painted in perspective and extending to a dim point in the distance; the other of which exhibited a royal apartment, which resembled a white-tiled Childs restaurant without the tables, hung with red velvet curtains and ornamented with palms growing from blue and gold jardinieres. The back scenes were not built as is the custom today. They consisted of succeeding rows of sliding flats working in grooves, the last pair meeting in the centre at the rear of the stage. Borders, representing ceilings or leaves of trees, masked the tops of these flats. The footlights and all the other lighting backstage had been, until within the past few years, gas, but electricity had supplanted this earlier and dimmer illumination.
On Wednesday evening, July 7, 1897, Hall's Opera House had been especially decorated for the gala entertainment in honour of the Countess Ella Nattatorrini. The American and the Italian flags mingled their bunting over the proscenium arch, and smaller banners hid the faces of the boxes. Across the front of the apron, below the footlights, a hage streamer had been stretched, bearing the inscription, emblazoned in red letters:
WELCOME TO OUR COUNTESS
The Ladies' Home Study Club, the Board of Trade, the Young Girls' Kensington Society, the Idle Hour Cinch Club, and the Elks had all contributed towards paying the expenses of the evening, which, with the
