A few subscribers, however, protested.

Why had so great a treasure been kept from them all that time?
Till then, Christine Daae had played a good Siebel to Carlotta's rather too splendidly material Margarita.

And it had needed Carlotta's incomprehensible and inexcusable absence from this gala night for the little Daae, at a moment's warning, to show all that she could do in a part of the program reserved for the Spanish diva! Well, what the subscribers wanted to know was, why had Debienne and Poligny applied to Daae, when Carlotta was taken ill?
Did they know of her hidden genius?
And, if they knew of it, why had they kept it hidden?
And why had she kept it hidden?
Oddly enough, she was not known to have a professor of singing at that moment.

She had often said she meant to practise alone for the future.

The whole thing was a mystery.
The Comte de Chagny, standing up in his box, listened to all this frenzy and took part in it by loudly applauding.