Page:Rolland - A musical tour through the land of the past.djvu/192

180 English) unless admission is free, as is often the case in Venice and Naples. The public is noisy and inattentive; it would seem that the peculiar pleasure of the theatre, dramatic emotion, counts for very little. The audience chats at its ease during part of the performance. Visits are paid from box to box. At Milan "each box opens out of a complete apartment, having a room with a fireplace and all possible conveniences, whether for the preparation of refreshments or for a game of cards. On the fourth floor a faro-table is kept open on either side of the building as long as the opera continues." —"At Bologna the ladies make themselves thoroughly at home; they talk, or rather scream, during the performance, from one box to that facing it, standing up, clapping and shouting Bravo! As for the men, they are more moderate; when an act is finished, and it has pleased them, they content themselves with shouting until it is performed again." In Milan "it is by no means enough that everybody should enter into conversation, shouting at the top of his voice, or that one should applaud, by yelling, not the singing, but the singers, as soon as they appear and all the time they are singing. … "Besides this, the gentlemen in the parterre have long sticks, with which they beat the benches as hard as they can, by way of admiration. They have colleagues in the boxes of the fifth tier, who, at this signal, throw down thousands of leaflets containing a sonetto printed in praise of the signora or the virtuoso who has just been singing. All the occupants of the boxes lean half out of them to catch these leaflets; the parterra capers about and the scene closes with