Another concert demands our attention, in which portions of a work by an American composer were submitted to the test of public judgment. This we must consider the most important musical event of the season; for great singers, though surely not common among our English race, have not been unknown; the ability to interpret God gives freely,--the power to create, rarely. In any generation, probably not ten men arise who write new melodies; of these, only a small proportion have either the intellectual power or the aesthetic feeling to combine the subtile elements of music into forms of lasting beauty. Most of them are influenced by prevailing mannerisms, and their music is therefore ephemeral, like the taste to which it ministers. Of all the composers that have lived, probably not more than six or eight have attained to an absolutely classic rank. These few are not in relations with any temporary taste; their music might have been written to-day or a century ago, and it will be as fresh a century hence. No one of the arts has had fewer great masters. A new composer, therefore, has a right to claim our attention. If, perchance, we discover that he has the gift of genius, and is not merely a clever imitator, we cannot rejoice too much. The work to which we allude is the opera "Omano,"--the libretto in Italian by Signor Manetta, the music by Mr. L. H. Southard. We shall not stop now to consider the question, whether American Art is to be benefited by the production of operas in the Italian tongue; it is enough to say, that, until we have native singers capable of rendering a great dramatic work, singers who can give us in English the effects which Grisi, Badiali, Mario, and Alboni produce in their own language, we must be content with the existing state of things, and allow our composers to write for those artists who can do justice to their conceptions. We hope to live to hear operas in English; but meanwhile we must have music, and, at present, the Italian stage is the only common ground.