That first visit was made possible by the generosity of a very great American Maecenas, the late Otto H. Kahn, to whom the art world of America owes an incalculable debt. The arrangement was for a season of four weeks. Her success was instantaneous. Her like never had been seen. The success was the more remarkable considering the circumstances of the performance, facts not, perhaps, generally remembered. Giulio Gatti-Cazzaza, the Italian director of the Metropolitan Opera House, was not what might be called exactly sympathetic to Otto Kahn’s determination to establish the Opera House on a better rounded scheme than the then prevalent over-exploitation of Enrico Caruso. As an Italian opera director, Gatti-Cazzaza was even less sympathetic to the dance, and was, moreover, extremely dubious that Metropolitan audiences would accept ballet, other than as an inconsequential _divertissement_ during the course of an opera. So opposed to dance was he, as a matter of fact, that, although he eventually married Rosina Galli, the _prima ballerina_ of the Metropolitan, he made her fight for ballet every inch of the way and, on general operatic principle, opposed everything she attempted to do for the dance. Because of his “anti-dance” attitude, and in order to “play safe,” Gatti ordained that Pavlova’s American debut be scheduled to follow a performance of Massenet’s opera _Werther_. The Massenet opera being a fairly long three-act work, its final curtain did not fall until past eleven o’clock. By the time the stage was ready for the first American appearance of Pavlova, it was close to eleven-thirty. The audience that had remained largely out of curiosity rather than from any sense of expectation left reluctantly at the end. The dancing they had seen was like nothing ever shown before in the reasonably long history of the Metropolitan. For her début Pavlova had chosen Delibes’ human-doll ballet, _Coppélia_, giving her in the role of Swanilda a part in which she excelled. The triumph was almost entirely Pavlova’s. The role of Frantz allowed her partner, Mikhail Mordkin, little opportunity for virtuoso display, the _corps de ballet_ seems to have been undistinguished, and the Metropolitan conductor, Podesti, most certainly was not a conductor for ballet, whatever else he might have been. Altogether, in this first season, there were four performances of _Coppélia_, and two of _Hungary_, a ballet composed by Alexandre Glazounow. Additional works during a short tour that followed, and which included Boston and Baltimore, were the Bacchanale from Glazounow’s _The Seasons_, and _La Mort du Cygne_ (_The Dying Swan_), the miniature solo ballet Michel Fokine had devised for her in 1905, which was to become her symbol. Such was the success, Pavlova returned for a full season in New York and a subsequent tour the following autumn, bringing Mordkin’s adaptation of _Giselle_, and another Mordkin work, _Azayae_.