laboured with more than the usual attempts at science, and with few indications of natural and spontaneous melody. The barytone part of the Duke de Chevreuse was, on this occasion, sustained by Signor Ferlotti, a performer of considerable experience, of a picturesque presence and graceful deportment. His performance, however, is deficient in repose, and his singing partakes of the same defect, its contrasts abounding, and being always too much in extremes. Madame Fiorentini (Maria) has improved as an actress, and with her fine voice, and the tasteful costume in which she appeared, created a most favourable impression. This lady has long been gaining insensibly in the estimation of hearers of taste; she is always correct and judicious; and, amidst the faults of exaggeration committed in the theatre, this is really giving great praise, but it is due to Madame Fiorentini.

Calzo

lari sang with his accustomed talent; and the two popular melodies given to the contralto, Armando de Gondi, favourably reminded us of the renowned Brambilla. On the whole, the opera was well received.

At the Royal Italian Opera the same work was produced at the opening of the season, supported by the original hero, Ronconi. Mdme. Castellan was Maria; a new contralto, Mdlle. Seguin, a pupil of Alary, performed Armando; Tamberlik, Chalais. Mdlle. Seguin may be noticed as an acquisition to the stage of very favourable promise. Her voice is of good quality, and she manages it well; and when the embarrassment which she yet feels as a novice on the boards shall have given place to a state of ease and confidence, we expect the most favourable things of her. The general interest of the open ever well s

band, his choking sounds of fury and passion, too great for utterance, form a picture so terribly like nature, as to fascinate the gaze, and to extort, even in despite of themselves, the general sympathy of the audi ence. Still we must say, that passion carried to such extremity as this is more favourable to histrionic than musical display; the impersonation of such scenes, from the amount of physical violence requisite, is necessarily destructive of many of the finer qualities of the singer. The taste of the modern Italian school inclines them to displays of the strongest and most vehement passions by means of music, and to this we owe the frequent unmusical character of voices, their fading, shortlived excellence, and the frequent false intonation both of tenors and barytones. It is grateful to us to revert in memory to the school of Meyerbeer, whose great operas, though full of historic associations and gorgeous pictures of costume and manners, abound in their subordinate parts with quiet touches of domestic interest and of natural and amiable affections. These last longer in the mind than the pangs of an abused Othello, or any scene of a similar character founded in the realities of Parisian high life.

William Tell, which from the foundation of the Royal Italian Opera has been ever and anon produced in sure reliance on the fine qualities of the orchestra and chorus which it so well displays, has been performed several times. A German tenor, Herr Ander, has sustained the part of Arnoldo, but with partial success, the unequal quality of his voice, which exhibits a large variety of vicious tones, rendering him anything but a favourite. It seems as if there were some vital defect in the education of German tenors, so seldom is a pure voice of that character and of Teutonic origin to be met with. The cast in other respects was meritorious; the great scene, the Oath of the Cantons, overture, and the extremely nt ballet music, were never executed. Notwithstanding kcellence and high aim of this c, in which the composer has assed himself in elevation and ence, William Tell does not take

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that hold on the hearers which some more unpretending pieces do, in which Rossini has followed the bent of his genius, and written upon more immediate impulse.

Beletti's return from his American tour with Jenny Lind (Madame Otto Goldschmidt) has given occasion to Mr. Lumley to reproduce the opera buffa, L'Italiana in Algieri. This production, full of the youthful fire of Rossini's genius, contains charming melodies, which are as fresh and delightful now as they were nearly forty years ago. Beletti is eminently qualified for the part of Mustapha, by the neatness and rapidity of his articulation. His performance, though not remarkable for power, is always refined and in good taste. Beletti was welcomed as a favourite by the audience. Mademoiselle Angri sustained the part of Isabella, in which her florid execution had ample room for display. We are glad to observe that her experience of the taste in England has led her to correct many faults of exaggeration, and has softened and ameliorated her style. Calzolari's performance of the air, Languir per una bella,' was an example of the most finished singing.

Mr. Bunn has concluded his winter season of operas, and is about to try the experiment of reducing the prices, and of making music cheap. Drurylane music should always be cheap. The company seem not to pull well together; there is a considerable amount of discontent, and Mr. Sims Reeves and Mr. Bunn have already engaged in an advertising and placarding war. The lessee, in a speech on his benefit night, assured his hearers that he did not sleep upon a bed of roses.' From all that we gather of the result of the re-opening of an English lyric theatre, success appears more and more doubtful and precarious. A Miss Crichton, who has supported the first soprano parts at this house, shows, amidst many disadvantages from timidity and inexperience, the solid course of training in which she has formed her mechanism as a singer.

The third concert of Mr. Hullah's present series at St. Martin's Hall afforded very interesting novelties. Gluck appears to be opening stores of admirable music concerted for

solo and chorus, the powerful dramatic expression of which cannot be surpassed. We have heard at Exeter Hall fine extracts from Iphigenia; but the scene from Orfeo, sung by Miss Williams and the chorus, struck us even more forcibly; and its incidental strains of melodramatic music almost realized the sweetness of classical fable. This is just the music for Mr. Hullah's society, and in producing it he confers a favour on all who desire to become prac tically acquainted with the standard models of the lyric drama. On the same occasion was produced a superb air, seldom heard, from the Davidde Penitente of Mozart. Mrs. Endersohn sang this extremely well, though the last part in the major seemed to carry her voice a little beyond its natural compass. There never was heard a song in which the accompaniments, both wind and stringed, stood out from the air in so masterly a style. The majestic features of these accompaniments were well displayed by the orchestra. These concerts have taken a very high station in music; they increase in interest with the rarity of the selections and the steady progress of the upper classes' in the refinements of choral singing. They will ultimately form an audience as well as singers of a critical taste, and animated by a kindred enthusiasm. An excellent performance of Elijah concluded the series.

For the foundation of the Musical Institute,' we believe we are also indebted to Mr. Hullah, who is the President of the Society for this its opening year. The object of this establishment is to afford a centre of co-operation for musical people, both professors and amateurs, to form a library, to hear papers on musical subjects read at evening meetings, followed by discussion, and occasionally mixed with music. In introducing all the musical world to each other it must do good, and may evoke valuable powers hitherto latent and obscure.

'There never has been,' said Mr. Hullah, in his inaugural address, the slightest difference of opinion on this, that the 'musical world' must be brought together somehow or other; that those who want counsel, or help, or sympathy of whatever kind, as who

does not? must be brought into contact with those who have counsel, help, or sympathy to give; and that none of us shall any longer have an excuse for vegetating apart. **** Did our plans include nothing more than the furnishing of a reading-room and library, I think that very great good would come of them. For they present both a means of and an end for co-operation. A place for meeting will soon be connected (involuntarily it may be) with a time when the majority of those who belong to us will be likely to be found in it; and I need not say what convenience and advantage necessarily arise from this in an overgrown metropolis like London, where one may easily spend a day in a fruitless attempt to see two people separately, and a week in trying to see them in company. Of the value of a library really accessible it cannot be necessary to say much.'

The Institute has been extensively patronised, and a good deal of cordiality and sympathy, and the adherence of many names celebrated in the art testify the respect entertained for the motives of the original projectors. The Society has made a good beginning: let us hope that its fruits will appear in due season.

A new symphony by Mozart, of the set recently published as pianofort duets, by Messrs. Ewer and Co.,

has been performed at the Philharmonic Concert with great success; the slow movement was encored. Hitherto there have been but six available symphonies of Mozart; in future there may be nearly thirty, for even his youthful works, written for the Archbishop of Salzburg's concerts, possess a charm inseparable from the native fire of genius. The public seem determined to work the old mine to the last, and it will reward them. An air by the contemporary of Mozart's boyhood, the celebrated Ciccio de Majo, has also been produced, showing in the direction good effects from the spur of rivalry and competition.

As we have at present in England almost all the continental celebrities of Europe, chamber concerts have become too numerous to mention in detail. Mr. Sterndale Bennett produced at his classical performances a beautiful concerto of Sebastian Bach, of which the slow movement, chiefly for the piano and flute, charmed every hearer. Bach and Mozart have the most vigorous posthumous existence. Mr. S. Bennett also played with Piatti a beautiful sonata for pianoforte and violoncello of his own composition.

TAUROMACHIA; OR, THE YORKSHIRE converging to the

Doncaster St. Leger, London discharging itself upon Epsom downs on the Derby-day, Paris circulating' through the alleys of Versailles on days of the grandes eaux,-each furnishes a fine specimen of the national holiday crowd. The Derby and St. Leger, however, like Christmas, come but once a-year; and the moveable feasts in honour of which Neptune and the mille tuyaux open their throats, do not happen above four times in a summer. But from Easter to the middle of autumn, every fair Monday in Madrid brings forth a festal mob, which, for merry clamour, picturesque movement, local colour and vivid nationality, is fairly worth all the aforesaid gatherings

SPANISH BULL-FIGHTS.* put together. If you would study a southern people at its sport, go and stand for half an hour at the gate of Alcala, and watch the dense column of variegated life, trudging on foot, or whirled madly in calesas, which pours down the noble street; and then take your place in a seat on the shaded side in the amphitheatre of the bull-fight. But if, for you, the Pyrenees are a barrier not to be passed, then procure Mr. Lake Price's beautiful volume on Tauromachia. Arrayed in the national colours of Spain, gules and or, it is no less fitted for an crnament to the boudoir- table, than adapted, by the fulness and variety of its information, for a book of reference in the library. A work of the kind

1852.

was much wanted; for the most picturesque of national sports had been strangely neglected by the pencil. It is strange that Velasquez, who loved and painted horses so well, should have left no studies of the bull-ring; still more strange that Rubens, who delighted in subjects of violence and uproar, and imaginary combats between hunters and wild beasts, should not have had his attention arrested and his pencil provoked by the real encounters of wild bulls and silken courtiers which he must have witnessed at Madrid. Although endless illustrations of the bull-ring are to be found in the Paris print-shops, none are to be depended upon as accurate. In the best of them the fierce Spanish sport is apt to become French melodrama, and many are obviously the work of artists who have never left the Boulevards for the bull-ring, and whose model-bull is the Boeuf

gras at Shrovetide. The Spanish prints, on the other hand, with the exception of the rare and somewhat exaggerated Toros of Goya, are tame and spiritless; the men being stiff as dolls, and the bulls dead as bulls of Nineveh. Mr. Lake Price is the first artist who has really taken Tauromachia by the horns, grappled with all its ever-shifting incidents and minute details, and made himself master of the scenes and science of the arena. His drawings are touched with great spirit, boldness, and breadth; truth has never been sacrificed to effect; and yet the more brutal features of the savage pastime have been skilfully veiled or eluded. To say that the letter-press descriptions are from the pen of Mr. Ford, is to say that they are brilliantly graphic, and scrupulously faithful; and that for once we find the charms of the hand-book pervading the mighty pages of a folio.

A bull-fight has been described a thousand times, yet we present Mr. Ford's description to our readers with a certainty there is none which can so vividly create the scene for those of them to whom a Plaza de Toros is a terra incognita, or recal it to those to whom it is as familiar as Smithfield.

As the bull and the picadors are the principal performers of the first act, it

will be more convenient to group toge ther the five plates which give the dif ferent scenes, than to describe them one by one. The opening the door from which the bull is to rush out, is a spiritstirring moment, and all eyes are riveted on his first appearance, as no one can tell how he will behave. Let loose from his dark cell, and amazed at the novelty of his position, he gazes an instant around at the crowd, the glare, and waving handkerchiefs. He bears on his neck a ribbon which marks his breed. He is ignorant of his fate; die he must, however gallant his conduct; death without reprieve is the catastrophe, which, although darkly shadowed out, does not diminish the sustained interest, since the intermediate changes and chances are uncertain, and the action may pass from the sublime to the ridiculous, from tragedy to farce. The bull no sooner recovers his senses, than his splendid Achillean rage fires every limb, and with closed eyes and lowered horns, he charges the foremost of the three picadors, who are drawn up at intervals close to the wooden barriers. The horseman, with presented spear, awaits him boldly on his trembling Rosinante, for none but the poorest hacks are sacrificed on these occasions. If the animal be only second rate, he remembers the sharp goad of old, and will not fight against the pricks. Turned by the first picador, he passes on to the others, who receive him with similar cordiality. If the animal be still baffled, stunning are the pæans raised in honour of the men. Such bulls as will not fight at all, and show a white feather, become the objects of popular insult and injury; they are hooted at as 'cows,' which is no compliment to a bull, and as they sneak by the barriers, are mercilessly punished with a forest of porros, or lumbering cudgels, with which the mob is provided for the nonce. Although unskilled in bucolics, Spaniards are excellent judges of the good or bad points of bull, and when any appear unfit for the sport, their indignation at being defrauded of their just rights becomes ungovernable, and the president, wisely yielding to the gentle pressure from without, orders the incompetent beast out, to be replaced by a better. The degrees of merit in a bull are nicely understood, and infinite are the technical epithets by which his good or bad qualities are expressed. Every feat and incident has also its appropriate scientific term. With these curiosities of toresque dialects Spaniards are well conversant to introduce them here would be mere pedantry, and tauromachian students are referred to the lucid glossaries appended to the masterpieces of Pepe Illo and Montes. When

the bull is slow to charge, the picador rides out into the arena, and challenges him with his vara; should the bull decline his polite invitation, and turn tail, he is baited by dogs, which is most degrading. A bold beast, however, is not to be deterred by fear of steel he charges at once, and increasing in appetite when baptized in blood, passes on from one picador to the other, overwhelming horses and riders, and clears the arena of foes; then, during the interval, before new assailants can arrive, the conquering hero is hailed with unbounded applause, and cheered with shouts of Viva toro!' Long life is wished to him by thousands who know that he must be dead in less than a quarter of an hour. Such an awkward customer will sometimes kill half a dozen horses. The picadors are subject to terrific chances; few in fact have a sound rib in their body. Occasionally the bull tosses man and steed in one ruin, and when they fall, exhausts his fury on the poor beast for the picador either manages to make him a barrier, or is dragged off by the attendant chulos who always hover near; and with their cloaks entice the bull from the man, leaving the horse to his sad fate. When these deadly struggles take place, when life hangs on a thread, every feeling of eagerness and excitement is stamped on the countenances of the spectators. Their rapture is wrought to its pitch when the horse, maddened with wounds and terror, the crimson seams streaking his foam and sweat-whitened body, flies from the still pursuing bull; then are displayed the nerve and horsemanship of the picador. It is a piteous sight to behold the mangled horses treading out their protruding and quivering entrails, and yet carrying off their riders unhurt. This too frequent occurrence, and which horrifies every Englishman, has, with some other painful incidents, been kindly kept out of sight by our artist, whose object is to please. Spaniards are no more affected by the reality than Italians are moved by the abstract tanti palpiti of Rossini. The miserable horse, when dead, is rapidly stripped of his accoutrements by his rider, who hobbles off; and the carcase is then dragged out by the mules, often leaving a bloody furrow on the sand, as Spain's riverbeds are marked with the scarlet fringe of flowering oleanders. The riders have a more than veterinary skill in pronouncing, off-hand, what wounds are mortal or not. Those thrusts which are not immediately fatal are plugged up by them with tow, and then they remount the crippled steed, and carry him, like a battered battle-ship, again into action. When the mangled and scared horse will

not face the horns, his eyes are bandaged over, and his means of escape curtailed: under any circumstance, no sympathy is shown for him,-all is reserved for the horseman, and for him only for a moment the dead and wounded are forgotten ere removed, new combatants fill their gap, the battle rages, fresh incidents arise, and no pause is left for regret or reflection. When a picador is carried off apparently dead, but returns immediately, mounted on a fresh horse, the applauding of the people out-bellows a hundred bulls. The first act is occupied with the picador, and when the different scenes have been gone through, a signal is given, and the part of the horsemen is over.

It is remarkable how totally devoid the Madridenians are of that sympathy with the horses which is always strongly felt by the foreigner, and especially by the English hippophile. The bull-ring incident which most powerfully touched us, and which has imprinted itself most deeply on our recollection, seemed the merest common-place to an excellent Spanish friend of ours, who was our companion in the shaded side of the arena. A dark brown horse, of fine size, figure, and action, who had known better days and gentler usage, had borne a picador gallantly and almost without a scratch through two fights; the cleverness and handiness of the animal who was ridden being far more remarkable than the strength or skill of the animal who rode. The third bull was fiercer than his predecessor; and the horse, through weariness, less able to sustain the shock and elude the horn, had soon received two desperate wounds. Still he bore up bravely against his fate; answering promptly both to the spur and rein, and showing no sign of terror or flinching, though you could see that his legs were failing fast. Again the enemy came on, with his tail in the air and his nose in the sand; burying his horns in the belly of his victim, he lifted his hind-quarters from the ground; and he would have finished him outright but for the distracting flutter of cloaks interposed by the protectionists in tags and silk breeches. When separated from the bull, the gored horse still kept on his legs, while the picador, unseated by the shock, lay like a sack across his path. From his gushing blood and qui