( 229 ) 

 MUSI C. 



EVERY day shows us more and more the necessity of having a 

 national opera. There are, we may say, not more than four principal 

 theatres in London, and these are opened for the performance of 

 foreign operas, spectacles, burlettas, plays, and melo-dramas, and not 

 more than two composers are employed amongst them all. 



At Drury Lane and Covent Garden Mr. T. Cooke is engaged to 

 direct the music,, which, to be properly conducted, requires at least 

 two directors. At the Olympic there is no composer. At the Adelphi 

 Mr. Rod well is compelled to write numbers of trifling scraps of music 

 in a given time, which, as a man of taste and genius, he must feel 

 cannot do him credit. 



English composers are excluded from Drury Lane and Covent 

 Garden. Why ? because Mr. Bunn, the lessee, who knows nothing, 

 and who cares nothing about music, will not pay English composers 

 to write for those two theatres, while he can procure foreign operas 

 for nothing; we do not wish to blame Mr. Bunn for preferring 

 getting his music without paying for it, to employing persons whom 

 he must pay ; taking into consideration his want of feeling for the 

 art in all that does not concern his pocket. 



The Adelphi and Olympic are theatres for melo-drama and in- 

 trigue, and the proprietors of them can satisfy their audiences with- 

 out good music; what then becomes of our dramatic composers? 

 Those who have been educated in the art of writing for the stage, 

 who have expended their all, and devoted their lives to that particular 

 style of writing they must either starve or submit to the drudgery 

 of teaching for a mere pittance. 



There are now in England many composers of first rate abilities, 

 some who have already been before the public, and who have suc- 

 ceeded, as far as the managers would allow them, by the position in 

 which their works were placed ; others, who have written operas in 

 the vain hope of having them performed, but who have invariably 

 met with disappointment and rejection. Among the former are Mr. 

 Bishop, who is obliged to wander about the country because he can- 

 not find sufficient employment in London; Mr. Burnett, who is 

 about to quit England in disgust, because, in addition to his not 

 being engaged to write for any theatre, he is even shut out from the 

 common privileges of the theatre which belong to those who have 

 written successfully, namely, the entree to them ; Mr. Wade, who is 

 starving in a prison, &c. Amongst the latter are Messrs. E. Loder, 

 Henry Smart, C. Packer, G. Macfarren, &c. &c. 



It might be asked why these composers did not offer their works, 

 and meet with encouragement at Mr. Arnold's theatre, the English 

 Opera ? The answer is, that there is no more encouragement for the 

 English composer at that theatre than at any other. The licence was 

 granted by George III. to Mr. Arnold, father to the present pro- 

 prietor, for a national English opera house, in which nothing foreign 

 should be made use of, nor foreigner employed in it ; the very materials 

 were to have been English. How far Mr. Arnold has kept to 

 those restrictions, the public can judge. From the time of his 



