comfort and luxury in their amusements. The place was pervaded with evil
smells; and, not uncommonly, in the midst of a performance, rats ran out
of the holes in the floor and across into the orchestra. This delectable
place was approached by a long, underground passage, with bare,
whitewashed walls, dimly lighted, except at a sort of booth, at which
vile fluids and viler solids were sold. As to the house itself, it was
the dingy abode of dreariness. The gallery was occupied by howling
roughs, who might have taken lessons in behavior from the negroes who
occupied a part of this tier, which was railed off for their particular
use."

This was the first home of Italian opera, strictly speaking. It had long
housed opera in the vernacular, and remained to serve as the fortress
of the English forces when the first battles were fought between the
champions of the foreign exotic and the entertainment which had been so
long established as to call itself native. Its career came to an end in
1848, when, like its predecessor and successor, it went up in flames and
smoke.

Presently I shall tell about the houses which have been built in New
York especially for operatic uses, but before then some attention ought
to be given to several other old theaters which had connection with
opera in one or another of its phases. One of these was the New York
Theater, afterward called the Bowery, and known by that name till a
comparatively recent date. The walls of this theater echoed first to the
voice of Malibran, when put forth in the vernacular of the country of
which fate seemed, for a time, to have decreed that she should remain a
resident. This was immediately after the first season of Italian opera
at the Park Theater. The New York Theater was then new, having been
built in 1826. Malibran had begun the study of English in London before