ON April 7, 1880, The New York Times announced that
$600,000 had been subscribed toward the building of
the Metropolitan Opera House by a group including "the two
Roosevelts, the three Vanderbilts," and numerous Iselins,
Goelets, and others. This group was soon joined by the multi-
millionaires, Ogden Mills, Cyrus Fields, John D. Rockefeller,
and Jay Gould. In Europe opera had long been subsidized by
the state. In America it was underwritten by the rich.

An opera house was built according to what were probably
the most extraordinary architectural specifications ever laid
down for one. Although its function was the projection of
music, the structure was not laid out according to the neces-
sities of acoustics, the stage, and the orchestra pit. It was
constructed around the boxes, and bore, therefore, the same
relation to functional architecture that a suit would bear to
tailoring if one gave a tailor a dozen buttons and told him to
surround them with clothes. But the Metropolitan was the crea-
tion of the new rich of a prodigally wealthy new continent
who were responding to the powerful impulse noted by Veblen
in his Theory of the Leisure Class:

"In order to gain and hold the esteem of men it is not suf-
ficient merely to possess wealth or power. The wealth or power
must be put in evidence, for esteem is awarded only on evi-
dence. And not only does the evidence of wealth serve to im-
press one's importance on others and to keep their sense of
his importance alive and alert, but it is of scarcely less use in
building up and preserving one's self-complacency."

If "esteem is awarded only on evidence," the rich support-
ers of the opera saw to it that they would be much in evidence.

-3-