Punchinello, Volume 1, No. 09, May 28, 1870

Excerpt

HIGH NOTES BY OUR MUSICAL CRITIC.

PUNCHINELLO'S critic, always the friend of fair-play, resents the insinuation that Mr. CARL ROSA has been a careless director of Opera. The truth is that Mr. ROSA has not produced the smallest work without a great deal of Preparation.

FLOTOW'S Shadow is to be brought out in London. It will not stand the ghost of a chance unless well mounted. Music light and sketchy; remarkable for a Chorus of Fishermen, well known as the "Shad oh! song."

Lohengrin has had a run of eight nights at Brussels, with average receipts of little less than four thousand francs. This sort of tune is the only one in the music of the Future which managers can understand. Nevertheless Herr WAGNER is not out of spirits. Intent upon laying the foundations of future wealth and fame, he can lay Low and Grin. Brussels gold will serve him as well as Rheingold.

The difference between BACH'S music find a music-box is yet an unsettled conundrum. Such is likely to be the fate of the question raised with so much temper over the Passion Music of that great man by the English critics. Shame on all critics that condemn MOZART as a fogy and BACH as a nuisance. Of course it is going back on BACH with a vengeance, but what sympathy can exist between the old fuguemakers and the modern high-flyers?

LATEST NEWS ITEMS.

A SHEFFIELD paper has been prosecuted for asserting that the Prince of Wales was a fast young man. The prosecution was withdrawn as soon as the editor confessed that the Prince was loose.

The Treasury Department is much distressed by the great genius for smuggling displayed by the Chinese immigrants. They secrete opium in all sorts of wonderful places, and so worry the custom-house officers dreadfully. Several children have been arrested for bringing their "poppies" over with them, and feeling in favor of the offenders ran so high that a number of women were fined for having a share in laud'n'm.

The bull fights in London have come to a mournful conclusion. The bulls refused to take part, and the principal combatant instead of being all Matted O'er with the blood of his taurine victims, has been sent to prison for trying to Pick a Door lock.

The Last of the Piegans is travelling East, on his way to Philadelphia, to see "SHERIDAN'S Ride." He was away from home when PHILIP was there, and is very anxious to know the young man when he sees him again. Hence his laudable anxiety to study the picture.

The Fenian Army.

If the Fenians send an army to aid the Red river insurgents, it may probably be the only "BIEL" work they will attempt this year.

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT PROTECTION.

DEAR PUNCHINELLO: Having skilfully illuminated Free Trade, I now proceed to elucidate Protection. You see when we reach Protection, the boot is on the other leg; you make the conundrums then, and the other man tries to guess them. There are many kinds of protection; there's the kind which a State's prison-keeper gives to one of his birds; the kind which a black-and-tan terrier, or a freshly-imported Chinaman, extends to a good fat rat; the kind which a pious young man offers to a fair and tender damsel, when he places his arm around her dainty waist, and gently absorbs the dew of innocence from her rosy lips, (that idea, is, I think, plagiarized from TENNYSON,) and the kind which a delicate mother-in-law, blessed with nerves, pours out upon her son-in-law....