In April, 1817, there came to Weimar from Vienna a gifted dog, who assisted his master in the presentation of a play of the melodramatic order, entitled "The Dog of Aubri de Mont-Didier." The director of the Grand Ducal Theater at the time was one Wolfgang von Goethe. To him the dog's manager applied for the privilege of producing his edifying piece. Goethe refused permission, and there was danger that the patrons of the playhouse which had echoed to the first sounds of the plays of Schiller and Goethe were to be deprived of the inestimable privilege of seeing a dog dash out of the door of a tavern in which a murder had been committed, pull a bell rope to alarm the village, carry a lantern into the forest, discover the murderer just at the psychological moment, pursue him from rock to rock, capture him at the last, and thus bring about the triumph of justice. But the dog's manager was not thus to be put down. He went with a petition to Fräulein Jagemann (whose portrait in the character of Sappho my readers may still find hanging on a wall of the library at Weimar), and solicited her intervention with the Grand Duke, whose reign Schiller and Goethe made glorious. Fräulein Jagemann was a prima donna and the Grand Duke's mistress. ("The companion of my leisure moments," he called her with quite a pretty euphemism.) In the former capacity she had given Goethe, the director, a great deal of trouble, and in the latter her influence had caused him many an annoyance. It was the dog that broke the camel's back of his patience. Fräulein Jagemann saw an opportunity to get in a blow against her artistic tyrant, and she wheedled Charles Augustus into commanding the production of "The Dog of Aubri de Mont-Didier." The play was given twice, on April 12 and 14, 1817, with uproarious success, of course, and on April 17th Goethe resigned the artistic direction of the Weimar Court Theater. As for Fräulein Jagemann, she eventually got a title and estates as Frau von Heygendorf.
And now for the story of "The Dogs of Donetti: or, the Downfall of the Astor Place Opera House," by Max Maretzek; it must be prefaced by the statement that after Edward Fry had made a lamentable failure of his opera season at which he had the services of Maretzek as conductor, Maretzek became lessee of the house and thus remained for the years 1849 and 1850.