During the following week, being the first of this extra season, Mdme. Patti appeared in _Semiramide_, _La Traviata_, and _Martha_. At each performance there were nearly 3,000 persons assembled in the theatre. On the following Monday, it being our last week, I induced Mdlle. Nevada to make her first appearance, on which occasion the receipts reached the same amount as Mdme. Patti's. Mdlle. Nevada, perhaps because she is a Californian, drew probably the largest audience we had had. On her entering the stage some 3,000 or 4,000 persons shouted and applauded a welcome as if they were all going mad. She was hardly prepared for her reception. She had looked forward for many years to appearing in her native city and singing a great _rôle_ before the people amongst whom she had spent her early life; and this was a momentous occasion for her. The enthusiasm of any other public would have spurred her on. But she was here so much affected that, although she sustained herself splendidly, yet after the curtain fell she was unable to speak. At the conclusion of the opera she was recalled several times, and large set pieces of flowers, some six feet in height, were handed up, numbers of the leading florists having been busy putting them in shape all the fore part of the day. New dresses were ordered for that occasion, and an invitation to get a seat in a box was looked upon as a prize. Long before half-past seven the vestibule of the theatre held a mass of fashionably-dressed ladies and gentlemen, all waiting to be shown to their places in order to be present on the rising of the curtain. During all the first act the singer was critically and attentively listened to, scarcely with any interruptions; but when the curtain fell after the duet with "Elvino" the pent-up enthusiasm of the audience broke loose. Nevada was called out, and with shouts, cries, and every manner of wild demonstration. Flowers were carried down the aisles, thrown from the boxes and dress-circle, until the stage looked like the much-quoted Vallambrosa. Again and again the prima donna was called out, until she was fairly exhausted. Amongst the set pieces handed up to the stage was a large floral chair built of roses, violets, and carnations on a wicker frame, and Nevada, as the most natural thing to do, sat plumply down in it, whereat the house fairly howled with delight. On the back of the chair were the words, "Welcome home!" The following night _Aida_ was performed with the great cast of Patti, Scalchi, De Anna, and Nicolini, when the largest receipt during the whole engagement was taken. To describe that evening would be impossible; it would exhaust all the vocabulary. The gratings along the alley-way were wrenched off by the crowd, who slid down on their stomachs into the cellars of the theatre to get a hearing of Patti and Scalchi.