Theatre in 1825 with Maria Garcia--later to become the celebrated Mme. Malibran--in the principal rôles. More recently an itinerant Italian opéra-bouffe company, which gravitated from the Park Theatre--not the same edifice that harboured Garcia’s company!--to various playhouses on the Bowery, included three zarzuelas in its répertoire. One of these, the popular _La Gran Via_, was announced for performance, but my records are dumb on the subject and I am not certain that it was actually given. There are probably other instances.) Mr. Hammerstein had previously produced two operas _about_ Spain when he opened his first Manhattan Opera House on the site now occupied by Macy’s Department Store with Moszkowski’s _Boabdil_, quickly followed by Beethoven’s _Fidelio_. The malagueña from _Boabdil_ is still a favourite _morceau_ with restaurant orchestras, and I believe I have heard the entire ballet suite performed by the Chicago Orchestra under the direction of Theodore Thomas. New York’s real occupation by the Spaniards, however, occurred after the close of Mr. Hammerstein’s brilliant seasons, although the earlier vogue of Carmencita, whose celebrated portrait by Sargent in the Luxembourg Gallery in Paris will long preserve her fame, the interest in the highly-coloured paintings by Sorolla and Zuloaga, many of which are still on exhibition in private and public galleries in New York, the success here achieved, in varying degrees, by such singing artists as Emilio de Gogorza, Andrea de Segurola, and Lucrezia Bori, the performances of the piano works of Albeniz, Turina, and Granados by such pianists as Ernest Schelling, George Copeland, and Leo Ornstein, and the amazing Spanish dances of Anna Pavlowa (who in attempting them was but following in the footsteps of her great predecessors of the nineteenth century, Fanny Elssler and Taglioni), all fanned the flames.