This irrepressibility of utterance in Italian musical audiences, even when everything behind the footlights went smoothly and well, was my normal drawback at all the Peninsular opera-houses I ever attended. But it was nothing to the discomfiture that befel me upon one or two occasions, when really vicious performances raised the public temper to fever-heat, and speedily led up to scenes of disorder, sound, and fury such as I have never witnessed in any theatre north of the Alps.