Euripides, says this learned translator, has exerted upon the character of Medea "the utmost efforts of his art and genius. This illustrious princess, the daughter of a powerful king, descended from the Sun, and celebrated for her science, found herself on a sudden forsaken by the man she loved, whom she had saved from inevitable destruction, for whom she had betrayed her father and her country, whose fortunes she had followed, or rather directed, for eight years, and whom she had never offended: thus injured by her faithless husband, insulted by Creon, and rudely driven with her two sons from his kingdom, she feels her misfortunes in their full force, and meditates the severest vengeance; to effect which she accommodates herself to every circumstance; is condescending and insinuating to the Corinthian dames who form the chorus, submissive to Creon, courteous and suppliant to Ageus: at her first interview with Jason she reproaches him with severity, but with a calm dignity, sustains her superiority even in her utmost distress, and refuses the offer of his treasures with a generous indignation: but as soon as she had secured a place of refuge, her fiery and impatient spirit flames out, and her whole soul is bent on revenge. Creon had not only betrothed his daughter to Jason, but had treated her with the greatest indignity; his daughter had alienated the affections of her husband from her and should the race of Sisyphus, whom she held in contempt, triumph in her misfortunes, and make a jest of her ruin? They must perish: the account of their death is dreadfully great. For Jason a punishment still more dreadful was reserved; she had two sons by him, and was passionately fond of them, but she knew that the father would be most sensibly wounded through them; she therefore determined to kill them. The struggle indeed was great. The poet has given this fierce and vindictive character all the tenderness of a mother; he had otherwise outraged nature, and drawn an Ate hot from hell, not a woman: she acknowledges that the dreadful deed would fill her own heart with anguish ; but Jason would suffer in it; there the flames of revenge blaze out, and every softer consideration gives place to their terrible fury. Thus the astonished Jason finds himself at once deprived of his bride, deprived of his sons, and even of the mournful satisfaction of burying them, and is left to grow old in misery, and at length to perish wretchedly; whilst the implacable Medea flies from Corinth through the air in a chariot drawn by winged dragons. "This seems to have been a favourite subject with the ancients. Ennius translated the Medea of Euripides into Latin; Ovid wrote a tragedy on the same story; and Mæcenas is said to have added to the number; these are lost had the Medea of Seneca undergone the same fate, good taste and literature would have suffered no great loss. With him Medea is uniformly in a rage; and when he should have been tracing the workings of a feeling mind, he puts us cheaply off with turgid declamation, or uninteresting description. The wise and learned Medea of Euripides is here a sorceress that shocks us; the whole fourth Act is taken up with her horrid incantations, of which P. Brumoy says well, c'est moins un enchantement magique, qu'un hurlement infernal. After the robe is thus enchanted, she sends her sons with it to the bride to procure her favour to them, though Creon had promised to treat them with a father's tenderness, and Jason had declared the same in the warmest and most affectionate terms, which destroys the motive for sending them so finely contrived by the Greek poet. The effects of this fatal robe, which by Euripides are described with so minute a simplicity, that we are led from light circumstances to deeper and deeper horrors, are here represented in general and unaffecting terms as a raging fire which had consumed the palace and endangered the city. Medea now proceeds to the murder of her sons, to punish them for their father's guilt, Vos pro paternis sceleribus pœnas date, which totally mistakes the intention and destroys the effect. Her irresolution, the struggles between nature and revenge, and her pathetic parting with her children, had formed in Euripides a scene too beautiful to be omitted; but all the tenderness of it is extinguished by a burst of madness, in which Medea sees ghosts and furies: she then outrageously wishes for as many children as Niobe had, that she might destroy them all; massacres one in the sight of the father, and then departs in her car drawn by winged dragons. Yet after all these scenes of rage, horror, and slaughter, the conduct of Creon and the infidelity of Jason are so mitigated, that they are scarcely culpable; the former was threatened with a war by Acastus, if he longer gave refuge to Medea; prudence therefore required him to send her away; and Jason was compelled to yield to her banishment by both the kings, hinc rex, et illinc; and what most prevailed with him was his affection to his children, who could not otherwise be saved; nay further, he had by his tears and entreaties obtained of Creon that the sentence of death, which he would have denounced against her, might be softened into that of banishment; so that he is represented rather as an unhappy man, than as a faithless, and perjured husband, and as such is the object of pity; whilst Medea, without sufficient cause, transported with a blind and ungovernable rage, is no longer an injured and resentful wife, but an infernal fury, and the object of abhorrence; and this totally destroys the moral of the drama, whose intention it was to display the dreadful consequences of infidelity in the connubial state. "The great Corneille, with these two different models before him, was so unhappy as to imitate the splendid faults of Seneca, rather than the chaste simplicity of Euripides. It gives one pain ever to mention this excellent person but in terms of the highest praise, which is justly due to his merits both as a poet and a man ; but truth extorts this unwilling censure on his Medée : yet even his faults are the ebullitions of a great genius too much indulging a rich and vivid imagination. P. Brumoy was led by the nature of his undertaking to examine this tragedy, which however is not one of Corneille's best productions, of which he was himself fully sensible; the Critic's observations are judicious; to them the reader is referred, as whatever degree of censure there may be in them, it comes with more propriety from the poet's countryman, than from a stranger who wishes only to commend, and apologizes in the words of Brumoy, Il ne m'appartient pas de faire le procès à Corneille. Il faut respecter jusqu'aux défauts des grands hommes.-Il seroit seulement a souhaiter qu'il n'eût pas quelquefois porté l'imitation de Séneque et de Lucain jusqu'à épouser leurs défauts. Après tout, cela ne diminue en rien la gloire d'un si grand Génie, qui a toujours enchéri sur ses modèles." The author of the Italian libretto, upon which Mayer composed his music, has wisely adopted the plan of Euripides, and hence the varying situations and passions which have afforded so fine an occasion to Madame Pasta for the display of her dramatic powers, The composer of the music has flourished during our own times, but his style appears to have been formed before the last age of florid notation. A Bavarian by birth, he has received his education and perfected his musical taste between Germany and Italy. There is simplicity in his melody and strength in his harmonies, but we cannot consider this opera as entitling him to the rank adjudged to him by the French critics—namely, as approaching to Mozart. There is not indeed in our judgment sufficient beauty to justify our entering upon a regular analysis of its parts. We shall content ourselves with a general description, and with an examination of its more prominent scenes only. The introductory chorusses are just agreeable and tolerably expressive, and as much may be said of the solos, which introduce Creusa as awaiting the arrival of Jason, and the hero himself on his return from his warlike expedition. The passion begins in the dialogue between Medea and Jason which follows. It is conducted for a considerable, time in recitativo parlante, and the object of the composer seems to have been to fetter the singer as little as possible, to give room for powerful declamation, and merely to support the voice and occasionally to throw into the accompaniment impassionate illustration. At the close of this appeared one of the most extraordinary gleams of Madame Pasta's genius. Jason concludes his remonstrance and solicitation to her to depart from him with her children in these words :Ah! l'amor tuo t' illude. Gia. Abbi pietà di te; volgiti intorno Un sol guardo, o Medea. Fosti regina: Regina più non sei ; darmi volevi Il regno de' miei padri; io stesso, errante, Che sperar posso? Che mi resta? Medea replies by a solitary word—IO. We shall now cite the latter part of the passage, with the notes of the composer. Che sperar posso di che sperar posso che mi - res - ta? I -0. It is impossible to convey the dignity with which Madame Pasta invested these two notes. She gave them with the whole power of her voice, at the same instant flung wide her arms above her head, and her whole figure seemed to dilate with a passionate majesty that can only be understood when seen, and when seen too as the climax of the preceding expostulation. A duet, "Cedi al tuo destin," which is entitled to high praise, closes the scene. It affords scope for the finest expression, for it changes from shade to shade of various passion, yet the melody is so simply constructed as to be almost syllabic throughout. In one pathetic appeal the great actress, who, as the title prophetically indicates, is the all in all of the opera, sung so beautifully as to allow the ear to be the conductor to the other senses, an office usurped by the eye almost throughout all the rest of the part so completely does the action dispossess the singing of its accustomed precedency. We transcribe the passage. Egeus presents himself in recitative, which, like the former, is of the unambitious, but declamatory species. The symphony, which is somewhat curiously constructed by the alternate adoption VOL. VIII. NO. XXXI.-1826. 3 B of the melody for the base and the base for the melody, promises however more than the vocal part performs. For the air which follows in the original score Signor Torri substituted another of Mayer's "Dolce fiamma del mio core"-one prettiness for another. The finale to this act, if not better than the rest, is at least equal to any other piece in the opera. It exhibits a complete example of the power of the lyric drama in combining a vast number of parts and interests in a contemporaneous dialogue, the parties to this finale being no fewer than the whole dramatis personæ. It opens with a chorus of priests, who make preparations for the nuptials of Jason with Creusa, and invoke the propitious presence of Love and Hymen. Creusa, Creontes, and Jason utter their several feelings. Medea and Egeus mingle with the spectators, and express apart their painful endurance of the scene. The ceremony proceeds. The father and the lovers breathe their vows of affection, while Medea and Egeus call down the wrath of heaven upon these impious rites-the populace give vent to their joy in exclamations. At length Medea rushes in-overturns the altar, stops the rites, and finally a band of the friends of Egeus enter, seize and carry away the destined bride, Creusa. The term "effective" is the best we can use in order to describe the very complicated music that all this implies. The single parts have, in some instances, passages of sweet melody; the principal is almost note for note with the air," Let not rage,” in Artaxerxes, while there is a simplicity in the structure of the concerted portions that gives strength and uniformity to the whole. The second act opens with a chorus and cavatina for Creusa, which is introduced between the divisions of the former. Both are light and melodious. The next scene is the incantation, which merits a more enlarged analysis. Gluck, in his Alceste, appears to have been the first who employed his talents with effect upon a similar subject. To trace the progress and the resemblance from this composer down to Weber, who has produced the last and most striking scena of the same species, might afford a curious subject for investigation; but it is not to our present purpose to pursue it so far. There is however one striking difference. All the writers before Weber kept their preternatural machinery from the view of the spectators, he |