ENGLISH OPERA COMPANY.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume IX, Issue 152, 29 June 1874, Page 2

ENGLISH OPERA COMPANY.

The members of this Company arrived in the Taranaki this morning from Wellington where they met with a most enthusiastic reception. They will make their first appearance in Nelaon to- night in Walluce'a popular opera Maritnna.

The announcement that we intend favoring our subscribers with a serieß of reviews of the coming performances of the Corpany will probably he recmved by despondent readers with a shudder, by sarcas.ic ones with a sneer. Shudder or sneer, but hear us. Whatever else may be said of our attempts at musical criticism, we can at least promise this, that they shall nn resemble — no, not in tho smallest particular, those amazing productions that usually do duty in this colony for public opinion on puhlia performances. To begin with, we shall not tifflict our readers, more especially when writing about Operas written by English composers, by interlarding the homely English speech that we have never yet found insufficient to express our meaning — when we bad a meaning «o express — with a polyglot jargon of French and Italian. We shill refrain from calliug the members of lhe Opera Company "artistes,'' a term apparently used by high polite "gents" and barbers' clerks to designate, singlers, dancers, mountebanks, nnd hair-dres3ers. Nor shall we be seduced by the bad example of our predecessors into informing the " cognoscenti " bow brilliantly, and with what a mustery of tbo most intricate *' contrapuntal complexities," the "prima donna assoluta " executed certain "/iorituri." Aud above all, we intend to be honest. We are eure that we shall set down naught in malice, and possibly our readers will give us credit for extenuating nothing. We will not be guilty of tbe meanness of bffectiug raptures that we do not fee!, and will admire only what seems to us admirable, paying not the slightest heed to the preposterous chorus of praise from other quarters that invariably heralds the approach of each new troop of travelling performers, of whatever description. We bave more than once been disgusted with theextravagantclaimson publicadmiration that very mediocre performers hare made for themselves, or havo suffered others to rauke for (hem. We need go no further than the late visit of lhelalian Opera troop for an instance of what we mean. Now we can see no good reason why pretensions of this kind should not be taken literally. If a penny whistle will persist in calling itself a " trumpet with a silver sound," it cannot complain if tho public should take the nobler instrument as its standard of comparison. So a singer who allows himself to figure on the hand-bills as " the world-renowned tenor," must not wince if he be measurjd by other tenors whom we may have heard, — respectable it may be> — but certainly not " worldrenown- d." We believe (hat nothing short of a sfeidy perseverance in the course of plain speaking that we have marked out for ourselves will rescue newspaper criticism of public performances of every kind from the ut'er contempt in which it is deservedly held by thinking people. As long as all who minister to the amusement of the public — whether they be good, bad, or indifferent — - whether they be actoi'B, musicians, or proprietors of dogs and monkeys — are led to expect, and actually receive, an indiscriminate and unstinted barvest of tho grossest adulation wherever they go; eo long will public performances be of inferior quality. Where there is one event to the gifted and the ungifted we con hardly expect much striving after excellence. We do not get much under the present system of unlimited puffing, but we certainly get as much as we deserve. I^owever unpleasant the unwonted style of criticism tbat we purpose adopting may appear to the incompetent, we have too high an opinion* of the body of veteran performers who intend giving us a specimen of their powers to apprehend that they will regard with disfavor a frank, but, we trust, not unkindly estimate of their performances.