Her Majesty's Opera Company in Kansas City

Her Majesty's Opera Company, piloted by the charismatic James Henry Mapleson, made three visits to Kansas City, Missouri, in the mid-1880s, giving a total of six performances. The first two productions occurred in February 1884, near the end of the British impresario's war with Henry Abbey. During the previous autumn, "Colonel" Mapleson, whose base of operations was the New York Academy of Music, had found himself locked in a duel for operatic supremacy with Abbey's Grand Italian Opera Company, based at the newly minted Metropolitan Opera House.¹ Soon the conflict spread from New York City to the American heartland, as the two operatic commanders maneuvered their forces on a cross-country campaign in the winter of 1884 and exacted tribute, in turn, from the same cities.

In late February the campaign entered a new phase. On the twenty-third, Mapleson's forces were concentrated on the west bank of the Mississippi River at St. Louis. Here, during the week of 18 February, his company had outdrawn Abbey's, whose troupe had visited the city earlier in the month and suffered a humiliating defeat at the box office.² With the news of Abbey's mounting losses in all the newspapers, Mapleson sensed that a bold stroke would solidify the victory that finally seemed within his grasp. A veteran of four U.S. tours, the impresario had never taken his company farther west than the Gateway City he currently occupied. Now he decided to stake his financial fortunes on a march overland to San Francisco. Presuming he could live off the land, he determined to finance his passage west with performances in major cities along his proposed route, Kansas City being the first. It was a risky venture.

Mapleson had entered St. Louis with a corps of 130 people. Seeking to cut his losses, he now detached fifty-eight of these, mostly choristers and a few instrumentalists, and sent them back to New York.³ His scaled-down troupe left St. Louis at 1 A.M. on 24 February, "on one of the most magnificent trains that ever crossed the continent." The opera train consisted of two baggage cars, two day coaches near the front of the train for the chorus, one Pullman sleeper occupied by the orchestra, two Mann boudoir cars (named "La Traviata" and "La Sonnambula") for the principal singers, and one special car, "Lycoming," reserved for Mapleson, soprano Louise Dotti, and soprano Etelka Gerster and her husband. On board were the requisite number of cooks, waiters, and porters, under the supervision of tourist agent W. H. Firth, of the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railway, and Count Zacharoff, manager and one of the proprietors of the Mann Boudoir Car Company of New York City. Superstar Adelina Patti remained in St. Louis, with the agreement that she would rejoin Mapleson in Denver within a few days.⁴

Members of the troupe were issued ornate souvenir programs of the trip, listing the scheduled arrival and departure times for various towns along the route and adorned with the following title page:

Her Majesty's Opera Company
From the
Father of Waters
Through
The Golden Horn
To
The Silver Lake
Via the
Popular Burlington Route,
C. B. & Q. R. R.⁵

Before the troupe could pull out of the St. Louis depot, however, the Fates intervened to undermine the projected timetable. A bridge collapse forced the special train to make a 120-mile detour across southern Iowa. Expected to arrive at 4 P.M., 24 February, Mapleson did not reach Kansas City until 2 A.M., 25 February, the day of the opening performance. Ongoing poker games helped pass the time, as the "party bowled merrily along at the rate of thirty miles per hour." A Kansas City Times reporter lost $11 to Dotti, who feigned a lack of familiarity with cards.⁶ Finding himself among a gaggle of reporters who had boarded the train at Marysville, Missouri, Mapleson issued the following challenge to the territories residing beyond the Mississippi: "This is my first attempt to introduce grand opera in the West . . . . If I...