her); then Grisi, the great, beautiful, abundant
artist, not afraid, in all her beauty and
abundance, to borrow; then Viardot, the inventor
and interpreter of the last quarter of a century.
And yet the reading of Signor Rossini's Desdemona
music, in this third act of his Otello, is no
more exhausted than Shakespeare's character
would be should a new Siddons, a new O'Neill,
arrive to brighten the tragic stage. This third
act is as unique as the second act of its
composer's Guillaume Tell; yet the opera can hardly
be said to keep the stage, so difficult is it in these
days of vocal poverty to find any man capable of
conceiving the hero's part, even of conscientiously
executing the notes.

One can hardly turn away from this most
superb example of Italian musical tragedy in
being, without wistfully thinking what the
genius of its maker might have done had he
chosen to follow Shakespeare in treating that
most enchanting of all the women of antique
history, "the serpent of old Nile." Perhaps
there can be no Cleopatra in music. The Queen
of Egypt (whether on Shakespeare's suggestion
or not) has been timidly approached in opera—
by Mattheson, at Hamburg, early in the last
century—later, by Frederick the Great's
Italianised-German familiar, Graun; lastly, perhaps, by
Weigl, whose sweet but superficial talent in no
respect fitted him to deal with a subject so
complex. Even less happily was it chosen, with
reference to his resources, by the tender and
melancholy Paisiello. There has been but one
woman on the musical stage in our time who
could have played, and sung, and looked
Cleopatra: that was Malibran.

If Cleopatra be Shakespeare's most intractable
heroine, Hamlet is his most difficult hero; as difficult
in his melancholy as Faust, as difficult in the
waverings of an unsettled brain as Don Quixote;
two types as well as heroes, purposely referred
to, as examples of musical caprice—both having
been favourite themes of illustration with
composers. In England the tragedy has been wholly
untouched, save as having given a title to one or
two overtures, since the early days when
common street ditties were put into Ophelia's part,
perhaps to suit the powers of the singing actress
of the time.—In Italy, we find it exciting
Gasparini of Venice, Corelli's favourite pupil, whose
opera Amleto, produced in the earlier part of
last century, is the only one on the subject that
lives, even in the column of a dictionary. But
Gasparini's music has entirely perished out of
recollection; nor, as the art then stood, is it
possible to conceive the tragedy of Kronberg,
treated by Marcello's townsman without utter
discharge of local colour. It has never been
operatised, I believe, in Germany;—which is
strange, considering the peculiar attention
drawn to it by that ingenious body of workers
and dreamers, the critics of Shakespeare. Two
forgotten men, Holland, a Hanoverian, and
Holly, of Breslau, fitted it up with scenic
music; and, besides them, a more noticeable
and original person, the Abbé Vogler. His
incomplete, eccentric genius, not without a pretty
strong spice of charlatanry (which was
indignantly, and, for a wonder, ill naturedly exposed,
ay the facile, profound, yet rarely unamiable
Mozart), delighted in unusual combinations and
experiments. He was as far in advance of his
time as a hasty half-educated enthusiast can be,
without solid acquirements on which to make
good his advance. That he had powers of
divination might be seen in the fact of his
attaching to him, and materially influencing, a
pair of pupils no less distinguished than Weber
and M. Meyerbeer, the works of both of whom
reflect his imperfections; but he is remembered
by Mozart's satire and by his pupils' success,
better than by his Orchestrion (an instrument
of his invention), or by his impure lessons
on counterpoint, or by his travels east, west,
north, or south, or by his setting of the
Penitential Psalms, translated by Moses Mendelssohn,
or by his unsuccessful assault on the French
opera in Le Patriotisme (he was always trying
strange conclusions). His Hamlet music was
printed in the now sleepy old cathedral city of
Speyer, but one may doubt whether a copy yet
lingers in any of the dusty libraries of the
Palatinate. Hamlet was a fit task for Vogler's more
gifted pupil, Weber; but, in his day, the Ophelia
whom I have never heard sing without thinking
the while of the lady, "of ladies, most deject
and wretched," the great northern artist, Mdlle.
Lind, had not appeared on the horizon.—The
interesting and completely-executed monograph
on Madame Schrœder-Devrient, just published
by Baron Alfred von Wolzogen, tells us that, in
the early days of that great German singer, when
it was not as yet decided whether she was to be
actress or dancer, her young voice and intense
dramatic sensibility were charming in this
tragedy.

Thus much of Shakespeare's passion-plays,
the grandeur of the grandest of all, King Lear,
having, apparently, distanced the musicians.
In Lablache's day there was a talk of the
tragedy being attempted by Signor Verdi, with
a view to its personation by that great artist;
but it came to nought.—Having incidentally
mentioned Weber, it may be here recalled, even
though it disturb, in some degree, the arrangement
marked out, that his Euryanthe belongs
to Cymbeline, which story was transformed and
deformed, in deference to Vienna prudery
(Heaven save the mark!), by that poor, shabby,
sentimental, literary drudge, Helmina von
Chèzy. She managed to produce almost the
most stupid among the many stupid opera-
books in being; and the Viennese, little grateful
for that consideration of their morals which
had suppressed "the mole cinque-spotted,"
seen by the venomous lachimo—glad as the
Viennese have always been of an inane joke—
called the opera L'Ennuyante. But Weber's
best music is in it; and a few—very few—
touches and changes in the text would make it
the one great German opera on Shakespeare's
text as yet existing. The original Imogene
(for Euryanthe is Imogene spoiled for Austrian