ART, LITERARY, AND DRAMATIC GOSSIP.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2198, 12 March 1881, Page 3

ART, LITERARY, AND DRAMATIC GOSSIP.

[From English and other filer.] The English adaptation o£ “ Michael Strogoff ” for the Adelphi is, we understand, being prepared by Mr H. J. Byron, and Mr W. Beverly is busy preparing the elaborate scenic effects. Mr Charles Warner has been engaged to ploy tho principal port. Newspaper writers are apparently about to become popular subjects for playwrights. Two war correspondents appear in the drama of “Michael Strogoff,” and a journalist figures in the new opera to be produced at the Olympic. Arrangements are in progress for the appearance in London of Mrs Scott Siddons during the coming summer. A new sixpenny magazine is in the field, entitled “The Burlington,” and produced under the editorship of the authoress of “ Coming thro’ the Rye." Its first number contains quite as much readable matter as most of the shilling monthlies, and numerous attractive features are promised in the editorial programme which is modestly inserted at the end of the magazine. Mr Sims Reeves, in view of the fact that he retires from public life in 1882, has addressed a letter to the “Times,” offering his services on four days in each week as vocal instructor to tho Royal College of Music.

The anniversary of St. Andrew’s Day was celebrated musically at St. James’s Hall and tho Royal Albert Hall, where concerts were given of an appropriate national character. At the Albert Hall several well-known vocalists appeared, and Mr W. Carter’s choir, and pipers of the Scots’ Guards, contributed to the programme. But three mors Saturday afternoon concerts «f the twenty-fifth Crystal Palace series remain to be given before Christmas. The eighth concert brought forward a concerto by M. Saint-Saens for the violoncello, which was played, for the first time in England, by M. Hollman (violoncellist to the Ring of Holland), who displayed highly cultivated powers of execution.

After a long holiday, Mr and Mr* Bancroft have resumed the management of the Haymarket Theatre. Mr T. W. Robertson’* comedy, “ School,” and Mr Clement Scott’s " fireside story," “ The Yioarage”—an English ▼arsion of “Le Yillage,” by M. Octave Feuillet—constituted the entertainment, when the winter season began. Notwithstanding its brilliant success, “ La Fillo du Tambour Major” must be withdrawn early next month, in consequence of engagements entered into for the production of a new programme at Christmas next. The opera will have been performed at the Alhambra 200 consecutive nights on Monday next, and is said to have already been witnessed by upwards of half a million of visitors.

Recently a new theatre was opened in the new quarter of Rome, between the Hotel Quirinal and the station. The King and Queen were present, as also the Roman fashionable world, to tho number of some 2200. The execution of the inauguration piece, Rossini’s “ Semiramis,” was, owing to the haste with which it had been got up, somewhat faulty ; but the unanimous verdict on the size, the decorations, and the general arrangement of the new theatre was one of unqualified approval. King Louis of Portugal, who has for some time past been engaged in translating Shakespeare, has just terminated the play of “ Richard III.”

M. Manet, the painter of sensational pictures, whoso canvases are always the subject of much speculation and wonder in France, is reproducing in oils tho episode of Rochefort’s escape from New Caledonia. According to the “ Publisher’s Circular,” the publications of 1880 are less numerous by 126 than those of the preceding year. In 1880, 4203 new books and 1415 new editions appeared, or a total of 5708, as against 5834 in 1870.

It is said that the Jews of London have recognised the services of the late George Eliot to the Hebrew race by offering prayers for the repose of her sou’. On the 31st January, at the residence of James Allison, Esq., by the Rev. Mr Paton, Michael Arthur Anderson, third son of the Iste J. H. Anderson, Esq., of Sydney, to Laura Wiseman, youngest daughter of Richard Wiseman.

Lady Martin (Miss Helen Faucit), the “Athcnwum” says, has permitted to be printed, “ for strictly private circulation,” two letters on the characters of Ophelia and Portia. These letters (written to amuse and gratify a dying friend, and now printed in compliance with that friend’s last request) are written with exceeding grace, tenderness, and womanly insight, and evidence a rare gift of delicate and subtle criticism. They are also especially interesting as a revelation of tho process by which great histrionic conceptions are evolved and ripened in the mind of a consummate actor. It is much to be desired that Lady Martin may bo prevailed upon to give these letters to the world at large.

Bay* the Sydney ‘‘Town and Country,” ‘‘La Fillo du Tambour Major” is the beet mounted and most amusing opera put upon tho colonial stage. The Melbourne Opera House is being crammed nightly, and there appears no chance of its withdrawal for some time to come. Mr H. R. Harwood, as the half-blind Duke, has astonished every one by by his immense amount ot genuine tun which ho infuses into tho piece. “ Binbad tho Sailor” is still running at the Theatre Royol, Melbourne. Colo’s Circus appears in Sydney early in April.