On April 7, 1905, the Metropolitan Opera company brought Parsifal to the Grand Opera House on Mission Street, in San Francisco. The San Francisco Call devoted almost its entire front page to the spectacle. Sally Sharp had the society report: "Mrs. Edgar Peixotto, smart white silk gown with square decolletage. In her hair she wore a silver glitter crown, matching the trimming of the gown. Mrs. C. R. Krauthoff was most becomingly gowned in a heavy cream cloth gown on which was let in open work embroidery. Her opera coat was of white cloth with Irish point. Mrs. William Maxwell wore a pink crepe de chine, ruffled and accordion-pleated..." James Crawford monitored the aficionados: "After the second act a longhaired man sipped beer in the barroom and deplored as sacrilege the repeating recalling of Nordica and Burgstaller, because of the shattering effect on the 'reverential atmosphere.'" And Blanche Partington, a notable local figure who had recently been intimate with Jack London and would be the last to hear from Ambrose Bierce, covered the musical angle: "The provincial imagination refuses the task of picturing a performance of Parsifal more loftily-compelling in its spell, more exalted in its splendor, more human in its appeal, than the one given on Mission street yesterday by Herr Conried's people." The only non-operatic news on page 1 was a brief item about Geronimo, who, in old age, was pleading for his freedom. One year later, the Grand Opera House was no more.
Previously: The Parsifal ban broken.
