Remonstrance was useless, the Secretary of the Academy being "out of the way," whilst the conductor, Mr. Theodore Thomas, was closed in and wielding the _bâton_ with such vigour that no one could approach him. I said nothing, therefore. In spite of formidable obstacles, the march and the procession in the fourth act of the opera had to be rehearsed under the platform, and, as good luck would have it, the opera went magnificently. Rehearsals of _Manon_ had now to be attempted; but whenever a call was put up, so surely would I find another call affixed by the rival Company for the same hour; and as they employed some 120 choristers, who had about an equal number of hangers-on in attendance on them, the reader can guess in what a state of confusion the stage was. The public has but little idea of the difficulties by which the career of an opera manager is surrounded. An ordinary theatrical manager brings out some trivial operetta which, thanks in a great measure to scenery, upholstery, costumes, and a liberal display of the female form divine, catches the taste of the public. The piece runs for hundreds of nights without a change in the bill, the singers appearing night after night in the same parts. The _maladie de larynx_, the _extinction de voix_ of which leading opera-singers are sure now and then, with or without reason, to complain, are unknown to these honest vocalists; and if by chance one of them does fall ill there is always a substitute, known as the "understudy," who is ready at any moment to supply the place of the indisposed one. The public, when it has once found its way to a theatre where a successful operetta or _opéra bouffe_ is being played, goes there night after night for months, and sometimes years, at a time. The manager probably complains of being terribly over-worked; but all he has really to do is to see that some hundreds of pounds every week are duly paid in to his account at the bank. To manage a theatre under such conditions is as simple as selling Pears' Soap or Holloway's Pills. The opera manager does not depend upon the ordinary public, but in a great measure upon the public called fashionable. His prices are of necessity exceptionally high; and his receipts are affected in a way unknown to the ordinary theatrical manager. Court mourning, for instance, will keep people away from the opera; whereas the theatre-going public is scarcely affected by it. The bill, moreover, has to be changed so frequently, so constantly, that it is impossible to know from one day to another what the receipts are likely to be. What would one give for a prima donna who, like Miss Ellen Terry or Mrs. Kendal, would be ready to play every night? Or for a public who, like the audiences at the St. James's Theatre and the Lyceum, would go night after night for an indefinite time to see the same piece!