage. Bianca, the Bravo's Bride, has drawn crowded houses every night since its first pro- duction, and the warmth of its reception is by no means abated. Further acquaintance with this opera has confirmed the opinion we expressed last week, that its success is not beyond its merit ; and its merit as a musi- cal work is all the greater that the composer has had to contend with the disadvantage of having a very indifferent libretto. It is much to be re- gretted that our English dramatic composers, even the best of them, have so little discrimination of the qualities of the pieces put into their hands.. Generally speaking, the Italian, German, and French operas, dramatically considered, are vastly superior to ours ; and this, more than the superiority of their music, is the cause of the preference given to them on the Eng- lish stage. Our musical dramatists are far inferior, in inventive genius and constructive skill, to our musical composers. This opera, Bianca, the Bravo's Bride, is only a version of an old and forgotten melodrama by the once famous author of the Honk, called Rugantino, or the Bravo of renice ; a thing which was popular in its day, but belongs to a class of literature the taste for which has gone by. There is nothing real or natural in the story; it is a mere string of old- fashioned stage conventionalities—adventures and incidents heaped on each other, which may engage the attention for the moment by their rapid succession, but create no serious incidents. The characters are of the usual stamp in such pieces : a prince who chooses, for no intelligible reason, to go about in masquerade, figuring in the guise of a bravo ; a romantic princess; a Duke of Milan, belonging to the class of "heavy fathers ; " a ruffian or two, a pert page, and a saucy soubrette. Such is the "farrago hujus libelli," and Mr. Balfe has infinite merit, we think, in clothing such a subject with such admirable music; for there is music not unworthy of Guillaume Tell or the Huguenots, while there is nothing in the subject from which the composer could draw his grand and beautiful inspirations. This opera has convinced us that Mr. Balfe is capable of doing much more than he has ever yet done ; and, as the means of doing so, we would counsel him to endeavour to find a dramatic poem more worthy of his genius than this rifacimento of an antiquated melodrama.
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