Many of the greatest singers of the time appeared in these performances. Miolan-Carvalho (the original Marguerite), Faure (the first Mephistopheles), Giuglini, the incomparable Trebelli, and Santley. Patti assumed the _rôle_ of the heroine in the following year with great success; but _Punch_ did not fail to welcome Titiens as Leonora in _Fidelio_, an achievement which he describes as "noble music nobly rendered." It was in 1864 again that the efforts of English opera to raise its diminished head called forth _Punch's_ satire. Foreign opera still held the field, and the only English feature of the venture was the conductor Mellon. The "Homeric Catalogue of Singers," published on April 1, 1865, shows how formidable was the competition of the foreign singers, headed by Patti, Lucca, and the honey-tongued Miolan-Carvalho, with other prima donnas from Munich, Berlin, Milan, Moscow, and Lisbon, and, amongst men, Mario, Wachtel ("the far-famed shouter of high notes"), Ronconi (a great actor and humorist) Tagliafico, and half a dozen others whose names have fallen into the limbo of forgotten singers. Meyerbeer's long-promised and posthumous _L'Africaine_ arrived at last in the summer season of 1865, but before its performance on July 22, with Pauline Lucca in the part of Selika, the libretto of this "grand new old opera" is irreverently burlesqued by _Punch_ with delightful pictures by Du Maurier. We can only find room for an excellent travesty of the Song of Inez:-- I go to execution, 'Tis righteous retribution, And by this Constitution All foreigners must die-- and the excellent and well-merited criticism of the execrable singing of the opera chorus (old style). [Illustration: "JUST HINT A FAULT" Little Tommy Bodkin takes his cousins to the gallery of the Opera. PRETTY JEMIMA: (who is always so considerate): "Tom, dear, don't you think you had better take off your hat, on account of the poor people behind?" you know?"] [Sidenote: _Nilsson and Grisi_] _Punch_ returns to _L'Africaine_ a couple of months later, but in a vein of irresponsible ribaldry. _Punch's_ notice, however, is valuable because it is a good (if partly unconscious) satire on the attitude of the frivolous opera-goer who goes (or shall we say went) to the opera to be amused and titillated, to see and be seen, to applaud the "stars" in their show songs, but for the rest deaf to the appeal of poetry and passion. _Punch_, at his worst, never sank to this level, witness his appreciation of Jenny Lind and Titiens and Ronconi; but the glamour of good looks and a fine voice seldom failed to touch his susceptible heart. His appreciation of Christine Nilsson on her appearance in 1867 is, with certain reserves, a good estimate of one who in her prime was an almost perfect Marguerite, or perhaps one should say Gretchen, and who might have stepped out of one of the canvases of Kaulbach:--