at
Theatre of San Carlo to do--what? Why simply to make fun of an old
woman--to deride, to hiss, to jeer at an actress they once worshipped,
but whose beauty is faded now, and whose voice has lost its former
richness. Everybody spoke of the rare sport there was to be. They said
the theatre would be crammed because Frezzolini was going to sing. It
was said she could not sing well now, but then the people liked to see
her, anyhow. And so we went. And every time the woman sang they hissed
and laughed--the whole magnificent house--and as soon as she left the
stage they called her on again with applause. Once or twice she was
encored five and six times in succession, and received with hisses
when she appeared, and discharged with hisses and laughter when she
had finished--then instantly encored and insulted again! And how the
high-born knaves enjoyed it! White-kidded gentlemen and ladies laughed
till the tears came, and clapped their hands in very ecstasy when that
unhappy old woman would come meekly out for the sixth time, with
uncomplaining patience, to meet a storm of hisses! It was the
cruellest exhibition--the most wanton, the most unfeeling. The singer
would have conquered an audience of American rowdies by her brave,
unflinching tranquillity (for she answered encore after encore, and
smiled and bowed pleasantly, and sang the best she possibly could, and
went bowing off, through all the jeers and hisses, without ever losing
countenance or temper); and surely in any other land than Italy her
sex and her helplessness must have been an ample protection for
her--she could have needed no other. Think what a multitude of small
souls were crowded into that theatre last night!"

English audiences, on the other hand, are notoriously friendly to
their old favourites. When Dr. Hanslick, the Viennese critic, visited
England and heard Sims Reeves singing before crowded houses as he had
been doing for forty or fifty years, he remarked, "It is not easy to
win the favour of the English public; to lose it is quite impossible."

Mme. Grisi made her last appearance in London in 1866 at the theatre
she had left twenty years previously, Her Majesty's. The opera was
_Lucrezia Borgia_. At the end of the first act she miscalculated the
depth of the apron and the descending curtain left her outside on her
knees. She had stiffness in her joints and was unable to rise without
assistance.... This situation must have been very embarassing to a
s