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THE OPERA-GOER’S DIARY.

Monday, May 16.—­Sound the trumpets, Beat the drums!  All Hail to Sir DRURIOLANUS OPERATICUS, the most successful Knight of the Season!  A brilliant audience in a brilliant house lighted by thousands of additional electric lights, acclaimed with rapture the awakening of Opera. Philemon et Baucis began it, a work by GOUNOD (which is not intended for swearing) of great sweetness and light; and this was followed by PIETRO MASCAGNI’s Cavalleria Rusticana, “Rustic Chivalry,” which might be epigrammatically described as a “Clod-hoppera.” Philemon et Baucis is charming.  M. MONTARIOL was a capital Philemon, and Mlle. SIGRID ARNOLDSEN as Baucis, a sort of classical Little Bo-peep, received a hearty welcome on her return to the Covent Garden House and Home.  M. PLANCON was the thoroughly French Jupin, and M. CASTELMARY an amiable Vulcan; both most accomplished Divines.  Altogether, a perfect quartette.  The graceful intermezzo only escaped an encore because the knowing ones among the gods and groundlings felt that too much enthusiasm at first might do serious damage to the subsequent reception of the great intermezzo of the evening.  All on qui vive for great intermezzo.  Anticipations of event heard in the lobbies.  Anxiety depicted on some countenances, but most features looking happy and hopeful.  The members of what was once known as “the Organising Committee” nod encouragingly to one another as they pass to and fro; the officials and habitues exchange greetings without any expression of opinion.  Sir DRURIOLANUS does not issue forth until the right moment, when he can shut up his opera-glass with a click, and give the word to Field-Marshal MANCINELLI to lead his men to the attack.  For the present, “Wait” is the mot d’ordre, “and this,” quoth a jig-maker, “is the only weight in the entire entertainment.”

[Illustration:  The Good and Great Archbishop Druriolanus Coventgardenus giving his Chorus Flock permission to use Palms on Easter Sunday.  Quite “the palmy days” of the Opera.]

Up goes the Curtain, and those who remember the Cavalleria as it was put on “in another place,” to use parliamentary language, see at the first glance that this representation is going to be quite another pair of shoes.  The stage management is admirable:  not a second without movement, and every movement with a motive—­musical or dramatic, or both.  Madame CALVE’s Santuzza is operatically and histrionically—­but especially the latter—­a triumph; and “this is the verdict of us all.”  GIULIA RAVOGLI makes a great part of Lola; the many-talented little Mlle. BAUERMEISTER’s Lucia is not quite up to her own Marta in Faust.  As for the men, the singing and the acting of Signor DE LUCIA as Turiddu (ye gods! what a name!), and of Mons. DUFRICHE as Alfio cannot be surpassed.