allet, the poor player has to
content himself with an indifferent stage and wretched decorations. In
short, to quote an observation made to me recently by Signor Salvini,
"Theatrical affairs are just the opposite in Italy to what they are
in America. In Italy the opera-bill is never changed more than three
times in as many months: in America it varies almost every evening. In
Italy the play-bill is renewed nightly, while in this country and
in England a drama, if good, may have a run of over a hundred
representations." Nothing surprised Salvini more during his stay in
the United States than the splendor of the _mise en scene_ of some
of the New York plays, but he accounted for it easily enough. The
managers of most of the New York, Paris and London theatres do not
hesitate to lavish large sums of money upon their decorations and
scenery, because should the piece fail for which they were painted
they can be used in some other. The Italian theatres are nearly always
the property either of some nobleman or of a company of speculators,
whose principal object is to make as much money out of them, and spend
as little upon them, as possible. They are rented out for a month or
so to one or other of the many troupes of actors which are constantly
wandering about the country, and which bring their own scenery
and dresses with them, generally of the cheapest and most tawdry
description.

A Tuscan proverb says, "_Figlio d'attore, attore_" ("The son of an
actor is always an actor"); and this in Italy is pretty sure to be the
case. The three greatest living actors, Salvini, Rossi and Majeroni,
belong to families which have long been popular on the stage, and so
do the actresses Ristori and Sedowsky. Signora Ristori made her debut
as an infant in the cradle, and was for years a member of a troupe the
leading lady of which was her late mother, Signora Maddalena Ristori,
a woman of great talent and merit, whose death at an advanced age
has recently occasioned her celebrated daughter poignant grief. There
still exists in Italy a Venetian troupe of comedians whose ancestors
were the first interpreters of the comedies of Goldoni, and several of
them claim descent from players who enacted the tragedies and comedies
of serious classical literature before the courts of Lucrezia Borgia
and Leonora d'Este. In glancing over an Italian play-bill one is
invariably struck by the fact that many of the artists bear the same
name, and are evidently c