[…] we went again, Wednesday 25, to Puccini’s opera but were too late for the overture. The house was very full and the music pleased me more than the first time. The airs are not so familiar as those of Paesiello, but there is much better writing in them – some accompanied recitatives especially, in which tho’ several different parts are going on at the same time there is a clearness, and, if one may so call it, a transparency which is wonderful. The singing as I before observed, is wretched, but there is so much vis comica in Cassacia that one never thinks of his singing – but for want of dancing the acts are necessarily so long that ‘tis wholly impossible to keep up the attention, so that those who are not talking or playing at cards, inevitably fall asleep.