Molto Agitato The Mayhem Behind the Music at the Metropolitan Opera

Chapter One The Boxholders Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt was furious, and that was how the Metropolitan Opera began. In the late 1870s, she had applied for a box at the Academy of Music, then New York's premier opera presenter and social venue, and she had been turned down by the directors of the Academy. Mrs. Vanderbilt, whose fortune was estimated at $200 million, regarded this decision as completely unacceptable. To have a box at the Academy--and there were only eighteen--was to attain the highest rung on the city's social ladder. As Edith Wharton wrote, "The world of fashion was still content to reassemble every winter in the shabby red and gold boxes of the sociable old Academy. Conservatives cherished it for being small and inconvenient, and thus keeping out 'the new people.' " But society in New York was, as it always is, in transition. The city's wealth and power had increased vastly in the second half of the nineteenth century, and this had catapulted families such as the Vanderbilts, Astors, Morgans, Roosevelts, Goelets, Iselins, and Goulds to vast fortunes. The men who amassed these fortunes acquired an equally vast desire for social standing. Certainly, with only eighteen boxes at the Academy, this ultimate symbol of social triumph was tantalizingly out of reach. There was no room--or no box--for the newly wealthy. The new elite believed that there was no obstacle that could not be surmounted by money. If the directors of the Academy refused them entry, they would solve that problem by building their own opera house. This new house would be designed with a virgin set of boxes, available to those who had been snubbed by the Academy of Music. In 1880, $600,000 was raised from a group of subscribers, each of whom would own their own box, and a site was purchased at Thirty-ninth Street and Broadway. And so the Metropolitan Opera was founded--essentially tiers of boxes with an opera house built to surround them. On October 22, 1883, the new theater was inaugurated with Gounod's Faust. The basic administrative organization of the new opera house was simple, and lasted for a quarter-century. The boxholders, who became known in 1893 as the Metropolitan Opera Real Estate Company, were cooperative owners of the opera house. They hired an impresario to produce what went onstage. This division between the Real Estate Company and the actual opera presenters would create serious problems in the future, but for the first few years, progress was smooth. Henry E. Abbey, the first impresario, received his instructions from the boxholder-stockholders. He was bidden "to provide first-class opera," or at least opera that was so defined by the boxholders. Abbey put together a fourteen-week season of nineteen operas, all in Italian. When, at the end of the first season, he had lost $300,000, he was dismissed. The boxholders were not interested in losing money. The boxholders next turned to Leopold Damrosch, conductor of the New York Symphony Orchestra, and a close friend of Wagner and Liszt, and engaged him as both impresario and music director. Damrosch brought in an experienced company of singers from Central Europe to produce German opera. The directors were impressed by the small budget he presented--German singers were considerably less expensive than Italians. So for the second Metropolitan Opera season, all operas were sung in German, including works from the Italian and French repertories. This new programming brought in a new audience of German opera lovers to the Metropolitan; many of these were members of New York's large immigrant population who thronged to the less-expensive seats. They went to the Met because they loved the music. The boxholders, in marked contrast, went to be seen by the other boxholders. The first German season was a success, but it took a grievous toll on Leopold Damrosch--he conducted every performanceFiedler, Johanna is the author of 'Molto Agitato The Mayhem Behind the Music at the Metropolitan Opera' with ISBN 9781400032310 and ISBN 1400032318.