All the town, and the country too, by paragraph circumstantial, and puff
direct, must have learned that every theatre in this Metropolis, and
consequently, every stage in the country, is to have its version of the
splendid French opera _Robert le Diable_. Its success in Paris has been
what the good folks there call _magnifique_, and playing the devil has
been the theatrical order of day and night since the Revolution. As we
know nothing of its merits, and do not write of what we neither see nor
hear, nor believe any report of, we do not put up our hopes for its
success. But, as the story of the opera is a pretty piece of Norman
romance, some fair penciller has sent us the sketches of the annexed cuts,
and our Engraver has thus pitted himself with Grieve, Stanfield, Roberts,
and scores of minor scene-painters, who are building canvass castles, and
scooping out caverns for the King's Theatre, Covent Garden, and Drury Lane
Theatres. Theirs will be but candle-light glories: our scenes will be the
same by all lights. But as scenes are of little use without actors, and
cuts of less worth without description, we append our fair Correspondent's
historical notices of the sites and the _dram. pers._ of "this our
tragedy."