Page:Anecdotes of Great Musicians.djvu/232

220 the whole house broke into a roar of laughter, and the obese basso had to make an ignominious exit, followed by the shouts of the audience.

What a pair Lablache and Mme. Alboni would have made.  

The dislike that Mendelssohn had to being mistaken for Meyerbeer has had parallels among musicians of lesser note.

The public hardly has a fair chance to see the features of the conductor as he sits with his back to the audience. Sir Julius Benedict and Arditi, both most excellent opera conductors were much averse to being taken for each other. The fact that Sir Julius was bald-headed did not help matters any, for Arditi also suffered from a depletion of hirsute appendage.

On one occasion Benedict was seen to go into the prima donna's dressing room just before the evening's performance, and, taking up a hairbrush carefully arrange his scanty locks so that they would cover as much space as possible. When asked his reason for the rearrangement he answered, "Oh, I don't want to be taken for Arditi while I am directing."

Shortly afterward in came Arditi and with a couple of brushes began to so arrange his hair as to cover as little as possible of the baldness. When questioned as to his reason for making himself look as bald as possible, he said, "Why, I don't want to be mistaken for Benedict."  

Henrietta Sontag had to combat a great prejudice from her very first appearance on the stage. This was the idea held by the musical world of that day that a German could not sing. Old Frederick the Great was not alone in this prejudice. Sontag made her début in