In the spring of 1897 Giacomo Puccini paid his second visit to England, to superintend the production of his opera “La Boheme” by the Carl Rosa company at Manchester. The young Italian composer had achieved only a moderate success with his “Manon Lescaut" at Covent Garden three years before, and was anxious to add to his laurels. On joining him at Manchester the afternoon of the premiere, I found him in very low spirits. He was not satisfied with the Carl Rosa artists, and fully anticipated a fiasco for the English representation of “La Boheme”. I assured him that Carl Rosa singers (as distinguished from Carl Rosa “directors”) did not know the meaning of the word “fail”; the intelligence and ensemble of the company were bound to pull him through. And so it proved. Deficient as it was in many respects, there was, nevertheless, so much spirit and animation about the performance, such a flavor of Bohemian jollity, that the opera instantly won the favor of the Lancashire audience and paved the way for its subsequent London success.