He established the Italian opera in Berlin, and until the Seven Years’ War he was a frequent attendant at the opera and ballet, as well as at the French comedy. The theatre, we are told, “cost the Emperor nearly four hundred thousand dollars a year. The admission was free, the boxes being assigned to the Court, the ministers, privy councillors, &c. The pit was filled by the military, every regiment of the garrison sending a certain number of men.” But it would seem that the “gentlemen of the green-room” gave the Emperor some trouble, for he once wrote: “The opera people are such a blackguardly set that I am heartily tired of them.” And on another occasion he wrote still more strongly: “I shall send them all off to the ----, such blackguards may be had any day; I must have money for cannon, and cannot spend so much on those mountebanks.” The dancers, too, caused him some considerable trouble, and even Vestris, the French _dieu de la danse_, found no engagement in Berlin, the Emperor remarking, “Mon. Vestris is mad; who in the world but a fool would give four thousand dollars to a dancer, besides three thousand to his sister, and one thousand to his brother.” But, much as Frederick liked theatrical amusements and dancing, he was an inveterate opponent of aerial feats and rope-dancing shows as highly dangerous, and forbade them throughout his dominions by a special cabinet order, which ran thus: “If such people have a wish to break their necks we cannot prevent their doing so in foreign countries, but in our own provinces our humanity, and fatherly care for our subjects, forbid us to allow them an opportunity.” Never, it is said, were stage representations of such gorgeousness exhibited in Rome until the period of the sojourn of Christina, ex-Queen of Sweden, in Italy in 1668, when her influence seems to have had an extraordinary effect on all classes of society. Thus we are told how the entire Sacred College were now for ever going to the play, “and the balcony of her box was every night crowded by cardinals, who looked with edification on the ballerinas, and listened with delight to the exquisitely dressed singing-girls, who resorted to Rome at the invitation of Christina. The etiquette, when she was present, was of the very strictest, the noblest in Rome being compelled to remain uncovered as long as she was in the house. The gay cardinals, who lolled over the balcony in front of her box, alone wore their caps, in allusion to which privilege a paper was one night fixed beneath the balcony, on which was inscribed, “Plenary indulgence for the gentlemen in purple.”[149]