Music: Met's First Week

"A major miracle," cracked Variety, and more sedate critics generally agreed: for once, the bejeweled opening-night audience at the Metropolitan Opera actually seemed more interested in the opera than in itself. The reason, as Variety reported, was that the company had "put its best tonsil forward." The chosen 4,000—who had paid a record $59,961 admission, with orchestra seats at $30—heard as fine a Forza del Destino as modern Metgoers could remember.

The critics ladled out the praise generously to the cast, headed by Soprano Zinka Milanov, Tenor Richard Tucker, Baritone Leonard Warren and...