The performances followed each other ten times a month, a unique fact in the annals of the theater for a new work, and this went on up to the sixtieth performance.
Apropos of this, they asked Lucy Arbell, our Perséphone, how many times she had sung the work, feeling sure that her answer would be wrong.
"Why," she exclaimed, "sixty times!"
"No," replied her questioner, "you have sung it one hundred and twenty times, for you are always encored in the aria of the Roses."
I owed that sixtieth performance to the new directors, Mm. Messager and Broussan, and that seems to be the last of a work which started off so brilliantly.
What a difference, I say again, between the manner in which my works have been mounted for some years and the way they were put on when I was beginning!
My first works were put on in the provinces with old scenery, and I was compelled to hear the stage manager say things like this:
"For the first act we have found an old background from La Favorita; for the second two sets from Rigoletto," etc., etc.
I recall an obliging director who on the eve of a first performance, knowing that I lacked a tenor, offered me one, but warning me, "This artist knows the part, but I ought to tell you that he is always flat in the third act."
Which reminds me that in the same house I knew a basso who had a strange pretension, still more strangely expressed, "My voice," said our basso, "goes down so far that they can't find the note on the piano."