The advertisement which appears daily in the newspapers, announcing that
Her Majesty's Theatre is to be let, surprises musical people a good deal, as the course of the last season, down to its close, did not east before it any shadow of approaching change. It is Mr. Lumley, we may pre- sume, that is offering the theatre for lease; for it will be remembered that the subsisting lease belongs to him, he having vindicated his right to it, before he reopened the house after its temporary close, by an obsti- nately contested action at law. The great stars of his company, more- over—Titiens, Piceolomini, and Guiglini, are bound to him by three years' engagements still current : eo that it must be only under a trans- action to which he is a party that they can appear next season. His reason for retiring from the management is said to be his inability to carry on the establishment in consequence of the defection of certain aristocratic capitalists who supported him with funds - and their reason, again, for this defection, is alleged to be their disapprobation of his course of cheap performances, by wh.:^h he injured the prestige of the house as the long-established centre of fashionable result. Be this as it may, we have long apprehended the conseque,:Lcs cf.• V-ese cheap entertainments, and often warned Mr. Lumley of the danger he was in--, curving. Mr. Lumley, however, is an able and energetic man. His parting with the management is, doubtless, only his pis-slier ; and be will not ultimately resort to it if he can do better. Ho will probably succeed after all in doing better, and we believe that it is with this view that he has departed for the Continent ; which, by the by, his rival, Mr. Gye has also done.
Miss Pyne and Mr. Harrison have taken the new Covent Garden Theatre from Mr. Gye for a period of three months from Christmas next, when their occupation of Drury Lane terminates. This is an ambitions- move ; and, we presume, will involve a corresponding extension of their establishment : for their present company, weak even where they are, will appear weaker still on the boards of the Royal Italian Opera. It is said that Belle's new opera, the title and subject of which have not yet transpired, will be reserved to inaugurate their occupation of Covent Garden Theatre.
Madame Anna Bishop, whose departure from England with M. Bocbsa, the harp-player, made so much noise some dozen years ago, and who has remained abroad ever since, has returned to London, with the view et resuming her professional labours in this country.
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