SULLIVANHOE!

_BRAVISSIMO_, Sir ARTHUR SULLIVAN of Ivanhoe, or to compress it
telegraphically by wire, "_Bravissimo Sullivanhoe!_" Loud cries of
"ARTHUR! ARTHUR!" and as ARTHUR and Composer he bows a solo gracefully
in front of the Curtain. Then Mr. JULIAN STURGIS is handed out to him,
when "SULLIVAN" and "JULIAN"--latter name phonetically suggestive of
ancient musical associations, though who nowadays remembers "Mons.
JULLIEN"?--the composer and librettist, bow a duet together. "Music"
and "Words" disappear behind gorgeous new draperies. "All's swell
that ends swell," and nothing could be sweller than the audience on
the first night. But to our tale. As to the dramatic construction of
this Opera, had I not been informed by the kindly playbill that I
was seeing _Ivanhoe_, I should never have found it out from the first
scene, nor should I have been quite clear about it until the situation
where that slyboots _Rebecca_ artfully threatens to chuck herself
off from the topmost turret rather than throw herself away on the bad
Templar _Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert-sans-Sullivan_. The Opera might
be fairly described as "Scenes from _Ivanhoe_," musically illustrated.
There is, however, a continuity in the music which is lacking in the
plot.

[Illustration: All Dicky with Ivanhoe; or, The Long and Short of it.]

The scenic effects are throughout admirable, and the method, adopted
at the end of each _tableau_, of leaving the audience still more in
the dark than they were before as to what is going on on the stage, is
an excellent notion, well calculated to intensify the mystery in which
the entire plot is enveloped.