Priest by M. Lassalle. Eight months before this it had been
performed as an oratorio by the Oratorio Society of New York. There
were two performances, on March 25 and 26, 1892, the conductor
being Mr. Walter Damrosch and the principal singers being Frau
Marie Ritter-Goetze, Sebastian Montariol, H. E. Distelhurst, Homer
Moore, Emil Fischer, and Purdon Robinson. London had heard the work
twice as an oratorio before it had a stage representation there on
April 26, 1909, but this performance was fourteen years later than
the first at the Metropolitan Opera House on February 8, 1895. The
New York performance was scenically inadequate, but the integrity
of the record demands that the cast be given here: Samson, Signor
Tamagno; Dalila, Mme. Mantelli; High Priest, Signor Campanari;
Abimelech and An Old Hebrew, M. Plancon; First Philistine, Signor
Rinaldini; Second Philistme, Signor de Vachetti; conductor, Signor
Mancinelli. The Metropolitan management did not venture upon a
repetition until the opening night of the season 1915-1916, when
its success was such that it became an active factor in the
repertory of the establishment; but by that time it had been made
fairly familiar to the New York public by performances at the
Manhattan Opera House under the management of Mr. Oscar
Hammerstein, the first of which took place on November 13, 1908.
Signor Campanini conducted and the cast embraced Mme. Gerville-
Reache as Dalila, Charles Dalmores as Samson, and M. Dufranne as
High Priest. The cast at the Metropolitan Opera House's revival of
the opera on November 15,1915, was as follows: Dalila, Mme.
Margarete Matzenauer; Samson, Signor Enrico Caruso; High Priest,
Signor Pasquale Amato; Abimelech, Herr Carl Schlegel; An Old
Hebrew, M. Leon Rothier; A Philistine Messenger, Herr Max Bloch;
First Philistine, Pietro Audisio; Second Philistine, Vincenzo
Reschiglian; conductor, Signor Polacco.