I arranged for a season of eight weeks at the Metropolitan and a tour of five weeks which should take us as far west as Kansas City, as this Far Western outpost had immediately put in a generous bid for three performances. I went abroad that spring to engage my artists and succeeded in gathering a notable company of Wagnerian singers: Rosa Sucher, of the Berlin Royal Opera for the _Brunhildes_ and _Isolde_; a young singer of twenty-three, Johanna Gadski, who sang for me in Berlin, for _Elsa_ and _Elizabeth_; Emil Fischer, of the Dresden Royal Opera, for _Wotan_ and _Hans Sachs_, and Max Alvary, the handsomest and most dramatic of _Siegfrieds_ and a truly knightly _Tristan_. He had studied the latter rôle at Bayreuth and had sung it there at the first performances. At Bayreuth I also found a highly gifted English singer, Marie Brema, who was then almost unknown but who was the possessor of a rich and expressive mezzo-soprano. Her talent for acting was remarkable and her vocal range so great that I thought I could use her not only for _Ortrude_ and _Brangäne_, but, if necessary, for the _Brunhildes_ as well. A great deal of the scenery for “Tristan” and the “Nibelung Trilogy” as well as for “Tannhäuser” I had especially painted in Vienna by the firm of Kautsky and Briosky. They were at that time at the head of their profession, and such beautiful foliage as, for instance, in the forest scene of “Siegfried,” had never before been seen on an American stage. Our New York painters gathered around it in amazement when it had been unpacked and properly mounted and hung. Such an expert on naval matters as William J. Henderson, the eminent music editor of the _New York Sun_, deservedly criticised the architecture and rigging of the ship that bore _Tristan_ and _Isolde_ across the Irish seas to Cornwall. Vienna, the home of my scene-painters, is not a seaport, and the gorgeous tent of _Isolde’s_, and the sails and mast, while very picturesque, completely hid the course of the ship from _Tristan_ at the helm, and if he had not been an operatic sailor, who knew exactly where the ship was going to land at the end of the act, he undoubtedly would have sent it crashing against the white-chalk cliffs of England instead of guiding it safely into the harbor of Cornwall. In the meanwhile, the subscriptions for seats at our New York office had gone up by such leaps and bounds that the financial success of my “crazy venture” was assured before the box-office opened for the single sale of tickets.