... . THE appearance of Mme. Sembrich as Queen Margherita, in the recent performance of Les Huguenots, added greatly to the attractiveness of that opera, and drew a large audience. How brilliantly she sang the florid passages of which the part of Margherita chiefly consists, it is hardly necessary to say, nor would it be generous to compare so gifted a vocalist with the two debutantes who had ...

... . Indi in Game from Quail to Tiger Shooting. By Wm. Riots, Major-General, Retired LiBt, Indian Army. London: W. H. Allen and Co. IT is nearly thirty years since the author established his reputa tion as a sportsman who could write well of sport. His book, Tiger Shooting in India, may still he read with interest and advantage. The present volume, with its wide range of subjects, its ...

... . Nineteen Centuries of Brink in England. A History. By Richabd Valpy Fbbnch, D.C.L., LL.D., F.S.A., Rector of Llanmartin and Rural Dean. Author of The History of Toasting, &c. London: Longmans, Green, and Co. 1884. THE reader is apt to take up this book, if readers who merely glance at the title show any aptness for taking it up at all, with the suspicion that it is one of those denunciatory ...

... MR. ALBERY'S Featherbrain at the CRITERION labours under the serious disadvantage of not furnishing a part for Mr. Charles Wyndham, whose name seems to be an indispensable item in the bill of this pop ...

... THE season of French performances commenced on Monday evening, at the GAIETY Theatre, which has been brilliantly redecorated during the brief period that has elapsed since the house was closed for tha ...

... EDWIN ASHDOWN.-- Both words and music of The Weaver's Daughter, the former anonymous, the latter by Annie Armstrong, are piquante and original; this song is of the narrative school, and of medium co ...

... . The Great Divorce Case has during the week been preceded at the Criterion by a pretty little lever du rideau, in the shape of Blanche's Somebody Else, wherein the cross-purposes of some Alsatian peasants in their love affairs are handled with grace and skill. Its heroine, Minnie, very brightly played by Miss KateRorke, is engaged to her worthy but rather slow- witted cousin, Hans Moritz, ...

... . The season of French plays began at the Gaiety on Monday with a fairly filled house, and a programme which was evi dently; found entertaining, though it boasted no novel feature. Niniche, by MM. Hennequin and Millaud, is known here not only through the medium of Boulogne, with Miss Farren in the ohief part, but in its original form as presented by Mme. Judic. Its plot, which deals with the ...

... . A DECIDED success was scored by Mrs. Edward Saker at her Globe matinée on Wednesday last-- a success to which her own performance contributed not a little. The play chosen for the occasion was a new one, Happy Go Lucky, by a Mr. Pemberton, who to the sense of humour shown in his Gentle Gertrude now proves that he adds perception of character and considerable skill in the conduct of a plot. ...

... . o adder stuff tnan The Sur ty- Burly or, Number Seven- Twenty- Eiyht, as adapted by Mr. Herman Hendriks from the German, has not been seen on the stage for some time. A farcical comedy which does not make one laugh has no right to exist and to laugh over the childish fun of The Surly-Burly was almost as difficult as to understand how it comes to pass that out of its German original a popular ...

... THE programme at the Avenue Theatre has been completely changed this week. Its more important and more successful feature is now Mr. James Mortimer's Gammon, an adaptation of MM. Labiche and Martin's capital comedy, La Poudre aux Yeux, which had, if we mistake not, a preliminary trial at a matinée some little time ago. Though Gammon begins better than it ends, it affords throughout an amusing ...

... MUSIC. ROYAL ITALIAN OPERA. UP to a recent date the directors of the Royal Italian Opera have continued to exhibit unslackened energy in the addition of fresh works to the repertory of the season, and have added to it the Romeo e Giulietta of Gounod, L' Africaine (Meyerbeer), and Lucrezia Borgia (Donizetti), making a total of thirteen operas in the space of five weeks. We cannot expect this ...