Thursday, 5 May 1881

Dinner at the Grand Hôtel as a party — [word blacked out: Papa,] Maman, my aunt, Dina, myself, the old Prince, Alexis, and du Sautoy. Alexis is very agreeable and we talk, but this boy, quite apart from his being of no great significance, gets drunk very easily — and then, while remaining more or less decent... it is tiresome. I have a horror of this deliberate stupefaction. He says it makes him forget his misfortunes... repugnant. After that we go to see Le Petit Duc at the Renaissance.
I fall asleep — I do not care for operetta. There are a few that are bound up with childhood memories and very early youth and which remain amusing, but everything done since Barbe-bleue, La Belle Hélène, Orphée, and Girofle-Girofla is insipid.

Notes

Le Petit Duc (1878): a popular operetta by Charles Lecocq, running at the Théâtre de la Renaissance. Marie had little patience for the operetta genre.
A list of Offenbach masterpieces from the golden age of French operetta: Barbe-bleue (1866), La Belle Hélène (1864), Orphée aux Enfers (1858 rev. 1874), and Girofle-Girofla (1874, Lecocq). Marie's taste is for the classics of the Second Empire period.