ON THE PRESENT STATE OF THE OPERA IN LONDON. 223 



tion of an enlightened taste, can only be the fesult of a properly di- 

 rected and long-continued course of study : a remedy may be, in the 

 mean time, suggested which will have a tendency to palliate, al- 

 though it will not entirely remove the evil. 



The attempt at the present moment to perform classical music of 

 every school could only terminate in failure and disappointment: 

 Italian singers possess a peculiar style, and manner, and taste, 

 which from long habit have become a second nature. Remove them 

 from the usual routine of their daily practice, and their inferiority 

 to other performers becomes as manifest as their former excellence. 

 To them Weber, Beethoven, and Spohr, write in an unknown 

 tongue ; the mode by which these writers produce their most splen- 

 did effects is a science which they have never acquired. While the 

 composers of other countries, more particularly the Germans, have 

 learned, during a residence in Italy, to combine Italian ease and 

 grace with their native depth and elaboration, the Italians have 

 never incorporated with their own style foreign peculiarities, so as. 

 to render them indigenous. In fact, when a composer has formed 

 an exception, it will be found that he lost the favour of his country- 

 men in the same proportion that he allowed foreign ideas and novel 

 modes of treatment to disturb the pure stream of native melody. 

 Such was the fate of Jomelli, whose music received the appellation 

 of scelerata, in consequence of the introduction of a few German 

 harmonies. Paer, and still more strikingly Cherubini, forfeited, 

 for the same reason, the good opinion of the Italian public. This 

 patriotic attachment prevails with equal force among the singers ; 

 an Italian opera, in whatever country it may be performed, remains 

 unchanged and unmodified by the taste of the public, or the exam- 

 ple of composers in the country of their temporary residence. An 

 Italian company invariably sings the compositions of Italians, or of 

 those foreigners who have made the nearest approach to their style. 



Instead, therefore, of attempting the impossibility of requiring 

 Italian performers to sing la musica tedesca, let us rather employ 

 their unrivalled talent in the classical school founded by INIozart. 

 The key to his style may be found equally in the accidents of his 

 artistical cultivation and in the events of his subsequent life. By 

 birth a German, his earliest studies were among the works of Han- 

 del, Sebastian and Emanuel Bach ; had circumstances confined him 

 to his native country he would, in all probability, have rivalled, in 

 their own line, these great men. But during a visit to the native 

 land of song, at an age when impressions received by the ductile 

 mind become not only permanent but expand with the growing 



