The Sun.
London, England, 1856-05-12 00:00:00

HER DIAJESTZ S THEATRE.

Saturday evening, the 10th of May, 1856,
will henceforth be a memorable date in the annals
of the Italian Opera in England. It will be re-
member-ad as the very noteworthy occasion upon
which her Majesty's Theatre was once more opened
to her Majesty's lieges, after the star of its for-
tunes had been fur no less than three years totally
eclipsed. Re-opened that grand arena of the
lyrical drama in London actually was on Saturday
evening—aud with an eclat so remarkable of its
kind that the season of 1856 could scarcely in
any way have been more brilliantly inaugurated.
Shadows of the coming event had been cast before
it—shadows thrown forward, indeed, very markedly
by the glare of the Covent Garden conflagration.
Everybody felt satisfied at once how it would be,
upon the morning of the melancholy sth of March,
when the Royal Italian Opera House in Bow-
street was nothing more than a smouldering ruin
—that structure, once the historic scene of the
histrionic triumphs of the Kembles, where John
and Charles had in succession strutted and fretted
their hour upon the stage in the glorious days of
old, meaning the famous nights when Sarah Sid-
dons reigned supreme at Covent Garden, and
later on when Edmund Kean was at once the
glory and the prop of Drury Lane. Everybody
felt certain how it would be, directly the evil
news spread through London that the former of
these two great theatres had fallen a prey to what
the penny-a-liners conventionally write about as
" the devouring element." And nobody was
mistaken. " It's an ill wind," says the proverb,
" that blows no one any good ;" and an ill fire it
must be that crackles no one any advantage—if
it be only the glaziers and the bricklayers. But
beyond this, there was a Dramatic Nemesis to be
satisfied—a sort of avenging spirit of the
lyric stage, led on by Terpsichore, and
supported by Thalia and Melpomene. Without
entering into the rights and the wrongs of the
quarrel which, during several successive years, re-
sulted so far in good to the public at large, that
it afforded us Londoners the unaccustomed luxury
of a choice of operas all through the season—it
may bo at once plainly and distinctly intimated
that Mr. Lumley retained to the very last a kind
of impcescriptible right to avail himself of every
reasonable opportunity for the winning of golden
opinions out of any possible failure or misfortune
which,in the long Chapter of Accidents, might per-
chance befal the rival establishment. That—we
take it—was obvious throughout. Diamond cut
diamond—Director against Director. Each strove
to out-do the other—and each alternately failed
or prospered, accordingly as their fortunes fluc-
tuated in the "ups and downs" of every species
of musical vicissitude. All this was perfectly
transparent to their patrons the public, even

while- those patrons were wondering, as Swift had
wondered a hundred years previously, under
soroz.what similar circumstances—
. What all this difference could be
'Twixt T weedieduni and Tweediedee."
Without otherwise taking part in the melodious
contention, the public regaled themselves alter-
nately at the intellectual festivities prepared fur
them, simultaneously or successively, here in the
neighbourhood of Bow- street, and there in the
precincts of the Haymarket. Struggling man-
fully against the most formidable odds, deserted
by one "Tower of Strength" after another, in the
shape of singer after singer of rare celebrity, op-
posed by the ample riches of Mr. Delafield, and
afterwdrds by the still more formidable talents of
.Mr. Gye, as one among the most gifted of our
Operatic Managers—Mr. Lumley nevertheless
Contrived by the sheer force of his own resolute
determination, aided by his inimitable tact and
his extended experience as (during so many glo-
rious and memorable seasons) the solitary Director