As has already been set forth, Mr. Abbey made a monumental financial fiasco; but his was a heroic effort to galvanize Italian opera, which seemed moribund, into vitality. He showed an honest desire to keep all his promises to the public made when he asked support for his enterprise, and all in all, his administration was signalized by virtues too frequently absent in the doings of operatic managers. His stage sets were uniformly handsome, and some of them showed greater sumptuousness than the people had seen for many years; his orchestra, though faulty in composition as well as execution, did some admirable work under Signor Vianesi; his chorus was prompt, vigorous, and tuneful; his ensembles were carefully and intelligently composed, and his selection of operas was judicious from a managerial point of view. He gave to New York the strongest combination of women singers that the city had ever known; nor has it been equaled in any one season since. The financial failure of the enterprise caused no surprise among intelligent and impartial observers. One needed not to be prophetically gifted to foretell twenty-five years ago that New York could not support two such costly establishments as the Academy of Music and the Metropolitan Opera House. The world of fashion, which in the nature of things is the supporter of Italian opera, and has been ever since the art form was invented, was divided in its allegiance, and divided, moreover, in a manner which made an interchange of courtesies all but impossible. This threw the burden of maintaining the rival houses upon two limited groups of persons, and the loss was mutual.
In Mr. Abbey's prospectus he promised to produce twenty-four operas, which he named; he kept his promise as to all but five, these being "Lucrezia Borgia," "Linda di Chamouni," "Fra Diavolo," "Otello," and "Le Nozze di Figaro." "Roméo et Juliette," which he attempted to give, but failed at the last, was not in the original list. Besides these performances, he gave fifty-eight outside of New York in visits to Brooklyn, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Washington, and Baltimore. The local record may be tabulated as follows:
"Faust" .................... October 22 ............ 6 "Lucia di Lammermoor" ...... October 24 ............ 3 "Il Trovatore" ............. October 26 ............ 3 "I Puritani" ............... October 29 ............ 1 "Mignon" ................... October 31 ............ 4 "La Traviata" .............. November 5 ............ 4 "Lohengrin" ................ November 7 ............ 6 "La Sonnambula" ............ November 14 ........... 2 "Rigoletto" ................ November 16 ........... 2 "Robert le Diable" ......... November 19 ........... 3 "Il Barbiere di Siviglia" .. November 23 ........... 3 "Don Giovanni" ............. November 28 ........... 5 "Mefistofele" .............. December 5 ............ 2 "La Gioconda" .............. December 20 ........... 4 "Carmen" ................... January 9 ............. 5 "Hamlet" ................... March 10 .............. 1 "Martha" ................... March 14 .............. 3 "Les Huguenots" ............ March 19 .............. 2 "Le Prophète" .............. March 21 .............. 1