A taste for the theatre is natural enough.  It is also easy to understand why people who are fond of sport and animals enjoy races and dog shows.  But the continued vogue² of grand opera, and more especially of Wagner’s long-drawn-out compositions, among our restless, unmusical compatriots, remains³ unexplained.

 

The sheeplike docility⁴ of our public is apparent in numberless ways; in none, however, more strikingly than in their choice of amusements.  In business and religion, people occasionally think for themselves; in the selection of entertainments, never! but are apparently⁵ content to receive their opinions and prejudices ready-made from some unseen and omnipotent⁶ Areopagus.

 

The careful study of an opera audience from different parts of our auditorium⁷ has brought me to the conclusion that the public there may be loosely divided into three classes—leaving out reporters of fashionable intelligence, dressmakers in search of ideas, and the lady inhabitants of “Crank Alley” (as a certain corner of the orchestra is called), who sit in perpetual adoration⁸ before the elderly tenor⁹.

 

First—but before venturing further on dangerously thin ice, it may be as well to suggest that this subject is not treated in absolute seriousness, and that all assertions must not be taken au pied de la lettre.  First, then, and most important, come the stockholders, for without them the

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