ing. The "room rehearsals" of
the music alone, take place, in a theatre of this kind, in one of the
dressing rooms where there is a piano. The room is almost always small
and very close, and there are eight or ten people packed into it, all
singing hard and exhausting the little air there is. The stage
rehearsals with the almost invariable and inevitable shouting and
excitement are very trying to the nerves, especially when one is making
two or three debuts a week, that is, singing a new part for the first
time almost every other night as I did, at the beginning of my career.
The better the theatre, of course, the greater the smoothness and lack
of confusion at stage rehearsals. The singers and orchestra men are more
experienced, and more competent, and the manners of the Kapellmeister
improve in ratio to the importance of the opera house. A little extra
excitement is permissible when a new production is being put on, but at
the rehearsals of repetitions undue exhibitions of "temperament" on
either side are discouraged, and the powers that be have to mind their
manners and stick to the conventional forms of address. The
_Heldentenor_ may sometimes have to allow his artistic nature to get the
better of him for a moment, but no one else may claim such license.

The stage during rehearsals is like a workshop--a certain amount of
noise and confusion is necessitated by the labour going on in it, but
no one has time to spare from his share of the job in hand, and the
discipline in a good theatre is remarkable. The native German is
trained, of course, both to give and take orders well, the result of the
whole system of government, both of the family and of the nation. Stage
etiquette and the relationship between principals and chorus, _erste und
zweite Kraefte_ (principals of first and second rank) singers and the
management, grows more conventional and regulated according to the class
of the theatre. Those in authority may exact perfect obedience, but they
must ask for it properly; and while an individual is entitled to proper
consideration, he must never forget that he is but a unit of the whole.

The dressing-room arrangements in Metz were rather primitive. The
theatre was 100 years old, for one thing, and no one had ever had the
money to install new conveniences. In a good German theatre, the
dressing rooms are rarely used for rehearsing, and the principals dress
alone, at least when they have a big role to sing. In Metz I