"Do you see these guns?" suddenly exclaimed the colonel. "I bought four hundred of them for five shillings a piece at an auction. They had been sold by an English firm to the French government during the Franco-Prussian war at a fabulous price. One night, at Dublin, we were doing 'Der Freischutz,' and poor Titjens was standing at the wing. One of these guns was loaded with a little powder rammed down by a piece of paper only. When fired, the lock blew off, and a piece of it went right through Titjens's dress, sticking in the wall behind her. What chance had the French with such weapons in their hands?"
From the armory we proceeded to the barber shop, where "Mignon," "Aida," "Traviata," and "Lucia" wigs, curls, moustaches and beards showed grizzly on shelves. A French barber was engaged in titifying Campanini's wig for "Linda," and he expatiated on its wonderful approach to nature with all the chic of his very expressive mother tongue.
In one of the wardrobes were the costumes for half a dozen operas, each opera folded away and labelled. Colonel Mapleson has about two thousand costumes with him, and his packing-cases, each the size of a small apartment, number nearly one hundred. We found the Nilsson Hall full of newly painted scenery, and the flies thronged with carpenters. The scene painter's room was devoted to "Aida," while the stage-man's room was choked full of flotsam and jetsam, from the lamp of a Vestal Virgin to the statuette of Cupid in puribus naturalibus, and from a loaded pistol to a roleau of stage gold.
PATTI.
"The stage brass band is rehearsing in the lower regions, the principal artistes doing 'Trovatore' in the first saloon, the chorus rehearsing 'Marta' in the second saloon, the orchestra on their own ground rehearsing 'Aida,' the ballet at work in a large room, and a set of coryphees blazing away in a distant corner. Listen!"
In the first saloon were the "Trovatore" party, lounging around a piano, presided at by Bisaccia, the accompanist to the company. Mlle. Adini, neé Chapman, the Leonora, was warbling right under the moustache of her husband, Aramburo, the tenor who was frantic because Mapleson refused £800 to release him from his engagement; while Del Puente was slapping his leg vigorously with his walking-cane, as he occasionally burst in with a superb note in harmony with the score. Madame Lablache leant with her elbows upon the bar, and knowing every square inch of a role she had performed from St. Petersburg to Gotham, turned from the perusal of a newspaper at the right moment in order to discharge the electricity of her Azucena, while her daughter, who is studying for the operatic stage, attended en amateur, a toy black-and-tan terrier in her arms. Having listened to a delicious morceau from "Il Trovatore," we ascended to saloon No. 2, from whence a Niagara of melody was grandly thundering. Here we found the chorus, numbering about eighty, seated hatted and bonneted, with Signor Rialp presiding at the pianoforte. The rehearsal was "Marta." After visiting a dozen different departments, every one of which is presided over by a vigilant chief, we again found ourselves on the stage.
"Now" exclaimed the colonel, "you have some little idea of what I have to look after, and yet when I produce a new opera, a crutch-and-toothpick fellow will coolly ask me, after seeing it twice, when I am going to give something 'new.' Do you know that every one in that chorus you have just seen is an Italian, and selected after considerable trouble and great expense? Do you know what it costs me to operatically rig up each member of that chorus?"
GERSTER.