and} Beethoven He came towards the mountain and Hallelujah And several others from Judas Maccabeus, Hercules, Joseph, the Creation, and Mozart. No pains have been spared to make such a choice as will best display all the excellences of this powerful band. The list of principal singers is not yet finally settled. Madame Catalani will not be at York. No difficulties arose about the pecuniary terms of her engagement, but the committee would not yield the choice and transposition of her songs to the singer. We highly applaud their judgment and firmness. Such a precedent ought never to have been allowed as the lowering of the overture and opening of The Messiah, or of its being given to a female. Perhaps the most important functions of directors is to take care that the best and most legitimate application is made of the powers of the orchestra under their command. They are responsible for the conduct of the whole, and excellence mainly depends upon the disposition of the parts. It rarely happens that a singer appreciates his own powers justly-it often happens that a singer indulges a very capricious humour. The remedy against these obvious evils lies with the directors. The best disposition should be made under the most careful consideration; but being made, it ought never to be departed from, but for reasons of the most stern and compelling necessity. At present it is, we believe, uncertain whether the French government will permit Madame Pasta to come over to England, but a negociation, through the British ambassador, has actually been set on foot to procure licence for this artiste to be at York. The medical advisers of Mrs. Salmon entertain no doubt that so long a season of repose will have restored her voice to its original perfection. Miss Stephens, Miss Travis, Miss Goodall, and a Miss Farrar, a native of Yorkshire, of whose talents much commendation is abroad, with Madame Ronzi De Begnis, will make up the ample list of sopranos. Vaughan and Sapio are the tenors; Terrail the counter-tenor, and Messrs. Bellamy, Phillips, and De Begnis the principal bases. Mr. F. Cramer leads the morning performances Messrs. Mori, Loder, and Kieswetter the evening. ,a Mr. Greatorex (assisted by Mr. Camidge, Dr. Camidge and Mr. White and Mr. Knapton) conducts. Such are the outlines of the general preparations for the assembling and employment of this prodigious company of musicians, and for the entertainment of the greatest concourse of the public, probably, that ever met to enjoy one common source of amusement in this country. The success is alike momentous to charity, to art, to local and even national greatness-for to the honour and exaltation of all these does such an use of talent and of money and of power contribute, in a degree which may be felt, but which cannot be computed-so certainly and so much do the effects enlarge the means of happiness. SIGNOR VELLUTI. ABOUT thirty years have passed over our heads since a singer with a voice of a like kind to that of the subject of our present. memoir has been heard in the King's Theatre. If (as we had imagined and even hoped) it had been decreed we should never hear a second, we should unquestionably have lost the gratification of observing the finest exertion of sensibility and art combined, that it has ever fallen to our lot to enjoy. We make this candid avowal at the outset, in justice to the individual, as well as in the support of a rule or principle which not even so illustrious an example can induce us to forget. We have neither been able to learn from any authority upon which we can rely, nor to discover in any foreign publication the least clue to the facts of his birth or musical education. He commenced his dramatic career in 1805, about the age of seventeen, and ever since he has excited the highest enthusiasm in the cities of the continent where he has appeared, and exerted a predominating influence upon his art. He came out at Rome, where he performed in more than one theatre. From thence he was invited to St. Carlo, at Naples, where he remained five years. From Naples he went to the Scala, at Milan. At this date his reputation has risen to such a height, that he received overtures from all the principal managers of Europe. His choice fell upon the imperial theatre of Vienna. It is not easy to describe the delight with which he was followed, but we have been told by persons who were resident there at the time, that his name was attached to articles of dress-in short every thing fashionable was a la Velluti. His chief honour was however that of being crowned, a custom more frequently employed in Italy than in Germany. At Vienna he remained two years, and then went to Venice, where he sung in the theatre of St. Benedetto. A medal was struck to his honour, which bore the following inscription. Grande se il Duce simuli Che Roma insulta e freme Dolce se imiti i palpiti D'un tristo cor che geme, From Venice Velluti went to Monaco, where he enjoyed the most distinguished reception, especially from its philosophical Prince, who had long expressed an ardent desire to number him amongst the singers of his court. Besides these theatres already enumerated Signor Velluti has sung at Tovino, Florence, Leghorn, Mantua, Piacenza, Bologna, Semigaglia, Faenza, Verona, &c. &c. No singer in existence can be said to have contributed to fix the present style in Italy so much as Velluti. Of this we have had the strongest assurances from artists of the highest repute, and that the first composers of the time have adopted his example in their works we learn from that passage in the Biography of Rossini, which accounts for the rise and formation of his "second manner." Indeed there are few topics and still fewer of the persons engaged in music that the lively author of the Life of Rossini has not touched upon. To Signor Velluti he has assigned an entire chapter,* and what is curious, this short dissertation is almost entirely apologetical. M. de Stendhal, though wholly possessed with the consciousness of the extraordinary genius of Signor Velluti, yet mistrusts the judgment of his readers so entirely as to devote nearly all he says to the endeavour to convince them, they cannot understand him without a course of preparatory instruction. He is addressing the amateurs of Paris. "A man of the world," he writes, "who has been a hundred times in the course of his life to the Comic opera, who begins to like the Royal Academy only for the ballet, and who neglects the Feydeau, is assuredly the most enlightened and the most candid reader that I can hope for. This man of the world will perhaps recollect having seen formerly, when censure was indulgent, the brilliant comedy of The Marriage of Figaro. Figaro boasts that he knows the English language thoroughly: he knows God-dam. Very well; since I must risk my credit upon a single word, this is exactly the point to which a French amateur has attained with regard to one of the principal parts of singing, fioriture or graces. He ought to hear Velluti or David for six months, in order to gain some idea of this region of music, so entirely new to Parisian ears. On reaching a foreign country, after the first coup d'œil, * Vie de Rossini, chapitre xxi.-Omitted in the English translation. which is not without its pleasures, we are soon shocked by the multitude of strange and unaccustomed things that beset us on all sides. The most cautious and good-humoured traveller finds it hard to avoid shewing some signs of impatience. Such would be the effect which the delicious style of Velluti would at first produce upon the Parisian amateur. I beg of this amateur to hear, as soon as possible, the romance of Isolina, sung by Velluti." In addressing our English amateurs we do not however fear that we labour under any such disadvantage-neither can we conceive, from all we have yet heard of this great artist, that any allowance needs be craved for the exuberant floridity of his style. They who have admired the singers of the first class we have lately had upon our theatres in London, will not, as it strikes us, find any thing to wonder at in Velluti's alterations and additions; for doing ample justice to the science and fancy of the former, Velluti appears to us not only to possess a finer vein of imagination, but to exert it with infinitely more taste and reservation. No-it is not upon this point that we fear the verdict of our countrymen-though we must confess that we are not without our apprehensions. These are derived from two causes : first, the nature of the instrument or means-the tone by which the expression is conveyed, so unaccustomed to English ears-and next from the conviction we entertain, that a temperament alive to the tenderest and most delicate touches of expression, as well as a judgment conversant with the finest and most cultivated resources of Italian art, are necessary to enable one to appretiate the true excellence and all the excellence of Velluti's manner. That combination of qualities which is generally termed style in singing is divisible (for our present purpose) into two heads-viz. the directing power of the mind, and the technical means of exemplifying the conceptions of that directing power. In both these it appears to us, Signor Velluti is supremely great. In person he is tall and slender. His features are handsome, and his eyes dark and speaking.-A passionate languor reigns indeed over all his countenance and gestures. It is necessary to describe these attributes of his person and manner, because they are intimately blended with his singing, being the faculties which make his extraordinary sensibility the more perceptible. The instant he addresses himself to sing, his fine features are illu |