Many of the greatest singers of the time appeared in these performances. Miolan-Carvalho (the original Marguerite), Faure (the first Mephistopheles), Giuglini, the incomparable Trebelli, and Santley. Patti assumed the rôle of the heroine in the following year with great success; but Punch did not fail to welcome Titiens as Leonora in Fidelio, an achievement which he describes as "noble music nobly rendered." It was in 1864 again that the efforts of English opera to raise its diminished head called forth Punch's satire. Foreign opera still held the field, and the only English feature of the venture was the conductor Mellon.
The "Homeric Catalogue of Singers," published on April 1, 1865, shows how formidable was the competition of the foreign singers, headed by Patti, Lucca, and the honey-tongued Miolan-Carvalho, with other prima donnas from Munich, Berlin, Milan, Moscow, and Lisbon, and, amongst men, Mario, Wachtel ("the far-famed shouter of high notes"), Ronconi (a great actor and humorist) Tagliafico, and half a dozen others whose names have fallen into the limbo of forgotten singers.
Meyerbeer's long-promised and posthumous L'Africaine arrived at last in the summer season of 1865, but before its performance on July 22, with Pauline Lucca in the part of Selika, the libretto of this "grand new old opera" is irreverently burlesqued by Punch with delightful pictures by Du Maurier. We can only find room for an excellent travesty of the Song of Inez:—
I go to execution,
'Tis righteous retribution,
And by this Constitution
All foreigners must die—
and the excellent and well-merited criticism of the execrable singing of the opera chorus (old style).
"JUST HINT A FAULT"