THEATRES AND MUSIC.
The season of the Opera Comique at St. James's Theatre, under Mr. • tehell's management, commenced on Monday. A contemptuous opinion of French music has been a vulgar error, akin o the notion that the French live on frogs and wear wooden shoes, long pre-
• alent in the mind of John Bull, but rapidly yielding to the influence of etter acquaintance with his neighbours. Their musical stage, in particu- ar, is not only the oldest in Europe after the Italian, but is at this day ore fertile in great works than that of any other country whatever. The German opera, rapidly as it has grown, is comparatively speaking a thing of yesterday. A hundred years ago an original opera in the German language was unknown. Burney, in his visits to every town in Germany, never heard one. The few native dramatic composers were Italians in education, style, and language. Hasse and Gluck did not write a single German opera; Mozart wrote only two; and the German musical stage has been created, in short, within the present century. As to English opera, there is some reason to question whether we can yet be said to have one. The musical plays which Purcell enriched with his beautiful songs and choruses would not be called operas anywhere but in England. Music does not enter into their essence; it is an accessory, which might be taken away without mutilating their dramatic structure. Nearly the same thing is the case with the "ballad operas" of a later date. In them, to be sure, the actors sing; but their airs are mere surplusage. Love in a Vil- lage, The Maid of the Mill, or The Duenna, might be acted pleasantly enough without singing a note. Storace's operas, with their scenes of con- certed music in the Italian style, are the first English pieces to which the name in its European sense can be properly applied; but the mere ballad opera again acquired the ascendancy, and maintained it till our stage came to be supplied almost entirely with importations from abroad.
In France the opera has had a very different history. The Italian opera found its way into France while yet in its very infancy. Cardinal blaze- rin brought an Italian company to Paris in the middle of the seventeenth century; and soon afterwards Louis the Fourteenth established the grand French opera, or Academie Royale de Masique; which has been supported ever since in a state of the utmost splendour, and has given employment to an uninterrupted series of the greatest musicians in Europe, both native and foreign, from Lull, Rameau, and Gluck, to Rossini and Meyerbeer. Not satisfied with having this great temple of lyrical tragedy, the French have had, for a century, a separate theatre for the comic opera; and this, like the grand opera, had also an Italian origin. An Italian buffo com- pany appeared in Paris about the year 1750; and the little comic pieces of Pergolesi, Duni, &c. became so popular, that they first came to be performed in French versions by French singers, then Italian composers were em- ployed to write the music of new French pieces, and lastly the Italians were emulated by the French musicians themselves. It was thus that French melody was gradually purified and refined by a long series of com- posers, native and foreign, who devoted their talents to the two musical theatres; and some of the most distinguished confined themselves chiefly, and sometimes entirely, to the Opera Comique. Among these were Phili- dor, (the famous chess-player,) Monsigny, Grossec, D'Alayrac, and Gretry, whose charming operas still keep their place on the stage; and the names of Berton, Catel, Boieldieu, Kreutzer, Peer, Adam, and Auber—all men of European fame—with others of lesser note, bring down the line of descent to the present day. The favour, too, with which the opera has always been regarded in France, has given musical dramas a higher literary rank than they hold anywhere else. No other country—not even Italy, not- withstanding her Metastasio—can produce a list of opera-writers which contains such names as Quinault, Fontenelle, La Fontaine, Gentil Bernard, Sedaine, Marmontel, and in our own day Scribe, whose admirable talents mainly induced Meyerbeer (as he himself has declared) to devote himself exclusively to the French stage.
The Opera Comique has always been, especially to foreigners, the most delightful of the Parisian theatres. It is more intensely national than the Grand Opera; which, being formed chiefly by the labours of Italian and German musicians, has always been rather an "abstract and brief chro- nicle" of the European musical drama of the day than a truly indigenous stage: and hence its principal productions have made the tour of Europe in forms equally attractive with the original. There is no occasion to go to Paris to see in all their perfection the Iphigenie en Tauride, Guillaume Tell, Robert le Diable, or Les Huguenots. But the case is different with the Opera Comique. It is true that many favourite pieces of Gretry, Boieldieu, Adam, and Auber have been produced, in vernacular versions, in the prin- cipal theatres of Grermanyand England, but it has been at the expense of all their native bloom and freshness. Full of the dramatic lightness and grace of French comedy, marked with the best features of the national music, and demanding the vivacity, ensemble, and nice attention to all the delica- cies of performance for which the French stage is preeminent, these pieces can no longer be recognized in the slovenly versions exhibited at our pre- tended musical theatres; and those who have formed an idea of the French comic opera from what they may have seen at the English Operahouse or the Princess's Theatre have now for the first time an opportunity of know- ing what it really is. For the first time, we say; for the stay of the Brus- sels company, a few seasons ago, was too brief to make much impression; and besides, instead of adhering to the comic opera, they wasted their time in the performance of grand tragic operas, to which their means were inadequate.
Mr. Mitchell has begun his season at the St. James's with a course of French comic operas, which is intended to be of some duration, and to embrace a repertoire of considerable extent. The perform- ance of Monday evening showed that he has obtained all the ap- pliances and means which such an undertaking demands. His dramatic company is complete and well-selected, including several eminent Parisian performers. His orchestra is a vrai bijou; strong enough for the size of the house, composed of the choicest materials, and conducted by M. Hanssens, the able musical director of the Brussels Theatre. The list of forthcoming operas is not confined to the popular pieces of the day, but includes many of the finest works from the days of Gretry downwards; it being a feature of the French character, that, with all the levity imputed to them, they are much more constant to old favourite composers than we are.
The entertainments of Monday were Le Mats,. de auspelle of Peer, and Le Domino Noir of Auber. The first, as now represented. both in Paris and here, is reduced to a trifle in one act, to serve merely as a prande to the greater performance of the evening. It is, however, the work of one ee the most celebrated men of his day—a man, too, who deserved his celebrity— the author of Sargino and Agnew. Peer lived many years' and died, in Paris; and was one of the musicians who devoted their talents to the French stage. Le Maitre de Chapelle as it now stands, deprived of all its plot and half its music, is a mere burlesque of Italian dramatic composition and singing. The characters are a crazy Italian maestro and his pupil; and the humour is of the same kind as that of the Fanatico per ks Musica, or La Proms dun Opera Seria. The music is pretty, in the Italian style of half a century ago; and the characters were very pleasantly sustained by M. Beauce and Mademoiselle Guichard; of whom we shall probably have more to say in more important parts.
Le Domino Noir is justly esteemed the best of Auber's comic operas, and is one of the pleasantest of Scribe's dramas. It is well known to the London playgoers, having had a long run at one of our theatres, supported by its intrinsic merit and Anna Thillon's attractive representation of the heroine, though poorly got up in every other respect. As we now have it, in its original form, it is a very different affair. Mademoiselle Charton is a better singer than Thillon, and as good an actress; and Couderc is the performer for whom the part of Horace was originally written. Not only are these two principal parts admirably acted and sung, but the whole cast of the piece is excellent; and the entire performance has a completeness, neatness, lightness, and spirit, which are met with only on the French comic stage.
The house was crowded, with boxes full of rank and fashion. Mr. Mitchell's enterprise promises to have the success it deserves.
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