We have not room for any particular review of the operas that have been this year performed; and, for the same reason, we can give but a few words to the chief novelty announced. We refer to the forthcoming opera of the _Tempest_, whose composition devolved, after the death of Mendelssohn, upon Halévy, the youngest, and one of the most distinguished, of living French composers. Scribe has supplied the poem. Upon his merits as a librettist it were superfluous to expatiate; it were perhaps more necessary, did it come within the scope of this paper, to correct the popular error that, compared with the music, the libretto of an opera is of little or no consequence. That kind of poetry has certainly been much degraded by the incapacity of many who have presumptuously undertaken it. Good writers of librettos are even more rare than good composers. Since Metastasio's day, those who alone can fairly claim a place in the first rank are Romani, Da Ponte, (the librettist of Don Giovanni,) and Scribe, that able and indefatigable purveyor of the stage, to whom English managers and playwrights owe so heavy a debt of gratitude--a debt which they are not always very prompt to acknowledge. Mendelssohn, when he agreed to compose an opera on the _Tempest_, stipulated that the libretto should be confided to Scribe, who willingly undertook it, and afterwards declared that he knew few subjects so well adapted for music. This opinion, proceeding from a man who, amongst the various classes of theatrical composition in which he has succeeded, is considered to have been especially successful in that of libretti--so much so, indeed, that it has been asserted he owed more than one vote, at his election as member of the French Academy, to their excellence alone--is of no slight weight. Nor were it reasonable to doubt that the composer of the _Juive_ and of _Guido et Ginevra_, who seems to have caught, especially in the last-named opera, no feeble spark of the inspiration of his brother Israelite, the great Meyerbeer, will have succeeded in clothing the verse of Scribe in music correspondingly worthy.
We must conclude without even touching upon the ballet. It needs no praise from us: the names alone of Carlotta Grisi, Marie Taglioni, and Amalia Ferraris, are sufficient guarantee of its excellence. Perhaps upon some future day we may be able to discuss its merits.