MUSICAL NOTES FROM PARIS.
Madame Patti's special performances in Gounod's Romeo ct [iiUetteaxt over, to the great disappointment of the Parisians, for, owing to the doings of certain speculators, no outsider had a chance of getting a seat unless he was ready to pay the exorbitant prices asked by the ticket-dealers, inde ira: of the public against the present managers of the Theatre Nationale de I'Opera. No expense nor pains were spared to give lustre to the reprise of Gounod's opera, but just as Faust lost rather than gained, from a musical point of view, in being transposed into a grand opera, so likewise the score of Rovieo and Juliet has lost much of its charm by being transferred from the stage of the Opera-Comique to that of M. Garnier's gorgeous Temple of Music. Gounod's sweet, evanescent melodies were lost amidst the din of M. Vianesi's orchestra, and so was Madame Patti's voice at times. It was amusing to see Gounod, who led the orchestra the first three nights, tiying to keep the instrumentalists in tone. The first night, as Madame Patti had not attended the general rehearsal, things did not go off at all correctly. Certain alterations had been made in the score to suit the diva's voice, and Gounod was terribly excited during the first act. He waxed wroth during the waltz movement, and kept striking the desk before him with grow- ing anger ; looking daggers at the wind instruments, then smiling sweetly at the violin quatuor, but all to little or no purpose, for off they went, up and down the score, quite regardless of the M.aestro, while the singers had no small difficulty in singing their parts in tone and tune. The second performance went off more smoothly. It is now over twenty-eight years since Adelina Patti ' enchanted ' Parisians with the charm of her voice and manner. She is now a little stouter, her voice has deepened a tone or two, and her style has improved, but she is and ever will be ' Rosina,' not 'Juliet'; alas and alack that she should ever have neglected Rossini, Donizetti, and the pleasant, easy Italian composers, to worship at the shrine of other gods ! Do what she will, she always reminds one of those pretty musical birds enclosed in gilt cages, which open their wings, flutter their feathers, even skip on their perch, and warble away — as long as they are wound up ! However, it must be acknowledged that Madame Patti's perform- ances were a great pecuniary success, whatever reseives the critic might make from a purely artistic and musical point of view. M. de Reske's ' Romeo ' was in every respect an admirable per- formance ; in appearance, voice, and bearing the rising young tenor was equal to his part. Since Madame Patti's departure, 'Juliet ' is personified by Mademoiselle Darclee, who made a very good debut, and promises to be a valuable addition to the somewhat second-rate groups of lady artists who sing at the Grand Opeia. Isoline, a fairy-play in ten tableaux, is the joint production of M. CatuUi Mendes, the well-known poet and chroniqueur, and M. Massager, the composer of the music of the pretty ballet Les deux Pigeons, produced with success at the Grand Opera last year. The poem is charming — an adaptation of the Titania and Oberon page episode in the Midsummer Night's Dream — the musician has composed a series of musical tableaux worthy of the poem, the scene-painter and the costumier have done their best to equal the poet and the musician, everything conduces to make Isoline un spectacle/ait a souhait pour le plaisir desyeux, but, unfortunately, as in all fairy tales, a wicked fairy was not invited to the christening of poor Isoline, and out of spite the wicked fairy has cracked the voices of the singers and spoilt the acting of the players. Thus it happens that one of the prettiest, quaintest phantasies we have seen for a long time on the stage of the ' Renaissance ' Theatre has almost proved a fiasco. The greater the pity in these days of Thciitre libre and ThMtre uaturalisie !
POE'S TALES AND THE ART OF FICTION.
WERE I bidden to say,’ writes Edgar Poe in his characteristic way, commenting upon Hawthorne's Tmicc-lold Tales, — ' Were I bidden to say how the highest genius could be most advantageously employed for the best display of its own powers, I should answer without hesitation — In the composition of a rhymed poem, not to exceed in length what might be perused in an hour. . . . Next to such a poem, I should unhesitatingly speak of the prose tale, as Mr. Hawthorne has exemplified it. I allude to the short prose narrative, requiring from a half-hour to one or two hours in its perusal. The ordinary novel is objectionable from its length, for reasons already stated in substance. As it cannot be read in one sitting, it deprives itself, of course, of the immense force derivable from lutalilij. Worldly interests intervening during the pauses of perusal, modify, annul, or counteract, in a greater or less degree, the impressions of the book. But simple cessation in reading would of itself be sufficient to destroy the true unity. In the brief tale, however, the author is enabled to carry out the fulness of his intention, be it what it may. During the hour of perusal, the soul of the reader is at the writer's control.'
It is not often given to an author to illustrate his critical principles in his creative work as remarkably as Poe in his tales has done — in his tales, it may be said, even more than in his poems. And now that the shorter tale seems almost likely in its rapidly increasing vogue to dispute in prose fiction what has hitherto been the absolute, the somewhat tyrannous, priority of the long novel — not altogether unfortunately, some of us may think, seeing to what inane results the conventional novel is apt to lead us — Poe's tales may well be turned to, with those of Hawthorne and other writers, for their admirable example in the art of fiction. There are, no doubt, many paths open to the tale-writer that Poe in particular did not attempt. His, it has been said, was a narrow range, in which melancholy, curiosity, or horror, in turn form the leading notes of appeal; but this, too, was Poe's virtue, that, being driven toward these things by temperament, and by circumstances which, singularly, grouped themselves so as to appear an inevitable outcome of that temperament, he studied to give his subject-matter the most perfect form attainable. When the stress of the pitiful life that America afforded him as an author did not lead him astray in the by-ways of metaphysics or buffoonery, or in other ways constrain his natural faculty, whatever he did was done with an art, and with an artistic individuality therewith, which in its kind was perfect. With perhaps a dozen poems remain about twice as
