The Opera has occupied perhaps less of Manager BUNN'S atten-
tion than even last year ; and, as far as the Winter Theatres are concerned, we should not know that it ever existed. That species of amusement which used to form a prominent attraction with the public and of profit to the lessee, is now discarded and nearly extinct. If we had desired to have given any intelligent foreigner the meanest possib!e opinion of the musical taste, talent, and cultivation of English singers, and the English public, we would have taken him to Covent Garden Theatre on Tuesday night. La Sonnambula has been dragged once more from sleep, in order to exhibit Miss RODIER as the heroine. We need not record, in detail, the defects of this insipid and drowsy com- pilation. It contains not the twentieth part of an original idea; and .BEseisti, under whose name it passes, has discovered neither the bold- ness nor the adroitness of a thief in his appropriations. Ile is a mere petty larceny rogue. And this is the creature for whom BISHOP and -BARNETT, RODWELL and THOMSON, are cast aside ! No wonder that to the lovers of music the Winter Theatres cease to offer the smallest attraction. We could hardly believe our eyes and ears when witnessing the acclamations with which Miss ROMER'S performance of Amino was received, and which far exceeded those bestowed on MALE- manse in the same part. Yet such a result is easily accounted for. IVIAturnAN threw a degree of polish and refinement over the music, which the present vulgar audiences of our Great Theatres neither un- derstood nor liked. Miss ROMER, on the contrary, lowers her singing to their taste, and thus renders it intelligible and agreeable. She appeals t the lowest class of her audience, and they respond by loud huzzas. We are not at all inclined to estimate her by the standard which trie herself has given—we know that she can sing better, if not well. Nature has given her an excellent voice, and diffidence interposes no res mint upon any absurdity in which she may be inclined to indulge. She fink that coarseness and extravagance are the passports to favour w di her auditors, and she submits to be coarse and extravagant. Such facts as these awaken us to the conviction that the character of the audience at this and the other house is wholly changed. The refined taste and lady-like deportment of Miss STEPHENS, could we now present them along with the charms of youth and novelty, would find no admirers in the scene of her former triumphs. Those who used to listen with delight to her singing, and to find musical gratifica- tion within the walls of this theatre, have left it to seek a similar plea- sure elsewhere, leaving their places to be seldom and scantily supplied by those to whom noise is the most welcome music, and screaming the applauded substitute for singing.
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