On this day in New York · October 22, 1883
The Old Met Opens Its Doors
New York's new-money families got tired of being shut out of the opera boxes downtown, so they built a bigger, gaudier opera house of their own and dared the old guard to compete.
The facts
- Date
- October 22, 1883
- Location
- 1411 Broadway, between West 39th and West 40th Streets, Manhattan
- Opening night
- Gounod's Faust, starring Christina Nilsson, managed by Henry Abbey
- Capacity
- 3,625 seats plus 224 standing-room places, designed by architect J. Cleaveland Cady
On October 22, 1883, the Metropolitan Opera House opened at Broadway and 39th Street with a performance of Charles Gounod's Faust, starring the Swedish soprano Christina Nilsson and managed by Henry Abbey. The theater was the answer families like the Vanderbilts, the Morgans, and the Roosevelts gave to the Academy of Music, the old-money house that had never sold them a box no matter how much they were worth. The new hall sat 3,625 people, with 224 more standing, and its three tiers of private boxes were built for exactly the kind of display the Academy had refused them. The Academy tried to run its own season the same night. It didn't work.
In their words
The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.
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families were loath to admit New York's newly wealthy industrialists into their long-established social circle.
Wikipedia, describing the Academy of Music's old-money subscribers around 1880
Source: Wikipedia
Why it still matters
It's the founding myth of New York cultural power in one building: shut out of the club, the new money didn't ask twice, they built a better club next door. The Academy of Music folded a few years later; the Met outlasted it by more than a century.
Sources
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