I had chosen “Tristan” for the opening performance. It was in 1895. The general rehearsal had gone well and an immense audience filled every available space of the opera-house and greeted me warmly as I appeared on the conductor’s stand. I was just about to begin the prelude when a whisper reached me that the English horn player was not in his place. It was old Joseph Eller, who had played in the Philharmonic under my father many years before. He had, incredible to relate, forgotten his instrument and, discovering this only on his arrival at the Metropolitan, had rushed home but had not yet returned. Imagine my agitation! Everything was ready, the lights turned down and the audience expectant, and I finally did not dare to wait any longer. I assigned the English horn part to the third French horn player and we began the long-drawn sighs of the violoncellos of the introductory bars of the prelude. To my great relief I saw Eller slip into his place a few minutes later, and the performance moved well and dramatically toward a triumphant close, in which Alvary, especially, distinguished himself by his marvellous acting and impassioned singing in the scene preceding the arrival of the ship bearing _Isolde_. Sucher invested _Isolde_ with a gentle, womanly dignity, but vocally she was no longer quite in her prime and did not, I think, equal Lilli Lehmann or Klafsky and Ternina, whom I brought to America the following year. To re-enter the Metropolitan on such a Wagnerian wave after German opera had been so ignominiously snuffed out five years before, was a great triumph and satisfaction for me, more especially because my father had laid the foundation eleven years before. I produced the other Wagnerian operas in quick succession, and as the houses were sold out for every performance the profit was considerable. Madame Marie Brema proved herself such a valuable member of the company, both as _Ortrude_ and _Brangäne_, that I felt it would be wise to give her the opportunity to sing _Brunhilde_ in “Walküre” as well. I, therefore, quietly began to train her in that rôle. Unfortunately, during a rehearsal which I had with her alone on the stage, Madame Sucher happened to saunter in and, hearing the familiar music coming from my piano, she suddenly beheld another woman singing _Brunhilde_. She gave me one indignant but comprehensive glance and then majestically sailed off the stage. A few hours later I received a letter in which she announced to me that she wished to return to Germany on the next steamer, as she had not been accustomed until then to have “her” rôles sung by another as long as she was in the company. This was the first letter of the kind that I had received during my short career as opera impresario, but it was but the prototype of many similar ones that followed each other like snowflakes in a storm during my various opera seasons.