utioner to an
execution, or the thimbles to a thimble-rig man. She takes no pains to
conceal what a high price she sets on the value of her presence. She
sings just when she pleases, and just as she pleases. Caprice itself is
not more capricious than this fair creature. As capricious as a prima
donna has almost become a proverb, and we predict that in a few years it
will become fully established as such. She is a female tyrant.
Impresario, treasurer, chef (d'orchestre,) chorus master and chorus
tremble before her, when in one of her passions she brings down her
pretty little foot in a most commanding stamp. She gives the first
mentioned person more trouble than all the singers, orchestra and
officials together, with her coughs, colds and affected indispositions.
Next to the impresario, the chef (d'orchestre) suffers most from her
imperious spirit. He never conducts so as to accompany her properly, and
though she sings a half a note higher than she did at rehearsal, she
expects every poor musician to transpose his magic at sight, or receive
the indications of her displeasure in a way that leads the audience to
believe that the fault lies entirely with the orchestra. She worries the
basso,--poor, heavy, drowsy fellow,--because he's such a slow
coach--and such an oaf. She is disposed to be more friendly to the
tenor, who is the only person who receives any tokens of her good-will;
but in truth, she would cease to be a woman, if she were unkind to this
gentlemanly, polite little fellow. Neither does she hold the public in
the least regard, but conceives that she has a right to be seriously
indisposed as often as she thinks that people are really desirous to
hear her; and "is subject when the house is thin, to cold," as Byron
says. She keeps all the town who have determined to go and hear her, in
the most provoking suspense. Balls and evening parties are sadly
interrupted by her erratic course, for she is sure to sing on the
evenings assigned to those delightfully laborious modes of destroying
time. All the pleasure promising engagements made by the Browns and the
Smiths to form a party, and go in concert to the opera, are postponed
from time to time, to the great vexation of young Harry Brown, who
craftily set the affair on foot, in order to have an evening's "chaff"
with Miss Julia Smith.

Sometimes the prima donna's "serious indisposition" is not discovered by
the fair singer herself, until the ladies of the audience have