Smithsonian Institution The William Steinway Diary: 1861-1896
Steinway & Sons Records and Family Papers, Archives Center, National Museum of American History
William Steinway and the Met
print this page
William Steinway stated 54 times in his diary that he and/or his family saw operas that were performed at the Metropolitan Opera House (“the Met”) between its opening in 1883 and 1895, the year before he died. On 40 of those occasions he named the opera but did not explicitly mention the Met. William favored operas by Richard Wagner and the then-popular Giacomo Meyerbeer whose operas were written in French but William saw them performed in German. He and/or family also saw operas by Beethoven, Bellini, Gounod, Halévy, Mozart, Rossini, and Verdi at the Met. He commented on the performances of Met soloists including soprano and friend Lilli Lehmann. William visited the Met while it was under construction and bought a box before it opened. He commented on pianos used at the Met and attended other events at the Met including concerts, balls, and centennial banquets. He died shortly after being elected president of the company that managed the Met.
WILLIAM VISITS THE MET WHILE IT IS UNDER CONSTRUCTION
In the early 1880s, supporters of opera in New York decided to build a new opera house to expressly address complaints from New York City’s nouveau riche that the Academy of Music, at which opera had been performed since 1854, had only 30 boxes.(3, p.216) William drove by the chosen construction site at “40th str. & Broadway” (1411 Broadway), several times (Diary, 1882-1-15; 3-19; 4-9) and stopped to “look it all over” (Diary, 1882-9-15). In his book Opera in America: A Cultural History, John Dizikes wrote that architect Josiah Cleaveland Cady had never been to an opera, though he “drew heavily on the talents of one of the junior architects in the firm, who had studied in Europe”.(3, p.217) The Met was “larger than the Paris Opéra or Covent Garden or the Vienna Opera House”.(3, p.217) An article in the American Art Journal reported that it was built in the Italian Renaissance style largely of fire-resistant materials (yellow brick, iron, and “little wood-work”).(9) In a Harper’s article published at the time, it was described as “[s]tanding free on all four sides”, with wide stairways and “separate entrances to all parts of the house” that would facilitate any egress.(14) An 85-by-43 foot foyer was said to be “ample for all but the largest public balls and assemblies”, though with the later addition of one of two corner buildings the foyer could be part of a “suite 214 feet in length.”(14)
The American Art Journal article reported that “[t]he halls are all in tints of old gold, light maroon, golden brown and mustard color—curiously enough the fashionable colors of the day.”(9) That article claimed that every seat had “a full and unobstructed view of the stage”, though another review said “The sight lines were dreadful.”(3, p.218) The acoustics got mixed reviews as in, for example, [i]t was “suited to a powerful ringing voice, though unfair to fine but smaller voices.”(3, p.218)
The Met had 3,045 seats and a stage that was 80 feet deep by 106 feet wide.(10) It had 122 boxes seating about 750 people in four tiers,(3, p.218) (Today’s Met functionally replaced the 1883 Met in 1966. Located about a mile-and-a-half north at Lincoln Center, it has 3,800 seats including 64 boxes with 428 seats, and a stage that is 80 feet deep by 103 feet wide. The 1883 Met was torn down in 1967.(15)
WILLIAM PURCHASES A BOX AT THE MET
Stockholders in the Metropolitan Opera and Realty Company subscribed to some 70 boxes in the spring of 1883. An auction for the remaining boxes and seats was held just ten days before the Met opened the next October. The auction site was Steinway Hall, which was just a few blocks from the Academy of Music; both are near today’s Union Square Park and about a mile-and-a-half south of where the 1883 Met had been. William paid $70.00 for box 102 in the second balcony; “All papers report my purchase of a box last night.”(Diary, 1883-10-12; 10-13.) His box, like most others, was “seven feet front by thirteen deep, divided nearly midway of their depth by an upholstered partition into a salon so called and a box proper, and they are intended for six persons each.”(14) He sometimes sat in other boxes.
OVERVIEW OF OPERAS AT THE MET THAT WILLIAM AND/OR HIS FAMILY AND OTHERS SAW 1883-1895
William and family saw operas at the Met three dozen times between 1883 and 1895, while family members went without him more than a dozen times more. He saw nine Wagner operas – Rienzi, Der Fliegende Holländer, Tannhäuser, Lohengrin, Die Walküre, Siegfried, Götterdämmerung, Tristan und Isolde, and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, some more than once. Both he and family saw Les Huguenots, Le Prophète, and L'Africaine, operas written by Giacomo Meyerbeer and Eugène Scribe, perhaps the most popular composer/librettist collaboration of the day. He and family saw Beethoven’s Fidelio, Bellini’s Norma, the Halévy/Scribe La Juive, and Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia and Guillaume Tell. His family also saw Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Verdi’s Rigoletto, La Traviata, and Aida. They all saw operas that are now rarely if ever performed.
Their attendance began on October 22, 1883, the Met’s opening night. William, his children George and Paula, Martha (William’s wife’s sister), his brother Theo, and his sister Doretta saw Gounod’s Faust and stayed out late, as he often did.(Diary, 1883-10-22) All operas performed during that opening season were sung in Italian, including Faust and Bizet’s Carmen (both written in French), and Lohengrin by Wagner, who wrote all his operas in German.
From the 1884-1885 season through the 1890-1891 season, all operas performed at the Met were sung in German, including Carmen, Mozart’s Don Giovanni, and Verdi’s Rigoletto and Aida (all of these written in Italian except Carmen). German singers were less expensive than French or Italian singers, and “New York’s German population, estimated at 250,000 [almost 20 percent of the total], could be counted on as well.”(11)
In early 1891 Henry Abbey (1846-1896), who along with Maurice Grau (1849-1907) had managed the 1883-1884 season and who both had come back to manage beginning in fall 1891, informed William that the 1891-1892 season would be performed only in Italian (Diary, 1891-1-14), though some that were written in French were sung in French. That decision had been made by the Board of Directors of the Metropolitan Opera House, largely to attract paying customers.(6)(7)
William commented about half the time on the performances of soloists including soprano Lilli Lehmann, tenor Albert Niemann, and bass Emil Fischer. He and Lehmann became friends, and he arranged her 1888 wedding (Diary, 1888-2-24; 2-25; 2-26).
DETAILS of these operas are below.
PIANOS AT THE MET
William commented several times about pianos used at the Met. The 11-year-old Polish pianist Josef Hofmann “seems to be a second Mozart” (Diary, 1887-11-30) playing a Weber at his American debut at the Met, the first of 17 recital dates there in the next two months.(13) German pianist Xaver Scharwenka played well but on a “simply beastly” Behr Grand (Diary, 1891-1-24). William learned that the Met had contracted with Knabe (then a Baltimore company) for pianos, so Steinway pianos were to be “excluded” (Diary, 1895-11-16). Knabe became the official piano at the Met in 1926.(4) Yamaha has that position today.
WILLIAM’S OTHER ACTIVITIES AT THE MET
William and/or family also went to the Met for a variety of other events, some of which were sponsored by organizations with which he was affiliated. These include a charity ball (Diary, 1884-1-3), Wagner concerts (Diary, 1884-4-22; 4-24; 4-26; 5-9), Liederkranz balls (Diary, 1884-9-16; 1885-2-17), more concerts (Diary, 1886-3-2; 11-13), another ball (Diary, 1887-2-10), an Arion music festival (Diary, 1889-10-7), a German Press Club concert (Diary, 1889-11-30), a “Hospital Concert given by Arion + Liederkranz” (Diary, 1891-1-15), and a Paderewski concert (Diary, 1892-3-27).
He was at the Met for the “Centennial Banquet”(1), celebrating George Washington’s first inauguration (Diary, 1889-4-30) and for the Supreme Court centenary, at which the L.K. “assisted.” (Diary, 1890-2-4)
The firm Abbey, Schoeffel and Grau, which had managed opera at the Met since 1891, was by 1895 in financial difficulties, failed, and was re-incorporated. (Diary,1896-6-12; 6-19; 6-21; 6-24; 7-8) William was elected president of the firm.(Diary, 1896-7-8) Abbey died October 17, 1896, and William died November 30, 1896. Meeting on May 4, 1897, at the Met, the firm’s stockholders gave up “all idea of operatic business” and freed Schoeffel and Grau to “enter the business on their own account”. Meeting reports noted “the excellent prospects for grand opera which existed at the opening of the last season, and laid much of the subsequent ill fortune to the deaths of William Steinway and Henry E. Abbey and the loss by the illness of [soprano Nellie] Melba and [soprano Emma] Eames.”(5)
DETAILS OF OPERAS AT THE MET THAT WILLIAM AND/OR HIS FAMILY AND OTHERS SAW
William wrote in his diary that he and/or family and friends went to operas at the Met as follows – (M) indicates he explicitly mentioned the Met, and (WS) indicates William was there:(8)
1883-1884 SEASON:
* Faust (Met premier) (Diary, 1883-10-22) (M) (WS)
* Il Barbiere di Siviglia (Met premier) (Diary, 1883-11-23) (M) (WS)
* Rigoletto (Diary, 1883-11-30) (M)
* La Traviata (Diary, 1883-12-21) (M)
* Hamlet (Ambroise Thomas/Carré and Barbier) (Diary, 1884-3-10) (M)
1884-1885 SEASON:
* Lohengrin (Diary, 1884-12-8) (WS)
* Don Giovanni (Diary, 1884-12-10: “My wife and daughter are at German Opera “Don Juan””)
* Tannhäuser (Diary, 1884-12-24) (M) (WS)
* Les Huguenots (Diary, 1885-1-7) (WS)
* Le Prophète (Diary, 1885-1-14: “done quite well to crowded house”) (WS)
* La Juive (Met premier) (Diary, 1885-1-16) (WS)
* Die Walküre (Diary, 1885-2-2) (WS)
1885-1886 SEASON:
* Le Prophète (Diary, 1885-11-27) (M) (WS)
* Die Königin von Saba (Goldmark/Mosenthal) (Diary, 1885-12-14) (WS)
* Meistersinger (Diary, 1886-1-11) (M) (WS)
* Rienzi (Diary, 1886-2-17) (M) (WS)
* Faust (Diary, 1886-2-26: “Lili Lehmann & Emil Fischer grand”) (WS)
1886-1887 SEASON:
* Die Walküre (Diary, 1886-11-10) (WS)
* Das Goldene Kreuz (Brüll/Mosenthal) (Diary, 1886-11-22) (WS)
* Tannhäuser (Diary, 1886-11-26) (M) (WS)
* Tristan (US premier) (Diary, 1886-12-1) (WS)
* Merlin (Albéniz/Money-Coutts) (Diary, 1887-1-7) (WS)
* Fidelio (Diary, 1887-1-19: “very crowded.”) (WS)
* Meistersinger (Diary, 1887-2-25) (WS)
1887-1888 SEASON:
* Siegfried (US premier) (Diary, 1887-11-9) (WS)
* La Juive (Diary, 1887-12-12) (WS)
* Euryanthe (Carl Maria von Weber/von Chézy) (Diary, 1887-12-28) (WS)
* Fernand Cortez (Spontini/de Jouy and Esménard) (Diary, 1888-1-11: “very uninteresting, except the splendid scenery”) (WS)
* Die Walküre (Diary, 1888-1-18)
* Götterdämmerung (Diary, 1888-2-3) (WS)
1888-1889 SEASON:
* L'Africaine (Diary, 1888-12-10)
* Les Huguenots (Diary, 1888-12-17: “Wife & Fra?ulein [children’s nurse] at Opera “Huegenots”)
* La Juive (Diary, 1889-1-21)
1889-1890 SEASON:
* Der Fliegende Holländer (Met premier and Met opening night of the season) (Diary, 1889-11-27: “In a drenching rain have to wait half an hour for our carriage”) (WS)
* Guillaume Tell (Diary, 1889-12-13) (WS)
* Der Barbier von Baghdad (Cornelius) (US premier) and ballet Die Puppenfée (Bayer) (Met premier) (Diary, 1890-1-8) (WS)
* Norma (Met premier) (Diary, 1890-2-27) (WS)
1890-1891 SEASON:
* Asrael (Franchetti/Fontana) (US premier and Met opening night of the season) (Diary, 1890-11-26) (WS)
* Les Huguenots (Diary, 1890-12-8)
* Il Vassalo di Szigeth (Smareglia/Illica) (Diary, 1890-12-15) (WS)
* Diana von Solange (Ernst II of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha/Prechtler) (US premier) (Diary, 1891-1-9: “it does not amount to much”) (WS)
* Meistersinger (Diary, 1891-1-14)
* Götterdämmerung (Diary, 1891-2-16)
* Tristan (Diary, 1891-3-20)
1891-1892 SEASON:
* Faust (Diary, 1892-2-29) (M) (WS)
There was no 1892-1893 season due to a “disastrous fire that necessitated extensive reconstruction of the auditorium”.(12)
1894-1895 SEASON:
* Tristan (Diary, 1895-2-25)
* Siegfried (Diary, 1895-2-28)
* Lohengrin (Diary,1895-3-1 “This is the first time that I have been in a Theatre or Operahouse since Decbr 1892. Opera house greatly improved, with 2 commodious elevators”) (M) (WS)
* Tannhäuser (Diary, 1895Diary-3-8)
* Walküre (Diary,1895-3-11)
* Meistersinger (Diary, 1895-3-18) (WS)
* Tristan (Diary, 1895-3-23: “The regular German Opera season comes to a close with matinee “Tristan + Isolde which is overcrowded, season has financially been very successful.”) (WS)
* Meistersinger (Diary, 1895-4-22). The February through March 1895 performances were by the Walter Damrosch Opera Company.(2) (M)
1895-1896 SEASON:
* Aida (Diary, 1895-12-25) (M)
[seh]
Sources:
1. “Banquet at the Metropolitan Opera House April 30th 1889, given in honor of the centennial of the inauguration of George Washington as President of the United States,” https://www.loc.gov/resource/rbpe.1290460b/?st=gallery
2. Chan, Hannah. “The Damrosch Grand Opera Company and the Ring, 1894-1899. Part I” in: Der Ring des Nibelungen in the New World: The American Performance and Reception of Wagner’s Cycle, 1850-1903. PhD dissertation in musicology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2014, pp. 409-428.
3. Dizikes, John. Opera in America: A Cultural History. New Haven: Yale University Press, September 27, 1995 (revised edition).
4. “The History of Knabe Pianos,” https://www.cooperpiano.com/the-history-of-knabe-pianos/
5. “The Idea of Opera Given Up,” The New York Times, May 5, 1897, p.9.
6. “The Italian Opera Season,” The New York Times, Jan. 16, 1891, p. 8.
7. “Live Musical Topics.” The New York Times, Jan. 18, 1891, p. 11.
8. Metropolitan Opera archives, http://archives.metoperafamily.org.
9. “The Metropolitan Opera-House from an Artistic Standpoint.” American Art Journal. Oct. 6, 1883. Vol. xxxix, no. 24, p. 464.
10. Odell, George C. D. Annals of the New York Stage, Vol. XII [1882-1985]. New York: Columbia University Press, 1940, p. 289.
11. Ogasapian J. and N. Lee Orr. Music of the Gilded Age. “The Gilded Age and the Metropolitan Opera” pp. 39-44, Chapter 2: Grand Opera. Westport Connecticut: Greenwood Press. 2007.
12. Sadie, Stanley (ed.). New Grove Dictionary of Opera. Vol. 3. New York: Macmillan, 1992, p. 587.
13. Schoenberg, Harold C. The Great Pianists From Mozart to the Present. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1963, pp. 380-381.
14. Schuyler, Montgomery, “The Metropolitan Opera-House,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, Vol. LXVII, No. 402, November 1883, pp. 2-3.
15. “Why Mimi No Longer Dies at Broadway and 39th,” The New York Times, April 23, 1995, p. RNJ7. .
