The list of the performers and singers who were presented in the year 1831, of itself bespeaks a time of transition—which is rarely a time of prosperity. The power of Signor Rossini's spell was, for the moment, beginning to weaken as rapidly as if four out of the five of his operas performed had not that lasting vigour and beauty which belongs only to works of genius such as his. “Ricciardo e Zoraide,” compared with them, is weak; and yet contains one trio, “Cruda sorte” the best movement of which helped to set a pattern to many a contemporary, and to almost every subsequent Italian composer—Bellini alone excepted.

For awhile, however, the new composers were received timidly. “Anna Bolena,” brought hither under the protection of Madame Pasta's royal robes, was permitted, rather than admitted—though in this historical English opera might be discerned something of Donizetti's own; and though three of the characters—those of the Queen (Pasta), Percy (Rubini), and Henry the Eighth (Lablache), were played and sung to perfection. —Donizetti, however, was not an utter stranger here. A duett of his, introduced into a pasticcio opera by Bochsa, called “I Messicani,” had, a season or two earlier, excited attention. But he was credited with small individuality by those who then ruled public opinion.