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    Herr Dessoir , the leading tragedian , from Berlin , by his performance of Othello , proved what I suspected , from his performance pi Faust , that he had a fine intelligence to conceive , and , in some respects , a mastery over the representative power , requisite in the pourtrayal of character under emotion , but he lacks the physical capabilities demanded by the part . He excels where Devrient is so deficient , — -namely , in intelligence and e motion ; but he is deficient in those indispensable qualities which constitute the whole of Devrient ' s claims , —namely , personal appearanoe , bearing , voice and diction . I never before heard the speech" to the senate delivered with such thorough poetic appreciation and artistic execution ; never saw any actor , not even Kean , so truthful and so tragic in the

    representation of emotion , during the early portions of the great tempting scene . The restrained feeling , struggling for utterance ; the chilled and almo st paralysed soul , trying to disbelieve , trying , also , to be calm ; the convulsive shudders , which not only betrayed the suffering then racking him , but also indicated the apoplectic fit which was to come ; the hoarse voice , and the intense quietness , conveyed a more truthful and tragic representation than any Othello conveyed to my mind before . Critics who are the dupes of Devrient may have seen little in it ; but those who trusted to their own emotions , felt what Devrient never made them

    feelthat here was a passionate soul , depicted in its agony . But , on the other hand , it must be noted first , that when the scene demands from Othello no . exaltation of emotion , —when the inwajd suffering flames into passion , expressing itself with terrible vehemence and power , there where Kean was so terrific and lion-like , Herr Dessoir was not equal to the part . He was spasmodic and monotonous * and instead of rising to a climax , the successive phases left me disappointed and unmoved . The final scene was monotonous . Othello , when he murders Desdemona , should be calm , but terribly calm , with white wrath more perfect than any vehemence .

    Secondly , it must be noted that Othello , above all other tragic personages needs great physical qualities in the performer . He must redeem his black complexion by dignity and power which outwardly express the greatness of his spirit . There must be something about him which makes us feel Desdemona could have loved him . Kean , in spite of his small stature , had that something . There was a lion-like grace about him ; and his eye ! who can forget that eye ! Herr Dessoir is small , ungraceful , monotonous in his gestures , monotonous in voice , and his Othello wa s consequently neither grand nor powerful . I regard his of

    performance , therefore , as unsatisfactory—but as the performance a highly intelligent actor struggling against natural deficiencies . If Herr Dessoir wanted power , Herr Pauli wanted , everything in lago —conception , power , finesse , truth . I never saw it so badly , so tamely played . As to Cassio and Boderigo , they were fully equal to the highest style of barn acting . Fraulein Fuhr played Desdemona with less discrimination and charm than I expected ; her scene with Emilia , however , was excellent . What a scene it is ! I mean the one after Othello ' s jealousy , where she talks , as she undresses , of JJudovico , of reputed false wives , &c , one of the most Shaksperian scenes in the whole drama , and always omitted on our stage ! . Vivian .

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    SARDANAPALUS AT THE ADELPHT . Let not churlish critics deny to the eminent antiquarian of the Princess ' s Theatre one rare distinction . He has touched nothing that he has not burlesqued . In other words , he has suggested th e ludicrous side of all that is grand in art , and dignified in history . But the misfortune of it is , that after one has seen Mr . Charles Kean as Macbeth , it becomes impossible to realize a Macbeth more comic than that : and when we have once sat out those dreary five acts , in which the collaborateur of Lav ard presents the Assyrian voluptuary as an overloaded and demoralized old-clothes man , where shall we look for a burlesque of Sardanapalus with any hope of our sense of the ludicrous being stimulated to tho same exhaustiner pitch again P It is by this happy

    combination of the solemn and the absurd that Mr . Charles Kean leaves the field for those literary contortionists , the burlesque writers , so narrow and so difficult . ,. a , Here is a case in point . Wo emphatically pronounce the hardanapalus presented to us by Miss Woolgar , at the Adelphi , to bo far more like Lord Byron ' s hero than that strange apparition in Oxford-street , which has lately taken ancient Prophecy into partnership , and shown us what a figure of fun an excavated descendant of Nimrod may be in 1853 . True , Miss Woolgar , in that square-cut board , wh ich cannot for a moment spoil the fine , sensitive face , and in those voluminous robes , which seem onlv to Hinrrfrest new noses of easv ffraco to the wearer , gives us a

    fleshand-blood portrait of tho Assyrian King , and converts him into a iast young man of our own epoch . And wo are not sorry for the chango . Wo wish " fast" young men in general would take a loaf out of Sardanapalus ' s ( wo mean Miss Woolgar ' s ) book , and bo only half as elegant , and half as delightful . If , however , Miss Woolgar and Mr . Charles Kean were to make an exchange of personations , Lord Byron would be tho gainer , and Mr . Mark Lemon not all the loser by tho exchange ; for what could bo more genuine burlesque than tho Sardanapalus of tho Princess ' s doing tho " fast King of Assyria" at tho Adelpln F On tho other hand—who can doubt P—tho Sardanapalus that Byron drew would , in Miss Woolgar ' s hands , rosumo all that prestige of poetry and passion—all that supremo tenderness , that fine insouciance , that grand weariness , which tradition supposes , and Mr . -Charles Koan hideouslcontradicts . " ¦ '

    y But not to overwhelm our readers with hypothesis , wo may as well state , without further circumlocution , that this AdidlphI version of Sardanapalus , is a smart and clever adaptation ; and from beginning to ond , aa wo can certify , keeps the audienco excited and amused . It does not bolong—need wo say P—to that swell-mob family of burlesques , consisting of execrable puns torn by force from tho dictionary , which condemn tho perpetrator to bo kicked out of any rational society . Nor is it , in roHpeot of writing , ono of tho best specimens of its own kind . But it ia bright , genial , and spontaneous : tho tablo-talk of the day is

    pleasantly struck off : the Cab Act and the Camp are turned to the best advantage ; and every now and then comes a p ithy word of shrewd sense lurking in a line of fun . Add to this that it is admirably mounted in quasi Assyrian style , and with a sumptuous prodigality of decoration j that the musical accompaniments are " seizing" and fanciful , the vocal parodies felicitous , the groupings carefully studied and elaborately reproduced from the Nimroud groups ; that Keeley is a prodigious mother-mlaw to a discarded Queen ; that Paul Bedford , as the ambitious Mede * copies , With laudable conscientiousness , the familiar gestures which seem to have descended from Assyrian warriors to London street-boys , and

    looms , rigid and enormous , in complete armour . ; and that Miss Collins , the favoured and devoted Myrrha , is quite as statuesque as we could wish that " beautiful Ionian" ( here translated into Irish ) to be under such ( or any ) circumstances , and has the additional vraisemblance of youth and good looks . As Myrrha is surel y no * a part for eminent antiquarians , we find no fault with Miss Collins for restoring the Myrrha of Lord Byron in these respects . Altogether , we decidedly prefer the Sardanapalus of the Adelphi to any other of our con . temporaries who have assumed that name ; and we recommend ail

    friends to pay him a visit . By the way , let not those ^ wiio do so iorget to stay for the farce of The Camp at Chobham . It as a success ^ of apropos—just what a flying piece de cirConstance should be , and acted . con amore by all concerned . The heavy and the light dragooa are real army men , and talk of stables and cigars , et cetera , as army men do . -L-eigH Murray ' s splendid and easy domination , his victorious and imperturbable assurance , is to the life ; and Keeley , as the terrified and bamboozled bourgeois , is " more easily imagined than described . " c . H .

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    A LAST LOOK AT THE KOYAL ACADEMY EXHIBITION . The closing day of the Royal Academy was the hottest we have had , or are likely to have , this summer , and the crowd within the building , irom a little after ten until nearly dusk , was a sight to see . There is much , difference of opinion as to the merits of the exhibition as a whole , oucn gaps among the R . A . ' s , and quasi R . A . ' s , have not occurred for seasons out of mind ; and the absentees had each a public , certain to lament its missing favourite . Maclise , Mulready , Leslie , Frith , John Martin , quite extinct ; Dyce and Herbert only just showing , each m a hasty study ; and Webster repeating his Dame ' s School with rather diminished effect , and doing nothing besides . All this , it must be confessed , is a great detraction of attraction , particularly for those who go with the and d ticallthe innovating

    Blachwood and Times critics , regarscep y genius of the younger men . For our own part , in spite of great disappointment at some cases of absence , we hold the merit of this exhibition to have been above the average . " Historical" painting was certainly more remarkable for academic propriety ( ten-feet-high Art not being anywise rampant this year ) than for numbers or ambition . But something more than the conforming merit belonged to Ward's " Execution of Montrose , " to Armitage's " City of Refuge , " to Johnston ' s " Edward the Fourth and Elizabeth Woodville" ( Johnston is the most promising of the Scotch painters ) , to Egley ' s scene from the Cloister Life of Charles the Fifth , and to Cross ' s " Death of Thomas a Becket . " This last we might condemn for its tameness and conventionality , and consistently defend against our own judgment . The adherence to certain rules of " High Art" is itself ambitious , and in the very tameness of the design there is evidence of discipline . It is in genre painting only that there and

    was a decided falling off . It would not do to think of Jb nth s . Tope Lady Mary" while looking at the spectator scene , " Phillis and Brunetta , cleverly painted too , by Mr . Solomon , or at Rankle / a less attractive picture of " Dr . Watts visiting his little friends . " Among the portraits , Gordon's were conspicuous for their general lifelike appearance , and their personality . This is not the universal attribute of portraits . Indeed , it seems that most painters object to committing themselves to personal views . They have an abstract expression whinli relieves them from such impropriety , as it fits every sitter ; for

    though the proverbial difficulty always holds good about material , which can only be modified , and not changed , and you can't mako a Silk Buckingham out of a John Parry , it is possible to substitute for Parry a habitual expression an ideal loftiness and profundity quite as imposing in its effect as the veritable expression of a Buckingham . It is among tho drawings and miniatures that tho best portraits are to bo found . The merit " hidden in this conspicuous place" has a new importance , since miniature-painting has , by accident , become associated while the

    with the great movement in Art , begun by Hunt and Millais , practice of multiplying crayon drawings , by improved machinery , ia making the public body familiar with tho features of its leaders . By the bye , it is a pity that so few of our artists are lithographers . When one scos tho admirable effects produced by men like Baugniet and Le " on Noel , far inferior as artists , or even as draughtsmen , to half tho exhibitors in the miniature-room at the Royal Academy , it becomes a matter of gigantic speculation aa to what Richmond or Laurence might do by direct application to tho stone . Tho engravings after their studies aro very insufficient re-productions .

    Tho landscapes appearod more glorious than over , on that hot Saturday , when we wore shouldered along through tho stifling rooms . After kneading Fleet-street mud for six weeks and over , it was pleasant , now that July had come indeed , to stand before such pictures aa those by Thomas Sydney Cooper , — " With a pant for woodlands dim . " tho soul of tho when ho did

    Cooper ' s landscapes ( ho was always picture tho cows to tho landscape of Lee ) wore positively tho best things of their kind at tho Royal Academy . Ho lias a way of getting at tho nett value of a pioco of grazing land , that no man has had sincb Berghom . Ono of his Bconos , with a light broozo swooping gently over it , flattening the branches of the trees and stirring tho tails of tho cattle ( a wonderful touch ) , deserves a separate notioo . Wo must eay more about the landscapes , which have boon tho mainstay of all tho gallcrioa this year . Q .

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    Jut * 30 ; 1853 . ] THE LEADER . 7 * 1 . -

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), July 30, 1853, page 741, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1997/page/21/