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In the 1880s,
New York's wealthiest families built themselves a grand opera house: the
Metropolitan Opera.
They reserved for themselves two tiers of box seats where they could see and be seen at performances that were as much social events as musical ones. From its first performance Gounod's Faust "The Met" has been the country's leading opera company. Soon it rivaled
Europe's great opera houses with the quality of its productions and its roster of star singers.
The
Met
has often blazed new trails. In
the 1890s, it became the first major opera company to insist that
performances be sung in the original language rather than in
translations. In the 1930s, it was the first to feature the works of
American composers and to introduce American singers. The
Met
also helped popularize opera nationwide with radio broadcasts of its productions, which occur on Saturday afternoons. In 1977, it began offering telecasts. The first featured
Luciano Pavarotti
in
La Boheme.
In 1966, The
Met
moved to a huge new theater at
Lincoln Center
for the Performing Arts. Today's audiences dress more casually than The
Met's high-society supporters of the 1880s, but their devotion to the opera is just as passionate.
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