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.
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