The line of demarcation between grand opera and comic opera is not easy to trace. Both have run together with a promiscuity which makes it very difficult to follow the history of one as distinguished from that of the other. _Le Nozze di Figaro_ and _Il Barbiere di Siviglia_ go hand in hand with _Fidelio_ and _Norma_; _Die Meistersinger_ is a companion of _Tristan_. The convenient tendency to spread the generic name of opera over all forms of musico-dramatic expression is found in all countries and periods. It is particularly noticeable in America, where even the dignified Metropolitan Opera House found it consistent to conjoin _Die Fledermaus_ and _Der Zigeunerbaron_ with _Parsifal_ and _Salome_. In our general survey of opera in America we have touched on the comic opera activities which went on more or less in association with grand opera, and it only remains for us to refer briefly to the activities of such companies as devoted themselves exclusively to the lighter form of entertainment. The first of these, of course, were the French companies from New Orleans who familiarized the country with Pergolesi, Rousseau, Piccini, Cimarosa, Méhul, Grétry, Dalayrac, Boieldieu, Auber, and other masters of the light opera. Apart from the companies playing English ballad opera--a distinct _genre_--these were the only troupes of note which presented exclusively the lighter side of operatic art until late in the nineteenth century. The real era of comic opera in America began about 1870 and lasted for somewhat less than twenty years. The first notable event of this period was the importation of Miss Emily Soldene and company--then the rage of London--by Messrs. Grau and Chizzola. They opened a season of _opéra bouffe_ in English at the Lyceum Theatre, New York, in November, 1874, and played to crowded houses for several months, presenting _Généviève de Brabant_, _Chilperic_, _La Fille de Madame Angot_, and _Madame l'Archiduc_. Afterward they visited Philadelphia, Brooklyn, Boston--'beautiful, bald-headed Boston,' as Miss Soldene called it--Washington, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Chicago, Louisville, St. Louis, Houston, Galveston, and New Orleans. In 1875 Madame Aimée arrived with her French _opéra bouffe_ company, also under the management of Messrs. Grau and Chizzola, and soon afterward came the Offenbach craze and the ill-starred visit of the composer.