It was about the same time that I first heard Josephine de Reszke in Paris. In any case it was somewhere in the seventies. She was a soprano with a beautiful voice but not an attractive personality. Her neck was exceptionally short and set so far down into her shoulders that she just escaped deformity. She was very much the blonde, northern type, and still a young woman. I have heard that she did not have to sing for monetary reasons. A few years later she married a wealthy Polish banker and left the stage. At the time I first heard her the de Reszke men were not singing. It was in _Le Roi de Lahore_ that I heard her, with Lascelle. I never listened to anything more magnificently done than Lascelle's singing of the big baritone _aria_. Maurel followed him as a baritone. He was a great artist also, with possibly more intelligence in his singing than Lascelle. Lascelle relied entirely on his glorious voice; in consequence he never realised all in his career that might have been possible. In reality, if you have one great gift, you have to develop as many other gifts as possible in order to present and to protect that one properly! A little later I heard Maurel in _Iago_. (This reminds me of _Othello_ in Munich, when Vogel, the tenor, sang out of tune and nearly spoiled Maurel's work). What an actor, and what an intelligence! One felt in Maurel a man who had studied his _rôles_ from the original plots. He played a great part in costuming, but, curiously enough, he could never play parts of what I call elemental picturesqueness. His Amonasro in _Aïda_ was good, but it was a bit too clean and tidy. He looked as if he were just out of a Turkish bath, immaculate, in spite of his uncivilised guise. He could, however, play a small part as if it were the finest _rôle_ in the piece; and he had an inimitable elegance and art, even with a certain primitive romantic quality lacking. But what days those were--of what marvellous singing companies! I hear no such vocalism now, in spite of the elaborate and expensive opera that is put on each year. In my mother's diary of this period I find: Louise presented to Verdi and we had no idea she would appear in any newspaper in consequence.... She went to hear the damnation of _Faust_ last Sunday and says the orchestra was _very_ fine. The singing is not so much. She went to hear _Aïda_ last night at the Grau Opera House with Verdi to conduct and Krauss as Aïda. Chorus and orchestra fine artists. _Well_--she was _disappointed_! Krauss sings so false and has not as much power as Louise. She came home quite proud of herself. Took her opera and marked everything. Says her _tempo_ was very nearly correct; but yet she was disappointed. Krauss changes her dress. Louise does not....