Who began the Metropolitan Opera?
The original Metropolitan Opera House was built by a group of New York industrialists and socially prominent families as a competing opera house to the Academy of Music on Fourteenth Street. The original founders, among whom were the Vanderbilt, Morgan, and Astor families, owned the building of the “old” Met and retained the use of the box seats for themselves. They then rented the house to an impresario or entrepreneurial group who actually assembled a performing company to produce operas in the house. This arrangement was changed several times, most notably in 1933 when the Metropolitan Opera Association was formed as a not-for-profit opera presenter. The Association bought the opera house from the box holders in 1940.
