OPERA HOUSE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVII, Issue 8319, 28 July 1890, Page 5

OPERA HOUSE.

MR. MILN'S COMPANY. Tin: play " Romeo and .Juliet'' was repeated on Saturday evening, at the Opera House, by Mr. Milti's company, before a fairly good audience. The performance was greatly appreciated, and Mr. Miin and Miss Kate Douglas were frequently called before the curtain. This and to-morrow evening "Macbeth" is to be staged. On Wednesday a farewell benefit is to be given to Mr. Miln, when Tom Taylor's play '"The Fool's Revenge" will be the principal feature, Mr. Miin appearing as the jester, Bertuccio. This play, the author explains, originated in a request) made to him by a well-known actor, to turn the libretto of " Kigoletto" into a play, as lie wished to act the part of ihe jester. The scene of " The Fool's Revenge" is laid in Faenzii, .Italy, in the fifteenth century, and the leading motives are the love of the jester for ins daughter, and his steadfast purpose of vengeance upon the noble Guido Malatesta, who years before had carried off Bertuccio's wife. The play has many dramatic situations. The final scene, when the jester realises that whilst pursuing his desire for vengeance, and aiding in the abduction, as he supposed, of Malatesta's wife, he had really assisted to place his own daughter in the toils, and had "drawn the bolt on his own head, and hers," is full of intense interest, and this is heightened by his sense of the fact that the wine prepared for his daughter's banquet has been poisoned, and that ho is prevented from giving her warning. Bertuccio is a sad and bitter - hearted jester, and there are many fine and noble touches in the scene in which he tells part of his history to his child—speaks of his love for her whom he guards with such jealous care, and then of the one haunting purpose that has shaped his life—that of revenge. In a note following the author's preface to the play, Mr. Miin says :—" In enacting the character of Bertuccio, ib is my aim to illustrate the idiosyncrasies and passional excesses of a poor wretch to whom nature had bequeathed a personality drawfed aud 'out of joint,' whoso natural vindietiveness had been enhanced by a terrible domestic calamity. No one, I think, can recall, without emotions of the deepest sympathy, the sad experience of this keen-witted, intensely passionate, bub despised court jester." Mr. Miin mentions the objection made against this play—that the immoralities of a ducal court of the fifteenth century are nob elevating to the stage. To that he replies that no more powerful antidote to wrong of any form can bo administered than is found in a vivid realisation of its consequences, and this is obtained in this tragedy. He claims also that powerful moral instruction is presumably derived from the reiterated reading in the churches "of the peccadilloes of such scriptural worthies as Judah, David, or the very much married but otherwise quite glorious King Solomon." Mr. Miin, on the occasion of his benefit, will doubtless have a very i large audience. J