In short, to quote an observation made to me recently by Signor Salvini, “Theatrical affairs are just the opposite in Italy to what they are in America.  In Italy the opera-bill is never changed more than three times in as many months:  in America it varies almost every evening.  In Italy the play-bill is renewed nightly, while in this country and in England a drama, if good, may have a run of over a hundred representations.”  Nothing surprised Salvini more during his stay in the United States than the splendor of the mise en scene of some of the New York plays, but he accounted for it easily enough.  The managers of most of the New York, Paris and London theatres do not hesitate to lavish large sums of money upon their decorations and scenery, because should the piece fail for which they were painted they can be used in some other.  The Italian theatres are nearly always the property either of some nobleman or of a company of speculators, whose principal object is to make as much money out of them, and spend as little upon them, as possible.  They are rented out for a month or so to one or other of the many troupes of actors which are constantly wandering about the country, and which bring their own scenery and dresses with them, generally of the cheapest and most tawdry description.

A Tuscan proverb says, “Figlio d’attore, attore” ("The son of an actor is always an actor"); and this in Italy is pretty sure to be the case.  The three greatest living actors, Salvini, Rossi and Majeroni, belong to families which have long been popular on the stage, and so do the actresses Ristori and Sedowsky.  Signora Ristori made her debut as an infant in the cradle, and was for years a member of a troupe the leading lady of which was her late mother, Signora Maddalena Ristori, a woman of great talent and merit, whose death at an advanced age has recently occasioned her celebrated daughter poignant grief.  There still exists in Italy a Venetian troupe of comedians whose ancestors were the first interpreters of the comedies of Goldoni, and several of them claim descent from players who enacted the tragedies and comedies of serious classical literature before the courts of Lucrezia Borgia and Leonora d’Este.  In glancing over an Italian play-bill one is invariably struck by the fact that many of the artists bear the same name, and are evidently connected by ties of consanguinity or of marriage.  In the Ristori troupe, for instance, there are several actors calling themselves by the same name as that great artist, and who are doubtless of her family.  The Salvini company embraces, besides the two brothers Tommaso and Alessandro, several Piamontis, two or three Piccininis and two Colonellos.  I once knew in Italy a manager named Spada who directed a little troupe of buffo actors consisting of his grandfather and grandmother, father and mother, three or four uncles and aunts, two brothers, and one or two sisters, in addition to himself, his wife and children.