It was Dickens' habit wherever he went on his Continental
travels to avail himself of any opportunity of visiting the
opera; and his criticisms, though brief, are always to the
point. He tells us this interesting fact about Carrara:

There is a beautiful little theatre there, built of
marble, and they had it illuminated that night in my
honour. There was really a very fair opera, but it is
curious that the chorus has been always, time out of
mind, made up of labourers in the quarries, who don't
know a note of music, and sing entirely by ear.

But much as he loved music, Dickens could never bear the
least sound or noise while he was studying or writing, and
he ever waged a fierce war against church bells and itinerant
musicians. Even when in Scotland his troubles did not cease,
for he writes about 'a most infernal piper practising under
the window for a competition of pipers which is to come off
shortly.' Elsewhere he says that he found Dover 'too bandy'
for him (he carefully explains he does not refer to its legs),
while in a letter to Forster he complains bitterly of the
vagrant musicians at Broadstairs, where he 'cannot write half
an hour without the most excruciating organs, fiddles, bells,
or glee singers.' The barrel-organ, which he somewhere calls
an 'Italian box of music,' was one source of annoyance, but
bells were his special aversion. 'If you know anybody at St.
Paul's,' he wrote to Forster, 'I wish you'd send round and ask
them not to ring the bell so. I can hardly hear my own ideas
as they come into my head, and say what they mean.' His bell