All Is Yet Unfinished; Columns,
Pedestals, Friezes, Capitals And Various Other Architectural Ornaments,
Besides Several Unhewn Blocks Of Marble, Lie On The Ground; And Probably
This Magnificent Design Will Never Be Completed For No Other Reason Than
Because It Was Imagined By Napoleon And Might Recall His Glories.
Verily,
Legitimacy is childishly spiteful!
Yesterday morning I went to see an Italian comedy represented at the
Teatro Re. The piece was l'Ajo nell' imbarazzo - a very droll and
humorous piece - but it was not well acted, from the simple circumstance of
the actors not having their parts by heart, and the illusion of the stage
is destroyed by hearing the prompter's voice full as loud as that of the
actors, who follow his promptings something in the same way that the clerk
follows the clergyman in that prayer of the Anglican liturgy which says "we
have erred and strayed from our ways like lost sheep." An Italian audience
is certainly very indulgent and good-natured, as they never hiss, however
miserable the performance.
But in speaking of theatrical performances, no person should leave Milan
without going to see the Teatro Girolamo, which is one of the
"curiosities" of the place, peculiar to Milan, and more frequented,
perhaps, than any other. This is a puppet theatre, but puppets so well
contrived and so well worked as to make the spectacle well worth the
attention of the traveller. It is the Nec plus ultra of Marionettism, in
which Signer Girolamo, the proprietor, has made a revolution, which will
form an epoch in the annals of puppetry; having driven from the stage
entirely the graziosissima maschera d'Arlecchino, who used to be the hero
of all the pieces represented by the puppets and substituted himself, or
rather a puppet bearing his name, in the place of Harlequin, as the
principal farceur of the performance.
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