It soon became clear that the Music Academy could not accommodate all the representatives of the two elements of fashionable society who for one reason or another wanted to own or occupy the boxes that were the visible sign of wealth and social position. Sick of the shutout, a new plan emerged that same year to build the Metropolitan Opera House: a bigger, better space for this new class of millionaires. Take the lead? The Vanderbilt family, including William H., William K. and Cornelius. (According to an 1881 report in The New York TimesOf the opera house’s 10,500 shares, the Vanderbilt family owned about 750.) Other now-famous families – such as the Morgans, Rockefellers and Roosevelts – joined them.
As the competition’s deep pockets became apparent, Academy of Music administrators made a last-ditch effort to avoid social oblivion by offering boxes to the Vanderbilts, Morgans and Rockefellers. But it was too late: in October 1883, the Metropolitan Opera House on 39th Street opened with a production of Faust. The hall was the largest in the world with 3,045 seats. The stage was the third largest, behind only the Imperial Opera House in Saint Petersburg and the New Opera in Paris. A critic at the time The nation regretted that such a format overshadowed the acoustics. But he also made a more pointed (if not entirely untrue) comment: “But since the house was built openly for social purposes and not for artistic purposes, there is no point in complaining about it.”
It was certainly social. In its opening coverage of the Metropolitan Opera House, the newspaper pointed out the crucial role it plays in New York high society: “The Temple of Wealth has been opened. I mean the new opera house. That concern is formally dedicated to the worship and glorification of money,” the correspondent wrote. Emblematic of all this? Alva Vanderbilt himself, who “led the family in beauty.”
She wore a white satin dress that was so decorated with pearls that it looked like they were covered in them, as well as diamonds on diamonds. The Washington Post I guessed that the jewelry the Vanderbilt women wore that night must have fetched a quarter of a million dollars—about eight million dollars today.
Within three years the Temple of Wealth had won. The Academy of Music, dwarfed by the competition, closed its opera program and resorted to vaudeville shows instead. In 1926 it was demolished to make way for the Con Ed building.
