The Press.
London, England, 1856-06-21 00:00:00

JUNE 21, 1856.

he celebrated Beethoven Quartett Society, and was
he chiet writer in the programmes 01 the lamed
meetings which were in such high repute for so
many years. Mr. Hill was an enthusiast for his art,
and he earned for himself the title of the Prince of
Tenors. His tone was superb, and no player,
perhaps, had a greater faculty in accommodating his
style to that of the artists, of whatever country they
were, with whom he was associated in quartett play-
ing. He leaves many able tenor players behind him,
but no successor in his varied qualities. He played
at the Musical Union only a few days since.

ate 9 raim

LYCEUM THEATRE.-RISTORI.

RISTORI appeared last night in a new part—in a real
Italian tragedy—in which the scene is in Italy, the
characters are all Italian, and the drama itselt is of
the genuine Tuscan stamp. The author was Ma-
renco, and wrote his play some twenty years ago
for Turin, a then famed actress being the heroine of
the well-known legend of " Pia dei olomeo ;" Ma-
renco having taken as text, from Dante's " Divina
Commeda," the oft-cited passage—

lo son la Pia:
Siena mi fe, dispecemi Maramma
Salsi eolui the' nannellata pria
Divonanda m'avea con la sua gemma.

Or, as the Euglish translator of the Italian play
readers it—

Thou then will think of Pia : Sienna brought me forth.
This fatal Maremma, as thou seest, has brought me to my
grave.

Who forgets the melancholy story of the middle ages,
when the Italian republics were at war with each
other—when the feuds of the Guelphs and the
Ghibelines so divided towns, and even families in
towns—the story which suggested the Capttlets and
the Montagues, and which Marenco presents under
the forms of the contending factions in Sienna and
Florence? Marenco, in the commonplace colouring
of his dramatic passages, has taken Alfieri as his
model in the stiff preservation of the unities ; only Pia
by her sublime virtue and devotion, rising above the
vulgar jealousy of her insipid husband, Rinaldo—an
Othello a long way removed from the Venetian Moor
—and above Hugo—a dull /ago—whose villany is so
transparent that it required absoluttly the stupidity
of a Boccomini to account for Rinaldo's absurd
blindness. To the husband and the would-
be seducer must be added the heavy father,
Tolomeo, ponderously sustained by Signor Tessero,
and costumed like the Ghost in" Hamlet." Before we
approach Ristori, it is but fair to her supporters (?)
to state that they were more at home than in the
heroic Greeks, and the diplomatic persons of Queen
Elizabeth's era. Pia del Tolomeo is played more
closely therefore than Medea and Maria Stuardo—
indeed the child, Mlle. Tessero, who enacted the
daughter of Pia and Rinaldo, and Mlle. Rapazzini,
who plays the f easant maiden in the last act—a part
formerly sustained by Ristori in Italy—both de-
serve a word of praise. Ristori, in the first act,
aprears as the devoted wife, who, on separating from
her husband, going to the civil war, strictly en-
joins him to be merciful, her father and brother
being amongst the insurgents. Scarcely has sbe
parted with Rinaldo than Hugo proffers his detested
love, altlioneh the wife had been lett to his charge by
the bushel d, as the latter had once saved Hugo's
life. In this scene was the first grand display
of histrionic genius by Ristori. Het dignifiLd
defiance of Hugo, when the villain threatens
vengeance, after his discomfiture, brought the first
act to an end amidst peals of applause and a recal
before the curtain. In the second act is the trap
laid for poor Pia, by which her husband, seeing her
with a strange soldier—whom she believes to be her
brother, not having seen him for years—is misled by
Hugo, and resolves to revenge his supposed dis-
nonour. In the third act there is a noble scene be-
tween the husband snd wife in the interior of the castle
in Maremma, an edifice erected amidst the most
awful and dismal swamps, where Malaria in short
reigns in terror. Anything finer than the acting of
Ristori cannot be conceived than in the varied
emotions of the interview—first her surprise at being
brought to such a place, then her amazement at the
wild accusations of Rinaldo—again, her momentary
triumph when she explains that it was her brother
whom she had seen, tollowed by her horror at the
announcement that her brother had been killed in
battle. The climax of despair, attained when
Rinaldo leaves her to her fate, was surpassingly well
reached ; but the crowning effeet was when Hugo
appears through a secret door, and again tenders his
unhallowed love. She has but one mode of escape—
the threat to throw herself from the elevated window
to the dizzy depths below; and sbe awes Hugo by
her attitude of dignity. Here Ristori rose again to
sublimity. In the fourth act Pia is not seen, Tolomeo,
the father, communicating to Rinaldo the proofs of the
wife's innocence, confirmed by Hugo's death confes-
onon the stage. In the last act there is the death of