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Global Historical Sociology

Bringing together historical sociologists from Sociology and International

Relations, this collection lays out the international, transnational, and
global dimensions of social change. It reveals the shortcomings of existing
scholarship and argues for a deepening of the “third wave” of historical
sociology through a concerted treatment of transnational and global
dynamics as they unfold in, and through, time. The volume combines
theoretical interventions with in-depth case studies. Each chapter moves
beyond binaries of “internalism” and “externalism,” offering a relational
approach to a particular thematic: the rise of the West, the colonial
construction of sexuality, the imperial origins of state formation, the
global origins of modern economic theory, the international features of
revolutionary struggles, and more. By bringing this sensibility to bear on a
wide range of issue-areas, the volume lays out the promise of a truly global
historical sociology.

Julian Go is Professor of Sociology at Boston University. He is author of

American Empire and the Politics of Meaning (2008) and Patterns of
Empire: The British and American Empires, 1688 to the Present
(Cambridge University Press, 2011).
George Lawson is Associate Professor of International Relations at
the London School of Economics and Political Science. His books
include The Global Transformation with Barry Buzan (Cambridge
University Press, 2015), The Global 1989: Continuity and Change in
World Politics, edited with Chris Armbruster and Michael Cox
(Cambridge University Press, 2010), and Negotiated Revolutions: The
Czech Republic, South Africa and Chile (2005).
Global Historical Sociology

Edited by
Julian Go
Boston University

George Lawson
London School of Economics and Political Science
University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom
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It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of
education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence.

www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107166646
DOI: 10.1017/9781316711248
© Cambridge University Press 2017
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 2017
Printed in the United Kingdom by Clays, St Ives plc
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-107-16664-6 Hardback
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Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of
URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication
and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain,
accurate or appropriate.
 Contents

List of Contributors page vii

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction: For a Global Historical Sociology 1

julian go and george lawson

Part I States, War, and Revolution 35

1 Real Mythic Histories: Circulatory Networks
and State-Centrism 37
matthew norton
2 States, Armies, and Wars in Global Context 58
tarak barkawi
3 A Global Historical Sociology of Revolution 76
george lawson

Part II Empire, Race, and Sexuality 99

4 Following “the Deeds of Men”: Race, “the Global,”
and International Relations 101
zine magubane
5 The Crisis of Europe and Colonial Amnesia: Freedom
Struggles in the Atlantic Biotope 124
robbie shilliam
6 Sex, Gender, and Sexuality in Colonial Modernity:
Towards a Sociology of Webbed Connectivities 142
vrushali patil

v
vi Contents

Part III Capitalism and Political Economy 161

7 The Global, the Historical, and the Social in the Making
of Capitalism 163
ho-fung hung
8 The Influence of Trade with Asia on British Economic
Theory and Practice 182
emily erikson
9 Asian Incorporation and the Collusive Dynamics of
Western “Expansion” in the Early Modern World 199
andrew phillips
10 Worlding the Rise of Capitalism: The Multicivilizational
Roots of Modernity 221
john m. hobson
Conclusion: Global Historical Sociology and
Transnational History – History and Theory Against
Eurocentrism 241
andrew zimmerman

Bibliography 252
Index 295
 Contributors

tarak barkawi is Reader in the Department of International Relations

at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He studies
warfare between the West and the Non-European world, past and
present. He is author most recently of Soldiers of Empire.
emily erikson is Associate Professor of Sociology at Yale University
working on the role of social networks in historical and cultural change.
She is the author of Between Monopoly and Free Trade: The English East
India Company (2014), winner of the Allan Sharlin Memorial Award,
the Ralph Gomory Prize, the Gaddis Smith International Book Prize,
and the James Coleman Award for Outstanding Publication.
julian go is Professor of Sociology and Faculty Affiliate in Asian Studies
and New England and American Studies at Boston University. His
books include Postcolonial Thought and Social Theory (2016), Fielding
Transnationalism, coedited with Monika Krause (2016), and Patterns of
Empire: The British and American Empires, 1688 to the Present
(Cambridge University Press, 2011).
john m. hobson is Professor of Politics and International Relations at
the University of Sheffield. He coedits (with L. H. M. Ling) the
Rowman & Littlefield international book series Global Dialogues:
Developing non-Eurocentric IR and IPE, and he is a fellow of the British
Academy. His most recent book is The Eurocentric Conception of World
Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2012).
ho-fung hung is the Henry M. and Elizabeth P. Wiesenfeld Associate
Professor of Political Economy at the Johns Hopkins University. He
researches global political economy, protest, and nationalism. He is the
author of Protest with Chinese Characteristics: Demonstrations, Riots, and
Petitions in the Mid-Qing Dynasty (2011) and The China Boom: Why
China Will Not Rule the World (2016).

vii
viii List of Contributors

george lawson is Associate Professor of International Relations at the

London School of Economics and Political Science. He is the author of
The Global Transformation: History, Modernity and the Making of
International Relations (with Barry Buzan) (Cambridge University
Press, 2015), and is currently working on a monograph entitled
Anatomies of Revolution.
zine magubane is Associate Professor of Sociology and African
Diaspora Studies at Boston College. She has been published in Signs,
Gender and Society, and Cultural Sociology.
matthew norton is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University
of Oregon. His work, focusing on cultural theory and the intersection
of culture and state power, has appeared in the American Journal of
Sociology, Sociological Theory, and Theory and Society. He is currently
working on a book about the destruction of piracy in the early modern
English empire.
vrushali patil is Associate Professor of Sociology at Florida
International University. She works on racialized gender and sexuality
with a focus on transnational, postcolonial, and decolonial approaches
to gender and sexuality. She is currently working on a book entitled
Transnationalizing Sex, Gender and Sexuality: Towards a Sociology of
Webbed Connectivities.
andrew phillips is Associate Professor of International Relations and
Strategy in the School of Political Science and International Studies at
the University of Queensland. His publications include War, Religion and
Empire – The Transformation of International Orders (Cambridge
University Press, 2011) and (with J.C. Sharman) International Order in
Diversity: War, Trade and Rule in the Indian Ocean (Cambridge
University Press, 2015).
robbie shilliam is Professor of International Relations at Queen
Mary University of London. He is coeditor of Meanings of Bandung:
Postcolonial Orders and Decolonial Visions (2016) and author of The
Black Pacific: Anticolonial Struggles and Oceanic Connections (2015).
andrew zimmerman is Professor of History at George Washington
University. He is the author of Anthropology and Antihumanism in
Imperial Germany (2001) and Alabama in Africa: Booker T. Washington,
the German Empire, and the Globalization of the New South (2010). He is
currently writing a history of the American Civil War as a transnational
revolution against slave labor and wage labor.
 Acknowledgments

All edited books are collective endeavors, but some are more collective
than others. This volume is of the latter variety. The impetus for the
project began in late 2011 when Gurminder Bhambra and George
Lawson talked about bringing together sociologists and international
relations (IR) specialists to consider the viability of constructing a global
historical sociology (GHS). While Bhambra made the point that,
although historical sociological work in disciplinary sociology had, to a
considerable extent, embraced work on race and, to a lesser extent,
imperialism and colonialism, it had not made a concerted move to tackle
the ways in which these issues were constituted by global formations and
connected histories. For his part, Lawson thought that historical socio-
logical work in IR had, for all its productivity, lost track of its specific
contribution and, at the same time, not found a way to engage those
working outside the discipline. Perhaps these two constituencies could be
brought together and a common enterprise forged?
Bhambra and Lawson organized a gathering of sociologists and IR
scholars at the London School Economics in April 2012 to consider
these issues. Participants were asked to prepare a few remarks in response
to the question: “what is global historical sociology?”, and a further set of
remarks on what such an enterprise entailed for their specialist areas of
interest: war, colonialism, capitalism, race, revolution, and more. The
liveliness of the discussion made clear that the project was onto some-
thing, even if it wasn’t clear exactly what that something was. The theo-
retical and empirical bandwidth occupied by global historical sociology
seemed extremely wide. And it was evident that, despite speaking the
same basic language in terms of subfield, disciplinary differences worked
to manufacture distinct dialects. If participants could understand each
other, they were not always able to fully tune into their colleague’s
regional accents. We offer our considerable thanks to the GHS pioneers
who worked so hard to construct a historical sociological Esperanto:
Tarak Barkawi, Manali Desai, John Hobson, Raka Ray, Justin

ix
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x Acknowledgments

Rosenberg, Robbie Shilliam, and George Steinmetz. Without their initial

efforts, this project would not have got very far.
Following the LSE meeting, Julian Go, who was also present at the
event, joined Bhambra and Lawson in co-convening the wider project.
Bhambra, Go, and Lawson wrote a manifesto summarizing the discus-
sions and suggesting a range of positions around which GHS could be
oriented. Follow-up meetings were held at the Social Science History
Association (SSHA) conference in Vancouver in November 2012 and at
the International Studies Association (ISA) convention in San Francisco
in April 2013. These meetings were sufficiently productive – and suffi-
ciently well attended – to warrant a second gathering at LSE in October
2013. This meeting had two objectives: first, tightening GHS as a field of
enquiry; and second, workshopping papers that could – eventually – form
part of an edited volume. Once again, the meeting was marked by highly
stimulating discussions. The project’s core premises came more sharply
into view and the disciplinary differences between participants began to
erode, not to the extent that there was a single language, but something
loosely approximating this. In addition to those who had been present at
the initial LSE gathering in 2012, we were joined by a range of new
colleagues at the SSHA, ISA, and LSE meetings, all of whom we would
like to thank for the productive role they played in forging the project’s
agenda: Julia Adams, Gennaro Ascione, Emily Erikson, Jack Goldstone,
Ho-fung Hung, Pei-Chia Lan, Nawal Mustafa, Daniel Neep, Dan
Nexon, Matt Norton, Vrushali Patil, and Isaac Reed.
The last stage of the project saw Go and Lawson assume coeditorship
as Bhambra pursued other projects. Of all the people involved in the
project who do not form part of this volume, Gurminder deserves the
greatest thanks. Much of the intellectual stimulus that lies behind this
volume come from Gurminder, something made clear by the many cita-
tions her work receives in the chapters that follow. We hope that
Gurminder enjoys the book and that it fulfills the goals she helped to
establish for the project.
The final flurry of activities associated with the book included meetings
at the 2014 SSHA meeting in Toronto and the 2015 ISA convention
in New Orleans. Once again, we offer our thanks to participants at
these events. Those who have not already been mentioned include:
Diego Holstein, Diana Kim, Jean Lachapelle, Andrew Phillips, Meera
Sabaratnam, Jason Sharman, Ann Tickner, Colin Wight, and Ayşe
Zarakol. Sandwiched between these events was a meeting of the book’s
final contributors at Yale University in October 2014. Joining us for the
first time at this workshop were Zine Magubane and Andrew Phillips.
Each paper was given a forensic examination by a group of outstanding
 Acknowledgments xi

discussants: Santhi Hejeebu, Wei Luo, Kristin Plys, Sadia Saeed,

Alexandre White, Nick Wilson, and Jonathan Wyrtzen. We offer special
thanks to Julia Adams, who not only secured funding for the event and
superbly curated it, but who has provided consistent intellectual leader-
ship throughout the project.
By the time of the Yale workshop, the volume had taken coherent shape
around a (more or less) unified language, analytic, and sensibility. During
2015, follow-up events at the British International Studies Association
(BISA) conference in London and the ISA North East meeting in
Providence deepened this coherence. Meticulous work by Will Rooke in
the final stages of the project underlined it. Jimmy Lou was professional-
ism personified in putting together the index. Our thanks to Will and
Jimmy, as well as the participants at the many events related to the book,
whether they’ve been thanked above, or whether they participated from
the floor. We have presented work linked to this project to well over a
thousand people. Many of their questions, comments and provocations
form a central part of what follows. We cannot thank them all by name
(even if we could remember them all), but they are a major reason for why
the project developed into a coherent volume. It has been collectively
constituted from the beginning. And it is much richer for the many forms
of public scrutiny that it has been through.
John Haslam at Cambridge University Press showed interest in the
project from an early stage and was extremely patient with us as the
project developed. John also organized two extraordinary reviews of
the manuscript, both of which were positive, yet each of which raised
pertinent queries that added up to over 8,000 words of comments. We
very much hope this level of constructive engagement is an indication of
the depth of thought that the book will provoke. We would like to thank
both John and the two reviewers for improving the volume considerably.
We also thank the contributors for responding so constructively to the
reviews. The final manuscript is much improved for this intellectual back-
and-forth. Indeed, this kind of back-and-forth has characterized the
project from the beginning. Our goal was – and is – to produce a volume
that is as an opening rather than any kind of final word. For funding our
endeavors along the way, we would like to thank Boston University’s
College of Arts and Sciences, the International Relations Department at
LSE, and the Kempf Fund of Yale University.
Our final thanks go to our respective families. The length of time this
project has taken (and taken up) has seen the arrival of two new members
of the Lawson clan. It has also seen Jake, George’s first son, mature from
precocious child to equally precocious teenager. George offers his thanks
to all three children – Kasper, Xavi, and Jake – for putting up with his
xii Acknowledgments

absent-mindedness (and notoriously “selective hearing”) while he con-

sidered just how GHS could and should be put to work. But George
reserves his greatest thanks to his wife, Kirsten, who now knows more
about global historical sociology than she ever expected to. Or wanted to.
Or had any interest in. Julian also thanks his family: his son, Oliver, who
was delightful company during some of Julian’s trips to the meetings, and
his wife Emily who, as ever, not only provided personal and moral support
but also frequent intellectual exchange. Our families are unlikely to read
this book. But we think of them as honorary global historical sociologists
anyway.
 Introduction: For a Global Historical
Sociology

Julian Go and George Lawson

Why Global Historical Sociology?1

Would it be an exaggeration to claim that there has been a “global”
revolution in the social sciences? Witness, in disciplinary history, the
rise of “global history” and “transnational history.”2 Ever since Akira
Iriye’s (1989) call for historians “to search for historical themes and
conceptions that are meaningful across national boundaries,” historians
have institutionalized transnational history as a prominent subfield, one
that can be seen in journals, books, conferences, course offerings, and
job lines. Witness, too, the proliferation of “globalization” studies (e.g.,
Castells 1996; Held et al. 1999; Beck 2006; Beck 2012) and the attempt
to institutionalize a “global sociology” (Burawoy 2000; Burawoy 2008),
moves intended to explore new cosmopolitan identities and trace social
processes at transnational and global scales (also see Wallerstein 2001).
Consider finally the discipline of International Relations (IR). For much
of its disciplinary history, IR has studied the workings of a small part of
the world (the West) through a relatively sparse analytical lens (the
“states under anarchy” problematique). In recent years, IR scholarship
has begun to make clear the ways in which the emergence of the discipline

1
For helpful comments and suggestions on this Introduction, we thank the volume con-
tributors and especially Julia Adams, who also helped secure some of the funding for our
meeting at Yale. We also thank two anonymous reviewers for CUP, as well as Colin Beck,
Craig Calhoun, Elisabeth Clemens, Jack Goldstone, Janice Bially Mattern, Gagan Sood,
Nicholas Wilson, and commentators and audiences at sessions on the paper at the 2014
Social Science History Association meetings (Chicago), the 2015 International Studies
Association meetings (New Orleans), the 2015 British International Studies Association
Meetings (London), and the 2015 Northeast Regional ISA meetings (Providence). For
funding the meetings at LSE and Yale, we thank Boston University’s College of Arts &
Sciences, the International Relations Department at the LSE, and the Kempf Fund of
Yale University.
2
Although distinctions can be drawn between these two enterprises (e.g., Zimmerman
2013), we see the turn to global history and transnational history as representing a single
movement in that both situate themselves in opposition to “internalism” and “methodo-
logical nationalism.” These terms are defined below.

1
2 Julian Go and George Lawson

was intimately associated with issues of colonial management (e.g.,

Vitalis 2010, 2016), the diverse range of polities that constitute the
international system (e.g., Phillips and Sharman 2015), and the myriad
of social forces, from market exchanges to cultural flows, that make up
“the international” (e.g., Hobson, Lawson and Rosenberg 2010).
The academy’s most overtly “international” discipline is finally going
“global” (Tickner and Blaney eds. 2012).
The essays in this collection join and advance this revolution. But they do
so from a particular standpoint: “Global Historical Sociology” (GHS).
By “Global Historical Sociology” we mean the study of two interrelated
dynamics: first, the transnational and global dynamics that enable the emer-
gence, reproduction, and breakdown of social orders whether these orders
are situated at the subnational, national, or global scales;3 and second, the
historical emergence, reproduction, and breakdown of transnational and
global social forms. The first of these dynamics provides the “global” in our
enquiry; the second constitutes the “historical sociology.” While historical
sociology is a long-established interdisciplinary field concerned with incor-
porating temporality in the analysis of social processes, we conceive global
historical sociology as the study of the transnational and global features of
these processes. Such features vary widely, ranging from the global
dynamics of capitalist accumulation to the role of transnational ideologies
and social movements in fostering change within and across state borders –
to many things besides. With this emphasis on the transnational and global,
Global Historical Sociology as an intellectual project emerges from the
subfield of historical sociology even as it seeks to extend it.
The motivation behind our attempt to advance Global Historical
Sociology is clear: it is, quite simply, to keep up with the world.4 After decades
(or more) of globalization, and centuries of imperial formations before that,
we are far from a world – if we ever inhabited one – when social science
could attend dutifully to issues only “at home”; that is, in the sequestered
sites of our particular territories. It took a special form of parochial vanity to
imagine that historical development arose from the endogenous character-
istics of a handful of powerful polities. Recent historical work has done

3
Once again, although transnational and global are not synonyms, we treat them as part of
a single field of enquiry in that they are both concerned with connections that do not take
place solely within states. The same is true for the term “international.” In broad terms,
“international” refers to relations between social orders (which are not limited to nation-
states), “transnational” means transboundary relations across social sites, and “global” is
an encompassing term that denotes interconnectedness and spatially expansive social
relations.
4
It is telling that, according to figures from the American Sociological Association, job lines
in “comparative-historical sociology” are few and far between, while job lines in “transna-
tional and global” areas are rising – and fast.
 For a Global Historical Sociology 3

much to demolish these assumptions (e.g., Pomeranz 2000; Christian

2004; Bayly 2004; Belich 2009; Osterhammel 2014). It has shown that
the world has long been a space of “imperial globality” in which historical
trajectories have been intertwined through power relations (Burton and
Ballantyne 2012: 13). Yet many scholars remain wedded to research that
explains the historical trajectory of a country via dynamics internal to that
territory, combining this with attention to the ways in which other terri-
tories lack comparable dynamics. In this way, much of the modern acad-
emy is home to two misconceptions: first, assuming that the world is
made of stable entities that are, in turn, comprised of stable attributes;
and second, bracketing off “internal” and “external” in a way that serves to
harden and, ultimately, reify these spheres.
Regarding the first misconception: historical sociology has long formed
part of the challenge to “attributional” thinking – the notion that “the social
world consists of fixed entities (the units of analysis) that have attributes
(the variables)” (Abbott 2001: 39). In this understanding, the interaction
of attributes leads to stable patterns, patterns that persist regardless of
context.5 Yet, if the world is not composed of static entities with timeless
properties but, rather, is “on the move,” then there is no static unit of
analysis and no set of universal properties that can be attributed to these
units. In this understanding, social formations contain neither ascribed
properties nor fixed attributes. If all social objects are made and remade in
and through time, then they are necessarily “entities-in-motion” and can be
studied as such. In this regard, GHS is informed by debates about the
“eventfulness” and “historicity” of social relations (Sewell 1996a; Jackson
2006). As we discuss later in this introduction, GHS adopts a “relational”
stance that examines the contextually bound, historically situated config-
urations of events and experiences that constitute social fields. This is why
we seek historical analyses. On the one hand, social entities often take on the
appearance of fixity. As Matthew Norton in Chapter 1 of this volume makes
clear, the idea of “the state” is just such an appearance. So too is the notion
of an autonomous “Western civilization” (Hobson Chapter 10). At times,
the appearance of fixity leads to the creation of institutionalized orders with
“thing-like” characteristics; again, the state is a good example (Norton
Chapter 1; also see Mitchell 1991). On the other hand, the danger lies in
naturalizing in our analyses what is constructed in practice. Historical
analysis is the antidote. It helps us denaturalize; it helps us escape the trap
of taking something as fixed when it is actually constituted through tempo-
rally located, social processes. Hence our project: global historical sociology.

5
It also leads to theory-construction as little more than “hunting for variables” (Krause
2010).
4 Julian Go and George Lawson

Regarding the second misconception – that is, the bracketing of “inter-

nal” and “external” that serves to harden and, ultimately, reify distinc-
tions between ostensibly stable social entities – we operate from the
recognition that such “analytic bifurcation” and the debates that ensue
(“the global” vs. “the local”; “globalization” vs. the “nation-state”) are
untenable (Bhambra 2007a; Magubane 2005; Go 2013a). Any histori-
cally informed social scientific study, whether engaged with dynamics of
war making (Barkawi Chapter 2) or the construction of sexualities (Patil
Chapter 6), must engage with the international, transnational, and global
entanglements within which such processes are embedded. Indeed, ana-
lysis of this kind is premised on the ways in which the relations between
people, networks, institutions, and polities drive such dynamics. This
does not mean that attention to global processes and scales serves as an
alternative to national or subnational processes; rather, the connections
between these scales require unpacking (Sassen 2007). Social sites “at
home” and “over there,” the “foreign” and the “domestic,” the “East”
and the “West,” “metropole,” and “colony” are not easily analytically
separable any more than they are empirically discrete. To the contrary, as
the various contributions to this volume make clear, these presumably
separate sites are often intimately connected. Yet a combination of
“internalism” and “methodological nationalism” has occluded these con-
nections and the wider dynamics they form a part of.6 Our goal is to make
such connections explicit, demonstrating how a range of transnational
dynamics, forms, and processes are generative of world historical devel-
opment, from the formation of the idea of modern Europe (Shilliam
Chapter 5) to the role of families in the expansion of capitalism (Hung
Chapter 7). Accordingly, just as our project is historical, so too is it global.
By this term, and related terms like “transnational,” we do not mean an
ontological space with a discreet logic of its own. There are relatively few
sites of social action that are constituted at the planetary scale. Rather,
“the global” and “the transnational” are encompassing terms that mark
out spatial and analytical scales of social interaction that need to be taken
seriously, but which have often been effaced.
The “global” in our title Global Historical Sociology, therefore, is a stra-
tegic sign under which this project can be gathered rather than an onto-
logical commitment or a claim about a particular set of theoretical

6
By “internalism,” we mean analytical narratives and causal explanations that are confined
to dynamics within a particular territory. By “methodological nationalism” (Wimmer and
Schiller 2002), we mean two related assumptions: first, that the boundaries of social
relations map directly onto the boundaries of the nation-state; and second, that nation-
states form the natural unit of social scientific analysis. As the next section makes clear,
there is a close association between “methodological nationalism” and “state-centrism.”
 For a Global Historical Sociology 5

categories. For the contributors to this volume, there is no opposition

between “the global” and the “transnational” on the one hand, and the
“local” and “the national” on the other. Taking such a stance would
mean replacing one centrism (nation-state-centrism) with another (glo-
bal-centrism). Our intention is the opposite of this – to break down the
binary though which global and national scales have been made to appear
mutually exclusive. The use of the term “global” in the volume is delib-
erately intended to be encompassing. Rather than starting analyses from
the assumptions of methodological nationalism, global historical sociol-
ogy starts from the assumption of interconnectedness and spatially
expansive social relations.7
In short, the title “Global Historical Sociology” represents an interest
in social relations as they unfold in time and as they are articulated on
multiple scales. But we also see the title as marking out a space that has
not already been fully captured by disciplinary or subdisciplinary classi-
fications. Consider the work of our colleagues in “transnational” and
“global history” (e.g., Bayly 2004; Zimmerman 2013; Rosenberg ed.
2012; Iriye ed. 2013; Osterhammel 2014). This work is generative of
global historical sociology in two ways: first, through its attendance to
temporality and historicity; and second, because it is concerned
with connecting events, people, and processes that are usually cordoned
off simply by virtue of taking place in different national territories. Yet,
although there is much to learn from this work, there are also key
differences between GHS and transnational/global history. While, like
transnational and global history, GHS is concerned with temporality and
historicity, it differs from these enterprises in its explicit focus on social
relations, overarching patterns or structures, social forms, and causal
mechanisms. While GHS does not promote any particular theory, pro-
gram, or grand narrative, it does embed historical enquiry within broader
social scientific questions and approaches. This means engaging fully
with transnational and global histories, while occupying a register at one
remove from such studies through the overt deployment of conceptual
abstractions, analytic schemas, and theoretical frames.8

7
Note that, in North America, “historical sociology” is institutionally designated in con-
junction with “comparative” sociology. For example, the official section of the American
Sociological Association for historical sociology is the “Comparative and Historical
Sociology Section.” Our replacing of “comparative” with “global” to form “Global
Historical Sociology” rather than “comparative historical sociology” is deliberate: we
seek to replace the basic assumption of comparison (the idea that units can be separated)
with the assumption of connectedness that the signifier “global” conveys.
8
We do not want to overplay the distinction between “history” and “theory” – both are
intimately co-implicated (Lawson 2012). Rather, our point is that history, sociology, and
6 Julian Go and George Lawson

In turn, the historical signifier in GHS helps to differentiate GHS from

much globally oriented sociology. Sociologists studying globalization
(e.g., Beck 2006; Castells 1996; Held et al. 1999) tend to argue that
dynamics of interconnectedness and interdependence, “global cities,”
“global civil society,” and “cosmopolitanism” are new, as if everything
before the second half of the twentieth century was of a local, parochial
nature. As numerous studies have shown, such a view does not stand up
to scrutiny (e.g., Hirst and Thompson 1996; Bayly 2004; Christian 2004;
Rosenberg ed. 2012; Iriye ed. 2013). The lack of sufficient concern for
temporality and historicity in much contemporary sociology is a long-
standing charge (e.g., Abbott 2001; Sewell 1996b). This volume both
renews and extends such critiques by concentrating explicitly on transna-
tional and global dynamics of order-making.
In sum, GHS operates in a different register from both transnational
and global history, while seeking to add a concern for historicity and
temporality to sociology’s global imagination. But it also does more: it
melds historical sociology and IR. As we explore in the next section, even
when mainstream historical sociology has attended to the “global,” it has
done so in a limited way, remaining wedded to various forms of state-
centrism. At the same time, much mainstream IR has assumed an asocial
and ahistorical character, thereby precluding analysis of key features of
international relations, whether these be the generative role of imperial-
ism in the formation of contemporary international order or the diversity
of forms that international orders have assumed over time and place.
Scholars undertaking historical sociological work under the umbrella of
disciplinary IR have done much to limit these asocial and ahistorical
myopias, just as scholars within historical sociology have begun to awaken
historical sociology’s “global imagination” (Magubane 2005; see also
Go 2014a). Putting these strands together is a core task of GHS.

Globalizing Historical Sociology

If, as argued in the previous section, there has been a “global revolution”
in the social sciences, our first premise is that the tools of historical
sociology can and should be mobilized to join it. What is historical
sociology after all? While historical sociology as an institutional field (or
more precisely a subfield) of inquiry is multifaceted, it shares certain

IR have their own particular versions of the history-theory relationship. These relation-
ships are not natural; rather, they have been forged historically through particular dis-
ciplinary dynamics. Hence, if in principle the difference between global historical sociology
and transnational/global history is somewhat arbitrary, in practice some significant differ-
ences between these enterprises have accumulated over time.
 For a Global Historical Sociology 7

underlying concerns and themes. Besides its concern with temporality,

which requires close attention to processes of change, sequence and
the unfolding of action over time, historical sociology’s underlying rubric
is its focus on the modern; more specifically, on the emergence and
constitution of modernity – or as Adams, Clemens, and Orloff (2005: 2)
put it, in “how people and societies became modern or not.” From
the classical founders of historical sociology such as Karl Marx, Max
Weber, and W. E. B. DuBois to its “first wave” represented by Richard
Bendix, Barrington Moore Jr., and the early work of S. N. Eisenstadt,
historical sociology has sought to illuminate the dynamics and dilemmas
involved in the emergence of modernity (Adams, Clemens, and Orloff
2005: 3–7).9
A range of scholarship has begun to demonstrate that modernity has
always been a transnational and global development, occurring on scales
higher (and at times lower) than the nation-state, including through
imperialism (e.g., Bhambra 2007a; Goody 1996; Pomeranz 2000;
Hobson 2004; Sassen 2007). Industrialization, ideas of sovereignty and
the modern, rational state: these and other core features of modernity
were formed and continue to operate at transnational and global scales
(Buzan and Lawson 2015). It follows that historical sociology, with its
sustained interest in the constitution of modernity, should contribute to
such enquiry. With the analytic rigor and theoretical innovation typical of
the subfield, historical sociology could help to illuminate the emergence
of global and transnational social forms over time. By going global,
historical sociology has the capacity to show how and in what ways
people, events, and social forms around the world are interrelated,
while also explaining the logics that sustain these interactions.
Despite the promise contained in the potential shift to Global
Historical Sociology, the subfield is at something of an impasse. One
problem is that, as yet, historical sociology has not fully elaborated the
concepts and theories that could be used in a systematic analysis of
transnational and global processes. This is because, as with other
branches of sociology, much historical sociology has been hindered by
internalism and methodological nationalism. While, as noted in the pre-
vious section, historical sociology has been defined by its focus on
temporality, historicity, and process, much of the substantive content of
historical sociology has not been oriented around transnational or global

9
We roughly follow Adams, Clemens, and Orloff’s (2005) division of the “waves” of
historical sociology but distinguish between the classical or canonical founders (e.g.,
Marx and Weber) and the “first wave” of the mid-twentieth century. Here our distinction
is closer to that of Dennis Smith (1991), although we use slightly different labels than
those adopted by Smith.
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8 Julian Go and George Lawson

processes. To be clear: the issue is not that comparative historical sociol-

ogy has narrowed its lens to Europe or the United States. As historical
sociologists themselves make clear (e.g., Mahoney 2011), non-European
parts of the world are firmly on the agenda.10 Rather, the issue is that
historical sociology has not yet systematically analyzed and theorized
the connections between or through societies and states (whether in the
West or elsewhere). In other words, historical sociology is known best for
studies of state-formation, economic development, gender politics, class-
formation, and social movements within states.11 However rich such
studies are, they are limited by dint of their methodological nationalism –
even as transnational and global dynamics (in the form of markets,
transnational ideologies, and interimperial conflicts) intrude on such
accounts, they are rarely given adequate attention, let alone effectively
theorized. At the same time, historical sociology is home to a range of
comparative accounts that examine the divergent developmental path-
ways taken by particular states (e.g., Slater 2010, Mahoney 2010). Yet
these studies are hindered by their internalism – again, even as transna-
tional and global dynamics are often central to how these studies conduct
their empirical analysis, such dynamics are neither effectively theorized
nor integrated into causal accounts, which remain centered around endo-
genous factors. All in all, while there are promising glimmers of a turn to
the global in historical sociological scholarship, historical sociology as
a subfield has yet to carry out sustained, empirically driven, theoretically
informed explorations of transnational and global dynamics.12
This is true, in particular, of the main work that came out of the
“second-wave” of historical sociology (Adams, Clemens, and Orloff
2005). Indeed, one can be forgiven for noting that second wave historical
sociology has suffered from the same limitations that afflicted disciplinary
history decades before its transnational turn: state-centrism (Go 2014a).
This is the assumption that social relations are territorialized along state
lines. Social processes, as well as cultural and political relations, are

10
A related issue pertains to the Eurocentrism that such analysis often contains regardless of
its empirical focus. See Bhambra (2007a) and Go (2013a).
11
It would be impractical to cite all of the works on these themes, but for good overviews,
see: Adams, Clemens, and Orloff (2005); Calhoun (1996); and Smith (1991).
12
There are, as ever, exceptions to this rule. The most prominent exception is world
systems analysis, which we return to below. Another partial exception is the subfield of
revolutionary studies, where there has been a concerted attempt to combine international
and domestic factors (e.g., Foran 2005; Goldstone 2014; Kurzman 2008; Ritter 2015).
However, even in these studies, international factors tend to be seen either as the back-
drop to, or dependent outcome of, revolutions – the heavy lifting in terms of causal
explanation remains rooted in domestic factors (Beck 2011, 2014; Lawson 2015, and
Chapter 3).
 For a Global Historical Sociology 9

treated as “contained” by the nation-state. What counts occurs within the

nation-state. Relations between states are less important; relations, pro-
cesses, and forms through or “above” nation-states are of little interest
either.13 In the strongest form of state-centrism, such relations are
bracketed out altogether.
Second wave historical sociology is not unusual in its state-centrism –
such an orientation has dominated the social sciences since their
inception, or at the very least since World War II (Taylor 1996;
Wallerstein 2001). As will be seen in the following section,
state-centrism in International Relations is something of a different
issue. But for historical sociology, a particular brand of state-centrism
was manifest in at least two ways (Go 2013a). The first is the more
straightforward: the main objects of analysis have been nation-states.
The historian Sven Beckert (in Bayly et al. 2006: 1455) usefully concep-
tualizes transnational history as premised upon “the interconnectedness
of human history as a whole”; transnational history “acknowledges the
extraordinary importance of states . . . but it also pays attention to net-
works, processes, beliefs, and institutions that transcend these politically
defined spaces.” This does not characterize second wave historical sociol-
ogy, which was instead interested in class-formation, types of political
regimes, collective action and revolutions, welfare states, gender rela-
tions, or economic and political development within national states.
This is most evident in the proliferation of research and theory on the
state – the very research and theory for which second-wave historical
sociology became renowned (Evans, Rueschemeyer, and Skocpol
1985). This work fruitfully examined state policies, welfare regimes, or
other state forms. But it rarely if ever studied the international organiza-
tions that national states confronted, the transnational networks of ideas
that stage managers formed part of, or the imperial webs that states were
embedded within. Furthermore, the states theorized in this work were
always “national states” (in Tilly’s 1990 terminology). They were rarely
imperial-states or city-states, or members of regional associations and
interstate organizations. Finally, the study of the state itself became
dominant. Why emphasize the “state”? Why didn’t historical sociologists
look at migration flows or the transatlantic slave trade, trading companies
or international nongovernmental organizations, global health regimes or

13
The earliest critiques of what was called “state-centrism” and is now also sometimes
associated with “methodological nationalism” came from geographers like Taylor (1996,
2000) and Agnew (1994), before being taken up by Immanuel Wallerstein (2001), and
others. Wimmer and Schiller (2002) discuss the issue in relation to migration studies;
Beck (2006) uses the idea as a foil to mount his study of “cosmopolitanism”; Chernilo
(2006, 2007) offers a sustained examination of its history and operation.
10 Julian Go and George Lawson

transnational women’s movements? When “bringing the state back in,”

this scholarship blocked virtually everything else out.14
The point here is not to deny that the state is an important unit of
analysis – of course, it is. Rather, the point is that a dominant focus on the
state has acted as an obstacle to effective analysis. What began as an
analytical move became, over time, an ontological one: the state acted
as a cage not just of social scientific enquiry, but of social relations in toto.
In other words, analysts acted as if states really were containers of ideas
and practices. Yet there are a myriad of actors, forms, and processes
operating at different scales that states try to manage, regulate, or disci-
pline but which they ultimately cannot. One of the contentions of this
volume is that states operate within a global and transnational social field
and that they are influenced by a range of processes beyond those that lie
within their formal control.
Some second-wave scholarship recognized this point. For example,
Skocpol’s (1979) seminal study of social revolutions did include analy-
sis of international factors. Social revolutions, Skocpol (1979: 19)
insisted, were shaped by global developments: “Transnational relations
have contributed to the emergence of all social-revolutionary crises and
have invariably helped to shape revolutionary struggles and outcomes.”
For Skocpol (1979: 22–30), the elision of international factors in pre-
vious accounts of revolution (not least by Barrington Moore, Jr.) was
something she sought explicitly to rectify. Similarly, Charles Tilly
(1990: 26) referred to international factors in his analysis of European
state-formation: “Other states – and eventually the entire system of
states – strongly affected the path of change followed by any particular
state.” For Tilly (1990: 23; also see Tilly 1975a: 42), competition
between states in the form of war and preparation for war was the
determining factor in dynamics of state formation: war made states
just as states made war.
But here arises the second way in which historical sociology’s
nation-state-centrism made its appearance – as a “realist” theory of
the international that limits this realm to the regulation of violence.15
For most second wave historical sociology, the international system
was treated as a bare space of “anarchy” largely devoid of empires,
transnational networks of actors, ideas that crossed borders, cultural
flows, and so on. As the next section makes clear, this is a radically
impoverished vision of the international. There are processes, logics,

14
One notable exception is the contribution by Peter Evans (1985) to Bringing the State
Back In.
15
We discuss the main contours of realism – and its inadequacies – in the following section.
 For a Global Historical Sociology 11

and forms in the international realm that are irreducible to the actions
of states, just as state policies and militaries do not exhaust the com-
plex reality of the international system. Yet the references by second
wave historical sociologists to international dynamics was largely lim-
ited to the regulation of violence. For instance, the interstate system
that Tilly historicizes in Coercion, Capital and European States, AD
990–1992 turns out not to be little more than a collection of polities
battling for position in the European theater. It is war that makes and
remakes states: “War drives state-formation and transformation”
(Tilly 1990: 20–23). For Tilly, the international system is a largely
passive arena – a space of conflict-strewn competition between states-
as-actors (Tilly 1990: 23).16 Similarly, consider Skocpol’s approach
to social revolutions. As Lawson notes in this volume, studies of
revolution generally efface the multiple, constitutive impact of inter-
national processes on revolutionary uprisings. Despite claims to the
contrary, Skocpol is no exception. While Skocpol (1979: 23, 173) is
explicit in stating that the “international system” or “context” (terms
she uses interchangeably) impacts revolutions and that this includes
factors such as “dependent development” and “world historical time,”
Skocpol’s overarching argument is that social revolutions are primarily
caused by state breakdown, which is in turn most often brought
about by defeat in war (Skocpol 1979: 60–63; 186, 95–98, 104).
As in Tilly’s work, Skocpol’s (1979: 20) bellicist theory of the state
summons a realist theory of the international: the international is
merely a “structure of competing states.”
A final example is provided by Michael Mann’s (1986, 1993, 2012,
2013) four-volume The Sources of Social Power. In the first instance, Mann
strives to avoid the confines of state-centric lenses. The very warrant for
his reinterpretation of the “history of power in human societies” is that he
had “arrived at a distinctive, general way of looking at human societies
that is at odds with models of society dominant within sociology and
historical writing”; that is, societies should be seen as “constituted of
multiple overlapping and intersecting sociospatial networks of power”
(Mann 1986: 1). Theoretically, this view of social relations could adduce
to an analysis of global networks that seep through and across nation-
states rather than being contained within them. However, in Mann’s

16
So important was this debt to realism that Tilly’s analysis (alongside the broader move to
“bringing the state back in”) helped to foster a resurgence in realist inspired analysis of
state formation (e.g., Brewer 1990; Downing 1992; Ertman 1997; Spruyt 1994). This
was not the only link between realism and historical sociology – a further example can be
found in the cross-pollination of ideas between hegemonic stability theory and world
systems analysis (e.g., Chase-Dunn and Hall 1997; Gilpin 1981).
12 Julian Go and George Lawson

empirical analysis, this promising approach does not come to fruition.17

Instead, when referring to global or transnational factors that explain the
rise of states, classes, and capitalism, he reverts to two different, arguably
opposed theorizations of global space, with one dominating the other.
The first is “culture”: he argues that a shared set of values and beliefs
among Europeans increased their sense of solidarity (Mann 1993: 753).
The second – and this is the one that dominates his analysis – is interstate
competition, especially war. Such competition and war requires “mili-
tary-fiscal extraction” which imposes heavy tax burdens on populations
(Mann 1993: 214–225). In turn, this imperative impacts domestic class
conflict and state-formation. Mann’s (2013, 2014) two concluding
volumes of Social Sources reveal the same logic, even as they explore
a period marked by globalization, the rise of the UN system, the expan-
sion of the human rights regime, and other such dynamics (Go 2013a).
In Mann’s work, as in Tilly’s and Skocpol’s, the global is primarily a space
of war – all three theorists hold the same bellicist cum realist conception of
the global.18
Historical sociology has not erred by discussing militaries or war –
both are powerfully generative of how domestic and international orders
have emerged and been shaped over time. The issue is that Skocpol,
Tilly, and Mann reduced the international to little more than war
between competitive states in a sparse environment represented by
“anarchy.” Despite repeated gestures to the productive capacity of
“the international,” their analysis contains only the thinnest conceptua-
lization of this sphere. This means that all three theorists buy into the
notion that violence is largely, at least in the modern era, something
carried out by and between states. As Tarak Barkawi makes clear in his
contribution to this volume, this assumption omits the multiple forms
of violence that escape the nation-state frame, from the procreant role
played by colonial and postcolonial forces in “Western” wars to the
impact of ostensibly “private” actors on coercive practices. Wedded to
state-centrism and an accompanying “states-under-anarchy” motif, the
rich insights Skocpol et al. furnish in terms of domestic outcomes are not
matched by equivalent insights into the relations that flow between or
across boundaries.

17
In other work (e.g., Mann 1997), Mann does approximate a view of global space as
consisting of overlapping networks, but this is not the dominant theme of Sources of Social
Power.
18
In Volume 2 of Social Sources, Mann (1993: 258) explicitly refers to Morgenthau as
providing the model for his thinking on international relations. For discussions of Mann’s
realism, see Hobden (1999), Hobson (2006), and Lawson (2006); for responses see
Mann (2006).
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 CHAPTER VI
OPERA IN THE UNITED STATES. PART I: NEW YORK

The New York opera as a factor of musical culture—Manuel García

and his troupe; da Ponte's dream—The vicissitudes of the Italian
Opera House; Palmo's attempt at democratic opera—The
beginnings of 'social' opera: the Academy of Music—German
opera; Maretzek to Strakosch—The early years of the Metropolitan
—The Grau régime—Conried; Hammerstein; Gatti-Casazza; Opera
in English; the Century Opera Company.

The vogue of English ballad opera, as we have seen, began to lose

some of its hold on New York audiences during the first years of the
nineteenth century. Symptomatic of an awakening desire for other
forms of operatic entertainment were the adaptations of Il Barbiere
di Siviglia, Le Nozze di Figaro, Der Freischütz, and similar favorites of
the contemporary European stage. There existed in New York at that
time a society of some brilliance, wealth, and culture—a modest
replica of the upper circles of London, Paris, and Vienna. In these
latter cities the opera flourished as a social function; it was one of
the most important foci of fashion. Obviously New York could not
remain long without such an addition to its fashionable life. Nor
could English opera serve the purpose, for English opera had ceased
to be the thing in London. Society had taken up Italian opera, and
only Italian opera was then de rigueur. Why New York did not have
Italian opera at an earlier date it is difficult to say. Possibly the field
did not seem sufficiently tempting to the European entrepreneurs;
possibly New York society had not yet affected that cosmopolitan air
which had come to be the distinguishing mark of the socially elect
elsewhere.

Whatever factors operated to keep Italian opera out of New York,

the situation had altered sufficiently in 1825 to tempt Manuel
García[38] over with an opera company in that year. To be sure,
García was past his prime as a singer and, except for his daughter,
Maria, and the basso Angrisani, his company was worse than
indifferent. But his coming marked the beginning of an epoch in the
operatic history of this country. He gave New Yorkers a first taste of
the best in contemporary opera and inaugurated a fashion which on
the whole has been productive of very brilliant results. In spite of
the fact that opera is not and never has been in New York a
diversion for the proletariat; in spite of the fact that it has been to a
large extent a vehicle for ostentation; in spite of the fact that its
conduct has not always been guided by broad artistic ideals—in spite
of all these and other drawbacks New York has set for itself a
standard of operatic achievement which is scarcely surpassed by any
city in the world. The value of this standard in the promotion of
musical culture is questionable; that it subserves the best interests
of art is not certain. But at least New York must be awarded the
credit of doing such operatic work as it has chosen to do in a
finished and magnificent manner.

I
The foundation of this work was laid by Manuel García at the Park
Theatre in 1825. This house was opened in 1798 and was rebuilt in
1820 after its destruction by fire. It was the house of English opera
as well as of the spoken drama prior to the García invasion.
Apparently the pièce de résistance on García's contemplated
program was an authentic version of Rossini's Barbiere di Siviglia,
and it does not seem that he had in project anything more exacting
than this and other light examples of the reigning Italian school. But
in New York he ran foul of the old idealist, Lorenzo da Ponte,
librettist of Mozart's Don Giovanni, Le nozze di Figaro, and Così fan
tutte, now condemned to the obscure fate of a small merchant and
teacher of Italian.[39] Da Ponte persuaded García to put on Don
Giovanni and succeeded in obtaining the necessary reinforcements
to make such a production possible. The production of Don Giovanni
was really an event, but whether the people of New York accepted it
as such we cannot say. García also presented Rossini's Barbiere di
Siviglia, Tancredi, Il Turco in Italia, Sémiramide, and La Cenerentola,
besides two operas of his own composition entitled L'Amante astuto
and La Figlia dell'Aria. The beauty, art, and magnetism of the
youthful Maria García made the season a success and started the
fashion of operatic idols which still influences to a large extent the
success or failure of that form of art. Otherwise the season was
undistinguished.

García went to Mexico in 1826, but his daughter remained in New

York and sang in English opera at the recently erected New York
Theatre. She also sang in the choir of Grace Church—a strikingly
unusual proceeding for an artist who had already won international
renown. For over five years there was no more Italian opera in New
York, nor was there, indeed, a regular operatic season of any kind.
English ballad opera, however, again came into favor for a time and
there were also performances in English of such works as Auber's
Masaniello, Boieldieu's La dame blanche, and Mozart's Il flauto
magico—all wretched adaptations of the originals. Seemingly the
operatic managers of that time had all the peculiar vices of the
musical comedy producer of to-day. The scores of Mozart, Auber,
Rossini and other masters were subjected to incredible mutilations,
and inapt interpolations of every kind were used to catch the popular
taste. If the following picture of musical life in New York is not
overdrawn it certainly paints an extraordinary state of affairs. It is
taken from a letter written by a visiting German musician to the
Cæcilia, a musical journal of Mayence.[40]
'Here the musical situation is the following: New York has four
theatres—Park Theatre, Bowery Theatre, Lafayette Theatre, and
Chatham Theatre. Dramas, comedies, and spectacle pieces, also the
Wolf's Glen scene from Der Freyschütz, but without singing, as
melodrama, and small operettas are given. The performance of a
whole opera is not to be thought of. However, they have no
sufficient orchestra to do it. The orchestras are very bad indeed, as
bad as it is possible to imagine, and incomplete. Sometimes they
have two clarinets, which is a great deal; sometimes there is only
one first instrument. Of bassoons, oboes, trumpets, and kettle
drums, one never sees a sight. However, once in a while a first
bassoon is employed. Oboes are totally unknown in this country.
Only one oboist exists in North America and he is said to live in
Baltimore.

'In spite of this incompleteness they play symphonies, and grand

overtures, and if a gap occurs they think this is only of passing
importance, provided it rattles away again afterward....

'Performances take place six times a week in these theatres. Sunday

is a day of rest. The performances commence at half past seven,
and last until twelve, sometimes till one. Rope-dancers, or one who
is a good clown—even if he be able to execute only tolerably well a
few jumps that resemble a dance, and can make many grotesque
grimaces,—or one who plays (all by himself) on the barrel-organ,
cymbals, big drum, Turkish pavilion,—these are the men that help
the manager to fill the treasury, and these people earn enormous
sums.'

At this ebb-tide of music in New York there stood out in bold relief
the venerable figure of Lorenzo da Ponte, the old idealist, the type of
the world's dreamers, whose achievements are rarely recorded.

'World-losers and world-forsakers

On whom the pale moon gleams
 Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.'

Da Ponte had a dream. It was of a permanent Italian opera in New

York, with himself as poet. The dream was not realized, but it had
an important influence. After five years of endeavor da Ponte
succeeded in inducing a French tenor named Montressor to
undertake a season of opera at the Richmond Hill Theatre. The
season opened in October 6, 1832, but failed after thirty-five
performances. On the whole, it would seem that the company was a
very good one, and it is hard to explain its failure except on the
ground that New York audiences were still lacking in the faculty of
appreciation. The orchestra was supposed to be the best that had
yet been heard in the city, and, fortunately for New York, most of its
members settled there after the failure of the enterprise. The operas
performed during Montressor's season were Rossini's Cenerentola
and L'Italiani in Algieri, Bellini's Il Pirata, and Mercadante's Elisa e
Claudio.

Notwithstanding Montressor's failure, da Ponte still remained

undaunted. He now determined that the thing really needed was an
Italian opera house decked out with the same social halo as adorned
the brilliant institutions of London and Vienna. He was right. The
Metropolitan Opera House of to-day is just the sort of institution that
da Ponte forecasted, and its success proves that the old dreamer
was no bad prophet. Through his influence the Italian Opera House
was built on the corner of Church and Leonard Streets at a cost of
$150,000, and with the coöperation of many of the most eminent
citizens. Evidently it was designed to appeal to the cream of the
beau monde. We quote from the diary of Philip Hone, Esq.,
sometime mayor of New York:

'——The house is superb, and the decorations of the proprietors'

boxes (which occupy the whole of the second tier) are in a style of
magnificence which even the extravagance of Europe has not yet
equalled. I have one-third of box No. 8; Peter Schermerhorn one-
third; James J. Jones one-sixth; William Moore one-sixth. Our box is
fitted up with great taste with light blue hangings, gilded panels and
cornice, armchairs and a sofa. Some of the others have rich silk
ornaments, some are painted in fresco, and each proprietor seems
to have tried to outdo the rest in comfort and magnificence. The
scenery is beautiful. The dome and the fronts of the boxes are
painted in the most superb classical designs, and the sofa seats are
exceedingly commodious.'

This resplendent institution was opened on November 18, 1833,

under the joint management of da Ponte and the Chevalier Rivafinoli
—the latter being, according to da Ponte, 'a daring, but imprudently
daring, adventurer, whose failures in London and in Mexico and
Carolina, were the sure forerunners of his failure in New York.' The
season was advertised for forty nights, but there was a
supplementary season of twenty-eight nights. In addition there were
fifteen performances given in Philadelphia. Socially and artistically
the season was a distinct success, but financially it was a failure. The
operas performed were Rossini's La gazza ladra, Il barbiere di
Siviglia, La donna del lago, Il Turco in Italia, Cenerentola and Matilda
di Shabran, Cimarosa's Il matrimonio segreto, Paccini's Gli Arabi nelli
Gallie, and an opera called La casa di Pendere, by the conductor,
Salvioni.

During the same season there was also a period of English opera at
the Park Theatre, where 'Cinderella,' 'The Barber of Seville,' 'The
Marriage of Figaro,' 'Artaxerxes,' 'Masaniello,' 'John of Paris,' 'Robert
the Devil' (adapted and arranged), and other works were produced
with Mr. and Mrs. Wood as principal singers. 'The house,' according
to the 'American Musical Journal,' 'was crowded nightly.' The
management of the Park Theatre certainly presented a much more
varied and catholic program than was furnished by the Italian Opera
House; but we suspect shrewdly that variety was its chief distinction.
When Rivafinoli's enterprise collapsed, the Italian Opera House was
taken over by Porto and Sacchi—the latter treasurer and the former
one of the singers of the Rivafinoli company. The season opened on
November 10, 1834, with Bellini's La Straniera, and during its short
life Rossini's Eduardo e Christina, L'Inganno felice, L'Assedio di
Corinto, and Mosé in Egitto were also produced. It collapsed with the
sudden disappearance of the prima donna, Signora Fanti. The
Signora's defection, however, was rather the occasion than the cause
of its untimely end. One is tempted to say that the Italian Opera
House suffered from too much Rossini. But the real secret of its
failure lay in the fact that it was not in the fashionable section of the
city. The lure of art, reinforced by rich silk ornaments and paintings
in fresco, by 'superb classical designs' and 'exceedingly commodious'
sofa seats did not prove sufficiently strong to draw society from the
strictly defined path of its appointed orbit. The valorous old da Ponte
pleaded eloquently, but in vain. Abyssus abyssum invocat, as he
truly complained.

II
After a year of vacancy the Italian Opera House went to James W.
Wallack, father of the famous John Lester Wallack, and after a year
of the spoken drama it went up in smoke. For ten years Italian opera
in New York was as dead as the English queen whose demise is her
chief title to fame. But New York was not wholly barren of opera
during those years. In 1837 came Madame Caradori-Allan from
England to sing in oratorio, concert, and opera in New York, Boston,
Philadelphia, and elsewhere. She gave some operas at the Park
Theatre in 1838, including Balfe's 'Siege of Rochelle,' Bellini's La
Sonnambula, Rossini's Il Barbiere di Siviglia, and Donizetti's Elisir
d'amore, all in English. Also in 1838 a company which Dr. Ritter calls
'the Seguin combination' gave some operatic performances at the
National Theatre. He tells us that Rooke's opera, 'Amalie, or the Love
Test,' was performed for twelve consecutive nights before crowded
houses.[41]

Noteworthy were the efforts of an English company who in 1839

gave performances of Beethoven's Fidelio, Rossini's La Cenerentola
and La Gazza ladra, Bellini's La Sonnambula, Auber's Fra Diavolo,
Donizetti's Elisir d'amore, and Adam's Postilion de Lonjumeau.

This was by far the choicest operatic menu that had ever been
placed before New Yorkers. The performances were in English and
we are not enlightened as to their quality; we know only that the
venture was not a success. In 1840 the Woods returned with a
season of operas in English, including La Sonnambula, Fidelio, and—
sublime bathos—the 'Beggar's Opera'! Later the singer and
composer, Braham, beloved of Englishmen, appeared at the Park
Theatre in 'The Siege of Belgrade,' 'The Devil's Bridge,' 'The
Waterman,' and 'The Cabinet.' Except for the visits of the New
Orleans opera companies, of which we shall speak in another
chapter, these were the only operatic treats vouchsafed to New
Yorkers between the years 1834 and 1844.

In the meantime a gentleman named Ferdinand Palmo was making

quite a reputation as a cook and proprietor of the Café des Mille
Colonnes on Broadway, near Duane Street. Mr. Palmo suffered from
that ancient delusion known as 'opera for the people,' and under its
influence he spent the accumulated profits of the Mille Colonnes in
remodelling Stoppani's Arcade Baths, on Chambers Street, into a
popular opera house. There, in 1844, he opened a season of Italian
opera with Bellini's I Puritani. Mr. Palmo was certainly determined to
give New Yorkers the best that could be obtained. He had Madame
Cinti-Damoreau, whom Fétis described as one of the greatest singers
the world had known; he had a great tenor in Antognini, whom
Richard Grant White compares as a singer to Ronconi and as an
actor to Salvini; he had a very good soprano in Borghese. In addition
he had an orchestra of 'thirty-two professors.' He survived the first
season, but in the middle of the second the 'thirty-two professors'
went on strike for their wages and the sheriff's minions descended
on the box office receipts, the Mille Colonnes and everything else
attachable that Mr. Palmo possessed. The attempt at a democratic
opera was a fine and courageous one, but the time was not ripe for
such an effort.[42]

After Palmo's failure his theatre was taken over by a new company
which included among its principal members Salvatore Patti and
Catarina Barili, the parents of Carlotta and Adelina Patti. It had a
very brief existence and in 1848 Palmo's Opera House became
Burton's Theatre. In the meantime, however, New York had been
enjoying an assortment of other operas, presented by various
visiting companies. The most important of these was a French
company from New Orleans which, in 1843, presented La fille du
régiment, Lucia di Lammermoor, Norma, and Gemma di Vergy—in
French, of course. There were also several English companies,
notably the Seguins, who gave opera in English at the Park Theatre
and elsewhere. In 1844 the Seguin company produced Balfe's
'Bohemian Girl' for the first time in America.

It has frequently been the lot of New York to be visited by Italian

opera companies from Cuba, Mexico, and South America. These
companies were sometimes very bad, sometimes indifferent,
sometimes very good. Of the last-named category was the company
brought from Havana by Señor Francesco Marty y Tollens in 1847.
Señor Marty was backed in his enterprise by James H. Hackett, the
actor, and William Niblo, proprietor of the famous gardens. He had a
very good company, notable chiefly for the fact that its conductor
was Luigi Arditi, composer of Il Bacio—the 'Maiden's Prayer' of
aspiring coloraturas. A season was given at the Park Theatre, after
which there were a number of extra performances at Castle Garden.
The repertory included Verdi's Ernani and I due Foscari, Bellini's
Norma and Sonnambula, Paccini's Saffo, and Rossini's Mosé in
Egitto. Señor Marty returned in 1848,1849, and 1850, with a
company which Max Maretzek described as the greatest ever heard
in America. The famous contrabassist, Bottesini, was musical director
and Arditi remained as conductor. Among the operas performed
were Verdi's Attila and Macbeth, Meyerbeer's Huguenots and
Donizetti's La Favorita.

Opera in English was still given frequently but without any regularity
at various theatres. Madame Anna Bishop appeared in a number of
operas in 1847, and during the same year W. H. Reeves, brother of
the famous Sims Reeves, made his operatic début. Among the
novelties produced was Wallace's Maritana. In 1850 Madame Anna
Thillon appeared in Auber's 'Crown Diamonds' at Niblo's and two
years later Flotow's 'Martha' was produced.

III
In the meantime, however, New York had launched one of the
greatest of operatic enterprises, a direct successor to the Italian
Opera House conceived and carried out by the old dreamer da
Ponte. Palmo's splendid experiment had only served to show that da
Ponte was right. Democratic opera was a delusion. Opera in Italian
or in any other language foreign to the mass of the people was
foredoomed to failure. Only the glamour of social prestige could save
it. And, just as opera needed society, so did society need opera. It
was out of the question, of course, that persons of social pretensions
should patronize Palmo's or Niblo's or Castle Garden or any other
place geographically outside the social sphere and appealing largely
to the common herd. Society is a jewel which shines only in an
appropriate setting. Hence one hundred and fifty gentlemen of New
York's social (and financial) élite got together and guaranteed to
support Italian opera in a suitable house for five years. On the
strength of this guarantee Messrs. Foster, Morgan and Colles built
the Astor Place Opera House, a theatre seating about 1,800 persons.
'Its principal feature,' said the slightly malicious Maretzek, 'was that
everybody could see, and, what is of infinitely greater consequence,
could be seen. Never, perhaps, was any theatre built that afforded a
better opportunity for a display of dress.' The Astor Place Opera
House was opened in 1847, with Messrs. Sanquirico and Patti, late of
Palmo's, as lessees, and Rapetti as leader of the orchestra. They
produced during the season Verdi's Nabucco and Ernani, Bellini's
Beatrice di Tenda, Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia, and Mercadante's Il
Giuramento. In 1848 the house was taken over by E. R. Fry, an
American, who brought over Max Maretzek as conductor and
gathered together a fairly good company, including M. and Mme.
Laborde. The operas given were Verdi's Ernani, Bellini's Norma, and
Donizetti's Linda di Chamouni, Lucrezia Borgia, L'Elisir d'amore, Lucia
di Lammermoor, and Roberto Devereux. Fry made a complete
failure, and, judging by his list, one is impelled to say he deserved it.

In 1849 Maretzek became lessee of the house and began that

chequered career as an impresario which ended only when the
Metropolitan so to speak shut its newly made doors in his face. Most
of his singers were taken from Fry's company, but he also had some
new ones, among them the Signora Bertucca, who was included in
the famous list which, according to Mr. H. E. Krehbiel, the
redoubtable Max invariably checked off on his fingers when
recounting his services to opera in New York. Maretzek remained at
the Astor Place Opera House until 1850, and during three seasons
gave Lucia, L'Elisir d'amore, Don Pasquale, Il Barbiere, Rossini's
Otello, I Puritani, Belisario, Ernani—the list is tiresomely familiar.[43]

In the meantime the Astor Place Opera House was leased to William
Niblo, the backer of Señor Francesco Marty y Tollens. Niblo's idea in
leasing the opera house was to eliminate it as a competitor. In
pursuance of this idea he engaged one Signor Donetti, and his
troupe of performing dogs and monkeys, whom he presented to the
aristocratic patrons of the institution. The patrons obtained an
injunction against Niblo on the ground that the exhibition was not
respectable within the meaning of the terms upon which the house
was leased. 'On the hearing to show cause for this injunction,' says
Maretzek, 'Mr. Niblo called upon Donetti or some of his friends who
testified that his aforesaid dogs and monkeys had in their younger
days appeared before princes and princesses and kings and queens.
Moreover, witnesses were called who declared under oath that the
previously mentioned dogs and monkeys behaved behind the scenes
more quietly and respectably than many Italian singers. This fact I
feel that I am not called upon to dispute.' Thus the ambitions and
exclusive Astor Place Opera House ended as a joke. The building
was used later as a library.

There is a peculiar resemblance between opera houses and human

beings. High hopes and ambitions mark the beginnings of both; but
the corrosive influences of life's practical everyday soon tarnish the
shining metal of their ideals until finally they are reduced to the dull
commonplace that marks the end of all created things. And, it may
be added, in the majority of cases the most powerfully corrosive
influence is money. An instance in point occurred in New York in
1852. It was another dream of democratic opera—or rather,
democratic music—a dream of a great new institution adapted to
American conditions wherein would germinate and grow to a brilliant
flowering the seeds of a national musical art. Truly a beautiful
dream, and one which, it might seem, should easily materialize in a
country so rich, so young, so eager, so progressive. A charter was
obtained from the state of New York authorizing the establishment
of an 'Academy of Music for the purpose of cultivating a taste for
music by concerts, operas, and other entertainments, which shall be
accessible to the public at a moderate charge; by furnishing facilities
for instruction in music, and by rewards of prizes for the best
musical compositions.' American music-lovers were naturally
gratified and Mr. D. H. Fry, a prominent musical critic, ventured to
hope that it might 'yet come to pass that art, in all its verifications,'
would 'be as much esteemed as politics, commerce, or the military
profession. The dignity of American artists lies in their hands'—
meaning, we presume, the hands of the Academy promoters.

The dignity of American artists lay in very incompetent hands—

incompetent as far as the dignity of American art was concerned.
The commodious new Academy was leased to Max Maretzek, who
sub-leased it to J. H. Hackett, and it was opened in October, 1854,
with a company headed by Grisi and Mario. The showman
exploitation of great artists existed long before P. T. Barnum
exhibited Jenny Lind. The appearances of Henrietta Sontag at Niblo's
in La fille du régiment in 1850 and of Grisi and Mario at Castle
Garden in 1854 were purely and simply showman enterprises.

In January, 1855, Ole Bull, the Norwegian violinist, took over the
management of the Academy, with the earnest intention of carrying
out the high purposes for which it was founded. As a first step to
that end he offered a prize of one thousand dollars for the 'best
original grand opera, by an American composer, and upon a strictly
American subject.' The phrase has become almost a formula. It is
unfortunate that idealistic enterprises in America always seek to fly
before they can walk. There was no American composer capable of
writing an original grand opera on any subject, neither was there a
public opinion cultivated enough to support such an enterprise as
the Academy. Within two months of Ole Bull's announcement, 'in
consequence of insuperable difficulties,' the Academy was forced to
close and the original grand opera by an American composer never
saw the light. The season was completed by the Lagrange company
from Niblo's, managed by a committee of stockholders, with
Maretzek as conductor.

III
A bright rift in the cloud that hung over operatic New York at that
time was the coming to Niblo's in 1855 of a German company, with
Mlle. Lehman (not, of course, the more famous Lilli Lehmann) as
star. Among the operas presented were Flotow's 'Martha,' Weber's
Der Freischütz, and Lortzing's Czar und Zimmermann.

In the following year the German company added Mme. Johannsen

to its forces, with Carl Bergmann as conductor, and presented,
among other operas, Beethoven's Fidelio. Bergmann remained as
conductor for several years and did an amount of pioneer work for
German opera in New York the importance of which has been
curiously ignored. It may be mentioned here, though a little in
advance of our narrative, that he introduced Wagner's Tannhäuser
for the first time in America at the Stadt Theatre, New York, in 1859.
The chorus was supplied by the Arion Männergesangverein.[44]

In 1855 Maretzek produced Rossini's 'William Tell' and Verdi's Il

Trovatore at the Academy. He had a good company which included
the soprano Steffanone—one of Señor Marty's singers—and the
tenor Brignoli, who became a great favorite with New Yorkers. A Mr.
Payne opened a season of forty nights there in the fall of 1855 and
in the following year Maretzek again became lessee. He soon
quarrelled with the proprietors of the Academy and went to Boston.
In January, 1857, Maurice Strakosch opened a season of Italian
opera with an indifferent company, but in March Maretzek
reappeared and set up an opposition at Niblo's. The next few
seasons were marked by an amount of activity in which control of
the operatic field was a consideration paramount to artistic
achievement. Maretzek, Strakosch, and the latter's aide, Bernard
Ullman, were the principals in an amusing campaign which, on more
than one occasion, saw the rival impresarios acting as partners.
Strakosch and Ullman opened the Academy season in the fall of
1857 with the fascinating Emmilia Frezzolini in La Sonnambula. Carl
Anschütz, later of the Arion, was conductor. It was really a good
season and, though it saw no novelties, it was redeemed from the
usual hurdy-gurdy category by the production of Les Huguenots and
Robert le Diable. In March, 1858, 'Leonora,' by the American
composer W. H. Fry, was produced at the Academy under the bâton
of Carl Anschütz.

Maretzek, in the meantime, was in Philadelphia with a company

headed by the famous buffo, Roncone. In 1858 he returned to New
York and opened a season at the Academy, while Strakosch took up
a stand at Burton's Theatre. Ullman came from Europe in October,
bringing with him the saucy and winsome Maria Piccolomini, whom
he advertised as a lineal descendant of Charlemagne and the great-
granddaughter of Schiller's hero, Max Piccolomini. As a showman
Ullman was second only to the great Barnum. Maretzek and Ullman
joined hands at the Academy in the fall of 1859 and presented
Adelina Patti in Lucia di Lammermoor.

For several years following there is nothing much to note. The

operatic situation was summed up in the alternate quarrels and
reconciliations of Maretzek, Ullman, and the brothers Maurice, Max,
and Ferdinand Strakosch, all of whom at various times have taken
occasion to speak of the sacrifices they made for Italian opera in
New York. As a matter of fact, opera was to all of them what the
green table is to the confirmed gambler. Yet they accomplished
much, and, though they relied mainly on the hackneyed list of
Rossini, Donizetti, and Bellini, they introduced New York opera-
goers, during the sixties and seventies, to a number of novelties.
Among these may be mentioned Meyerbeer's L'Africaine, Le Pardon
de Ploërmel, and L'Étoile du Nord, Verdi's Aïda, Gounod's Faust,
Thomas's Mignon, Wagner's Lohengrin, and the Crispino e la Comare
of the Ricci brothers—all in Italian. Maurice Strakosch was
responsible for the presence in America of Christine Nilsson and of
Italo Campanini, both distinguished artists who held a high place for
many years in the affections of New Yorkers.[45]

By far the most noteworthy operatic event of the sixties was a

season of German opera given by Carl Anschütz at the old Wallack
Theatre on Broadway and Broome Street in 1862. The principals of
the Anschütz company were mediocre, though they included Mme.
Johannsen, but there was a good orchestra and a well-trained
chorus. The list of operas included Mozart's Die Zauberflöte, Don
Juan, and Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Beethoven's Fidelio,
Weber's Freischütz, Auber's Le Maçon, and Flotow's Martha and
Stradella. Unfortunately, no social glamour was attached to the
enterprise, nor were the times especially propitious to it, and it soon
failed.
In the seventies there was a great vogue of the Offenbach opéra
bouffe, and such airy trifles as La belle Hélène and La grande
duchesse occupied the public interest to the exclusion of more
serious musical fare. As is usually the case in America, the interest
reached the intensity of a mania and it was necessary that public
curiosity be satisfied by a sight of the composer himself. Accordingly
Offenbach came over in 1875. But as soon as the people had
satisfied their curiosity they lost all interest in him and his tour was a
complete failure.[46]

In 1876 Mlle. Teresa Tietjens came to America under the

management of Max Strakosch and appeared at the Academy of
Music with great success, especially in Norma and Lucrezia Borgia.
Two years later a short season of opera was given at the Academy
by a German company headed by Mme. Pappenheim and Charles
Adams. It was far from successful, but during its brief existence New
Yorkers had an opportunity of hearing Wagner's Lohengrin,
Tannhäuser, Der fliegende Holländer, and Rienzi, Halévy's La Juive,
and Gounod's Faust.

In 1878 Max Strakosch, with a company that included Clara Louise

Kellogg and Annie Louise Cary, ignored the Academy of Music and
settled down at the Booth Theatre. There he gave a season of three
weeks, presenting Aïda, La Traviata, and Il Trovatore. The directors
of the Academy, in the meantime, turned to Colonel James H.
Mapleson, one of the most famous of operatic impresarios, who, as
manager of Her Majesty's Theatre and of Drury Lane, London, had
for some time been engaged in a lively operatic war with Frederick
and Ernest Gye at Covent Garden. Mapleson was a most astute
manager and a devoted protagonist of the 'star' system. During his
first season in 1878-79 he brought over a brilliant company which
included Minnie Hauck, Etelka Gerster, and Italo Campanini, with
Luigi Arditi as conductor. His list of operas was less impressive. The
only novelty was Bizet's Carmen. On the whole, the season was
moderately successful and Mapleson made a contract with the
stockholders of the Academy for the seasons of 1879-80, 1880-81,
and 1881-82. Nothing occurred in any of those seasons which calls
for special mention. They presented the same old list of operas in
the same old way. Italian opera in New York was getting into a rut
and was losing its hold on the people. The Academy was becoming
more and more unsuited to the growing demands of New York
Society. Everything was, in fact, ripe for the inauguration of a new
epoch.

IV
It must be confessed that the evolution of opera in New York has
been determined more by social than by artistic factors, and a
history of New York society would be almost a necessary background
for a complete narrative of its operatic development. Here it is
necessary to mention that the Vanderbilt ball of 1882 marked the
culmination of a social revolution in New York. During the early years
of the nineteenth century there was an absolute ascendancy of that
social element which is known by the name of Knickerbocker. It was
composed, in the main, of old families with certain undeniable claims
to birth, breeding, and culture. They constituted a caste which was
not without distinction. But about 1840, with the rapid material
development of the country, began the influx of a new element
armed for assault on the social citadel with the powerful artillery of
wealth. Gradually this new element widened a breach in the rampart
of exclusiveness which the Knickerbocker caste had built around
itself, and at the above-mentioned Vanderbilt ball the citadel finally
surrendered. The effect on the operatic situation was immediate.
There was not sufficient accommodation in the Academy for the
newly amalgamated forces, and a box at the opera was, of course, a
necessary badge of social distinction. Consequently, in 1883, the
Metropolitan Opera House Company (Limited) was formed by a
number of very prominent gentlemen for a purpose sufficiently
indicated by its title. The very prominent gentlemen were James A.
Roosevelt, George Henry Warren, Luther Kountze, George Griswold
Haven, William K. Vanderbilt, William H. Tillinghast, Adrian Iselin,
Robert Goelet, Joseph W. Drexel, Edward Cooper, Henry G.
Marquard, George N. Curtis, and Levi P. Morton. This, financially
speaking, impressive list is important because it helps us to
understand the true nature of the enterprise upon which these
gentlemen embarked.[47]

The Metropolitan Opera House was leased for the season of 1883 to
Mr. Henry E. Abbey and was opened on October 22 with Gounod's
Faust. In the cast on the opening night were Mesdames Nilsson and
Scalchi and Signor Campanini, while Signor Vianesi acted as musical
director. The season lasted until December 22, with regular
subscription performances on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday
evenings and Saturday afternoons. Two performances missed from
the regular subscription series were given after the return of the
company from a trip to Boston on January 9 and 11. A spring
season, begun on March 10, lasted until April 12. The operas given
between October 22 and April 12, with order of their production,
were: Gounod's Faust (in Italian), Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor,
Verdi's Il Trovatore, Bellini's I Puritani, Thomas's Mignon, Verdi's La
Traviata, Wagner's Lohengrin (in Italian), Bellini's La Sonnambula,
Verdi's Rigoletto, Meyerbeer's Robert le Diable (in Italian), Rossini's
Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Mozart's Don Giovanni, Boïto's Mefistofele,
Ponchielli's La Gioconda, Bizet's Carmen, Thomas's 'Hamlet,' Flotow's
'Martha,' and Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots and Le Prophète. Apart
from Mme. Nilsson and Signor Campanini, the principal artists
engaged were Marcella Sembrich—probably the greatest coloratura
soprano since Patti—who afterward became very familiar to New
Yorkers; Mme. Fursch-Madi, a French contralto, who had already
sung in New Orleans; and M. Capoul, French tenor, who had
appeared at the Academy under Maurice Strakosch in 1871. The
company gave fifty-eight performances in Brooklyn, Boston,
Philadelphia, Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Washington, and
Baltimore. Mr. Abbey's losses on the season have been estimated at
more than $500,000. He had no ambition to undertake another one.
Colonel Mapleson, in the meantime, was holding on at the Academy,
where he still retained Patti as the chief attraction, assisted by the
fresh-voiced Etelka Gerster, then on the threshold of her career,
Mme. Pappenheim, whom we have already met in German opera,
Signor Nicolini,[48] a mediocre tenor, and Signor Galassi, a good
baritone.

During this season, also, there occurred under his management the
American operatic début of Mrs. Norton-Gower, afterward known as
Mme. Nordica. The operas performed were Bellini's La Sonnambula
and Norma, Rossini's La Gazza ladra, Donizetti's L'Elisir d'amore and
Linda di Chamouni, the Ricci brothers' Crispino e la Comare,
Gounod's Faust, Flotow's Martha, Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots, and
Verdi's La Traviata, Rigoletto and Aïda.

In 1884 Leopold Damrosch submitted to the directors of the

Metropolitan a proposition for a season of German opera under his
management, and, faute de mieux, the directors acceded. Dr.
Damrosch secured a very strong company, including Amalia Materna,
who, in Bayreuth, had created the part of Kundry in Parsifal;
Marianne Brandt, also known in Bayreuth; Marie Schroeder-
Hanfstängel of the Frankfort Opera, a pupil of Mme Viardot-García
and the chief coloratura singer of the company; Auguste Seidl-
Krauss, wife of Anton Seidl, then conductor of the Stadt Theater in
Bremen, and Anton Schott, a tenor of considerable reputation in
Wagnerian rôles, whose explosive methods led von Bülow to
describe him as a Militärtenor—ein Artillerist. The list of operas given
included Wagner's Tannhäuser, Beethoven's Fidelio, Meyerbeer's Les
Huguenots, Weber's Der Freischütz, Rossini's 'William Tell,' Wagner's
Lohengrin, Mozart's Don Giovanni, Meyerbeer's Le Prophète, Auber's
La Muette de Portici, Verdi's Rigoletto, Halévy's La Juive, and
Wagner's Die Walküre. It is not surprising that the season was a
pronounced success. The receipts up to the middle of January were
double those of the corresponding period in the previous year,
though the prices had been reduced considerably. But the season
was brought to a tragic close and the cause of German opera in New
York was set back many years by the unexpected death of Dr.
Damrosch on February 15, 1885.

During the previous year a season of Italian opera had been given at
the Star Theatre by James Barton Key and Horace McVicker with the
Milan Grand Opera Company, recruited from Italian singers who had
been stranded by the failure of operatic ventures in Mexico and
South America. The only interesting feature of the season was the
production of Il Guarany, a Spanish-American opera by Señor
Gomez. Colonel Mapleson started his seventh season at the
Academy on November 10, 1884. He still retained Patti and had
annexed Scalchi and Fursch-Madi from Abbey's disbanded forces,
but his season presented nothing of interest while it gave every
evidence that his operatic reign in New York was drawing to a close.
The season of 1885-86 was his last with the exception of a short
attempt in 1896. He had lost Patti but he still presented a strong
company, which included Alma Fohström, Minnie Hauck, and Mlle.
Felia Litvinoff, better known as Madame Litvinne. The season ended
in a dismal failure after twelve evening and four afternoon
performances. With the exception of Carmen, Fra Diavolo, and
L'Africaine there was no variation from the stereotyped program of
which New York must have been intensely sick. During a short return
engagement, however, Mapleson's company gave Massenet's Manon
for the first time in America (Dec. 23, 1885).

A very much better showing was made by the German company,

which gave a season during the same time at the Thalia Theatre
under the management of Gustav Amberg and the conductorship of
John Lund, a chorus master and assistant conductor under Dr.
Damrosch at the Metropolitan. The repertory included Der
Freischütz, Adam's Le Postilion de Lonjumeau, Nicolai's Die lustigen
Weiber von Windsor, Victor Nessler's Trompeter von Säkkingen, and
Maillart's Les Dragons de Villars Germanized as Das Glöckchen des
Eremiten. A light program, of course, but very refreshing. During the
same season an American opera company made a loud attempt to
do something, but it blew up with a bad odor of scandal before it
went very far. Its artistic director was Theodore Thomas, and during
its short existence it gave Goetz's 'Taming of the Shrew,' Gluck's
Orpheus, Wagner's Lohengrin, Mozart's 'Magic Flute,' Nicolai's 'Merry
Wives of Windsor,' Delibes' 'Lakmé',' Wagner's 'Flying Dutchman,'
and Massé's 'Marriage of Jeanette'; Delibes' ballet 'Sylvia' was also
performed. Considering this fine start, it is a very great pity the
American Opera Company could not keep its head straight.

After the death of Dr. Damrosch the directors of the Metropolitan

sent Edmund C. Stanton and Walter Damrosch to Europe to organize
a company for a second season of German opera. The result was
perhaps the finest operatic organization New York had yet seen. It
included Lilli Lehmann, the greatest of all Wagnerian sopranos;
Marianne Brandt, Emil Fischer, the inimitable 'Hans Sachs,' Auguste
Seidl-Krauss, and Max Alvary, who set the matinee-idol fashion in
operatic tenors. Anton Seidl was conductor and Walter Damrosch
assistant conductor. The operas produced were Wagner's Lohengrin,
Die Walküre, Tannhäuser, Die Meistersinger, and Rienzi, Meyerbeer's
Der Prophet, Bizet's Carmen, Gounod's Faust, and Goldmark's Die
Königin von Saba.

In the fall of 1885 there was a short season at the Academy of Music
by the Angelo Grand Italian Opera Company. Angelo was a graduate
of the luggage department of Mapleson's organization. His season
lasted two weeks, during which he presented Verdi's Luisa Miller, I
Lombardi, Un Ballo in Maschera, and I due Foscari, as well as
Petrella's Ione. The American Opera Company, in the meantime, had
been reorganized as the National Opera Company, which, still under
the directorship of Theodore Thomas, gave performances in English
at the Academy, the Metropolitan, and in Brooklyn. Among the
interesting features of their program were Rubinstein's Nero, Goetz's
Der Widerspenstigen Zähmung, Delibes' Lakmé, and a number of
ballets, including Delibes' Coppelia. In the spring of 1887 Madame
Patti appeared at the Metropolitan in a 'farewell' series of six operas
under the management of Henry E. Abbey. She continued to make
'farewell' appearances for over twenty years.
The most notable features of the Metropolitan season of 1886-87
were the productions of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, Beethoven's
Fidelio, Goldmark's Merlin, and Brüll's Das goldene Kreuz. Notable,
also, was the appearance of Albert Niemann, histrionically the
greatest of all Tristans.[49] The season of 1887-88 saw the
production of Wagner's Siegfried and Götterdämmerung, besides
Nessler's Der Trompeter von Säkkingen, Weber's Euryanthe, and
Spontini's Ferdinand Cortez. There were two consecutive
representations of the entire Ring des Nibelungen during the season
of 1888-89, the only novelty being Das Rheingold. Der fliegende
Holländer, Un Ballo in Maschera, Norma, and Cornelius's Der Barbier
von Bagdad were added to the list in his season of 1889-90.

Outside the Metropolitan there was a season of German opera at the

Thalia Theatre in 1887, the prima donna being Frau Herbert-Förster,
the wife of Victor Herbert. The list of operas offered was
commonplace. In 1888 the National Opera Company, without
Theodore Thomas but with a distinguished tenor in Barton
McGuckin, gave a short and unsuccessful season at the Academy of
Music. A notable event of the same year was the first performance in
America of Verdi's Otello by a company brought from Italy by Italo
Campanini. The enterprise failed, partly owing to the incompetence
of the tenor, Marconi, who was cast for the title rôle, and partly
owing to the fact that New Yorkers, for some peculiar reason, seem
constitutionally incapable of appreciating Verdi in his greatest and
least conventional works. Eva Tetrazzini, sister of the more famous
Luisa, was the Desdemona of the occasion.

The only performance of Italian opera in New York during the season
of 1888-89 was a benefit for Italo Campanini at which he appeared
with Clémentine de Vère in Lucia di Lammermoor. During the season
of 1889-90 some performances of opera in English were given by
the Emma Juch Opera Company at Oscar Hammerstein's Harlem
Opera House, which was also the scene of a short postlude to the
Metropolitan season by a company conducted by Walter Damrosch
and including Lilli Lehmann. The Metropolitan in the meantime was
occupied by a very strong Italian company under the management
of Henry E. Abbey and Maurice Grau. The company included Patti,
Albani, Nordica, and Tamagno,[50] with Arditi and Romualdo Sapio as
conductors. Tamagno's presence meant, of course, the production of
Otello, and this was the only interesting feature of the repertory.
Patti was still singing a 'farewell' in the old hurdy-gurdy list.

The season of 1890-91 proved to be the end of German opera at the

Metropolitan for some years. Der fliegende Holländer, Tannhäuser,
Lohengrin, the Ring operas (except Das Rheingold), Tristan und
Isolde, and Die Meistersinger, Beethoven's Fidelio, Cornelius's Der
Barbier von Bagdad, Bizet's Carmen, and Meyerbeer's Le Prophète,
Les Huguenots, and L'Africaine were chosen from the regular
repertory, while the novelties were Alberto Franchetti's Asraël, Anton
Smareglia's Der Vasall von Szigeth, and Diana von Solange by His
Royal Highness Ernest II, duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. The two first-
named novelties were of slight account, while the last-named was so
trivial as to lend color to the innuendos that the justly famed
liberality of His Royal Highness in the matter of decorations was
being exercised for the benefit of some persons not unknown at the
Metropolitan.

V
For the season of 1891-92 the Metropolitan was leased to Messrs.
Abbey, Schoeffel and Grau. The lessees brought together a brilliant
company, including Lilli Lehmann, Emma Eames, Marie Van Zandt,
Giula and Sophia Ravogli, Lillian Nordica, Emma Albani, Jean and
Édouard de Reszke, and Jean Lassalle. Vianesi was conductor.
Meyerbeer, Gounod, Bizet, Verdi, and the older Italians supplied the
list of operas for the season, while Lohengrin, Die Meistersinger, Der
fliegende Holländer, and Fidelio were given (in Italian) as a sop to
the 'German element.' The only novelties were Gluck's Orfeo and
Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana, the latter having been given
previously by two companies in English. A supplementary season in
1892 featured Patti in Lucia and Il Barbiere. In the same year the
Metropolitan was partially destroyed by fire.

The Metropolitan Opera House Company was reorganized in 1893 as

the Metropolitan Opera and Real Estate Company and made a new
lease with Abbey, Schoeffel and Grau, which, through various
vicissitudes, lasted until Heinrich Conried took over the reins in 1902.
Abbey died in 1896 and Grau remained at the head of affairs until
Conried's advent. The season of 1893-4 presented nothing new
except Mascagni's L'Amico Fritz, which did not make a sensation.
There was, however, a sensation in the fascinating shape of Emma
Calvé, whose Carmen is an imperishably piquant memory with New
York opera-goers. With Nellie Melba and Pol Plançon she was the
chief newcomer of the season. A supplemental season presented
Massenet's Werther. Otherwise there is only to note the Carmen
craze provoked by Calvé and a Faust craze induced by the
coincidence of Emma Eames, Jean de Reszke, and Plançon. The
latter was so pronounced as to lend point to Mr. W. J. Henderson's
witty characterization of the Metropolitan as the Faustspielhaus.

Calvé did not return for the season of 1894-5 and in her place came
Zélie de Lussan, whom New Yorkers refused to accept as a suitable
embodiment of Mérimée's heroine. Francesco Tamagno and Victor
Maurel were the other noteworthy newcomers, while Luigi Mancinelli
was the principal conductor. The important event of the season was
the first performance of Verdi's Falstaff, and there was a new opera,
Elaine, by the Argentine composer Herman Bemberg, a distinct anti-
climax.

In the meantime, there were signs that a new order of things at the
Metropolitan was much desired of a large section of the New York
music-loving public. The Metropolitan had practically a monopoly of
opera in the city and a few serious attempts had recently been made
to break that monopoly. Oscar Hammerstein and Rudolph Aronson
had rushed to the front with immature performances of Cavalleria
rusticana in 1891. The former, apparently, had already been
inoculated with the managerial virus and in 1893 he opened his
Manhattan Opera House on Broadway and Thirty-fourth Street.
Moszkowski's Boabdil and Beethoven's Fidelio were the features of a
season of two weeks which saw the beginning and end of that
particular enterprise. Some performances in English were given at
the Grand Opera House, beginning in May, 1893, and in the same
year the Duff Opera Company presented an English version of
Gounod's Philémon et Baucis.

There was, however, a demand of which these flimsy ventures took

no account, and the credit for realizing it sufficiently to take chances
on it goes to Walter Damrosch and Anton Seidl. The former took
advantage of the presence in New York of Amalia Materna, Anton
Schott, Emil Fischer, and Conrad Behrens to give representations of
Die Walküre and Götterdämmerung at the Carnegie Music Hall and
the Metropolitan Opera House, respectively. Further evidence of the
strong Wagnerian tendency in New York was the success of an
improvised performance of Tannhäuser by the German Press Club.
The next symptom of the movement was the organization of a
Wagner Society to support a season of Wagner operas at the
Metropolitan. Unfortunately Seidl and Damrosch were rivals and
could not agree on a plan by which they might give German opera
together. Damrosch was able to secure subscriptions enough to
insure him against loss, and, after the close of the Metropolitan
season of 1894-95, he gave seventeen performances of opera with a
middling company which included Johanna Gadski, then a novice,
Marie Brema, Max Alvary, and Emil Fischer. The enterprise was
devoted altogether to Wagner and was an immense success. Denied
the use of the Metropolitan for another season, in 1896 Damrosch
established himself at the Academy of Music with a strong company
which numbered among its members Milka Ternina, Katherina
Klafsky, Johanna Gadski, Max Alvary, and Emil Fischer. Besides the
Wagner repertory he presented Fidelio, Der Freischütz, and his own
opera, 'The Scarlet Letter,' based on Hawthorne's romance of that
name. The second Damrosch season was a failure.
Before returning to the Metropolitan season of 1895-6 it may be
mentioned that, on October 8, 1895, Sir Augustus Harris, of Covent
Garden, presented at Daly's Theatre some 'beautiful music
composed for the occasion' by 'Mr. Humperdinckel.' Sir Augustus was
referring to Humperdinck's Hänsel und Gretel.[51] The Metropolitan
season of 1895-96 was distinguished by an announcement that 'the
management [had] decided to add a number of celebrated German
artists and to present Wagner operas in the German language, all of
which operas will be given with superior singers, equal to any who
have ever been heard in the German language.' The 'number of
celebrated German artists,' however, materialized into three, of
whom only Marie Brema could even by poetic license be
characterized as 'superior.' Calvé returned to glad the hearts of
Carmen lovers, and, except for the addition of Mario Ancona, a
sterling bass, the other principals remained the same as in the
preceding season. Anton Seidl was conductor. Unquestionably the
event of the season was Jean de Reszke's presentation of Tristan in
the soft-toned vesture of bel canto. De Reszke, of course, was too
great an artist to turn the character into an Italian stage lover, but
he did present a vocally mellifluous Tristan and his methods have
influenced all subsequent interpreters of the rôle. Two acts of Bizet's
Pêcheur de Perles, Massenet's Navarraise (with Calvé), and Boïto's
Mefistofele were other interesting features of the season.

In the fall of 1896 Colonel Mapleson made a short reappearance at

the Academy of Music. He still retained his bad taste in choosing a
répertoire, but he provided one novelty in the shape of Giordano's
Andrea Chénier. After the opening of the Metropolitan season he
moved to Boston, where his orchestra went on strike and his
American career ended forever. The loss of Mme. Nordica by
disagreement and of Mme. Klafsky and Mr. Alvary by death was a
handicap to the Metropolitan in the beginning of its season of 1896-
97. Before the season had closed Melba injured her voice singing
Brünnhilde and had to retire; Eames was compelled to undergo an
operation, and Castelmary fell stricken with heart disease during a
performance of Tristan und Isolde. In spite of which the season
managed to run its allotted span. The only novelty was Massenet's
Le Cid.

There was no Metropolitan season in 1897-98, but Walter Damrosch

and Charles A. Ellis gave a series of German and Italian operas at
that house in January and February, 1898, with an excellent
company, which included Melba, Nordica, Gadski, Marie Mattfeld,
Emil Fischer, David Bispham, and Giuseppe Campanari. In May of the
same year the Milan Royal Opera Company, of La Scala, recruited
chiefly from Mexico and South America, introduced New York to
Puccini's La Bohème. The opera was again produced later in the year
at the Casino by another Italian company and in English at the
American Theatre by Henry W. Savage's Castle Square Opera
Company.

Melba and Sembrich came back to the Metropolitan for the season of
1898-99 and among the newcomers were Ernestine Schumann-
Heink, Suzanne Adams, Ernest Van Dyck, Albert Saleza, and Anton
Van Rooy. Nordica, Eames, Lehmann, Mantelli, the brothers de
Reszke, Pol Plançon, David Bispham, and Andreas Dippel were also
in the company—altogether a very brilliant assemblage. The only
novelty was Mancinelli's Ero e Leandro. Antonio Scotti was a
newcomer in the season of 1899-1900, which was also distinguished
by a visit from Ernst von Schuch, director of the opera at Dresden,
who conducted two performances of Lohengrin. Before the opening
of the following season the Metropolitan English Grand Opera
Company, promoted by Henry W. Savage and Maurice Grau, gave a
series of operas in English with a tolerably good repertory and a very
good list of singers. Savage's Castle Square Company had already
brought forward earlier in the year a novelty in the shape of
Spinelli's A basso Porto, and at the Metropolitan he produced for the
first time Goring-Thomas's 'Esmeralda.'

For the season of 1900-01 Milka Ternina came to the Metropolitan

and New York was introduced to Louise Homer, Lucienne Bréval,
Fritzi Scheff, the inimitable and much-lamented Charles Gilibert,
Imbart de la Tour, Robert Blass, and Marcel Journet. Mancinelli was
still conductor. The novelties were Puccini's La Tosca and Ernest
Reyer's Salammbo. Of the newcomers for 1901-02 the only one that
calls for mention is Albert Reiss, whose Mime and David still delight
New York Wagner lovers. Isidore de Lara's Messaline and
Paderewski's Manru were the novelties, and there was also a gala
performance in honor of Prince Henry of Prussia, which was one of
the most elaborate displays of snobbery ever staged in America.
Walter Damrosch, Signor Sepilli, and M. Flon were the conductors.
Alfred Hertz came over as conductor of German opera for the season
of 1902-03, and has remained a distinctly reliable asset to the
Metropolitan ever since. The only novelty of that season was Ethel
Smyth's Der Wald, though Verdi's Ernani and Un Ballo in Maschera
had been strangers for so long that they were novelties in effect.
Before the opening of the season Mascagni favored New York with a
visit and produced at the Metropolitan his own operas Zanetto,
Cavalleria rusticana, and Iris. His enterprise was not successful.

VI
Maurice Grau was compelled through ill health to retire from the
management of the Metropolitan during the season of 1902-03 and
before the opening of the next season the reins passed to Heinrich
Conried, a native of Austria, who had already made an enviable
reputation as manager of the German theatre in Irving Place and of
various German and English comic opera companies. Conried was an
excellent impresario. For his first season he annexed Enrico Caruso,
Olive Fremstad, and Otto Goritz, and brought over Felix Mottl as
conductor, besides retaining Sembrich, Eames, Calvé, Homer, Scotti,
Plançon, Journet, Campanari, and other Grau stars. Everything else
he did before or since, however, was overshadowed by his
production of Parsifal on December 24, 1913. Whether his action
was artistically and ethically justified or whether, as many believed, it
was a violation of the sacred shrine of Bayreuth, is not a question
pertinent to this narrative. But there is no doubt that his motives in
staging the opera were purely commercial and the manner in which
he advertised it was productive of unfortunate results which
cheapened Wagner's solemn art-work beyond expression. For
purposes of record it may be noted that in this first American
production of Parsifal Milka Ternina was the Kundry, Alois Burgstaller
the Parsifal, Anton Van Rooy the Amfortas, Robert Blass the
Gurnemanz, Otto Goritz the Klingsor and Marcel Journet the Titurel.
Alfred Hertz conducted. Prompted by the tremendous publicity given
to Parsifal, Henry W. Savage hawked it in an English version all over
the country. A much-touted novelty; a variant from the small-time
vaudeville, from the eternal stock company, from eternal boredom; a
cross between a church meeting and a circus! Such was Parsifal to
the shirt-sleeved communities of America from coast to coast. It was
a sad spectacle—the saddest perhaps in the artistic annals of this
country.

In his second season Conried staged a rather too elaborate

production of Strauss's Die Fledermaus, which he followed up in his
third season with Der Zigeunerbaron. The production of Hänsel und
Gretel in the presence of the composer and the revival of Goldmark's
Königin von Saba were creditable features of the third season. In
1906-07 Mr. Conried outshone himself and, whatever his motives, he
stirred operatic New York then as it had perhaps never been stirred.
To begin with, he produced Richard Strauss's setting of Oscar Wilde's
Salome. Such a fluttering in the moral dovecotes has rarely been
seen. Ever meticulously careful of its spotless purity, New York
protested violently against the 'shocking exhibition' and, after the
first performance, the directors of the Metropolitan issued the
following notice: 'The directors of the Metropolitan Opera and Real
Estate Company consider that the performance of Salome is
objectionable and detrimental to the best interests of the
Metropolitan Opera House. They therefore protest against any
repetition of this opera.'
However, the bad taste left by Salome in the mouths of the
Metropolitan Opera House patrons was presumably removed by the
gala productions of Puccini's Manon Lescaut and Madama Butterfly
in the presence of the composer. The former had already been given
by an Italian company at Wallack's Theatre in 1898 and the latter in
English by Savage's company at the Garden Theatre in 1906. Other
novelties of the season were Berlioz's La Damnation de Faust and
Giordano's Fedora. In the season of 1907-8 the only novelty was
Francesco Cilea's Adriana Lecouvreur. The season was otherwise
notable for the presence of Gustav Mahler, then conductor of the
Court Opera, Vienna, who gave extraordinary readings of Don
Giovanni, Fidelio, Tristan und Isolde, and Die Walküre.

Conried resigned from the Metropolitan management in February,

1908. His managerial career was certainly extraordinary; he
thoroughly stirred New York's turgid operatic waters. The list of
artists introduced by him is a brilliant one. Besides the names
already mentioned it includes Bella Alten, Lina Cavalieri, Geraldine
Farrar, Marie Mattfeld, Bessie Abbott, Marie Rappold, Berta Morena,
Carl Burrian, Allessandro Bonci, Riccardo Martin, and the great
Russian basso, Theodore Chaliapine.

In the meantime Oscar Hammerstein, who had made various

immature attempts to break into the operatic field, built a new
Manhattan Opera House, which he opened in December 3, 1906, for
a season of opera which closed on April 20, 1907. His high sounding
promises were not taken seriously by musical New York, but the
achievements of his first season changed that attitude materially.
True, the list of operas brought forward is not inspiring. It included I
Puritani, Rigoletto, Faust, Don Giovanni, Carmen, Aïda, Lucia di
Lammermoor, Il Trovatore, La Traviata, L'Elisir d'amore, Gli Ugonotti
(Les Huguenots), Il Barbiere di Siviglia, La Sonnambula, Cavalleria
rusticana, Mignon, I Pagliacci, Dinorah, Un Ballo in Maschera, La
Bohème, Fra Diavolo, Marta, and La Navarraise. But the significant
fact is that Mr. Hammerstein had the courage to start a season of
opera on an elaborate scale in opposition to the Metropolitan and