Barnum’s opera

Levine: “In 1853 Putnam’s Magazine had proposed that P. T. Barnum . . . be named the manager of New York’s Opera. ‘He understands what our public wants, and how to gratify that want. He has no foreign antecedents. He is not bullied by the remembrance that they manage so in London, and so in Naples, and so in St. Petersburg. He comprehends that, with us, the opera need not necessarily be the luxury of the few, but the recreation of the many.’”