This year placed the artistic success of the new opera theatre beyond possible question.—Rumours were circulated before the curtain of the Haymarket Opera House with eager alacrity, speaking of wreck and ruin as imminent; and these were proved not to be baseless by subsequent disclosures in the law-courts, of heavy losses endured by the original capitalists.—But to close a theatre in which a public finds enjoyment, and from which good things are to be expected, is a catastrophe harder to bring about than the outer world, unaware of the fascination of such speculations, could be readily made to believe.—Musically, the performances at the Royal Italian Opera were of a magnificence which entirely bore down the attraction of the rival theatre—great and intoxicating as it was, in the presence of a singer who had driven the world, sacred and profane, well-nigh frantic. The productions of “La Favorita” and “Les Huguenots,” on a scale of splendour totally unattempted before, settled the question of character, with a decision beyond all power of cavil or cabal to shake.

The former opera—Donizetti's best serious work—had never till then been relished in England. In truth, to counterbalance the painful nature of the story, it required, for this country, such impassioned singing and acting as those of Madame Grisi and Signor Mario, and such a lavish splendour of pictorial decoration and choral solemnity as was thrown into the impressive monastery-act. Even with all these advantages and accessories, “La Favorita” has never been so popular with us as “Lucrezia Borgia,” though it is by much the finer opera of the two.