The Carl Rosa English Opera Company closes its season this month at Manchester. Its chief tenor, Mr. Hedmondt, is, I think, destined to exercise a considerable influence upon operatic art. Not only a fine singer and a fine actor, but a man of also a great business and organising capacity, he indulges in the idea of an English opera which shall be truly English. "He has discovered two or three young composers of the modern school, of whom he expects great things; and he will make their.compositions the foundation of that English réper-loire which he hopes will ultimately result from his generous encouragement. 'The first work which he will produce, when preli-minery arrangements are completed, will be The Prentice Piller, a powerful and dramatic opera composed by Mr. Reginald Somerville, a young composer of high talents and' brilliant musical education. Mr. Somervillo's friends laughed at him when he told them he was at work on a serious opera, and asked him where a young man under thirty, comparatively unknown, would secure a production of such " work—and now, the impossible has happened.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.