134 THE MUSICIAN ABOUT TOWN. 



indiscretion, and furnished a lesson to other managers not to trust 

 the egotism or cupidity of composers, who appear to cling to the 

 notion (in defiance of every year's experience) that any thing will 

 serve to hang music upon — like a clothes-horse, or duraby, for dis- 

 playing a fashionable ready-made coat. 



After the failure of " Farinelli" at Drury Lane, and when the 

 zoological curiosity of the public was satiated, the lessee made an 

 experiment of giving shilling concerts, where strange vagaries were 

 enacted both by performers and audience. As, however, Mr. Bunn 

 did not include in the admission money a glass of rum and water 

 and a segar for the purchaser of a ticket, he had no chance with 

 the landlord of the Eagle Tavern, and was in consequence obliged 

 to shut up his house. Since which event Miss Romer and Mr. 

 Balfe have been sharing with the manager of the Surrey Theatre — 

 and very successfully ; for in one week we know, from the best au- 

 thority, that the lady's profits amounted to more than £^0. Before 

 this number goes to press Mr. Braham will probably have joined 

 the company, for he is announced as being engaged. 



The Philharmonic Concerts, notwithstanding the unreasonable- 

 ness of some of the subscribers, excited by the interested antipathy 

 of a writer or two, whose services are no longer needed by the so- 

 ciety, have gone on increasing in attraction to the close of the sea- 

 sou. The directors have had difficulties and perplexities to encoun- 

 ter, which have made their task to provide a succession of novelty 

 for the subscribers a most laborious one. They have been disap- 

 pointed of a new symphony by Spohr ; also of one by Schubert 

 (the recommendation of Mendelssohn), which those snail-waggon 

 Germans will have ready for performance about a fortnight after 

 the season has closed. They have received two or three overtures 

 strongly recommended to them, bnt which, upon trial, they could 

 not bring forward. They would have engaged Duprez for four 

 concerts, had his terms been a liitle more moderate than £500. per 

 night. They could not engage Laporte's company ; and had they 

 been able to do so, the subscribers would have complained of the 

 music those people would insist upon singing. When we had the 

 Italians at the Philharmonic, it was the eternal cry, " Why do you 

 not give us better music ?" and when our native artists selected the 

 most classical compositions, the subscribers groaned after " the flesh- 

 pots of Italy !" The directors have done their best, and they have 

 done well. Every singer, not within the influence of the opera ma- 

 nager, has been engaged ; no instrumentalist of acknowledged repu- 

 tation has visited us without having the means afforded him of dis- 



