This was a year of confusion :—the principal event of which was a forcible attempt to give Signor Verdi that place on the London stage which he already held in the Opera-houses of Italy.—Two works, as yet unheard, were brought to hearing.—The first was “Nino”—a grand opera offered in conjunction with the excitement of the re-opening of the theatre, elaborately, if not tastefully decorated—and with the appearance of a new set of artists, and a new conductor.

“Nino” in England is “Nabucco” in Italy—an Old Testament opera, permitted in Catholic countries, but an opera which must here be rebaptized—even as Signor Rossini's “Mosé” had been for England. We English are not so hard, or so soft, as to be willing to see the personages of Holy Writ acted and sung in theatres. Hagar in the wilderness—Ruth gleaning among the “alien corn”—Herodias with the head of John the Baptist in the charger—are subjects of personal exhibition which all thoughtful lovers of art in music must reject, on every principle of reverence and of taste, and from which the thoughtless would recoil,—because, perhaps, they are not so amusing as “La Traviata.” The castigation of “Nabucco” is a measure never to be carried out without loss of strength, character, and reality.—Who could bear one of Shakespeare's plays acted from the text of Bowdler?