Article on A New Opera House for the Metropolis

“A New Opera House for the Metropolis.  We learn that the Russian government has declined to pay the operatic subvention, and that the Opera House at St. Petersburg has consequently closed. . . . We presume that some impudent and ignorant German adventurer had, by hook or crook, become the manager of the St. Petersburg Academy of Music; that he had made a little money, and had grown meaner as he grew richer; that he had refused good artists the salaries they demanded and deserved, and had engaged cheap and poor artists in order to swindle the St. Petersburg public. . . .

          In this country, under similar circumstances, we manage matters differently.  Instead of shutting up our Opera House we invoke the genius of opposition.  When a manager turns out to be a failure we do not allow this to deprive us of opera; but we find another manager, open another lyric theatre, and transfer our patronage to that.  The St. Petersburg mode of revenge simply punished the public for the fault of the impressario [sic].  The New York method is to punish the impressario [sic] by leaving him with a beggarly account of empty boxes and vacant stalls, while in a cosier and better conducted establishment fashion flirts her fans and displays her magnificent toilettes.”

          Compares the Academy to a barn.  A new Opera House being built for Grau has not yet been completed. 

          “There is a gem of a lyric theater at the corner of Madison Avenue and Twenty-fifth street, which was built and is owned by Jerome, the millionaire.  This Opera House will seat about five hundred people, and there, before the elite of the metropolis, Manager Grau’s inaugural performances will be given. . . . [W]e have no doubt that every seat will be taken by subscription and that applications will be a dozen deep.”