“Messrs. Grau & Chizzola, the managers of this house, are young men making their first essay in the management of a metropolitan theatre. One of them, at least, has shown in the Rubinstein and Salvini seasons a disposition towards a standard of public amusement where art and taste are predominant. It must be, therefore, a matter of regret to those who would wish those young men to succeed in their present undertaking to find that they inaugurated their first season with a mass of French filth under the guise of an opéra bouffe that reaches even a lower depth of immoral turpitude than the testimony taken before the Plymouth church investigating Committee, and which no lady can hear without feelings of shame and disgust. It would be idle to mention morality in the same breath with opéra bouffe with very few exceptions; but even in the wild license of the stage of to-day there should be some limit. In the worst cases before the courts, in peculiar civil trials, there are times when the judge wishes the spectators to retire. In ‘La Timbale d’Argent’ the word indecency, as applied to the dialogue, may be considered as mild. The good sense of the public, had the French language been better known and had not supposititious knowledge of it without good foundation led some astray, should have caused them to hiss the piece off the stage the very first night. The music, good as it certainly is, fits it about as well as the cloak of Raleigh did the mud-puddle over which he threw it for the favor of good Queen Bess. It is thoroughly opéra comique music and possesses not a sparkle of the Offenbach, Lecocq or Herve fire. For the sake of decency the managers should cleanse their boards of this ill-smelling stuff and place before a generous public something more in accordance with public taste.”