The baritone for the New York season was "Garcia, jr.," as the subject of this memoir was advertised, and the cast was completed by d'Angrisani as the _basso cantante_, and Rosich as the _buffo caricato_. The chorus, which was collected and organised by Garcia only with the greatest difficulty, consisted chiefly of mechanics settled in America, who were accustomed to serve in choirs and could read music. Of the circumstances which brought about this scheme of giving Italian opera in America we may read in the biography of the poet, Fitz-Greene Halleck. In it the author, General James Grant Wilson, tells us that Halleck was one of the two thousand New York pupils of Signor Daponte, who was for many years professor of Italian literature in Columbia College there. "To this Signor Daponte, the personal friend of Mozart, and writer of the libretto of 'Don Giovanni,' the poet told me," says the biographer, "that we were indebted for the introduction of Italian opera here, he having, with the late Dominick Lynch and Stephen Price, induced the elder Garcia to visit them with his troupe, and appear at the Park Theatre, of which Price was the manager." When the elder Garcia arrived in New York he was at once visited by this Daponte, and it is reported that he rushed up to the Italian librettist and embraced him with the greatest warmth, singing all the while the aria "Fin ch'han dal vino," the Drinking Song from "Don Giovanni," for the words of which Daponte had been responsible. During October and November, in addition to appearing in oratorio, the Garcia family gave a number of concerts, during which the tenor delighted to show the perfection of his method. He had a custom of striking a single chord, and then with his wife, son, and daughter, rendering a difficult operatic quartette, unaccompanied. At the end he would strike the chord again, to show that they had not deviated from the pitch to the extent of even a hair's-breadth. They certainly formed a quartette of pre-eminent ability; indeed, Chorley, one of the greatest musical authorities of his day, wrote of them, "The family of Spanish musicians are representative artists, whose power, genius, and originality have impressed a permanent trace on the record of the methods of vocal execution and ornament." The first mention of their arrival we find in the 'Harmonicon,' which had a notice on October 25, to the effect that "The Spanish family of the Garcias, consisting of husband, wife, son, and daughter, have been engaged by Mr Price." Some three weeks later a preliminary notice of their forthcoming venture appeared in a New York paper called 'The Albion, or British, Colonial, and Foreign Weekly Gazette.' In its issue of November 19 there was printed the following prospectus, which may be quoted in full, as it contains several points of interest:--