In his second season Conried staged a rather too elaborate production of Strauss's Die Fledermaus, which he followed up in his third season with Der Zigeunerbaron. The production of Hänsel und Gretel in the presence of the composer and the revival of Goldmark's Königin von Saba were creditable features of the third season. In 1906-07 Mr. Conried outshone himself and, whatever his motives, he stirred operatic New York then as it had perhaps never been stirred. To begin with, he produced Richard Strauss's setting of Oscar Wilde's Salome. Such a fluttering in the moral dovecotes has rarely been seen. Ever meticulously careful of its spotless purity, New York protested violently against the 'shocking exhibition' and, after the first performance, the directors of the Metropolitan issued the following notice: 'The directors of the Metropolitan Opera and Real Estate Company consider that the performance of Salome is objectionable and detrimental to the best interests of the Metropolitan Opera House. They therefore protest against any repetition of this opera.'
However, the bad taste left by Salome in the mouths of the Metropolitan Opera House patrons was presumably removed by the gala productions of Puccini's Manon Lescaut and Madama Butterfly in the presence of the composer. The former had already been given by an Italian company at Wallack's Theatre in 1898 and the latter in English by Savage's company at the Garden Theatre in 1906. Other novelties of the season were Berlioz's La Damnation de Faust and Giordano's Fedora. In the season of 1907-8 the only novelty was Francesco Cilea's Adriana Lecouvreur. The season was otherwise notable for the presence of Gustav Mahler, then conductor of the Court Opera, Vienna, who gave extraordinary readings of Don Giovanni, Fidelio, Tristan und Isolde, and Die Walküre.
Conried resigned from the Metropolitan management in February, 1908. His managerial career was certainly extraordinary; he thoroughly stirred New York's turgid operatic waters. The list of artists introduced by him is a brilliant one. Besides the names already mentioned it includes Bella Alten, Lina Cavalieri, Geraldine Farrar, Marie Mattfeld, Bessie Abbott, Marie Rappold, Berta Morena, Carl Burrian, Allessandro Bonci, Riccardo Martin, and the great Russian basso, Theodore Chaliapine.
In the meantime Oscar Hammerstein, who had made various immature attempts to break into the operatic field, built a new Manhattan Opera House, which he opened in December 3, 1906, for a season of opera which closed on April 20, 1907. His high sounding promises were not taken seriously by musical New York, but the achievements of his first season changed that attitude materially. True, the list of operas brought forward is not inspiring. It included I Puritani, Rigoletto, Faust, Don Giovanni, Carmen, Aïda, Lucia di Lammermoor, Il Trovatore, La Traviata, L'Elisir d'amore, Gli Ugonotti (Les Huguenots), Il Barbiere di Siviglia, La Sonnambula, Cavalleria rusticana, Mignon, I Pagliacci, Dinorah, Un Ballo in Maschera, La Bohème, Fra Diavolo, Marta, and La Navarraise. But the significant fact is that Mr. Hammerstein had the courage to start a season of opera on an elaborate scale in opposition to the Metropolitan and without the support of 'society.' His success demonstrated the feasibility of such an enterprise and gave an impetus to the growth of public interest in opera, of which others are now reaping the benefit. He was rather unfortunate in his repertory, but he was more fortunate in his selection of artists. Among them were Melba, Calvé, Regina Pinkert, Bressler-Gianoli, Giannina Russ, Eleanora de Cisneros, Allessandro Bonci, Maurice Renaud, the greatest of French baritones, Charles Dalmorès, Charles Gilibert, Mario Ancona and Vittorio Arimondi. He was additionally fortunate in securing Cleofonte Campanini as conductor.
For his second season Mr. Hammerstein added to his forces Lillian Nordica, Mary Garden, Emma Trentini, Alice Zeppilli, Ernestine Schumann-Heink, Jeanne Gerville-Réache, Giovanni Zenatello, Amadeo Bassi, Mario Sammarco, Hector Dufranne, Adamo Didur, and several others of lesser note, besides retaining his principals of the preceding season, with the exception of Calvé and Bonci. Before the season closed he also presented Luisa Tetrazzini. The first production in America of Charpentier's Louise and Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande were notable results of a new policy which was to make the Manhattan Opera House par excellence the home of French opera in New York. Other French operas on the list for the same season were Carmen, Berlioz's La Damnation de Faust, Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffmann, a revival, Gounod's Faust, and Massenet's Thaïs and La Navarraise. The Italian list departed from the hackneyed a little by the inclusion of Giordano's Siberia and Andrea Chénier and of the Ricci brothers' Crispino e la Comare.
After the resignation of Mr. Conried from the Metropolitan, Giulio Gatti-Casazza and Andreas Dippel were appointed managers. The former had been director of La Scala in Milan, and the latter for several years had been a prominent and versatile member of the Metropolitan company. Apparently the design in conjoining them was to give equal representation to the Italian and German sides of the house. The results for the season 1908-9 were very pleasing and there was a good admixture of Italian and German operas, without any startling revolution in the general character of the repertory. The novelties were d'Albert's Tiefland, Smetana's Die Verkaufte Braut, Catalini's La Wally, and Puccini's Le Villi, while there were revivals of Massenet's Manon, Mozart's Nozze di Figaro, and Verdi's Falstaff. The most notable addition to the Metropolitan forces was Arturo Toscanini, who came from La Scala as conductor of Italian opera. Hertz and Mahler remained as conductors of German opera, though Toscanini led performances of Götterdämmerung and Tristan und Isolde with apparent gusto and brilliant success. Among the new singers were Emmy Destinn, Frances Alda, Bernice di Pasquali, Marion Flahaut, Pasquale Amato, Adamo Didur, and Carl Jörn.
In the same season Mr. Hammerstein brought forward a number of interesting novelties, including Saint-Saëns's Samson et Dalila, Massenet's Le Jongleur de Notre Dame, and the Princesse d'Auberge of Jan Blockx. He also had the hardihood to produce Salome, and its success seems to indicate that the squeamishness of New York's moral stomach had, by some strange process, entirely disappeared. Except for Otello there was nothing else of particular interest in his list. During the season of 1909-10 he produced Strauss's Electra and Massenet's Hérodiade, Grisélidis, and Sappho. In addition he made experiments with opéra comique, presenting Maillart's Les Dragons de Villars, Planquette's Les Cloches de Corneville, Audran's La Mascotte, Donizetti's La Fille du Régiment, and Lecocq's La Fille de Madame Angot. The most notable acquisitions to his forces in this season were Madame Mazarin, a French dramatic soprano of fine talent, Lina Cavalieri, and John McCormack, the Irish lyric tenor. He no longer had the services of Campanini, his principal conductor being the Belgian de la Fuente. After the close of the season he sold out to the Metropolitan interests and entered into an agreement with them not to give grand opera in New York city for ten years.
The season of 1909-10 at the Metropolitan had a number of unusual features. The most prominent of them was the appearance of a Russian troupe of dancers headed by Anna Pavlova and Mikail Mordkin. Another departure was a series of performances at the New Theatre, a beautiful house originally designed to give drama under somewhat the same auspices as prevailed at the Metropolitan. The operas given at the New Theatre were, on the whole, works of a light and intimate character, such as Fra Diavolo, La Fille de Madame Angot, Flotow's Stradella, Lortzing's Czar und Zimmermann and Pergolesi's[?] Il Maestro di Capella. Nineteen operas, three ballets, and a pantomime were presented at this house. At the Metropolitan thirty-seven were produced, the chief novelties being Franchetti's Germania, Tschaikowsky's Pique Dame, Frederick S. Converse's 'Pipe of Desire' (the first production of an American opera at the Metropolitan), and Bruneau's L'Attaque du Moulin. There was a splendid revival of Gluck's Orfeo ed Eurydice under Toscanini.
After the close of the season Mr. Dippel left the Metropolitan to assume the direction of the Chicago-Philadelphia Opera Company, which was formed chiefly of artists from Mr. Hammerstein's disbanded forces. During the season of 1910-11 he gave a subscription series of French operas at the Metropolitan on Tuesday evenings from January to April. The novelties of the series were Victor Herbert's Natoma, Wolff-Ferrari's Il Segreto di Susanna, and Jean Nougues' Quo Vadis? The regular Metropolitan season saw the first production on any stage of Puccini's La Fanciulla del West and Humperdinck's Königskinder, in the presence of their respective composers. Dukas' Ariane et Barbe-Bleue had its American première and there was also a brilliant revival of Gluck's Armide.
The seasons of 1911-12, 1912-13, and 1913-14 at the Metropolitan have been notable chiefly for the first performance in America of Horatio W. Parker's 'Mona,' which was awarded the prize offered by the Metropolitan directors for the best opera by an American composer. Thuille's Lobetanz, Wolff-Ferrari's Le Donne Curiose, Leo Blech's Versiegelt, Walter Damrosch's Cyrano de Bergerac, Victor Herbert's Madeleine, Moussorgsky's Boris Godounoff, Strauss's Rosenkavalier, Charpentier's Julien, Montemezzi's L'Amore dei tre re, and Wolf-Ferrari's L'Amore medico were the other novelties. Among the new singers engaged for those seasons were Lydia Lipkowska, Frieda Hempel, Margarete Ober, Lucrezia Bori, Margarete Matzenauer, Hermann Jadlowker, Leo Slezak, Carl Burrian, Jacques Urlus, Hermann Weil, Heinrich Hensel, and Giovanni Martinelli. During 1914-15 Melanie Kurt, Wagnerian soprano, and Elisabeth Schumann were added to the list of singers, and the novelties were Giordano's Madame Sans-Gêne and Leoni's L'Oracolo. The season's sensation was a revival of Carmen with Farrar.