Whenever possible I went to the opera, seldom startling by way of standards; but the point is that there were opera-houses in abundance, just as there were Filharmonias.  The repertoire was strangely conservative – Puccini, middle Verdi, and early Wagner – but I heard some Polish classics like Moniuszko’s Halka, and also Delibes’s Lakmé, which contains much charming music besides the Bell Song.