The Press.
London, England, 1857-09-26 00:00:00

Dus tr.

ROYAL LYCEUM THEATRE.
WHAT is a National Opera? S 3MS native co-n-

posers, critics, and singers vr3u.1,1 reply-4 The
lyric drama that is essentially English." There

must be nothing foreign. The poem—ve must not
write "libretto "—muit emanate from an En:flish

imagination—Bunn, Fitzball, or Mark Limon, to

wit; the score—wa dare not call it " partition "

must oe the inspiration of a national mind—F:aglish,
Scotch, Irish, Welsh, Australian, Canadian, Weit
Indian, or any locality ruled over by our gracious
Queen. Tha singers—we shall be libelling them to

style them "artistes "—must be actually born within
the United Kingdom and the dependencies. Any
one bearing a foreign name should be exclu led
from a National Opera; he or she would be insulted,
hooted, hissed, and yelled at by " native talent." An
English poet and a British musician must not be
allowed even to select a foreign theme. The scenery
must be English ; the getting up—it would be
treason to mention "mice en scene "—inust be
thoroughly British. There must be no foreign
instruments in the orchestras. Down with the
Cremonas. English makers must manufacture
English fiddles. No more strings from Naples—
let the catgut be national. No parchment from
any foreign animal. The brass must be dug from
English mines, and the wood grown in native forests.
When are we to have a National Opera in pursuance
cif the lamentations of legitimacy ? Who will he the
daring capitaliuts to realise the dream? Certainly
not Miss Louisa Pyne and Mr. Harrison, who have
just opened the Lyceum as an English opera-house.
The new managers have thrown down the gauntlet
of defiance at once, by presenting Auber's Crown
Diamonds and Meyerbeer's Huguenots on alternate
evenings this week, and they have acted boldly, if not
prudently. A National Opera on the basis of utter
exclusiveness would be absurd. Music is of no
country, and an English opera means the univer-
sality of art as much as this principle is
acted upon at the Grand Opera and the Opera
Comique in Paris. It is only in London the
nonsense is heard about a National Opera. There
is no such thing abroad, even in the theatres sup-
ported by the respective Governments. English
music will never rise whilst its professors are merely
imitators. Let the musical composers of Great
Britain originate a school and a style, and then they
may preach about nationality. They are " wasting
their sweetness on the desert air" as servile
copyists. The patent New Grand National Opera
will be a myth until there he another Bishop or
Purcell—a creative genius, not a publisher's
plagiarist. The experience of the last quarter of a
century in the attempts to place English opera on a
permanent basis seems to be entirely overlooked.
Now Arnold at the Lyceum, Mme. Vestris at Covent
Garden, Bunn at both Drury Lane and Covent
Garden, Braham at the St. James's, Maddox at the
Princess's, Miss Romer at the Surrey, Jullien at
Drury Lane, Balfe at the Lyceum, John Barnett at
the St. James's, and other operatic managers whose
names escape our memory, all in turn gave English
musicians their trial. John Barnett, Macfarren,
Edward Loner, Henry Smart, Frank Romer, Tully,
Henry Phillips, Forbes, T. Cooke, C. Horn, A. Lee,
Herbert Rodwell, Rooke, &c., have had their
chances, but have they been able, collectively or
individually, to establish the Nation Opera, good, and
in some instances great, as have been their produc-
tions? And is it not notorious that the works of
(Mozart, Spohr, Salieri, Cherubini, Rossini, Auber,
Bellini, Beethoven, Winter, Paer
Marschner, Herold, Maurer, Boieldieu, Meyerbeer,
D3nizetti, Benedict, Verdi, tk.c., have mainly been
the support of every British lyric enterprise ? The
mode in which a National Opera may eventually
take root in this metropolis is by sowing the seeds of
liberality and impartiality, and not those of
exclusiveness and intolerance. Let the works of
the composers of all countries be conscientiously
executed, and then there will be a possibility of
permanency in an English opera-house. But
how can true amateurs be satisfied with the Lyceum
doings last Monday with The Crown Diamonds, and
on Tuesday with The Huguenots? The bills an-
nounced The Crown Diamonds, by Auber; the
public should have been told that Mr. Fitzball's
version is by Auber, Tully, Brinley Richards, Bene-
dict, and Rode. By Tully there was the air, " O'er
the mountain steep" (the " Muleteers"), originally
interpolated for Borrani in the Drury Lane version,
and now sung by Hamilton Braham. By Brinley
Richards there was the publisher's ballad, "Oh
whisper what thou feelest," introduced by Mr. Har-
rison also at Drury Lane and now at the Lyceum.
By Benedict there was the " Skylark" bravura,
composed for Jenny Lind by Benedict, but infinitely