Third Season and Beyond: Fall 1896 - Spring 1898

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Despite the problems of the second season, the agreement with the Metropolitan made a third season possible for Damrosch's company. A group offered the Philadelphia Academy of Music to Damrosch as his musical home in that city and pledged further assistance for the season.(1, p.121) He talked with William during this time as to his opera status.(Diary, 1896-07-03)

During the 1896-1897 season Cecile Moher-Ravenstein succeeded the late Katherine Klafsky while Ernst Kraus succeeded Max Alvary. Rothmuel returned after a year’s absence. (1, p 122)(6) The season opened in Philadelphia with Lohengrin and the debut of Ernst Kraus, one of the greatest tenors in Germany. Carl Somer from the Vienna Royal Opera also made his debut.(5) William would not be in attendance that year to hear the new performers. He had heard his last opera. William had one final conversation with Damrosch in September(Diary, 1896-09-10) before dying on November 30. The third season was a greater financial success than the previous one, but Damrosch was tiring from the strain of being both conductor and manager.(1, p. 123)

Damrosch considered disbanding the company because of the demands on his time, but in the spring of 1897 Charles Ellis, the manager of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, agreed to a partnership that became known as the Damrosch-Ellis Opera Company.(1, p. 123)(7) He also contracted with the soprano Lilli Lehmann and her husband, the tenor, Paul Kalisch. (1, p. 122) This season promised to be the most successful yet, the first week in New York in 1898 attracting the largest crowds of Damrosch’s career. Subscribers bought out nearly the entire house.(3) That year Damrosch conducted only in Chicago and Boston while Ellis conducted the remainder of the tour.(1, p. 124)

With Damrosch continuing with his opera company and the Metropolitan returning to mostly French and Italian opera, Seidl conducted at Covent Garden in London and returned once again to Bayreuth.(2, pp. 64, 68) While in New York in March, he dined with friends and fell ill shortly afterwards. A few hours later on March 28, 1898, at the age of 47, he died from ptomaine poisoning although some of his friends blamed the stress over the conflicts with Damrosch for weakening his body and exacerbating the symptoms that ultimately led to his death.(2, pp. 36, 80-82)

Damrosch was now the uncontested Wagnerian conductor in the United States, but having accomplished his goal of returning German opera to America, he announced his retirement on April 9, 1898, just 12 days after Seidl's death, and disbanded the company at the end of the 1898-1899 season.(1, p. 123)(9) The following year Maurice Grau invited Damrosch to conduct German operas at the Metropolitan. Grau had assembled a very talented group of Wagnerian singers, including several from Damrosch’s former company. He then claimed to have given performances that came as near to perfection as he could ever hope to witness.(1, pp. 129, 133) After disbanding his opera company, Damrosch continued to compose and conduct. In addition to The Scarlet Letter, he composed Dove of Peace(1912), Cyrano de Bergerac, (1937), and Opera Cloak (1942). He conducted the New York Symphony Society until it merged with the New York Philharmonic in 1927.(8)

In the last years of the 19th century, New York lost two of its most famous men in the music world ? William Steinway in 1896 and Anton Seidl in 1898. In early 1896 at the age of 34, Damrosch told The Musical Courier that he wished he could live another 50 years so he could see large cities acquire their own orchestras and America develop its own opera sung in English, for certainly that would happen in the coming decades.(4) He was granted his wish. Damrosch lived for an additional 54 years, dying in New York at the age of 88 on December 22, 1950.(8)
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Sources:

1. Damrosch, Walter, My Musical Life, New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1925.
2. Finck, Henry Theophilus, ed., Anton Seidl: A Memorial by His Friends, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1899.
3. “The Grand Opera Outlook,” I January 11, 1898, p. 7.
4. “Mr. Damrosch’s Season,” The Musical Courier, March 4, 1896, pp. 27-28.
5. “The Music World,” The Philadelphia Enquirer, December 6, 1896, p. 19.
6. “New Singers With Mr. Damrosch,” The Chicago Daily Tribune, December 13, 1896, p. 3.
7. “To Give Grand Opera,” The Chicago Daily Tribune, April 7, 1897, p. 2.
8. “Walter Damrosch Dies At The Age of 88,” The New York Times, December 23, 1950, pp. 1, 16.
9. “Walter Damrosch To Retire,” The New York Times, April 9, 1898, p. 7