There was no Metropolitan season in 1897-98, but Walter Damrosch and Charles A. Ellis gave a series of German and Italian operas at that house in January and February, 1898, with an excellent company, which included Melba, Nordica, Gadski, Marie Mattfeld, Emil Fischer, David Bispham, and Giuseppe Campanari. In May of the same year the Milan Royal Opera Company, of La Scala, recruited chiefly from Mexico and South America, introduced New York to Puccini's _La Bohème_. The opera was again produced later in the year at the Casino by another Italian company and in English at the American Theatre by Henry W. Savage's Castle Square Opera Company. Melba and Sembrich came back to the Metropolitan for the season of 1898-99 and among the newcomers were Ernestine Schumann-Heink, Suzanne Adams, Ernest Van Dyck, Albert Saleza, and Anton Van Rooy. Nordica, Eames, Lehmann, Mantelli, the brothers de Reszke, Pol Plançon, David Bispham, and Andreas Dippel were also in the company--altogether a very brilliant assemblage. The only novelty was Mancinelli's _Ero e Leandro_. Antonio Scotti was a newcomer in the season of 1899-1900, which was also distinguished by a visit from Ernst von Schuch, director of the opera at Dresden, who conducted two performances of _Lohengrin_. Before the opening of the following season the Metropolitan English Grand Opera Company, promoted by Henry W. Savage and Maurice Grau, gave a series of operas in English with a tolerably good repertory and a very good list of singers. Savage's Castle Square Company had already brought forward earlier in the year a novelty in the shape of Spinelli's _A basso Porto_, and at the Metropolitan he produced for the first time Goring-Thomas's 'Esmeralda.'