Thank you for checking out this book by Theophania Publishing. We appreciate your business and look forward to serving you soon. We have thousands of titles available, and we invite you to search for us by name, contact us via our website, or download our most recent catalogues. I have never seen a reasonably good all-round performance of grand opera. Nevertheless, though not a melomaniac, I am extremely fond of grand opera, and have seen it in the following cities: Antwerp, Brussels, Florence, Ghent, Hanley, Lisbon, London, Milan, New York, Paris, Ostend, Philadelphia, Rome, San Remo, and others which I cannot recall. If operatic performances succeed in several particulars, as they sometimes do-though rarely in more than one-they always fail in at least one particular, generally in several, sometimes in all. The best show I ever saw anywhere on the operatic stage was a performance of Le Mariage de Figaro in English at Drury Lane under Sir Thomas Beecham. The production had been superintended by Nigel Playfair. The translation was quite neat, and often very witty indeed. The acting was good. There was an ensemble. The scenery was not really good, but it was so immensely better than ordinary scenery in world-renowned opera-houses that it gave the illusion of being good. I was as well satisfied by this affair as by a faulty performance of Strauss's absolutely enchanting Rosenkavalier at Covent Garden: which is saying a great deal. It would be impossible for me to decide which was the worst show I ever saw-the choice would be too embarrassing. But it occurred certainly in either Paris, Milan, or London. I know that after a performance of Siegfried, at the Paris Opera House I took an oath never again to enter the Paris Opera House.