1829,] Theatrical Matters.. (53 
more cloudy apology just put forth, says, that “ whatever may be the 
result, Mademoiselle Sontag will come out of the affair with as much 
character as before !” é 
Now all this is a great deal too profound for our comprehension. 
If any woman on or off the stage, expect to have the privilege of gomg 
through society with an untainted reputation, let her take the honest 
and easy mode of sustaining it. Let her take her husband's name. We 
cannot understand these unmarried marriages ; these illustrious husbands 
of whom nobody knows any thing; the female virtue that wears the 
badge of shame; nor the male dignity that suffers a wife to run the 
round of nightly scorn, for the sake of securing her salary. 
_ Malibran, as the novelty of the season, bears away the honours of the 
Opera. Her Desdemona delights all the amateurs, and makes all the 
women weep, when they are not otherwise engaged. She is an inge- 
nious performer, and has as much feeling as an Italian stage generally 
exhibits, which is scarcely any whatever. Her voice is not unlike her 
father’s, feeble and thin, well practised rather than well taught, and 
infinitely too much of the violin school for vocal expression. She is a 
tolerable actress in parts of youth, and a tolerable singer in the general 
range of Italian music, and she is no more. She has been extravagantly 
yuffed, and as this anticipatory praise settles the judgment of nine-tenths 
f mankind, she has been extravagantly admired. But it would be 
burlesque to name any of our Opera wonders, of the present time, 
ainst the true bravura singer. ‘They are trifling and superficial, they 
want the power, and the profound and spirit-stirring richness of expres- 
sion, that make the great singer. They are expert at ballads, and there 
the panegyric is at an end. Othello, melted down, disfigured and dis- 
graced by some Italian compounder of operas, is the principal perform- 
ance of the season. But as a drama, it is a national offence. If ghosts 
were ever permitted to rise and vindicate their characters on earth, we 
should inevitably see Shakspeare starting up between the boards of the 
King’s Theatre, and making an example of both the Desdemona and 
Othello ; and after having extinguished Donzelli and Malibran for their 
presumption, extracting, in the most summary mode, whatever brains 
were left to M. Laporte. One of the imported fooleries of the time, is 
the French trick of summoning the performers to appear after the fall 
of the curtain. We thus have the murdered Moor and his Venetian 
starting on their feet, making their obeisances to the pit, and consoling 
those tender bosoms which thought them dead, by the walking evidence 
that they are actually alive. 
he uncertainty of the law still keeps up its reputation by its theatrical 
decisions. The Lord Chancellor has just reversed the decision of the 
Master of the Rolls in the case of Harris and Kemble, &c., giving the 
cause against Harris, and saddling him with costs, an enormous sum. 
Harris intends to appeal to the Lords. A similar decision has been 
given against Waters, the late proprietor of the King’s Theatre. The 
bargain which he attempted to break with the bankrupt, Chambers, has 
been confirmed, and thereby Waters looks upon his loss as some twenty 
thousand pounds and costs. With these eternal appeals to law, theatres 
must be undone. But the true source of astonishment is how, with 
their inordinate expenses, they can subsist at all. With actors at 
twenty pounds a night, and rents from ten to fourteen thousand 
_ pounds a year, and with a mountain of outstanding debt accumu- 
M.M. Nem Series.—Vow. VII. No. 42. 
