Article on the opening of the opera season

“To-night Pike’s Opera House will reopen with the superb company whose season was so rudely broken in upon by Lotta’s negro minstrelsy. The opening opera will be ‘La Traviata,’ with Mrs. Agatha States as the consumptive heroine. To-morrow night Bateman will introduce the ever popular Tostée in a classical dress at the French theatre, and explain in Offenbach’s best style why Paris ran away with La Belle Hélène. These two interesting events may be considered as the opening of the spring season of amusements; and as the modistes throw open the treasures of their establishments and display the spring fashions about the same time, additional brilliancy will be communicated to the new season of opera. There is every prospect that the coming season at all the theatres will be a gratifying one to the managers and to the public. People are now so weary of the impeachment and Erie muddles of the stagnation and the pranks of the weather that they will seek refuge in the paint, tinsel, ballet, music and the red fire of the theatres and laugh away all care, in listening to the extravagances of Offenbach. The ladies will have an additional motive now to patronize the opera and other places of amusement; for where can they find a better place to display their new spring toilets and criticize those of others? Again, we learn from our Paris correspondent that some of the American ladies there who have been the acknowledged belles of that gay capital during the winter contemplate an early return to their homes on this side of the Atlantic in order to try the power of their charms on the susceptible hearts of their countrymen and to compete for the prize of beauty, like the three goddesses on Mount Ida, with their fair sisters. As blustering Winter, after his late fit of unprovoked ill-humor, grumblingly retires before bright young Spring, the managers on all sides are preparing greater attractions for the coming season. But in all this bustle and excitement in the amusement world there is one immense concern that once claimed to be first in the metropolis and is now deserted. ‘The harp that once,’ &c., has gone to Pike’s, and the one hundred and ninety-nine and a half stockholders of the Academy are weeping in vain and calling on their lost impresario to come back. What can be done, then, with this unhappy concern? As a circus it would be necessary to keep the horses constantly blanketed, and even the Cynocephalus might be afflicted with bronchitis or influenza were Mr. Lent to exhibit him there. It might be turned into a huge tenement house, the necessary changes being made; but then the tenants would be haunted by the ghosts of departed voices or managerial suicides. In all the other places of amusement, however, the prospects for the season are encouraging.

Before the season commences at Pike’s a word of advice to the management may be of service. There is every reason to fear that the same narrow minded prejudice and monopoly which ruined Italian Opera on the east side of town will interfere with the prospects of this establishment. Madame Lumley, the splendid contralto who made such a triumphant debût here some time since in the rôle of Azucena, is not engaged in the company, as her predecessor in the same rôle became so frightened at her success that she threatened to leave the troupe and go off to California with one of the prime donne if the accomplished sister of the London impresario [sic] should appear again at Pike’s. We warn the leader of the orchestra who supports her demands to remember what a fate a similar course at the Academy entailed upon him. The public want good artists, and will not submit to the exclusion of any one to please the whim of another. This has been heretofore the principal obstacle in the way of the success of Italian Opera; and the managers at Pike’s should see that it is removed in time.”