In New Orleans during the first half of the nineteenth century opera flourished with a brilliance unknown elsewhere in America. The Louisiana city was, as we have pointed out, an American Paris, and the best operatic artists of the French capital appeared there in works selected from the current Parisian répertoire. The opera house was the centre of social, artistic, and musical New Orleans. It was an institution with a tradition and an atmosphere. The brilliant and cultured Creole society lent to it the glamour which only society can give, but it was not dependent upon social support in the same sense as the successive New York opera houses were dependent on such support. It was a popular institution; it was an integral part of the life of the city; it was a source at once of pride and pleasure to the humblest citizen. And to a certain extent it remains so still. The father of opera in New Orleans, as we have already pointed out, was John Davis, who built the Théâtre d'Orléans in 1816. This theatre was remodeled in 1845 and was destroyed by fire in 1866. Its glory, however, had departed several years previous to the latter date and had passed over to the New French Opera House, erected by the New Orleans Opera-House Association in 1859. The moving spirit in the new enterprise was M. Boudousquie, who became its manager. M. Parlange tried a season of opera at the Théâtre d'Orléans in 1859-60, but without success, and the old house then fell into disuse. Its history, however, had been a brilliant one. For over forty years it had maintained a standard of artistic excellence unsurpassed in America and not far below that of the best European opera houses. Its ensembles, both vocal and instrumental, were exceptionally good--notably so, indeed, in a period when operatic stars were too conspicuously in the ascendant. True, its repertory was never remarkable either for its novelty or for its eclecticism. But that was a fault only too common to opera houses both here and abroad during the first half of the nineteenth century. The list of operas presented at the Théâtre d'Orléans between 1825 and 1860 would be too long to quote here, but it may be mentioned that during that time New Orleans heard the following operas for the first time: _Le Barbier de Séville_, _La Maette de Portici_, _Fra Diavolo_, _Robert le Diable_, _L'Éclair_ (Halévy), _Sémiramide_, _Les Huguenots_, _La Sonnambula_, _Zanetta_ (Auber), _Lucia di Lammermoor_, _La Esmeralda_ (Prévost), _Beatrice di Tenda_, _Il Furioso_, _L'Elisir d'Amore_, _Norma_, _Guillaume Tell_, _La Favorita_, _La Fille du Régiment_, _La Juive_, _Lucrecia Borgia_, _I Puritani_ (in Italian), _Belisario_ (in Italian), _La Reine de Chypre_, _Der Freischütz_, _Les Martyrs_, _Charles VI_ (Halévy), _Jérusalem_ (Verdi), _Le Prophète_, _Le Caïd_ (Thomas), _Les Deux Foscari_, _Les Montenégrins_ (Limmander), _La Gazza Ladra_, _Tancredi_, _Othello_ (Rossini), _Moses_ (Rossini), _Don Giovanni_, _Marguérite