The Express.
London, England, 1856-06-05 00:00:00

DRAMA

MADAME RISTORPB DEBUT IN LONDON.
The great orent of the theatrical year is over.
Madame Ristori last night made her first appearance
before the English public. Let us record tae result
at once. The gifted actress has received from the
unanimous enthusiasm of an audience crowded, bat
select, sympathetic and yet discriminating, a plenary
eastfirmation of that judgment of the oontinent al critics
which has already assigned to her, if not as unap-
preached pre-eminence in the highest regions of tragic
art, at all events a coequal share of that histrionic
throne where Rachel so long queened it in sole and
undisputed supremacy. French criticism, indeed,
is our readers are probably aware, has gone be-
yond this, and with an ingratitude somewhat
too common we fear with that most versatile
and capricious of all possible publics has
dethroned the eider goddess, in order to enhance the
triumph of the younger. We stall not imitate the
example. Madame Ristori is great, and with •
greatness all her own. She is far too great to need
any of that barer incense which a mean and ma-
levolent flattery would extract out of disparagement
to a rival in arr. Let Ristori wear her laurel crown,
but let nct Rachel be insulted with that mocking
wreath of inamortedes by which a Parisian audience
had once the cruelty to remind Mdlle. Mars, not in.
deed of the dcc ty of her powers, but of the decline of
bee p,pularity, and the weariness c..used by the long
duration of her reign.
Most of our readers, we may fairly assume, know
who Adelaide It'ltori is. For the sake of the few
who do not, let ua briefly recapitulate the main out-
lines of her career. Born in Venetian Lombardy, about
the year 1822, the great actress is now in her thirty-
fifth year. She was educated at Rome. At a very
early *gel she sppeared os the stage, and acted ter
some time is the company attached to the court of
the King of Sardinia. In 1848 she married the
Marchese del ; and atter two years of matri-
mony, returned to the stage. The effect produced
by her reappearcuce wu extraordinary; and from
that time to this, her career has been a succession of
triumphs, of which, until last bight, the most bril-
liant had been that achieved at Paris rather more
than a twelvemonth ago.
The drams in which Madame Ristori appeared
but night is an Italian translation (by Signor Mon-
tauelli) of M. Ernest Legoure's well-known tragedy
of Medea. This play, though occasionally it
drags along with ultra-classical heaviness, yet
contains many passages which afford scope to
the powers of a great actress. Madame Ristori
makes the mo-t of them. Her appearanoe is siege-
larly adapted to the part: a stately stature, features
strongly marked yet finely formed, and capable alike
of expressing every shade of transitory emotion
cad the stoney stress of the more vehement pessimist
&voice that can range through the whole compass of
feeling, melt with pathos, wither with score, and
appal with tempestuous rage—alike qualify her for
maces in a part which blends in one arduous whole
the passionately fond mother, the insultingly 'Mo-
delled wife, the outraged maniac driven by the
cruelest of wrongs to the most terrible of revenges.
Her first appearance on the scene, as weary of heart
sad limb sue descends from the rocks of the shore to
the precincts of the Temple, is in itself one of the
soot striking of tableaux. In the scene with
Cream that immediately. follows, the recount
she gives of her first Interview with her un-
realised lover is the very protection of animated
narrative. As the interest of this scene advances', as
she tells her doubts of her lord's fidelity, it is
admirable to watch how the sleeping demon stirs
within her, till in answer to Crania's question what
abs would do should she fled her misgivings true, she
break, forth into a burst of savage and exalting fury
which fairly eleotrified the house.

Ch. fare(
Ct • yawl expo dells pelts
ll !overdo allor els is whites°
Salto, raggesdo di es/ailed 'We
Festive gull iolthre 'hernias
La weds, a is eso speco is porn, a I lanibti
lkagalasati se squaws a Was° s bnse.
Woat would Ido to then t What does th• pother,
Whoa is the depth of tweet gloom', I. sprlip
daddru is fury, wolfram with tell joy
Upos hM posy sad Wan it to Lie cm,
Then toads at limb by limb, sad joist by j
IlaasUeg etch mile, weather.

The action with which this fearful passage was
glum—the head thrust forward and downward, as
though the very goal thirsted to lap bl.od ; the arms
messed and merossed with convulsive energy, as it
were in the very ad of doing what the verse de. '
seribee—was owe of those bold inspirations of genius
arida are only justified by their instantaneous
and unparalleted saucers. Scarcely inferior in effect
was the panting eagerness with which, on the entry
of Orpheus, the abandoned wife rush(' up to him
with the mar question, " Vire t " Never wu a whole
atlas moo thrown into one word— was there
a mere magnificent burst of rapture than that which
balled the assurance that her lost lord still lived:
Cho pease ettlr t este us meson !
Bola an MINIM t Vire.

When the fatal smut is revealed, when the truth
breaks on her that Orissa is the destined bride of
lbw Maw love, the sublimity with which she ascends
step by step to a very climax of contemptuous hatred,
la a marvel of artistic power. Queenly scorn has
sever been mere consummately expressed than in the
wards with which this first act Blows—Bi ! spew
tool Value& When the curtain fell at this
ris..., Madame Ristoci wee twice sous-
am forward by the irrepressible =the-
simmer dm, audience.

Thiremsel ask though admirably performed
2=sleMem fewer points of telling effect—s
set unimportant when the language of
Sodom& idl but an unknown tongue to a consider-
able pieties of the audience. Nothing, however,
MUM Iseetkan the cry for vengeance with which
the eemed ego of the outraged woman burets
talk after the sad terrible interview with Jason
'-teething mew tenehiegly pathetic then the trans-
put with whisk the desolate mother embraces the
alive whew their father's guilt had fora moment
anis her execrate. Very flee, too, is the sadden
temp with which she passes from exaltation in the
acstemplated meassination of her Oreek rival,
tato the attitude of a suppliant, for her
children's sake, at that rival's feet. A sessed
call awaited Madame Ristori at the termination
of the second act. In the third her great
_powers
Sod, perhaps, their fullest development. The slate
amp* with which she falls prostrate as the stage
whoa OM bee own children abandon her; the W-
ebb labosity with which she consecrates the ea-
=brood to Sawn ; the wild buret of pedant,
with which, se the mother for the last
time triempheAke clasps them ones again tobar heart ;
the frenzied 'gamy of the great 0611140 and the eon-
ea Crated power of her lest seeming ward shot " as
from the deadly level of a gun" against the guilty
author of all this woe—this varied and rapid 'mani-
festation of tragic power of the very highest order
would alone suffice to prove incontestably the right of
Madame Ristori to the pre-eminent station accorded
her by the general suffrage of Europe.
From the construction of M. Legouve's piece, and
from theeurpassing interest attached to the performance
of Madame Ristori, it unavoidably follows that the
Meals is the one character which absorbs to itself
almost the undivided attention of the audience. It
would be unfair, however, not to add that several
of the subordinate parts, those especially of Orpheus,
lasso, and Crean, were very respectably filled, and
that the general nine in wen* was worthy of the
Lyseant management.