Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 333, July 1843

In the midst of all this ignorance, with our one opera, our anthems, madrigals, glees, and ballads, we nevertheless esteem ourselves a musical people, and every one is ready to exclaim with Bottom, "I have a reasonable good ear in musick!" Music certainly is the fashion now, and no one would dare to avow that he had no music in his soul. It may be thought, that none but a people passionately devoted to music, could produce a succession of patriots ready to sacrifice health and wealth, rather than their countrymen should fail to possess an Italian opera. Some one is ever found equal to the emergency; there is seldom any lack of competitors for the "forlorn hope" of the management of the Italian opera, and, undismayed by the ruin of his predecessors, the highest bidder rushes boldly on to the direction of the Queen's theatre. Forty thousand pounds of debt has been known to have been incurred in a single season; and it has been calculated that a sum little short of a million sterling, besides the produce of the subscriptions and admissions, has been sacrificed to the desire of an Italian opera. Every autumn is rich in musical festivals, as they are called, by which, though the temples of God are desecrated, and the church, in common with the theatre and the concert-room, becomes the scene of gaiety, frivolity, and amusement; and though the speculation is a charitable one, by which it is hoped