Verdi's _Falstaff_ had been produced in 1894, but _Punch_ abstains from any criticism of that exhilarating work, merely pronouncing the performance a success, and a few years later further advertised his inability to recognize the supreme achievements of the later Verdi by declaring that _Otello_ as an opera was "heavy." In opera he was in the main an inveterate _laudator temporis acti_ and chiefly enjoyed himself when opportunities arose for indulging in alliterative quips such as "merry Mancinelli," "beaming Bevignani," or puns on the name of the performers, e.g. "Mlle. Bauermeister-singer." Puccini's operas--_Manon_, _La Bohême_ and _Madama Butterfly_--found favour in his sight; they had sparkle, elegance and _brio_. But he was not impressed with _La Tosca_, holding that the "operaticizing" of successful plays was a mistake; in general his notices are void of musical criticism and only deal with the singing of Melba and Caruso and the admirable Destinn. Still _Punch_ had lucid intervals of vision when he saw a good or great thing and praised it handsomely. The Santuzza of Calvé, in 1894, was "grand and magnificent" and her Carmen "marvellous" and unique. The epithets were fully deserved, but _Punch_ acutely detected that this great artist and actress suffered from the excess of her qualities, and wittily described her Marguerite in _Faust_ as "a _Mädchen_ with a past." Madame Patti's reappearance in opera in 1895 after many years' absence was genially welcomed, none the less so for her choice of _La Traviata_ for her _rentrée_, for _Punch_ was faithful to his old operatic loves. In the next few years English opera and operatic composers claimed _Punch's_ attention. The scheme of a National Opera House was revived in 1899 when _Punch_ represented Music petitioning the L.C.C. for a site, but the sinews of war were not forthcoming. Sir Charles Stanford's _Much Ado about Nothing_, the libretto adapted from Shakespeare by Mr. Julian Sturgis, with Miss Marie Brema, Miss Suzanne Adams, Mr. David Bispham and M. Plançon in the cast, was pronounced "an undisputed success" in 1901. In 1902 there were two native novelties. In Mr. Herbert Bunning's _Princesse Osra_, founded on "Anthony Hope's" novel, _Punch_ found little scope for positive praise: it was "musically disappointing save for accidental reminiscences." Nor was he much more enthusiastic over Miss Ethel Smyth's _Der Wald_, with its lurid plot "of the penny plain, twopence coloured type" and "interminable duets." Over one stage direction, "Peasants turn pale," _Punch_ waxed ribald, and he concludes his notice with the ambiguous sentence: "Miss Smyth was acclaimed vociferously, the Duke of Connaught and the occupants of the Royal box testifying their great pleasure at what may come to be, after judicious elimination, a satisfactory success." The first of the _Salomes_ who de-decorated the lyric and variety stages was not Strauss's but Massenet's version, produced in the summer of 1903. Mme.