Had before dinner received tickets for the Duke of Orleans’s box at the Italian: sent the Villamils and Bessy; joined them there afterwards; Count Pahlen took me. Some conversation with him about Rossini. […] In comparing him to Cimarosa, critics say, Cimarosa never repeated himself, but then there is but one of his pieces that keeps the stage, the “Matrimonio.” The opera, to-night, “L’ltaliana.”