ROSSINI IN PERFECTION.
THE opera of Saturday and of Tuesday night was the first com- plete performance at the King's Theatre that we have witnessed for some years. Whenever there has been any attraction here, it has usually centered in one singer,—PASTA, SONTAG, or MALI- BRAN. All the rest had better have been omitted. Mutilated or diluted in this way, even the operas of RossINI have not had fair play, and may be said to have been unheard. Thus, in La Cene- rentola, the principal personage has sometimes been the heroine, sometimes the count, and sometimes his valet : but on the pre- sent occasion, each character occupied the station allotted to it by the author; each being efficiently, admirably, sustained. CINTI was Cenerentola, TAMBURINI Dandini, DONZELLI Ramiro, and ZUCHELLI Don Magnifico. The opera, in itself, is but a second- rate affair ; and repeated exhibitions of it have worn off the little gloss which it originally possessed: but in such hands no beauty was lost, and much was added. In estimating the performance of such -a work, we must judge of it as what it is, and regard it as expressly written with a view to embellishment : hence, those eternal roulades which would be unseemly excrescences on the airs of MOZART, become beauties when appended to those of Ros- SINI. The school of the latter is, for this reason among others, essentially feeble. No singer can supply an eternal variety of ornament ; he is therefore obliged to have continual recourse to the same. In exuberance, TAMBURINI distanced all his competi- tors, and won from the audience, for that reason, the laurel of vic- tory. But TAMBURINI can do more and better than this. The fine, round quality of his tone, his energy, his ease and self-pos- session, enable him to sustain characters of a much higher order than Dandini; and in such we hope to see him. But the King's Theatre is a bad school for a singer, and that TAMBURINI feels and knows. He has noted the weak points of his auditors, and while be laughs at their folly, ministers to it. ZUCHELLI has lost some of his power since his last visit to this country ; but his per- sonation of Don Magnifico was all that the character required. CINTI was still suffering, in a degree, from her late indisposition ; but with this abatement, her performance possessed all its wonted .claims to our admiration.
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