would, it might have been argued, be
simply impossible, had we not heard such a
wonderful modern reading of one of Tennyson's
lines as,

            Queen of the rosebud: garden of girls!

The third of Shakespeare's plays, not suggesting,
but expressly demanding, supernatural music,
is the grand witch-tragedy, which has been handled
in every conceivable form of illustration, and
apparently formed one of the most tempting of
the entire series, especially to continental
composers. In England we have been debarred
from variety and improvement in the attempt
by our loyalty. We have regarded the old
music to Macbeth (whether by Eccles or Lock
is a matter of controversy too dry and too
doubtful to be entered on here) with a sort of
"church and state" reverence, in which there
has been as much of superstition as of sound faith.
Few established institutions have been more
implicitly believed in—more redundantly over-
praised. Even to these latest days of ours, when
Dryden and Cibber, and a host besides of patching
playwrights, have been thrust off the stage
in favour of Shakespeare's pure text, no one has
dared to intermeddle with this portion of it, in
order to weed the words of much questionable
matter; and the writer will stand in a worse
plight than the rash party who spoke disrespectfully
of the Equator, should he venture to call
the music bald and monotonous—so much sound
remotely representing the sense. There is sweetness
in it, some pomp, some opportunity of
choral display—but not a chord, not an inflection,
to tell that the "supernatural solicitings"
are those of malignant beings who rejoice in
wreck, in revenge, in murder. When their
incantations recur to us, as thus set, it is impossible
not to recal, by comparison, that page in
Handel's Saul where the witch of Endor calls up
Samuel—so intense, yet so ghastly in its
simplicity.

The Germans, quickened, no doubt, by interest
in Schiller's translation, and by the great fame
of their Siddons, Madame Sophie Schrœder (yet
living), as the representative of the Lady,
occupied themselves to find music for the tragedy.
—Spohr's overture is not by any means the best
of his overtures, it is grim and stale.—Goethe's
friend, Eberwein—André of Offenbach—Holly
of Breslau—Reichardt of Berlin, the "German
Fatherland" Reichardt—Mederitsch, called
Gallus among forgotten composers—Rastrelli of
Dresden—Taubert, more recently at Berlin, and
others, successively tried their hands at scenic
music for the tragedy, but have produced none
that is final, or that can be everywhere accepted.
The play is yet open to the garniture which was
expressly bespoken for it by its writer.

Two operas on the subject are to be
mentioned: Chèlard's and Signor Verdi's. Though
not a first-rate French composer, and having
fallen as he did in France on the awkward
interregnum betwixt the operatic reigns of
Spontini and Signor Rossini, Hyppolitus Andrew
John Baptist Chèlard grappled with Macbeth,
neither feebly nor unintelligently.—His opera,
which could find no home in Paris, gained its
author renown and a chapel-mastership in
Germany. In London, when it was performed under
his superintendence during the year 1832, it was
effaced entirely by the interest of Fidelio,
which work was then an utter novelty in
England. There are some artful and effective
musical contrasts. The music given to the witches,
who always sing in a group, has a sinister and
piercing shrillness, which cuts the gloom of the
tempest on the heath as it were with the edge
of lightning. The reception of Duncan is
gorgeous, with a certain bardic tone thrown into
the chorus. The sleep-walking scene is
exceedingly well noted, with a closeness of expression
in the accompanied recitative often tried
for, but rarely attained, in this most difficult
portion of a musician's task, because, it is the
portion in which he must assert his equality
with the poet, without any great special display,
without overpowering his mate, still leaving
freedom to the declaiming singers.—Madame
Schrœder-Devrient's Lady Macbeth is one
among the great opera recollections of the last
half century. It was from her baleful look, her
indications of ambitious crime, compressed yet
never concealed, her wretched frenzy of
remorse, that Retsch derived his idea of the
heroine, not Siddonian, it is true, but still arresting
for the moment, and leaving the record of
wicked power, and lacerating anguish, upon the
memory of all who saw the actress.

It is worth recording, that the text for
Chèlard's Macbeth, was arranged by the luckless
clever author of "La Marseillaise," Rouget de
Lisle. The musician never took another flight
so high, or gained so much success, in any
subsequent opera; he was elbowed out of sight,
perhaps owing to certain peculiarities of temper,
and died, some years ago, at Weimar, an obscure
and unpopular man.

The Italian Macbeth is far more flimsy,
far more tawdry, though written by a far more
famous man than Chèlard—Signor Verdi. But
his taste in musical tragedy is for that meagre
ferocity which does not get beyond melodrama
(with slight exception)—then, too, he shares the
incapacity of his countrymen to deal with
supernatural subjects—Signor Rossini's apparition of
Ninus in Semiramide making the one exception.
His witches are mere Vauxhall sorceresses,
ludicrous and make-believe, anything but appalling
and prophetic.—His Lady's drinking song
at the banquet, might, with the soberest
propriety, be transferred to the free-and-easy supper
of the Camellia gentlewoman, otherwise La
Traviata. Nor is the last monologue of the heroine
(who, by the way, was originally the most ill-
favoured woman, and the grandest voice in modern
Italy, Madame Barbieri-Nini) in any respect
comparable to Chèlard's. Like Chèlard's,
however, this scene has had the advantage of being
presented by one of the greatest actresses of
any time, we may say the greatest living actress,
recollecting her incomparable yesterday's