still have foreign artists singing foreign works in a foreign tongue,
but the change in repertory would promote an appreciation and an
understanding of truthful, dramatic expression in a form which claimed
close relationship with the drama.

This was the state of affairs when, negotiations having failed with
both Mr. Abbey and Mr. Gye, the summer days of 1884 being nearly gone
and the prospect of a closed theater confronting the directors of the
Metropolitan Opera House, Dr. Leopold Damrosch submitted to them a
proposition to give opera in German under his management, but on their
account. Either the forcefulness and plausibility of his arguments or
the direfulness of their need led the directors to make the venture. Dr.
Damrosch went to Germany toward the end of August; toward the end of
September he was back in New York, ready to announce a season of opera
in German, with a completely organized company and a promising list of
operas. Few persons knew what was coming, and the information brought
with it a shock of surprise. Dr. Damrosch had been a vigorous factor in
the musical life of New York for twelve years, but he had never been
identified with opera in the public mind, and, in fact, his practical
familiarity with it was little. He had come to New York from Breslau,
where he was conductor of the Orchesterverein (a symphonic organization)
in 1871. He had had some practical experience with the theater at
Weimar, where he played with the orchestra of the Court Theater under
the direction of Liszt, had been musical director at the Municipal
Theater in Posen and Breslau, but for short periods only. He had not
gone through the career of the typical German conductor for the reason
that he was not a musician "vom Hause aus"--as the Germans express it.
He was a physician turned musician--a member of one of the scientific
professions who had abandoned science for art.