When the
demons have to fly in the air, dummies of brown cloth are
substituted, or sometimes real chimney-sweeps, who swing in the
air, suspended by cords, until they are gloriously lost in the rag
sky....
"But you can have no idea of the dreadful cries and roarings with
which the theatre resounds.... What is so extraordinary is that
these howlings are almost the only things that the audience
applaud. By the way they clap their hands one would take them to be
a lot of deaf creatures, who were so delighted to catch a few
piercing sounds now and then that they wanted the actors to do them
all over again. I am quite sure that people applaud the bawling of
an actress at the opera as they would a mountebank's feats of skill
at a fair--one suffers while they are going on, but one is so
delighted to see them finish without an accident that one willingly
demonstrates one's pleasure.... With these beautiful sounds, as
true as they are sweet, those of the orchestra blend very worthily.
Imagine an unending clatter of instruments without any melody; a
lingering and endless groaning among the bass parts; and the whole
the most mournful and boring thing that I ever heard in my life.
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