The Darcys also attended opera and its accompanying balleto, but could not admire the performance as they had in Paris and Geneva. The Italians were principally acrobats who set the movements to music, as opposed to an intentional combination of the two arts. Despite this, it was apparent that the Venetians were, as with their English counterparts, partial to the dance. Much of the opera had gone unattended by the audience, but the instant the dancers appeared, all conversation was universally suspended, and all attention fixed upon the stage. They attended the premier performance of Rossini’s Eduardo e Cristina at the Teatro San Benedetto. The interior could not compare with the grandeur of La Fenice, but the production was quite enjoyable, nonetheless; and, as with the theatres in Geneva and Milan, was attended-to diligently by the Venetian audience, especially when compared with their Parisian equivalents, much to Georgiana’s satisfaction.

La Serenissima was justly characterised as a city of ambiguous extremes, and beneath the piety of the congregations in the churches and the Apolline beauty of the exteriors, the city also harboured a prospering underworld of licentiousness and libertinism. Georgiana saw enough—viewed through the lens of decay in the externalities—to discern, much to her disappointment, a scene of degradation, both of the moral and the physical, that could excite but little admiration. Try as she might, she could not leave her prejudice aside, and view Italy inherently with the eyes of the Italians. As she spent more time in Italy, this tension increased rather than otherwise, and Georgiana found she could not resist comparing everything to the familiar scenes and employments of home. Georgiana believed herself suffering under an ever-increasing burthen of that common malady—homesickness. She was not afraid of those sensations—such uneasiness was too commonplace and too reasonable to require remedy. However, to speak of her distress was unthinkable, for fear of sounding ungrateful; she kept these feelings to herself, only daring to allude in the most tentative of ways to her yearning for England in the letter that she wrote to the Hallendales a few days after their arrival in Venice.