Event Comment: An
Italian Comic Opera by some performers just arriv'd from
Paris. Went off pretty well, -a Girl greatly admir'd (
Cross). [
The girl seems to have been
Sga Spiletta.] She plays off with inexhaustible spirits all muscular evolutions of
the face and brows; while in her eye wantons a studied archness, and pleasing malignity. Her voice has strength and scope sufficient; has nei
ther too much of
the feminine, nor an inclining to
the male. Her gestures are ever varying; her transitions quick and easy. Some over-nice critics, forgetting, or not knowing
the meaning of
the word Burletta, cry that her manner is outre. Wou'd she not be faulty were it o
therwise?
The thing chargeable to her is (perhaps) too great a luxurience of comic tricks; which (an austere censor would say) border on unlaced lasciviousness, and extravagant petulance of action (
Paul Hiffernan,
The Tuner, No 1). [
Spiletta was
the name of
the character to whom
Sga Nicolina Giordani gave such life that
the name stuck to her. See
Saxe Wyndham,
Annals of Covent Garden Theatre.] [A Comic Opera by G. Giordani, Music by
G. Cocchi-
Nicoll, English Drama, III, p. 349.] Nothing less than
the full price will be taken during
the Performance. Printed books of
the opera sold at
the theatre. Tomorrow,
Venice Preserved. [
Murphy commented in
Gray's Inn Journal (22 Dec.): "A great deal of whatever humour this production may contain, is certainly lost to an
English audience; and
the manner of acting, being a burlesque upon what people here are not very well acquainted with, is not universally felt. But notwithstanding
these disadvantages,
there is one among
them, Sga Nicolina Giordani, who displayed such lively traces of Humour in her countenance, and such pleasing variety of action, and such variety of graceful deportment, that she is generally acknowledged to be, in that Cast of playing, an excellent comic actress."