The performances of _Le Roi de Lahore_ were running on at the Opéra and they were well attended and finely done. At least that is what I heard for I had already stopped going. Presently I left Paris where, as I have said, I devoted myself to giving lessons, and went back to the country to work on _La Vierge_. In the meantime I had learned that the great Italian publisher Guilio Ricordi had heard _Le Roi de Lahore_ at the Opéra and had come to terms with Hartmann for its production in Italy. Such a thing was really unique, for at that time the only works translated into Italian and given in that country were those of the great masters. And they had to wait a long time for their turn, while it was my good fortune to see _Le Roi de Lahore_ played on the morrow of its first performance. The first house in Italy at which this honor fell to me was the Regio in Turin. What an unexpected good fortune it was to see Italy again, to know their theaters from more than the outside, and to go into their wings! I found in all this a delight which I cannot express and in this state of rapture I passed the first months of 1878. Hartmann and I went to Italy on the first of February, 1878. With the Scala at Milan, the San Carlo at Naples, the Communal Opéra at Boulogne, the old Apollo at Rome--since demolished and replaced in popular favor by the Costanzi--with the Pergola at Florence, the Carlo Felice at Genoa, and the Fenice at Venice, the beautiful Regio Theater, built opposite the Madame Palace on the Piazza Castella, is one of the most noted in all Italy. It rivaled then--as it does now--the most famous houses of that classic land of the arts to which it was always so hospitable and so receptive. The manners at the Regio were entirely different from those at Paris and were, as I discovered later, much like those in Germany. Absolute deference and punctilious exactness are the rule, not only among the artistes but also among the singers of the minor rôles. The orchestra obeys the slightest wish of the director. The orchestra at the Regio at that time was conducted by the master Pedrotti who was subsequently the director of the Rossini Conservatory at Pesaro. He was known for his gay, vivacious melodies and a number of operas, among them _Tutti in maschera_. His death was tragic. I can still hear honest Pedrotti saying repeatedly to me: "Are you satisfied? I am so much." We had a famous tenor of the time, Signor Fanselli. He had a superb voice, but a mannerism of spreading his arms wide open in front of him with his fingers opened out. In spite of the fact that an excessive fondness for this method of giving expression is almost inevitably displeasing, many other artists I have known use it to express their feelings, at least they think they do, when, as a matter of fact, they feel absolutely nothing. His open hands had won for this remarkable tenor the nickname, _Cinque e cinque fanno dieci!_ (Five and five make ten!)