Theatrical Difficulties.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume III, Issue 119, 5 March 1901, Page 3

Theatrical Difficulties.

The recent production in Adelaide of “I! Trovatore ” by Mr Musgrove’s Company was attended by considerable difficulties. At eleven o’clock in the morning, says the South Australian Register, Mr Fink, Mr Musgrove’s representative, discovered that twenty baskets of costumes and some of the scenery necessary for the opera had been left somewhere on the overland railway line. The authorities soon discovered that the missing “ properties ” were at Tailem Bend, a wayside station seventy-live miles from Adelaide, in the Ninet3 r Mile Desert. There was no train to come through which would land tiie delayed dresses in the city in time for them to be used at night, -but Mr Fink engiged a special to go to Tailem Bead and bring along the truckload of goons. The locomotive reached the city shortly before Gp.m., but this did not allow of all the baskets being unpacked in time for all their contents to be used in the evening. The scenery for the second act arrived at the theatre after the opera began, and there was only just time to get the settings in position before the curtain went. But, despite all that had been done, some of the div ses could not be unpacked in time to be worn, and the prima donna had to appear as Leonora in two costumes, which had been made by the company’s costumier, since midday, instead of in the costumes she had worn in Melbourne and iSydno), one a magnificent, robe, which cost 100 guineas. Lilies will readily understand what mortification the prima donna must have endured in these untoward circumstances.