The Press.
London, England, 1856-07-19 00:00:00

HER MAJESTY'S THEATRE.

"How is it," said an ex conductor of English opera,
on Saturday night, after the representation of Lu-
crexia Borgia, " that when we were performing the
works of so many composers, the day after, such
severe notices appeared in the papers, and here, after
a massacre such as was rarely witnessed, even on
our boards, the criticisms will pronounce the execu-
tion to be perfection itself!" Such was the observa-
tion made to a bevy of critics collected in the passage
behind one of the box-tiers. No distinct reply was
given to the indignant burst of the very clever pro-
fessor ; only one writer muttered, " Well, I did not
make the engagements." Certainly Saturday was one

of Mr. Lumley's blackest nights. The prima donna,
the new tenor, and the new contralto—all failures;
and only Belletti, like a triton amongst the minnows,
standing gloriously on the bread. Italian sch Jol, and
singing superbly. What was particularly annoying
in the " execution" of the Lucrezia was, that the two
first appearances—the tenor and the contralto—are
English. For Charles Braham there is, however, a
future, but it must be as a concert singer, for which
his physical acquirements are alone adapted. His
voice is weak, both in power and compass, and he
has not the most remote notion of dramatic singing.
As the son of the great Braham, there was some
sympathy felt at his mistake, for his manner was
modest and unassuming ; the antithesis of which
qualities was displayed by Mme. Amadei, whose pre-
tentious style deprived her hearers of any regret that
might otherwise have been felt at her glaring incom-
petency. Wagner's rock was the choice of a charac-
var which, like Norma, so long as Grisi is in the
field, every artiste in her right senses would leave
alone. Jenny Lind even found her Scylla in Norma,
and Wagner has touched the Charybdis in Lucrezia.
Wagner, it must be emphatically repeated, is not the
less a great artiste, who will be of infinite value at
Her Majesty's Theatre if she is shown in her own
legitimate repertoire, the German operas. The Cor-
mire everybody ought to see. It has been judi-
ciously curtailed, and the pantomime of Rosati,
Dauty, and Ronzani, combined with the spectacle
and groupings, must render the ballet popular.
MUSIC HALLS AND LIMITED LIABILITY.

THE new Limited Liability Act is to be applied to
every possible purpose. Not only Ere our bodily
wants to be supplied by combined capital and action,
but our intellectual gratifications are to be satisfied
by public companies. That amateurs of music, who
are but little acquainted with the intricacies of
management of those most difficult of all human
beings to be managed—namely, the singers and in-
strumentalists—should make the limited ventures,
cannot be wondered at. The investment of a few
shares will bring the subscribers in contact with the
artistic world, an object of much ambition on the

part of pleasure-seekers. The contact is no doubt
pleasant enough, whilst it is confined to mere com-
panionship and patronage; but when it comes to
matters of business, then is he indeed to be pitied
who has the misfortune to have to rule these unruly
artists with their morbid sensibilities, their ever-
changing caprices, their perpetual whims, their irri-
tability, their intense selfishness, and their utter
recklessness as to the interests of the director or
manager engaging them. Two companies are now
before the world. One is just hatched, under the
title of the St. James's hall Company, and its object
is to erect three grand concert-halls of different sizes,
an accommodation certainly much wanted in the

metropolis, the existing edifices being inadequate.
As the proposed site presents entrances both in
Regent-street and Piccadilly, and as the object of
the company will be only to let the halls, and not to
give performances, the project looks well. Owen
Jones is to be the architect. What a happy Board it
will be not to have the artists under its direction.
The second scheme is now in full work ; it is the

"Royal Surrey-garchns" (limited), and the wAld
beasts and birds have been ejected, only the ben r.pit
remaining to remind the visitors of the ra Irs of
former days. M. Jullien is the conductor, under
whose baton nearly a thousand executants were
assembled last Tuesday in the afternoon for the per-
formance of The Messiah, a magnificent hall having
been erected from the designs of Mr. Horace Jones,
the architect, in a remarkably brief period. If the
plans of the' limited" amateurs had been confined
to the creation of a kind of Sacred and Profane Har-

monic Society on the south side of the Thames, there
might have been a lair prospect of success, although
we emphatically deny the possibility of any execu-
tive committee being able to manage the artistic en-
gagements. Nothing but a despotic dictatorship is
capable of directing an establishment of singers and
players. But the Surrey gardens, besides music of
the elevated schools, are to supply refreshments on a
most superior scale, the Epernay champagne, in
fact. being specially imported with the "batteries de
cuisine" of a couple of Parisian cooks, especially
decorated with the "Cordon Bleu." So that the
ardent and hungry amateur who sits al fresco listen-
ing to the Handelan strains can have his "Mayo
naise," his " Rognons sautés," his "Anguilles A la
Tatare," his " omelette souffiee," 84c., all the time
gazing upon a splendid pictorial exhibition of Cor.
stantinople, in which it is difficult to ascertain which
is the real water and sky, so admirably has the
painter completed the union of art and nature. Be•
sides the restaurant, the music-hall, the oratorio,
and the panorama, there are caverns, grottos, pro-
menades, lawns, Swiss chalets, cascades, waterfalls,
aril at night gas illuminations and fireworks. Thus
Tivoli, Vauxhall, Cremorne, and Krolls-gardens at
Berlin &rein turn laid under contribution to carry out
the undertaking, the result of which there is not the
slightest difficulty in predicting. It will be found