guineas a seat. But during Catalani's engagement the price of a box to hold six was advanced from 180 guineas to 300.

Although the first two decades of the century were not remarkable for great singers, they were peculiarly rich in great works. Catalani introduced Mozart's Nozze di Figaro,' being herself the original Susanna in London. In 1811 the immortal composer's Cosi fan tutte' was heard for the first time, and received with unbounded delight. Il Flauto Magico' followed, but the company was inadequate to the interpretation of this difficult work and it failed. The year one thousand eight hundred and seventeen should be marked with a red letter in operatic annals, since it witnessed the production of the greatest of all operas, the incomparable Don Giovanni,' brought out in opposition to a strong cabal and immense difficulties. Its success was triumphant. It was played twenty-three nights to overwhelming houses, and restored the exhausted treasury to a flourishing condition. The original cast embraced Madame Camporese, Madame Fodor, Signors Crivelli, Ambrogetti, Naldi, and Agrisani. In the same year Madame Pasta, then a mere girl no older than the century, made her début, but seems to have given little indication of her future pre-eminent genius, and created no attention. With the appearance of Signor Garcia in 1818 began the reign of Rossini, he introducing the Barbiere,' the first opera of that composer heard in England. So great became the rage for these works that from 1821 to 1828 fourteen out of a repertory of thirty-four operas represented were his; Mozart was next. Rossini came to London in 1824 to conduct his opera of Zelmira.' Madame Rossini, a singer of great eminence in Italy, sustained the principal part; but, although she was still beautiful in person and grand in style, she was passée, and was coldly received. It was her last appearance upon the stage.

In 1825 Velluti, the last of the male sopranos, appeared. Thirty years had elapsed since this voice had been heard by the English public. So strong were the prejudices entertained against the new singer, that it was only after much hesitation the management decided upon his appearance. Lord Mount Edgcumbe

gives the following description of the event:—

'At the moment when he was expected to appear the most profound silence reigned in one of the most crowded audiences I ever saw, broken on his entering by loud applauses of encouragement. The first note he uttered gave a shock of surprise, almost of disgust, to inexperienced ears; but his performance was listened to with attention and great applause throughout, with but few audible expressions of disapprobation, speedily suppressed. The opera he

had chosen for his début was " Il Crociato in Egitto," by a German composer named Meyerbeer, till then totally unknown in this country. The music was quite of the new school, but not copied from its founder, Rossini; it was original, odd, flighty, and might even be termed fantastic.'

Might not this be the mild criticism of an old gentleman of the present day upon Wagner? His remarks upon Rossini's works, in which he complains of the sudden change of motives, the absence of airs and the noisy instrumentation, so different from the weak, melodious operas of his youth, are equally applicable. And yet the anti-Wagnerites urge the same complaints against the German maestro, and fall back upon Rossini and even Meyerbeer as representatives of the old school. Perhaps our sons in their old will point to Wagner as conservative and classical, when some new musical prophet shall out-Wagner Wagner.

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From 1824 to 1840 was the golden age of opera in this country; between those dates it attained a perfection, and was interpreted by artists, with which no other period can compare. Pasta reappeared in 1824 in the height of those marvellous powers which rendered her, perhaps, the greatest lyric artist the world has ever seen. 'Pasta,' says Mr. Hogarth, was what a musical performer ought to be, but is so very seldom-a complete impersonation of the character she assumed. We thought not of admiring the great vocalist; we even forgot that it was Pasta who stood before us while we were thrilled with horror by the frenzy of the desperate Medea or wept for the sorrows of the love-lorn Nina' (Paiesello's Nina '). After a long and, as it had been supposed, final retirement from the stage, she reappeared for one night in 1850 in selections from Anna Bullena.' The melancholy scene is admirably pictured by Mr. Chorley. Her toilet was neglected, her hair absurdly dressed, as, indeed, was her whole figure. Among the audience was Rachel, who cruelly and openly ridiculed the whole performance; and Madame Viardot, then in the height of her fame, came to hear Pasta for the first time. She attempted the final mad scene of the opera, the most complicated and brilliant among the mad scenes on the modern stage, an example of vocal display till then unparagoned. By that time, tired, unprepared, in ruin as she was, she had rallied a little. When, on Anne Boleyn's hearing the coronation music for her rival, the heroine searches for her own crown upon her brow, Madame Pasta wildly turned in the direction of the festive sounds, the old irresistible charm broke out; nay, even in the final song, with its roulades and its scales of shakes ascending by a semitone, the consummate vocalist and tragedian was able to combine form with meaning, the moment of the situation was indicated at

least to the younger artist. "You are right," was Madame Viardot's quick and heartfelt response (her eyes full of tears) to a friend beside her. "You are right. It is like the Cenacolo' of Da Vinci at Milan-a wreck of a picture, but the picture is the greatest in the world.""

Sontag came to London in 1828, but her Berlin (she was a Prussian by birth) and Paris idolaters had aroused such marvellous expectations in the English public that she was a disappointment. Gradually, however, a reaction took place, and ere the season was over she had become an established favourite. Upon her marriage with Count Rossi, a Piedmontese noble, she retired from the stage. The revolution of 1848 stripping him of his possessions, she again resumed her art; reappeared at Her Majesty's, and during the seasons of 1849-50 was the great star. Her style, like Catalani's, was excessively florid; she excelled in light opera. The year after Sontag's début a far greater artiste made her bow before an English public-Madame Malibran, the original Amina in this country. Some one-Mr. Chorley, I think-has felicitously called her the Garrick of the Italian stage, to mark her great diversity of style as compared with Pasta, whom he calls the Siddons of opera. A romantic pathos hovers around the memory of this glorious artiste. Her history was a sad one: a harsh father (Garcia) in her childhood, an unhappy marriage with a man double her age in her girlhood, and then her early death at twenty-eight, just after she was united with De Beguis, the man of her choice. In private life she was as warm-hearted and generous as she was great in public.

'Boundless as were Malibran's resources, keen as was her intelligence, dazzling as was her genius, she never produced a single type in opera for other women to adopt. She passed over the stage like a meteor, as an apparition of wonder rather than as one who, on her departure, left her mantle behind for others to take up and wear.'

Each season now brought forth a new prodigy. In 1830 appeared Lablache, whose first part was Geronimo in Il Matrimonio Segreto.' 'Musical history,' says Mr. Chorley, contains no account of a bass singer so gifted by nature, so accomplished by art, so popular without measure or drawbacks, as Louis Lablache. His shoe was as big as a child's boat, one could have clad a child in one of his gloves,' and yet he goes on to say that so perfectly artistic was he in dress and bearing that the spectator was never shocked by his abnormal size. There are many laughable anecdotes told of his immensity; here is one.

'One winter's day, while in Paris, a violent shower of rain

obliged Lablache to seek refuge in the entrance of a passage, and soon afterwards a young gamin bethought him of the same shelter. To enter a passage, however, barricaded by a Lablache was no very easy matter, especially when the colossal basso had his elbows extended under an ample cloak, and swayed from one side of the passage to the other. The boy, tired of dodging the living gate, took hold of a corner of the giant's cloak, and pulling it lustily, cried, " Cordon, s'il vous plaît!" the expression used when the concièrge is required to open the door. Lablache entered into the humour of the position, and, as he let the boy pass, imitated the motion of a door turning on its hinges.'

Rubini created an immense enthusiasm upon his appearance in 1831. The fascination of his voice was irresistible; even his brother artistes would linger at the wings while he was singing, loath to lose a single note. He made his début at the theatre of Romano, his native town, in a woman's part, when he was twelve years old. He was afterwards engaged to play the violin in the orchestra of the theatre at Bergamo and sing in the choruses. A drama was about to be produced into which a cavatina was to be introduced, but there was nobody to sing it. Rubini was mentioned, and a few shillings were offered him to undertake it. He accepted, and received great applause. Some time afterwards he was engaged as tenor at Pavia at thirty-six shillings a month. Sixteen years afterwards he and his wife were offered an engagement at 6,000l. But he always cherished that song which first brought him into public notice, and used to sing it when he was in the height of his reputation. The compass of his voice was marvellous; he could begin on the high B flat without preparation, and hold on it for a considerable time. At Milan the people flocked in crowds to hear this wonderful effect, and never failed to encore it. One night, raising his eyes to heaven, extending his arms, inflating his chest, and opening his mouth, he endeavoured as usual to give forth the wonderful note. But B flat would not come. Greatly disconcerted, the tenor brought all the force of his splendid lungs into play and gave it forth with immense vigour. But he could feel that he had in some way injured himself. He went through the performance, however, as brilliantly as ever. When it was over he sent for a surgeon, who very soon discovered that he had broken his collar-bone-it had been unable to resist the tension of his lungs. 'Can a man go on singing with a broken

clavicle?' he inquired.

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Certainly,' replied the doctor; and if you take care not to lift any weight, you will experience no disagreeable effects.' And he did go on singing.

Tamburini appeared in 1832, Grisi in 1834, Persiani in 1838,

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and Mario in 1839. Out of this combination was formed the world-famous 'Puritani' quartette, Rubini, Lablache, Tamburini, and Grisi; such a one had never before been approached upon the lyric stage, and probably never will be again. In 1842 a noble artiste burst upon the town, Miss Adelaide Kemble, the greatest English singer (though not the best of this century),' says Mr. Chorley, a poetical and thoughtful artiste whose name will never be lost as long as the art of dramatic singing is spoken of.' He says that in Norma' she could compare with Pasta, and could be preferred (apart from voice and person) to Grisi. In comedy her Susanna and Caroline were good enough for any opera-house in Europe, no matter how high the standard.' Laurent and Laporte succeeded Mr. Ebers in the management of the opera. Under the directorship of the latter occurred the famous Tamburini 'row,' which may be regarded as the last of the theatrical riots. The favourite baritone had been superseded by an inferior artiste named Colletti, upon which his colleagues of the theatre organised a clique to compel his re-engagement, and enlisted upon their side the fashionable part of the audience. On Colletti's appearance he was saluted with a storm of hisses from the omnibus boxes, and shouts of Tamburini!' Laporte appeared, but could not make himself heard. At length the noble occupants of one of the boxes, headed by a Prince of the Blood, leaped upon the stage, the curtain fell, and the invaders, waving their hats, shouted Victory!' and Laporte was obliged to give way. The affair has been immortalised in one of the Ingoldsby ballads. The death of Laporte placed the theatre in 1842 under the direction of Mr. Lumley, who had been previously concerned in his management. The event of his first season was the début of Ronconi, who, in the greatness of his acting, rivalled even Lablache, and that with a voice limited in compass, inferior in quality, possessing little power of execution, a low stature, and commonplace features.

Early in 1846 there rose a rumour that a new opera was about to open at Covent Garden. It was laughed to scorn, pronounced an impossibility; and when at length the preparations for the event were forced upon everyone's attention, the sceptics held that it could never be accomplished, and that some unforeseen accident would certainly crush it in its birth. It nevertheless came to pass, and Grisi, Mario, Tamburini, and Costa went over to the new house. The opening opera was 'Semiramide,' superbly produced; this was followed by other great works both in that and the following season, mounted with a splendour and care such as had never yet been seen in the Haymarket. The old house was rapidly sinking before its young and energetic rival when Jenny Lind came to