Stage Manager: "We must rehearse this last act over again." Everybody at this announcement looks broadswords and daggers. There are some pretty pouts from the ladies, and some deep but energetic profanity from the gentlemen. [Illustration: "NOW, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, ALL TOGETHER."] The California journalist has just about done justice to the subject. I have attended rehearsals when it was utterly impossible to comprehend whether they were reading Revelations or going through Mother Goose's melodies. Drilling the chorus for opera is attained by the same trials and tribulations as rehearsals for dramatic representations. The leader grows furious at the surrounding noise, and the distractions that members of the chorus give themselves up to. It is a bad thing to get them together at first and harder still to keep them together afterwards. When the leader with an atmosphere of the kindest humor surrounding his smooth head holds his baton aloft imagining that everything is all right, says: "Now, ladies and gentlemen, all together," he gracefully lowers his arm, but suddenly arises in an angry mood, for they are not all together. About one-half the throng begin, and the other half loiter behind to drop in at intervals. And so it goes from act to act until the opera is finished. The singers are in street dress and the shabbiest of garments brush against the most stylish. In rehearsing grand opera only one act is taken at a time, and the scenes presented, with the mellifluous Italian and the sweet-scented garlic floating around the stage, are picturesque to the eye, charming to the ear, and simply entrancing to the nose. The principals rehearse sitting. [Illustration: TRAINING BALLET DANCERS.]