Chapters of Opera | Page 5

that it was in that year that "The Beggar's Opera" found its
way to New York, after having, in all probability, been given by the
same company of comedians in Philadelphia in the middle of the year
preceding. But it is as little likely that these were the first performances
of ballad operas on this side of the Atlantic as that the people of New
York were oblivious of the nature of operatic music of the Italian type
until Garcia's troupe came with Rossini's "Barber of Seville," in 1825.
There are traces of ballad operas in America in the early decades of the
eighteenth century, and there can exist no doubt at all that French and
Italian operas were given in some form, perhaps, as a rule, in the
adapted form which prevailed in the London theaters until far into the
nineteenth century, before the year 1800, in the towns and cities of the
Eastern seaboard, which were in most active communication with Great
Britain, I quote from an article on the history of opera in the United
States, written by me for the second edition of "Grove's Dictionary of
Music and Musicians":
Among French works Rousseau's "Pygmalion" and "Devin du Village,"
Dalayrac's "Nina" and "L'Amant Statue," Monsigny's "Déserteur,"
Grétry's "Zémire et Azor," "Fausse Magie" and "Richard Coeur de
Lion" and others, were known in Charleston, Baltimore, Philadelphia,
and New York in the last decade of the eighteenth century. There were
traces, too, of Pergolese's "Serva padrona," and it seems more than
likely that an "opera in three acts," the text adapted by Colman, entitled
"The Spanish Barber; or, The Futile Precaution," played in Baltimore,
Philadelphia, and New York, in 1794, was Paisiello's "Barbiere di
Siviglia." From 1820 to about 1845 more than a score of the Italian,
French, and German operas, which made up the staple of foreign
repertories, were frequently performed by English singers. The earliest

of these singers were members of the dramatic companies who
introduced theatrical plays in the colonies. They went from London to
Philadelphia, New York, Williamsburg (Va.), and Charleston (S. C.),
but eventually established their strongest and most enduring foothold in
New York.
Accepting the 1750 date as the earliest of unmistakable records for a
performance of "The Beggar's Opera" in New York, the original home
of opera here was the Nassau Street Theater--the first of two known by
that name. It was a two-storied house, with high gables. Six wax lights
were in front of the stage, and from the ceiling dangled a "barrel hoop,"
pierced by half a dozen nails on which were spiked as many candles. It
is not necessary to take the descriptions of these early playhouses as
baldly literal, nor as indicative of something like barbarism. The "barrel
hoop" chandelier of the old theater in Nassau street was doubtless only
a primitive form of the chandeliers which kept their vogue for nearly a
century after the first comedians sang and acted at the Nassau Street
Theater. Illuminating gas did not reach New York till 1823, and "a
thousand candles" was put forth as an attractive feature at a concert in
the American metropolis as late as 1845. "The Beggar's Opera" was
only twenty years old when the comedians sent to the colonies by
William Hallam, under the management of his brother, Lewis,
produced it, yet the historic Covent Garden Theater, in which it first
saw the stage lights (candles they were, too), would scarcely stand
comparison with the most modest of the metropolitan theaters
nowadays. Its audience-room was only fifty-four or fifty-five feet deep;
there were no footlights, the stage being illuminated by four hoops of
candles, over which a crown hung from the borders. The orchestra held
only fifteen or twenty musicians, though it was in this house that
Handel produced his operas and oratorios; the boxes "were flat in front
and had twisted double branches for candles fastened to the plaster.
There were pedestals on each side of the boards, with
elaborately-painted figures of Tragedy and Comedy thereon." Hallam's
actors went first to Williamsburg, Va., but were persuaded to change
their home to New York in the summer of 1753, among other things by
the promise that they would find a "very fine 'Playhouse Building'"
here. Nevertheless, when Lewis Hallam came he found the fine

playhouse unsatisfactory, and may be said to have inaugurated the habit
or custom, or whatever it may be called, followed by so many
managers since, of beginning his enterprise by erecting a new theater.
The old one in Nassau Street was torn down, and a new one built on its
site. It was promised that it should be "very fine, large, and
commodious," and it was built between June and September, 1753;
how fine, large, and commodious it was may, therefore, be imagined.