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Show i FIRST NIGHT OF NEW PUCCINI OPERA. ! The premier performance of "The Girl of the Golden West," by J Giacomo Puccini, the great Italian composer, at the Metropolitan Opera house, in New York, a few nights aero, was a new mile-post marking the progress of music in America. Hitherto all new musical works of the first order have been brought out in Milan, Paris, Ber- lin, London and other music centers of the old world. It has caused considerable bitterness in Italy that an Italian should consent to initiate a great new work anywhere outside of his own country, and especially on this side of the Atlantic. But the American dollars consideration, as usual, won the day, for New York is now the greatest patron of opera among all the cities of the world. "The Girl of the Golden West" is founded on David Belasco's play of the same name. It is really a powerful drama set to music, rather than a musical composition hung on a flimsy framework of plot, and is thus of the modern school. Such a demand was there for seats at the first performance to vhich critics came from all the great cities of Europe that the speculators were able to get $100 apiece for dress circle places. The rale of tickets to the I-Tetropolitan has of late been turned over to the speculators to such an extent in fact that it is difficult for an ordinary ordi-nary person to get in at all, without paying several prices. |