Angrily excited as was German popular feeling against France and Frenchmen during the terrible struggle of 1870-71, the chefs-d'oeuvres of Gounod, Auber, Halevy and Mehul were not even temporarily withdrawn from the repertoire of the Royal house, but appeared on the bills in their due turn (according to certain prescribed customs of the estabUshment) and drew, so the General-Intendant subsequently informed me, audiences quite as numerous and sympathetic as those which attended performances of Die Zauberflote or Der Freischuetz. In no European opera house — above all, not in that so long and conservatively directed by M. Halanzier — have Rubinstein's operas been so splendidly put upon the stage, so favourably received and so frequently given. I have even heard Michael Balfe's Bohemian Girl under the German title of Die Zigeunerin far better played and sung in the house on the Opern- platz than it had thitherto (within my personal experience) been rendered in London — in a word, as carefilly and intelligently as it has in later years been performed by the Carl Rosa Opera Company.