WINTER CONCERTS Al' DRURY LANE.
•
ibira is his lot who, here by Fortune placed, Mum ci tt.cli the wild vteissitudes UI ta..ht, With ct tly meteor et: caprice flaw ill y, And chase the new. blown Imhbles of the day."
Tuus, nearly a century ago, did JOHNSON express his estimate of the opieion of the town, and thus did his friend bleniume venture to de- seri he the duty on which he had just entered as the manager of Drury Lane Theatre. In another part of' the same address, he proclaimed hi.e musical antipathies ; announced his intention, if possible, to banish music from his theatre, and appealed to his auditors to aid hint in " chasing from the stage the charms of sound." 'Ibis had been the policy of his predecessor, and Comma willingly followed CallITEll'S example. His appeal, however, was vain. AIINE was too formidable a champion for
his art, end had obtained too powerful a hold of the public ear, to be excluded from Drury Lane ; and Genuine]: was obliged to seek an alliance with the art he had held up to scorn, and to admit the lyric drama into his theatre.
llow is the scene now charged! Speculating on the possible degree dation to which the classic ground of Drury might sink, JOHNSON, in the same prologue, had said- - Perhaps (for who can tell the effect or chance?)
Here I lout may box, or Mahomet mal. dance !"
but the wildest dream of imagination would never have led either
Joniesos or GARRICK to anticipate the rout of the drama fronts its oldest and most favoured abode, and its prostration at the feet of music—not of' dramatic music—but music (for the limit part) of the lowest order ; to foresee actors of all kinds driven from the stage, and the stage buried beneath the floor of an orchestra, quadrilles awl waltzes substituted for tragedy and comedy, and a French mouutebank usurping the place of CAI:LUCK hilliSelf. Yet all this has come to pass, and thus is the pomp and pride of Drury Lane humbled. Last season] We regarded the con- certs as a temporary expedient, consequent upon au miforeseen casualty; but the theatre now opens as a concert-room, or rather, as a place where &slices are played to a peripatetic audience. This is no triumph for the art—rather its degradation ; an exhihition of noise tolerable as an accompaniment to claming, but in itself intolerable.
The etttee and the pit are covered by a common floor, in the centre
of which rises an orchestra containing about a 'kindred performers, nuet of whom deserve a better fate than subjectiou to the will of a
quedrille-vainper. " Aloft in awful state " is perched this sublime per-
sonage—ostensilily the conductor, but rather the conducted ; for the baud appears to be regarded by M. MUSAHD rattler as the subsidiary acconeeminient to a series of gesticulations. You might inmeine Ii ho. an orator on the tribune, attitudinizing and important, told prompted to eecit suceeF,ive grimace by the progress of the quadrille. The whole affair, it must he allowed, is in admirable keeping--tl.e music is avwthy of' tile conductor, and the conductor is equully worthy of the
mask.
We suspect dad I.:Li.vsoN has only a minor elinre in this 'undertaking, mei that the influence is French. Trained under the best engin mestere, :11‘'. nullifier with their compositions, he must despise ond loathe SHalt an exhibition. The number of imported French I:layers—the prepow;crance of the trash which the Freneh mistake for met mueie—the style of' puffing employed, al \veil tie the opi- nioLs aml die language of the puffs—all bespeak French ori;.;in and French infittonce. A single sentence will stmiliucc to ehow that these are
but translations-
" At; an author of quadrilles. Musard has no If, al, and nohcdy cell compete eh biro fun the supremaey of that kind of comp): Wc noun to speak ebeet quadrilete of yeeeli lo• is pertmnally the author ; for if SVC mention those that he hos drawn II limo operas and works of our gr, at comyo,(TS, 11111St Vice time KS.:1111.131Ce that ti:111{111.y. I lical in it masterly iccil clegaht t,tyle nobody can he compared to Aitt.tard. It is then out of doubt lit an undertaking in:waged Musard and Elia -am must succeed."
Of welt sort ()I' ware is the Drery Lane till
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