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Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 1998, 31 May 1875, Page 2

TiiJ3 Opera.—Regarded in the light of reason,. Italian opera is monstrous and even ridiculous. At best it exists at the very periphery of rational coherence, a hairs-breadth beyond which sends-us whirling in fragmentary fashion into the abyss of unfathomable nonsense. A reasonable creature, taken in' stark unpreparation and sent down in opera-house while the business of a high-strung scene was going on—a tenor stabbed to death, and dying with such effusion of musical noise as would tax the capacity of an organ bellows ; a lovelorn prima donna raving about the stage in the very ecstacy of melodious hysterics; a dozen or two of lookers-op, who offer the man no aid and the lady no hartshorn, but who simply " stand: around " and sing, while beforo them two or three score musicians give themselves up to fiddling and tooting, and blowing and ■ ithumping, among whom, perched high, a man beats the air with a little' stick;_ 'and yet more wonderful, most woridefful of all, a vast assemblage, dressed on purpose in their best clothes, look down upon the scene with breathless interest, and when :the noise »tdps—for noise it simply is, not one distinguishable word being heard by any creatute jpr'esent —break forth into" such :eitmta||n rt "and tumultuous expressions ;Qf delight as he can never have hearcTbefore (for it is ■. remarkable that no: such, Outbursti^gand manifestly soiil-relieying ; applause ,' a« greets the most admired. j>assarges; ; in a favourite opera is elicited by. any-other act done in earnest or performed in makebslieve by any human creature on my other occasion, or in any other place whatever), the resonablc being, having this spectacle set before his unprepared, untutored eyes—would he .not say that these people, prima donna, tenor, chorus, fiddlers, fiddlees, were mad—all lunatics together ?•—The Galaxy.

It may interest our stage reformers to know that in America deficient costume is thus imaginatively expressed :—"Not clothes enough on to wad a gun."