THE OPERA-GOER'S DIARY. _Monday 23_.--Operatic world all agog to hear, and to see, _Le Prophète_. First appearance for many years. Great things expected of JEAN DE RESZKÉ as _Jean of Leyden_, and Mlle. RICHARD as _Fides_. Great expectations not disappointed. Scene in Cathedral magnificent as a spectacle. But scene in Cathedral between JEAN and his unhappy mother still grander as acting. _Le Prophète_ is remarkable too, as being an Opera without Mlle. BAUERMEISTER in it. Skating scene, with a nice ballet, rather a frost. "Not sufficient go in it," observes veteran Opera-goer, with book in his hand, dated eighteen hundred and sixty something, containing a cast of characters which, he says, though he doesn't show me the book, comprises the names of MARIO, GRISI, VIARDOT-GARCIA, and HERR FORMES. A more veterany veteran tells me that GRISI and VIARDOT never played together in this, but that GRISI succeeded VIARDOT as _Fides_. [Illustration: MONDAY, JUNE 23. Jean de Reszké as Jean of Leyden. Jeanne The Risky as Sarah d'Arc.] Even the veteran is pleased, and acknowledges that thirty years ago they couldn't have done it as they do now, barring the skating scene, where, he insists upon it, the original "go" is wanting. The fact is, we have long passed the days when "rinking" was a novelty on the stage or off it. But what a jolly lot these Anabaptists were! They enjoyed themselves with their dancing-girls and their picnicking on the ice. Substitute General BOOTH for _Jean of Leyden_, and the tambourine girls for PALLADINO and the ballet, and then you have a modern version of _Le Prophète_. [Illustration: Mlle. Richard as Fides,--not Boney Fides.] Delightful to see M. MIRANDA as one of the three Anabaptists, _Mathisen_ (a good name in the city, with only a letter changed), striking a sixteenth century flint, for the purpose of lighting a candle, but, failing in the attempt, compelled to destroy sixteenth-century illusion, and employ, in a sneaking kind of way, the nineteenth-century match, which strikes only on its own box. Mlle. NUOVINA, not so good here as in the part of _Marguerite_, but there is very little for a soprano to do. JEAN reckless in the final drinking song. The voice of DRURIOLANUS OPERATICUS is heard at the wings. The stage-manager's assistant is evidently nervous, and the curtain, after once going up a little way and coming down again, ascends suddenly, in spite of adjuration of DRURIOLANUS to "Wait! wait!" No hitch, and in another moment DRURIOLANUS, calm, but with suppressed emotion, is watching the scene from the front. "Ah," he murmurs to himself, "if I could only get Guildhall to do what I like in on that Ninth, of November when I shall be Lord Mayor. I'd soon show 'em what's what. I'd have a coronation, or investiture, scene to which this should be mere child's play."