Metropolitan Opera Company

Foremost opera company in the USA, founded in 1883 in New York City. The Metropolitan Opera House (opened in 1883) was demolished in 1966, and the company moved to the new Metropolitan Opera House at the Lincoln Center.

The first production of the Metropolitan Opera House Co., Ltd, was Gounod's Faust. Highlights of its history include: the ‘Golden Age’ 1898-1903, when artists from all over the world appeared at the ‘Met’; the 1903 New York debut of Enrico Caruso; the 1955 appearance of Marian Anderson, the first black to sing in a lead role there, in Verdi's Un ballo in maschera; and the first live telecast of a Metropolitan Opera production, Puccini's La Bohème/Bohemian Life, featuring Renata Scotto and Luciano Pavarotti, 1977.