129 



THE MUSICIAN ABOUT TOWN. 



The Italian Opera has advanced into the fourth month of its 

 season without one single dramatic novelty having been presented 

 to the subscribers. They have been led to expect the production of 

 Rossini's " Guilleaume Tell," but the reality is still in remote per- 

 spective. The ''Lucrezia Borgia" of Donizetti is actually an- 

 nounced for Grisi's benefit ; but up to the present date (June 1st) 

 it has been postponed. Mr. Laporte is a man of golden promise, 

 but of leaden fulfilment — a line of conduct which we verily believe 

 accords with the predilections of his aristocratic supporters ; for Mr. 

 Laporte is " wise in his generation." He knows that they doat 

 upon being humbugged, because it is genteel, unraercantile. None 

 but contractors and stock-jobbers, and such vulgar bores, insist upon 

 the letter of their bond. How are the classes to be distinguished, 

 but by opposite courses of conduct ? The wily manager, therefore, 

 makes florid protestations, and they trust he will be deliberate, and 

 do nothing in a vulgar heat. He promises a world of novelty, and 

 they murmur to him, in the Mandane strain, 



" Forbear to fan the gentle flame, 

 Oh ! let us be deceived /" 



The appearance of Madlle. Pauline Garcia, younger sister of the 

 eminent Malibran, has been to us, as well as to the discriminating 

 portion of the musical public, a novelty of more than ordinary in- 

 terest. She made her debut on the 9th of May, in the character of 

 Desdemona, and would assuredly have produced a very lively sensa- 

 tion had not the public expectancy been over-excited by a prepara- 

 tory running fire of mischievous puffs. We were advertised that we 

 should hear a finer singer than her sister, and we found a timid 

 sensitive girl, between seventeen and eighteen years of age, with a 

 voice (of course) not fully developed, but of rare and glorious pre- 

 tension. It is of the same noble and weighty quality as her sister's 

 and, we conjecture, of the same surprising compass. In a musician- 

 like composition, written for her by Costa, and introduced upon this 

 occasion, she dwelt fully and firmly (if our memory be correct) upon 

 F below the line and the c in alt. Speaking from remote recollec- 

 tion of her sister, and with the immediate impression of Pauline's 

 tones upon our mind, we should ^y that her voice is more equal 



VOL. X., NO. XXVIII. 17 



