In the meantime a gentleman named Ferdinand Palmo was making quite a reputation as a cook and proprietor of the _Café des Mille Colonnes_ on Broadway, near Duane Street. Mr. Palmo suffered from that ancient delusion known as 'opera for the people,' and under its influence he spent the accumulated profits of the _Mille Colonnes_ in remodelling Stoppani's Arcade Baths, on Chambers Street, into a popular opera house. There, in 1844, he opened a season of Italian opera with Bellini's _I Puritani_. Mr. Palmo was certainly determined to give New Yorkers the best that could be obtained. He had Madame Cinti-Damoreau, whom Fétis described as one of the greatest singers the world had known; he had a great tenor in Antognini, whom Richard Grant White compares as a singer to Ronconi and as an actor to Salvini; he had a very good soprano in Borghese. In addition he had an orchestra of 'thirty-two professors.' He survived the first season, but in the middle of the second the 'thirty-two professors' went on strike for their wages and the sheriff's minions descended on the box office receipts, the _Mille Colonnes_ and everything else attachable that Mr. Palmo possessed. The attempt at a democratic opera was a fine and courageous one, but the time was not ripe for such an effort.[42] After Palmo's failure his theatre was taken over by a new company which included among its principal members Salvatore Patti and Catarina Barili, the parents of Carlotta and Adelina Patti. It had a very brief existence and in 1848 Palmo's Opera House became Burton's Theatre. In the meantime, however, New York had been enjoying an assortment of other operas, presented by various visiting companies. The most important of these was a French company from New Orleans which, in 1843, presented _La fille du régiment_, _Lucia di Lammermoor_, _Norma_, and _Gemma di Vergy_--in French, of course. There were also several English companies, notably the Seguins, who gave opera in English at the Park Theatre and elsewhere. In 1844 the Seguin company produced Balfe's 'Bohemian Girl' for the first time in America.