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Article: Founding the Metropolitan Opera
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- American Eras
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1997 Gale Research Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Founding the Metropolitan Opera
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An Age of Opulence.
The story of the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City unfolds amid privilege and desire. During the late nineteenth century a coterie of moneyed families, their fortunes swelled by post-Civil War speculation, set new standards for conspicuous consumption. Yet despite their cash and their flash, the nouveaux riches of New York remained excluded from the inner circles of the old Knickerbocker gentry. In the 1870s and early 1880s New York boasted an adequate opera house: the Academy of Music, founded in 1849 and located downtown on Fourteenth Street. Edith Wharton (1862-1937), novelist of New York manners, opened her
Age of ...