The Astor Opera House, also known as the Astor Place Opera House and later the Astor Place Theatre, [1] was an opera house in Manhattan, New York City, located on Lafayette Street between Astor Place and East 8th Street. Designed by Isaiah Rogers, the theater was conceived by impresario Edward Fry, the brother of composer William Henry Fry, who managed the opera house during its entire history. [2] [3]
Fry engaged the Sanquerico and Patti Opera Company under the management of John Sefton to perform the first season of opera at the house. The opera house opened on November 22, 1847 with a performance of Giuseppe Verdi's Ernani with Adelino Vietti in the title role. [4] Sefton and his company were not re-engaged by Fry, and the opera management of the house went to Cesare Lietti for the second season. During his tenure the opera house presented the United States premiere of Verdi's Nabucco on April 4, 1848. [5]
Lietti was also replaced after one season, and the Astor's third and longest lasting opera manager, Max Maretzek, was hired for the third season, which commenced in November 1848. [6] The following year Maretzek founded his own opera company, the Max Maretzek Italian Opera Company, with whom he continued to stage operas at the Astor Opera House through 1852. [7] [8] Under Maretzek the opera house saw the New York premiere of Donizetti's Anna Bolena on January 7, 1850 with soprano Apollonia Bertucca (later Maretzek's wife) as the title heroine. [9]
The theatre was built with the intention of attracting only the "best" patrons, the "uppertens" of New York society, who were increasingly turning out to see European singers who appeared at local venues such as Niblo's Garden. It was expected that an opera house would be:
a substitute for a general drawing room – a refined attraction which the ill-mannered would not be likely to frequent, and around which the higher classes might gather, for the easier interchange of courtesies, and for that closer view which aides the candidacy of acquaintance. [10]
In pursuit of this agenda, the theatre was created with the comfort of the upper classes in mind: benches, the normal seating in theatres at the time, were replaced by upholstered seats, available only by subscription, as were the two tiers of boxes. On the other hand, 500 general admission patrons were relegated to the benches of a "cockloft" reachable only by a narrow stairway, and otherwise isolated from the gentry below, [3] and the theatre enforced a dress code which required "freshly shaven faces, evening dress, and kid gloves." [11]
Limiting the attendance of the lower classes was partly intended to avoid the problems of rowdyism which plagued other theaters in the entertainment district at the time, especially in the theatres on the Bowery. Nevertheless, it was the deadly Astor Place riot in 1849 which caused the theatre to close permanently – provoked by competing performances of Macbeth by English actor William Charles Macready at the Opera House (which was operating under the name "Astor Place Theatre", not being able to sustain itself on a full season of opera) and American Edwin Forrest at the nearby Broadway Theatre.
After the riot, the theater was unable to overcome the reputation of being the "Massacre Opera House" at "DisAster Place." [12] By May 1853, the interior had been dismantled and the furnishings sold off, with the shell of the building sold for $140,000 [13] to the New York Mercantile Library, which renamed the building "Clinton Hall". [14]
In 1890, in need of additional space, the library tore down the opera house building and replaced it with an 11-story building, also called Clinton Hall, which still stands on the site. [15]
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The Public Theater is an arts organization in New York City. Founded by Joseph Papp, The Public Theater was originally the Shakespeare Workshop in 1954; its mission was to support emerging playwrights and performers. Its first production was the musical Hair in 1967. Since Papp, the theatre has been led by JoAnne Akalaitis (1991–1993), and George C. Wolfe (1993–2004), and is currently under Artistic Director Oskar Eustis and Executive Director Patrick Willingham.
8th Street is a street in the New York City borough of Manhattan that runs from Sixth Avenue to Third Avenue, and also from Avenue B to Avenue D; its addresses switch from West to East as it crosses Fifth Avenue. Between Third Avenue and Avenue A, it is named St. Mark's Place, after the nearby St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery on 10th Street at Second Avenue.
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Trowbridge & Livingston was an architecture firm based in New York City, active from 1897 to 1925. The firm's partners were Breck Trowbridge and Goodhue Livingston. They were successors to the firm Trowbridge, Colt & Livingston, founded in 1894 but dissolved in 1897 when Stockton B. Colt left the partnership.
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The Astor House was a luxury hotel in New York City. Located on the corner of Broadway and Vesey Street in what is now the Civic Center and Tribeca neighborhoods of Lower Manhattan, it opened in 1836 and soon became the best-known hotel in America. Part of it was demolished in 1913; the rest in 1926.
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Max Maretzek was a Moravian-born composer, conductor, and impresario active in the United States and Latin America.
The Fourteenth Ward Industrial School is located at 256-258 Mott Street between Prince and Houston Streets in the Nolita neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. It was built for the Children's Aid Society in 1888–89, with funds provided by John Jacob Astor III, and was designed by the firm of Vaux & Radford in the Victorian Gothic style. The Society built a number of schools for indigent children at the time. It was later known as the Astor Memorial School.
Alexander Saeltzer was a German-American architect active in New York City in the 1850s and 1860s. His work includes the Anshe Chesed Synagogue, Academy of Music, Theatre Francais, the Duncan, Sherman & Company building and the South Wing of the Romanesque revival structure at 425 Lafayette Street built between 1853 and 1881 as the Astor Library.
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