The New York herald., 1870-12-31
NEW YORK HERALD SATURDAY DECEMBER 81, 1870

certain regions Of Southern Europe, and
the rise of the sea which did not reach
our hemisphere may have played more i'm
portant part In the other. This Is point on
which we can, rs yet, form no decision, and we
must await further and more explicit advlces
before treating of it as we could readily do
with precedent and parallel fact. We cling to
the opinion, however, that heavy rains in the
mountains and over the Campagna will account
for the food at Rome, which, happily, at last
accounts was subsiding.
Good Opportunity for italian Opera
Who Stops the Way.
The people have been hungering for long
time for first class Italian opera. While we
have been surfeited with opera 6oube--which
is really not opera at all, but painful conflict
between legs and vocal organs, kind Of g!a-
datorial contest between the two for the ap-
pause Of the mutitude-the legitimate opera
has been allowed to pass quietly away. This
fact Is to DO regretted. The cause, however,
is pretty well known to every one. We have
an Opera House which was established with
q particular object, and that object the n9bble
one Of the encouragement Of art. The
Academy of Music, instead Of being an assist
ance to the cultivation OF music in fts highest
form, has become an obstruction to the pro-
gress Of Italian opera through the selfish con-
duct of two hundred stockholders, who hold
on to their privileges Of the best seats in the
house, regardless Of the fact, which experience
has established, that no manager can afford to
keep company Of first slagss srtists on the
boards Or present the operate works of the
great Italian and German composers in suit
able manner in the face of such an obstacle as
the selfish stockholders insist upon presenting.
Manager after manager has tried the expert
ment, but each Of them in turn hss been van
aa::'saed q i i is2 n2t bsokrapted: ..ss. q
There is splendid opp ,rtunity at the pre-
sent time for establishing Italian opera here
| We have the material in our midst. There is
| Nilsson-such an artistic as this country has
not seen or heard since the days of Jenny
Lind. We remember bow she impressed Now
York audiences with the magnetic power of
her voice and the exquisite fascination of her
manner. We have read lately Of the enthusi-
asm which she has created in the West-some-
| thing, indeed, almost unparalleled. No one who
has heard her but must feel that her genius,
| subdued as it necessarily was in the concert
room, would burst forth splendidly on the
operate stage. That is her proper sphere 1t
was there that she won the guerdon of her
| European fame
| There are many other artists available to
make up first class opera company, whom a
| shrewd manager could easily obtain. Indeed,
for superior opera company. We are not
wanting 10 the material if we only had the
facilities to use it, which an available opera
house alone can furnish. Patti will,
probably, be here soma time within the
coming year. The theatres in many of the
principal cities of Europe, now shut up by
this dreadful war, have let loose an abundance
of talent which might be secured for this
country. But the stumbling block in the way
of the recuperation of Italian opera is the
stolid sellishness Of the stockholders of the
Academy, an aristocracy a. which the public
enlightened enough to forexo their claims and
give manager fair chance to make an
opera season profitable, there. would be no
want Of enterprise to restore Italian opera to
that position which it occupied in the days of
Malibran, and Grisi and Sontag, and Alboni,
and Jenny Lind, and Catherine Hayes, when
Italian opera was "a thing of beauty and a
joy forever
But the stockholders of the Academy stop
the way. If they would only surrender their
claim to the best seats In the house there
would be no difficulty in finding manager to
undertake season Of opera, which would
| probably lead to permanency of Italian
opera as we ought to have it-a fixed in
stitution for the metropolis. The public are
certainly not illiberal in supporting opera or
| anything else in the musical or dramatic line
worthy of support, and in this country
managers have to depend solely upon public
patronage. Art appeals to the people, for
she has no crowned heads to bow to or from
whom to accept eleemosYnary aid. The opera
in the leading cities of Europe is sustained
by subsidy from the government. 1t is
| q significant fact that, on the contrary,
| in New York Italian opera, 80 far
50 far from receiving any pecuniary support
from the government or any other outside
sources, is actually taxed by the monopoly ol
stockholders who, by their stubborn illibe-
rality, have not only driven opera away, but
have brought the Academy of Music so low in
public estimation that it is more suitable for q
circus than a temple of art-a dreary cata-
comb in which Art might shiver if Genius did
not supply its fire to keep the goddess warm.
| ~ L..A ...~ ri