THE OPERA-GOER'S DIARY.

_Monday 23_.--Operatic world all agog to hear, and to see, _Le
Prophete_. First appearance for many years. Great things expected
of JEAN DE RESZKE as _Jean of Leyden_, and Mlle. RICHARD as _Fides_.
Great expectations not disappointed. Scene in Cathedral magnificent
as a spectacle. But scene in Cathedral between JEAN and his unhappy
mother still grander as acting. _Le Prophete_ is remarkable too, as
being an Opera without Mlle. BAUERMEISTER in it. Skating scene, with
a nice ballet, rather a frost. "Not sufficient go in it," observes
veteran Opera-goer, with book in his hand, dated eighteen hundred
and sixty something, containing a cast of characters which, he says,
though he doesn't show me the book, comprises the names of MARIO,
GRISI, VIARDOT-GARCIA, and HERR FORMES. A more veterany veteran tells
me that GRISI and VIARDOT never played together in this, but that
GRISI succeeded VIARDOT as _Fides_.

[Illustration: MONDAY, JUNE 23.

Jean de Reszke as Jean of Leyden. Jeanne The Risky as Sarah d'Arc.]

Even the veteran is pleased, and acknowledges that thirty years ago
they couldn't have done it as they do now, barring the skating scene,
where, he insists upon it, the original "go" is wanting. The fact is,
we have long passed the days when "rinking" was a novelty on the stage
or off it. But what a jolly lot these Anabaptists were! They enjoyed
themselves with their dancing-girls and their picnicking on the ice.
Substitute General BOOTH for _Jean of Leyden_, and the tambourine
girls for PALLADINO and the ballet, and then you have a modern version
of _Le Prophete_.

[Illustration: Mlle. Richard as Fides,--not Boney Fides.]

Delightful to see M. MIRANDA as one of the three Anabaptists,
_Mathisen_ (a good name in the city, with only a letter changed),
striking a sixteenth century flint, for the purpose of lighting
a candle, but, failing in the attempt, compelled to destroy
sixteenth-century illusion, and employ, in a sneaking kind of way,
the nineteenth-century match, which strikes only on its own box. Mlle.
NUOVINA, not so good here as in the part of _Marguerite_, but there is
very little for a soprano to do. JEAN reckless in the final drinking
song.

The voice of DRURIOLANUS OPERATICUS is heard at the wings. The
stage-manager's assistant is evidently nervous, and the curtain, after
once going up a little way and coming down again, ascends suddenly,
in spite of adjuration of DRURIOLANUS to "W