"TO SIGNOR BERTINI.
"In consequence of the lamentable failure you met with on Wednesday evening last, the 24th inst., it is my painful duty to notify you that by reason of your inability to perform your contract, I hereby put an end to it. At the same time I request that you will return me the balance of the money that I advanced to you, amounting to 1,000 dollars.
"Yours, truly,
"(Signed) J. H. MAPLESON."
Of course he did not return my thousand dollars, but fell into the hands of some attorneys, who at once issued process against me for 50,000 dollars damages!
While admitting that at the time I engaged him he was a good singer, I maintained that latterly, from some cause or other, his voice had utterly gone. I had engaged him to perform certain duties which he was unable to fulfil.
His lawyers insisted upon his having another opportunity. This I at once agreed to; but not before the public, for whom I had too much respect to inflict another dose of Bertini upon them. I therefore offered him the empty house, full orchestra and chorus, and a jury half of his own selection and half of mine, with the Judge of one of the Superior Courts as umpire; but this he refused. The matter, therefore, went into the usual groove of protracted law proceedings and consequent annoyances and attachments. The very next day all my banking account was attached, and it was two days before I could get bondsmen in order that it might be released, so that I could continue to pay my salaries to the other artists.
On the following night we performed Norma at Brooklyn, with Mdme. Pappenheim as the Druid priestess; the night afterwards being reserved for the début of Mdme. Patti at New York in La Gazza Ladra. The occasion naturally drew together an immense audience, which displayed much enthusiasm for the singer. The pleasure of hearing Mdme. Patti again was increased by the fact that the work in which she was to appear was not a hackneyed one.
The opera, however, failed to make the effect I expected, being generally pronounced by the Press and the public to be too antiquated. The contralto who undertook the rôle of "Pippo" was excessively nervous, having had no rehearsals and never having met Patti before.
One daily paper said that the lesser rôles were well taken, down to the stuffed magpie, who flew down and seized the spoon, and sailed away into the flies with prodigious success, adding: "La Gazza Ladra will soon be laid permanently on the shelf. It is many years since it was done here before, and from a judgment of last evening, it will be many years before the experiment will be repeated."