File:Evening Post (New York), 1833-11-18, p. 2.jpg

Includes a description of the interior of the new Italian Opera House, plus a letter to the public from Italian poet Lorenzo Da Ponte, which reads:

To the Friends of the Opera:

Ladies and Gentleman,–If you will know the affair of the Opera Books of which the public journals have spoken, hear it from me. The love of my poor country, and the hope to please you, induced me, after having introduced the language and the literature of Italy, to make the attempt to naturalize her music here also. Such was my enthusiasm that I calculated neither my labors or expenses, and succeeded at length in producing to you an excellent company. A fatal combination of circumstances, which the Director could neither foresee nor guard against, deprived us of that union of talent, and left him without the means of doing what he desired for compensating my sacrifices. All that he could do, he cheerfully performed; and that was to give me the privilege of selling the books to the opera. The expense of printing and translating, which amounted to more than $1,000, and the closing of the company left me with no more than $500 towards my reimbursement, and with 4500 copies on hand of the different operas. The new director, with no other reason to become my enemy than because I sustained the [?] of Montressor, has denied me the privilege of selling them in the new opera house! To the generous American public, and particularly to my respected pupils, I appeal to know if it be just that an octogenarian poet, who will soon be a nonagenarian, ought to be deprived of this little benefit and left to this hard fate after so many years of faithful devotion to your service.