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New York - New York City - Metropolitan Opera House Efforts to provide a new building for the Metropolitan Opera House are made perennially -- indeed, Rockefeller Center is a by-product of this movement. Yet, the warehouse-like yellow-brick structure that occupies an entire block on the edge of the garment district, remains the home of the world's foremost opera company: and within its original domicile the opera continues to expand its activities and enlarge its functions. The opening of the Metropolitan Opera House in 1883 was part of the great wave of artistic endeavor which arok in America in post-Civil War days. The new moneyed aristocracy, assuming in the last decades of the nineteenth century the role of art patron, depended for its aesthetic tutelage on the taste of contemporary European capitals. Immense numbers of paintings, sculptures, and architectural models, both good and bad, were imported. New museums appeared in American cities, and great private collections were initiated. With all this grandiose expansion of artistic enterprise, there were, however, certain misgivings when the ambitious plans for opera in America were announced. The New York Times wrote that the auditorium envisioned for the presentation of Italian opera was "on a scale of possibly too great magnitude." Its interior would "dazzle the eyes" of an assemblage accustomed to "the primitive surroundings" of the old Academy of Music, its predecessor on Fourteenth Street. The opera house was designed by J. C. Cady, a prominent architect of the day. That Mr. Cady was without experience in theater construction seemed to matter little; audiences ever since have paid for his mistakes, as but half the stage can be seen from the side seats of the balcony and family circle. What did matter at the time, especially to the press and to readers of its society columns, was that the opera house had a "Golden Horse-shoe" -- two tiers of boxes and a row of baignoires -- occupied by the seventy original stockholders, among them the Vanderbilts, the Morgans, and the Goulds. Henry E. Abbey directed the opera during the first season. At the opening performance Vianesi conducted and Christine Nilsson sang the role of Marguerite in Faust. The Horseshoe was crowded with patrons whose total wealth was estimated at more than five hundred million dollars. Socially the first season was successful, but financially it showed an estimated loss of six hundred thousand dollars, a deficit underwritten by patrons who thus established a precedent. The following year Dr. Leopold Damrosch, German-American musician ( 1832-85), became the director. He suggested the introduction of the music of Wagner, then hardly known in New York and considered extremely radical. Wagner's works filled the house with delighted audiences, and incidentally reduced the deficit. Fire gutted the supposedly fireproof structure in August, 1892. It was quickly rebuilt, and reopened in November, 1893. Ten years later, it was redesigned by Caréare and Hastings, who eliminated the baignoires of the Golden Horseshoe and retained the two tiers of boxes which came to be known as the Diamond Horseshoe. Because of limited funds, the architects chose to treat the entrances and corridors simply and to splurge in the auditorium itself, which was fashioned into a magnificent, spacious hall. The tiers sweep around in great horizontal arcs from the proscenium. Vigorous carved decorations impart a sense of richness to the generous and handsome proportions of the auditorium. Opera continued to appeal to a large number of opera goers as a spectacle rather than as music. Audiences demanded familiar works -- Aïda, Il Trovatore, Faust -- and, because this exotic business was associated with foreigners in the popular mind, native singers often masqueraded under alien names. (Precedent for this custom was set the first season, when Alwina Valleria [Schoening] sang the role of Leonora in Il Trovatore.) Meanwhile the star system, abandoned to some extent through the Wagnerian period, was resumed in 1898 under the directorship of Maurice Grau. During the "golden age of song," names, world-famous then, and still well-remembered, headed the bills: the De Reszkés, Nordica, Scotti, Sembrich, Lehmann, Eames, Calvé, Schumann-Heink. Caruso, under the directorship of Heinrich Conried, made a nervous debut in Rigoletto, November 23, 1903. The next year he opened the season in Aïda, the first of sixteen consecutive "Caruso opening nights." His last appearance was in Elisir d'Amore; although he suffered from a hemorrhage he insisted on singing and was able to finish an entire act. He died in 1921. Arturo Toscanini during his tenure as conductor, from 1908 until 1915, established the highest musical standards the Metropolitan has known, and his departure, after disagreements with the management, was a severe loss to American opera. But the man who probably influenced the Metropolitan more than any other was Gatti-Casazza, who became director in 1908 and remained in charge until 1935. He widened the Opera's repertory to include new and varied works: Pelléas et Mélisande by Debussy; Boris Godounoff by Moussorgsky (the title role played by Chaliapin); the neglected classics of Gluck and Mozart; and recent compositions, including Walter Damrosch Cyrano de Bergerac, and Deems Taylor Peter Ibbetson and The King's Henchman for which Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote the libretto. He introduced to Metropolitan audiences such singers as Giovanni Martinelli, Amelia Galli-Curci, and Kirsten Flagstad. Salome was first produced by the Metropolitan, January 22, 1907, with Olive Fremstad in the leading role, but the Dance of the Seven Veils aroused protest, and the management did not offer the opera again until January 13, 1934. Two outstanding events of the Gatti-Casazza tenure were the world premièes of Puccini Girl of the Golden West and Humperdinck Goose Girl. From 1910 to 1929, the management not only succeeded in operating the Metropolitan on a sound financial basis but also accumulated a surplus. With the depression, however, the contributions of stockholders fell off, and although crowds might stand in line for seats in the family circle or for standing room, the balconies might be packed by the time the late arrivals reached their places in box and orchestra, bravos might thunder from under the roof, there was always a deficit at the end of the season. The Metropolitan faced ruin. The Metropolitan Opera House in New York City Photographic Print Buy at AllPosters.com