as rouleaux not seldom to be found on their
plates) and hunting for praise and notoriety
with a nervous anxiety painful to recollect,
Niedermeyer, more slenderly gifted with the
means to seize the ear and to propitiate the
censor, was contented to let his music take its
chance. The opera was not strong enough to
sustain itself against such showy and
indefatigable rivalry. Yet "Stradella" contained some
delicious numbers. The romance "Venise est
encore au bal," sung by the superb Italian
voice just mentioned, is as freshly present to
memory as if I had heard it three days, not
thirty years, ago.

Not so the music of another "Stradella,"
which has had a different fate on the Continent
—M. von Flotow's paltry opera. For some
score of years or more has it been the delight
of German theatres. Poorer, more frivolous
(and German frivolity is apt to be heavily
insipid), stage music can hardly be. It is true
that there are two publics, eminently distinct, in
Germany; but when an Englishman is there
sarcastically assured (as is frequently his good
fortune) that no real taste for the art exists in
our country, he may justifiably appeal to the
circulation of a work so musically worthless as
"Stradella," and mildly declare that neither in
England nor in France has its Teutonic reputation
been borne out.

A far more sterling German opera, on a
musical subject, has within the last year seen the
light, and been greeted with favour. This is
Herr Abert's "Astorga." The romance of this
composer's adventurous life (to be re-told when
the Romances of the Musicians come to be
written) has been heavily tithed and treated by
the arranger of the book, Herr E. Pasqué.
Then, too, Herr Abert, though he is an
accomplished musician (as his "Columbus" symphony
has proved to English ears), cannot be credited
with that lightness of hand and play of fancy
which transport a public; neither with such
freshness of melody as, in Weber's case,
fascnated the world into forgetfulness of his
defective training. "Astorga" is an honestly made
steady-going opera, not without a fair display
of powers of combination—not without elevation
of style at certain moments—not without
picturesque colour—and its acceptance in
Germany is a sign of the musical sense and sanity
which, for a while it might have been imagined,
had departed from the country under the reign
of Decay, began by Schumann, and continued
by the usurpation of Delirium, under Herr
Wagner's sceptre.

When operas on musical subjects are the
subject, the charming "L'Ambassadrice" of
that wonderful veteran, M. Auber, rises to
recollection in all its brightness and grace.
The story, it has been said, owes its origin to
the early retirement from the stage of one of the
completest artists ever heard or seen on the
stage, Henrietta Sontag—the beautiful woman
who, to the uttermost delicacy and charm, united
a knowledge which nothing could distance, a
will which no difficulties could conquer. There
are few things in the annals of any art comparable
to the history of Countess Rossi's career,
on her return to the theatre after twenty years
of retreat into the dulness of court and
diplomatic life. That she produced herself in
upwards of a score of operas which had no existence
in her maiden days, in spite of the
increased and coarsened strength of modern
orchestras—that she could even "hold her
own" as succeeding a star no less brilliant than
Mademoiselle Jenny Lind—are as much facts
of history as the languid grace of her court
manner contrasted with her eager constancy to
every interest that concerned her special art.
Of all these things, however, Scribe could have no
prescience when he wrote the excellent genteel
comedy which M. Auber set, in the very prime
of his piquant and characteristic talent, for the
lady nearest in accomplishment and peculiar
qualities of voice to Madame Sontag—Madame
Cinti Damoreau—to sing. There is nothing
droller in music than the part of the singer's
mother, the greedy Madame Barnek (how
capitally acted by Madame Boulanger!), than the
lesson-scene, where the prima donna submits to
the music-lesson of the great lady, her future
sister-in-law, rather than betray her identity,
and, after singing false for a while, unable to
hold out longer, bursts out into the triumphant
exercise of her powers. There is nothing more
deliciously French and coquettish than the song,
"Que ces murs coquets." The opera is, of its
kind, as complete a masterpiece as are "Fra
Diavolo" and "Le Domino Noir," and the
brilliant Exhibition overture written by M. Auber
for London.

While naming the patriarch of French
composers as having written operas on musical
subjects, his "La Sirene" must not be forgotten—
calculated to display the voice of a skilled vocalist
little gifted with beauty, Mademoiselle Lavoye.
She was not allowed to present herself on the
scene during the whole first act, till the siren
charm of her refined method and execution
(herself invisible) had secured for her a warm
welcome. The introduction to "La Sirène,"
subsequently employed as a setting to the words,
"O Nymphe trop craintive," is as admirable as
is a movement in some respects similar, the
introduction to the overture of "Der Freischutz."

Before the stage musical illustrations of
music are turned away from, a word must be
said commemorating Mr. John Barnett's
"Farinelli." The drama was simply ridiculous, and,
what was then the rule of English operas, ill
acted, and the ridiculous drama and the defective
acting dragged down the music, which merited
a better fate than it met.

It would be easy to fill a ream with talk of
the songs about music and singing which have
delighted the world for the past century and a
half. Long ere that period set in, however, it
might have been thought that the theme had been
exhausted by the poet who could wield Jove's
thunderbolts, and yet, when it so pleased him,
discourse like "Philomel with melody,"—in his
'Orpheus' song. The amount of suggestion,