Tiffero; Biterolf, Josef Miller; Heinrich der Schreiber, Otto Kemlitz;
Reinmar, Ludwig Wolf. The performance made no claim upon special
analysis or description. Its highest significance consisted in the
publication which it made with reference to the new ideals in operatic
representation which came in with the new movement. No doubt to a large
portion of the audience, still judging by the old standards, much of it
must have been inexplicable, much of it (especially the singing of Herr
Schott) little short of monstrous. To a smaller portion, familiar with
the opera, the language of its book and the spirit of the play, as well
as the music, it came as a vivid realization of the purposes of the
poet-composer. To all but the German element in the audience the opera
itself was practically a novelty. "Tannhäuser" had not been incorporated
in the Italian repertory as "Lohengrin" had, and only those knew it
who had attended the sporadic German performances of earlier decades
conducted by such men as Bergmann, Anschütz, and Neuendorff. The
first New York performance took place on August 27, 1859, at which the
Männergesangverein Arion supplied the choruses.

Wagner once described his Tannhäuser as "a German from head to foot,"
and it was doubtless because Dr. Damrosch saw in it a representative
quality that he chose it for his opening. There was patriotism as well
as lovely artistic devotion, too, in the choice of "Fidelio" for the
second performance, on November 19th. Beethoven's opera had almost
as little association with Italian opera as "Tannhäuser," and it was
noteworthy that the only portion of the audience room which was not
filled was that occupied by the stockholders' boxes. It was an English
company that, in September, 1839, had introduced "Fidelio" to New York,
and with it made such successful competition with the Italian company of
the day that it was performed fourteen times in succession. Mr. Mapleson
made a pitiful essay with it in March, 1882, at the Academy, but to