gentlemen were James A. Roosevelt, George Henry Warren, Luther Kountze, George Griswold Haven, William K. Vanderbilt, William H. Tillinghast, Adrian Iselin, Robert Goelet, Joseph W. Drexel, Edward Cooper, Henry G. Marquard, George N. Curtis, and Levi P. Morton. This, financially speaking, impressive list is important because it helps us to understand the true nature of the enterprise upon which these gentlemen embarked.[47] The Metropolitan Opera House was leased for the season of 1883 to Mr. Henry E. Abbey and was opened on October 22 with Gounod's _Faust_. In the cast on the opening night were Mesdames Nilsson and Scalchi and Signor Campanini, while Signor Vianesi acted as musical director. The season lasted until December 22, with regular subscription performances on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings and Saturday afternoons. Two performances missed from the regular subscription series were given after the return of the company from a trip to Boston on January 9 and 11. A spring season, begun on March 10, lasted until April 12. The operas given between October 22 and April 12, with order of their production, were: Gounod's _Faust_ (in Italian), Donizetti's _Lucia di Lammermoor_, Verdi's _Il Trovatore_, Bellini's _I Puritani_, Thomas's _Mignon_, Verdi's _La Traviata_, Wagner's _Lohengrin_ (in Italian), Bellini's _La Sonnambula_, Verdi's _Rigoletto_, Meyerbeer's _Robert le Diable_ (in Italian), Rossini's _Il Barbiere di Siviglia_, Mozart's _Don Giovanni_, Boïto's _Mefistofele_, Ponchielli's _La Gioconda_, Bizet's _Carmen_, Thomas's 'Hamlet,' Flotow's 'Martha,' and Meyerbeer's _Les Huguenots_ and _Le Prophète_. Apart from Mme. Nilsson and Signor Campanini, the principal artists engaged were Marcella Sembrich--probably the greatest coloratura soprano since Patti--who afterward became very familiar to New Yorkers; Mme. Fursch-Madi, a French contralto, who had already sung in New Orleans; and M. Capoul, French tenor, who had appeared at the Academy under Maurice Strakosch in 1871. The company gave fifty-eight performances in Brooklyn, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Washington, and Baltimore. Mr. Abbey's losses on the season have been estimated at more than $500,000. He had no ambition to undertake another one. Colonel Mapleson, in the meantime, was holding on at the Academy, where he still retained Patti as the chief attraction, assisted by the fresh-voiced Etelka Gerster, then on the threshold of her career, Mme. Pappenheim, whom we have already met in German opera, Signor Nicolini,[48] a mediocre tenor, and Signor Galassi, a good baritone.