On February 14, 1903, the directors of the Metropolitan Opera and Real Estate Company by a vote of seven to six adopted a resolution directing the executive committee "to negotiate with Mr. Heinrich Conried regarding the Metropolitan Opera House, with power to conclude a lease in case satisfactory terms can be arranged." This was the outcome of a long struggle between Mr. Conried and Mr. Walter Damrosch, a few other candidates for the position of director of the institution making feeble and hopeless efforts to gain a position which all the world knew had, after many vicissitudes, brought fortune to Mr. Grau. The public seemed opera-mad and the element of uncertainty eliminated from the enterprise. Mr. Conried had been an actor in Austria, had come as such to New York, and worked himself up to the position of manager of a small German theater in Irving Place. He had also managed comic operetta companies, English and German, in the Casino and elsewhere, and acted as stage manager for other entrepreneurs. For a year or two his theater had enjoyed something of a vogue among native Americans with a knowledge of the German tongue, and Mr. Conried had fostered a belief in his high artistic purposes by presenting German plays at some of the universities. He became known outside the German circle by these means, and won a valuable championship in a considerable portion of the press. In the management of grand opera he had no experience, and no more knowledge than the ordinary theatrical man. But there was no doubt about his energy and business skill, though this latter quality was questioned in the end by such an administration as left his stockholders without returns, though the receipts of the institution were greater than they had ever been in history. He had no difficulty in organizing a company, which was called the Heinrich Conried Opera Company, on the lines laid down by Mr. Grau, and acquiring the property of the Maurice Grau Opera Company, which, having made large dividends for five years, sold to its successor at an extremely handsome figure. Mr. Conried began his administration with many protestations of artistic virtue and made a beginning which aroused high expectations. To these promises and their fulfillment I shall recur in a résumé of the lustrum during which Mr. Conried was operatic consul. Also I shall relate the story of the principal incidents of his consulship, but for much of the historical detail shall refer the reader to the table of performances covering the five years. The new operas produced within the period were but few. Some of them are scarcely worth noting even in a bald record of events; others have been so extensively discussed within so recent a period that they may be passed over without much ado here.