that they do not very warmly insist on the repetition of the last song she sings there, out of tenderness to the actress, not to spare their own ears, which are soon cloyed with sweetness, and delight in nothing but noise and fury. We regard Miss Stephens's Zerlina as a failure, whether we compare her with Madame Fodor in the same part, or with herself in other parts. She undoubtedly sung her songs. with much sweetness and simplicity, but her simplicity had something of insipidity in it; her tones wanted the fine, rich, pulpy essence of Madame Fodor's, the elastic impulse of health and high animal spirits; nor had her manner of giving the different airs that laughing, careless grace which gives to Madame Fodor's singing all the ease and spirit of conversation. There was some awkwardness necessarily, arising from the transposition of the songs, particularly of the duet between Zerlina and Don Giovanni, which was given to Masetto, because Mr. Charles Kemble is not a singer, and which by this means lost its exquisite appropriateness of expression. Of Mr. Duruset's Masetto we shall only say, that it is not so good as Angrisani's. He would however have made a better representative of the statue of Don Pedro than Mr. Chapman, who is another gentleman who has not "a singing face," and whom it would therefore have been better to leave out of the opera than the songs; particularly than that fine one, answering to Di rider finirai pria dell'aurora, which Mr. Chapman was mounted on horseback on purpose, it should seem, neither to sing nor say! Mr. Charles Kemble did not play the Libertine well. Instead of the untractable, fiery spirit, the unreclaimable licentiousness of Don Giovanni, he was as tame as any saint; "And of his port as meek as is a maid." 1 W. B. Rhodes, Bombastes Furioso, sc. i. He went through the different exploits of wickedness assigned him with evident marks of reluctance and contrition; and it seemed the height of injustice that so well meaning a young man, forced into acts of villany against his will, should at last be seized upon as their lawful prize by fiends come hot from hell with flaming torches, and that he should sink into a lake of burning brimstone on a splendid car brought to receive him by the devil, in the likeness of a great dragon, writhing round and round upon a wheel of fire an exquisite device of the managers, superadded to the original story, and in striking harmony with Mozart's music! Mr. Liston's Leporello was not quite what we wished it. He played it in a mixed style between a burlesque imitation of the Italian Opera, and his own inimitable manner. We like him best when he is his own great original, and copies only himself— "None but himself can be his parallel."1 He did not sing the song of Madamina half so well, nor with half the impudence of Naldi. Indeed, all the performers seemed, instead of going their lengths on the occasion, to be upon their good behaviour, and instead of entering into their parts, to be thinking of the comparison between themselves and the performers at the Opera. We cannot say it was in their favour. [Drury-Lane. The farce of The Romp was revived here, and we hope will be continued, for we like to laugh when we can. Mrs. Alsop does the part of Priscilla Tomboy, and is all but her mother in it. Knight is clever enough as Watty Cockney; and the piece, upon the whole, went off with great éclat, allowing for the badness of the times, for our want of genius for comedy, and of taste for farce.] 1 Allusion to Theobald's Double Falsehood, III, i. 2 Altered from Bickerstaffe's Love in the City. Revived May 22. BARBAROSSA. Drury-Lane, June 1, 1817. MR. KEAN had for his benefit on Monday, Barbarossa,' and the musical after-piece of Paul and Virginia. In the tragedy there was nothing for him to do, and it is only when there is nothing for him to do that he does nothing. The scene in which he throws off his disguise as a slave, and declares himself to be Achmet, the heir to the throne, which Barbarossa has usurped by the murder of his father, was the only one of any effect. We are sorry that Mr. Kean repeats this character till further notice. In Paul we liked him exceedingly: but we should have liked him better, if he had displayed fewer of the graces and intricacies of the art. The tremulous deliberation with which he introduced some of these ornamental flourishes, put us a little in mind of the perplexity of the lover in The Tatler, who was at a loss in addressing his mistress whether he should say, Or, “And when your song you sing, Your song you sing with so much art," "And when your song you sing, You sing your song with so much art. 93 As Mr. Bickerstaff, who was applied to by the poet, declined deciding on this nice point, so we shall not decide whether Mr. Kean sung well or ill, but leave it to be settled by the connoisseurs and the ladies. His voice is clear, full, 1 Barbarossa, by Dr. John Brown, and Paul and Virginia, by James Cobb, were revived May 26. 2 Kean only played this part twice-May 26 and 27. 3 See The Tatler, No. 163, by Addison. "I fancy, when your song," etc. and sweet to a degree of tenderness. Miss Mangeon played Virginia, and in so doing, did not spoil one of the most pleasing recollections of our boyish reading days, which we have still treasured up "in our heart's core, aye, in our best of hearts."1 [Covent-Garden. Mr. Kemble played Posthumus here on Friday. At present, to use a favourite pun, all his characters are posthumous; he plays them repeatedly after the last time. We hate all suspense: and we therefore wish Mr. Kemble would go, or let it alone. We had much rather, for ourselves, that he stayed; for there is no one to fill his place on the stage. The mould is broken in which he was cast. His Posthumus is a very successful piece of acting. It alternately displays that repulsive stately dignity of manner, or that intense vehemence of action, in which the body and the mind strain with eager impotence after a certain object of disappointed passion, for which Mr. Kemble is peculiarly distinguished. In the scenes with Iachimo he was peculiarly happy, and threw from him the imputations and even the proofs of Imogen's inconstancy with a fine manly graceful scorn. The burst of inconsolable passion when the conviction of his treacherous rival's success is forced upon him,3 was nearly as fine as his smothered indignation and impatience of the least suggestion against his mistress's purity of character had before been. 4 In the concluding scene he failed. When he comes forward to brave Iachimo, and as it were to sink him to the earth by his very presence -"Behold him here"-his voice and manner wanted force and impetuosity. Mr. Kemble executes a surprise in the most premeditated and least unexpected manner possible. What was said the other day in praise of this accomplished actor, might be converted Allusion to Hamlet, 111, ii, 78. Cymbeline was revived May 30. 2 3 Cymbeline, 11, iv. 4 Ibid. V, V. a H a V W 0 S a W 1 into an objection to him: he has been too much used to figure "on tesselated pavements, where a fall would be fatal" to himself as well as others. He therefore manages the movements of his person with as much care as if he were a marble statue, and as if the least trip in his gait, or discomposure of his balance, would be sure to fracture some of his limbs. Mr. Terry was Belarius, and recited some of the most beautiful passages in the world like the bellman's verses. His voice is not "musical as is Apollo's lute," but "harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose." "Mr. Young made a very respectable Iachimo, and Miss Foote lisped through the part of Imogen very prettily. The rest of the characters were very poorly cast.-Oh! we had forgot Mr. Liston's Cloten: a sign that it is not so good as his Lord Grizzle,2 or Lubin Log,3 or a dozen more exquisite characters that he plays. It would however have been very well if he had not whisked off the stage at the end of each scene, "to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh." The serenade at Imogen's window was very beautiful, and was encoredwe suspect, contrary to the etiquette of the regular drama. But we take a greater delight in fine music than in etiquette.] 5 MRS. SIDDONS'S LADY MACBETH. Covent-Garden, June 8, 1817. MRS. SIDDONS's appearance in Lady Macbeth at this theatre on Thursday," drew immense crowds to every part 1 Comus, 477-8. 2 In Tom Thumb the Great, Covent Garden, May 16, 1806. 3 In Love, Law and Physic; see ante, p. 24. 4 Hamlet, III, ii, 45-6. "Hark, hark! the lark."-Cymbeline, 11, iii. 6 Macbeth was played for Charles Kemble's benefit, June 5. Y |