Richings English Opera: The Bohemian Girl

“The Richings’ Opera Troupe inaugurate a season of English Opera at the Academy of Music this evening, with the production of ‘Crown Diamonds’ [sic]. This is decidedly the best organized English Opera Troupe that we have ever had in this country, including as it does among its members some of the best lyric artists to be found in the profession, and as it is composed of native talent, every encouragement should be shown it. We have had enough of the ‘foreign element.’ Miss Richings is recognized as one of the best prima donnas that sings in English opera, and Mrs. Seguin is another great favorite in this city, where she is better known as Zelda Harrison. Mr. Castle and Sher. Campbell are old favorites with the New York public, and are too well known for us to dwell upon their merits at present. There are others in the troupe who are good singers and clever actors.”

“When, with Dickens on one side and the Circus on the other, and in the midst of the various other nightly attractions which divide the honors of the town, we find the Richings English opera troupe at the Academy of Music, without any special trumpeting, drawing substantial houses, of which the Italian opera would have been proud, there must be some substantial merit in these English operas and in this English opera company. So there is, as was most satisfactorily proved last (Saturday) evening in the rendering of that ever charming, ever new musical drama of the ‘Bohemian Girl.’ Castle, the tenor, has a sweet, melodious voice; Campbell, the baritone, has a full, round, capacious voice, equally good, and both have evidently gone through the severe ordeal of careful study and practice. Of Miss Richings we need only say that since the departure from our shores of Louisa Pyne we have had no English opera prima donna to dispute her ascendancy as a singer, while as an actress she is the superior even of the English nightingale. In the mounting and in all the accessories, choruses, processions, equipments, etc., the spacious stage of the Academy affords a finer opportunity for the English opera than it has at any time heretofore possessed in this city for pictorial effects, and the advantages thus offered have been appropriated, so that in every point of view the English opera, as now done at the Academy, is better this time than we have ever had it before.”