An able critic, writing of this feature of the 1858 season, says:--
"The only real novelty that Mr. Lumley ventured to mount and bring forward was Verdi's _Luisa Miller_ ... the result of which was unequivocal failure, for dull and mawkish as is the work itself, Mademoiselle Piccolomini had not the slightest pretension to have been thrust into the leading character, and Madame Alboni made nothing of the small part of the Duchess Fredrica, although she evidently tried to do so, by substituting a _cavatina_ for the original duet of the opera. Giuglini alone was appreciated, the music being somewhat suited to his style; but he began to manifest the bad taste of relying upon long breaths, loud A's, and other meretricious devices, instead of singing legitimately and sensibly. Beneventano, Vialetti, and Castelli, who undertook the other parts, trenched so closely upon the grotesque, that they produced amusement rather than pleasure. In spite of its being said that _Luisa Miller_ had thoroughly succeeded, its immediate withdrawal from the bills positively enough proved the contrary."[32]
_Luisa Miller_ found no favour in the eyes of the _Athenæum_ critic.
"There is little from first to last in the music to reconcile us to the composer.... As regards the solo music, _Luisa Miller_ contains nothing so good.... The heroine might be Gilda, Violetta, or Abigaille for any touch that marks her life or her country.... The want of local colour, however, might be overlooked (in consideration of the master's school and country), were there any compensating beauty of melody. Everything that is not trite in the score is unpleasant.... The songs are in the known Verdi patterns, full of fever, empty of feeling.... The music of _I Due Foscari_ was meagre and dismal enough, but the music of _Luisa Miller_, so far as idea is concerned, seems yet more meagre and dismal."[33]
In these and similar terms did Mr. Chorley dismiss _Luisa Miller_. Nor was _The Times_ criticism more hopeful, since that summed up the opera "as an uninterrupted series of commonplaces, pale, monotonous, and dreary, which may fairly be symbolised as the sweepings of our composer's study or the rinsings of his wine-bottles.... The music of _Luisa Miller_ is not worth the consideration to which an ambitious failure might be entitled."[34]