CROWNING A TENOR.
While her Majesty's Opera Company was having a season at the Academy of Music, New York, two years ago, a newspaper man interviewed Col. Mapleson, the impresario, and took a look at the interior of the establishment, exploring many of its mysteries. In the course of the conversation he asked:—
"How many rehearsals do you give a new opera?"
"Ah, now I can tell you something that the public know nothing of. A man of the crutch-and-toothpick school, after I've put on, let me say 'Aida' at a cost of $10,000, will come to me and say, 'Aw, I've seen "Aida" twice; when are you going to give us something new?' And the poor manager has to smile and mount something equivalent to it immediately. Rehearsals! Par example. This is the sixth full-hand rehearsal for the orchestra alone—drilling for two and three hours—to get the light and shade of the pianissimo and forte. After some more band rehearsals—the slight alterations in the score by Arditi kept four copyists at work all last night and until daybreak—the principal artists rehearse about twenty times with the piano; then comes a full rehearsal with band, the artists seated all around the stage on chairs; then the property-man has to have his rehearsal. The carpenters now come in for their rehearsals, with scene framers, etc. Then comes the first stage rehearsal, with everybody without the scenery, and then another with the scenery; later on again with the properties and the business, and then it is fit for public representation. Then a languid swell will tell me he has seen the opera twice, and will want to know when I am going to give something new."
An attendant here brought the colonel his letters, over which he hastily glanced.
"Here is a letter from the Prince of Wales," he exclaimed, showing me the note, dated Hotel Bristol, Paris, October 22d. "It's in reference to his omnibus box at Her Majesty's. While I am free for a moment from my den, just take a tour of this place. I'll act as guide, philosopher and friend. I'd like you to see what's going on, and to let the public know what a herculean task it is to run old operas, let alone producing new ones."
We strode across the stage and plunged into a cavernous passage, to emerge on a staircase and into a property-room.
"What dummy is this?" demanded the colonel, administering a kick to the decapitated form of a buxomly-proportioned female, "and where's the head?"
It is the "Rigoletto" corpse.
We took a peep into the armory, which, from its aroma of oil, painfully reminded me of my ocean experience. Here the "Talismano" helmets, Oriental of design; here the head-pieces worn in the "Puritani," reminding one of Cromwell's crop-eared knaves; here the Italian so well known in "Trovatore." Morions and breastplates and shields were here, and matchlocks of ancient pattern, with guns of the Martini-Henry design.