Theatrical Mailers. [JUNE, 



But a new manager will be found ; a new lessee will embark in the 

 theatre ; new melo-dramas will succeed and be useless ; a new comedy 

 from Lord Glengall will be represented and be incontinently d-mn d ; 

 and in two years of similar expedients and successes the committee will 

 be called together again, and informed by Mr. Calcraft, that the lease is 

 at their service, the manager in a state of affliction, the treasury in a 

 state of deliquescence, and that a burning is the only next catastrophe 

 which can clear them or the theatre. 



The oratorios as usual at Easter were performed on alternate nights 

 at both theatres, and had but slight success at either. The cause is like 

 that of the unpopularity of the plays, a want of novelty. The singers 

 were all those whom we had either heard before until we were tired of 

 them, or whom, hearing for the first time, we never desired to hear again. 

 Some of our principal singers were not engaged. Braham, Sinclair, 

 and Sapio, were unemployed. The music was in the same circumstances. 

 It was old, and of course in a great degree exhausted, or it was new, and 

 perfectly trifling. Handel will live for ever, but he cannot be listened 

 to for ever with the same delight : and the mob of modern composers, 

 who fill the desks of the boarding-school pianos, and the advertising 

 columns of the newspapers ; whose genius flutters from a concerto to a 

 quadrille, and who are equally eminent in both, can never be listened to 

 with any delight at all. 



Hawes, the director of the oratorios, is an active manager and a 

 good musician, but all his activity had not been fortunate enough 

 to procure any one new performance that had a right to attract the 

 public. Beethoven's Battle of Vittoria once sustained the oratorios 

 through a season ; for it had spirit, science, and novelty -, and nothing 

 less than the three together will secure popularity. There has 

 been, too, a remarkable deficiency of instrumental excellence this 

 season, as unluckily there is now among our present English musi- 

 cians ; no great violinist, nor fluteplayer, nor harpist, nor even any 

 brilliant public pianist, for Cramer's style was never brilliant, and 

 even of Cramer we hear nothing. All the distinguished performers 

 are foreigners, and of these there are none now among us. With 

 such Lenten entertainment, the public would not patronize the ora- 

 torios, to hear obsolete music, or yesterday's ballad drawled out by 

 the green pupils of a singing- school ; nor even to hear a fragment of 

 a wire-drawn flourish from Lindley's bow, or the groan that Dragonetti's 

 iron hand extorts from the trembling bowels of his tortured double bass. 

 Why are not the director's energies extended to France or Germany, 

 where there are abundant solo-players of admirable skill ? or why has he 

 not tried whether Paganini could not hazard himself in the hearing of 

 John Bull ? The truth is, that unless a director does some of those 

 things, he must fail: novelty and effect are essential to him; he should 

 bring something new and something admirable, or he throws away his 

 time and his expenditure. There may be risk or difficulty in these 

 matters, but there is no risk so fatal as the losing certainty of a manage- 

 ment which is satisfied with letting affairs drag on in the old way, and 

 linger into sluggish ruin. 



The burning of the Lyceum had driven the French company to the 

 Haymarket, where they succeeded, because they have little plays which 

 to us are new, and actors whose skill is just adequate to their little 

 plays. The Frenchman wants force on the stage, but so does his 



