The San Carlo Grand Opera Company was opened in 1913 by the Italian immigrant Fortune T. Gallo (1878-1870) and sparked the popularization of opera in the United States. Gallo’s success in the pursuit of happiness in the new land must have provided the Italians with particularly personal inspiration considering that Gallo came from the same humble roots as the typical Italian immigrant of the time. He arrived in New York in 1895 aboard the Werra at the age of sixteen with fourteen cents to his name. He found employment as a clerk in an Italian bank on Mulberry Street – the same street as the Societa Libraria Italiana. According to the Immigration History Resource Center, it seems that Gallo “became involved in politics on the local level, amassing contacts and influence within the Italian community,” engraining himself as a local figure. Around 1911 Gallo aided an Italian opera company in financial matters, a duty that ended with Gallo taking over management of the company, which he reinvented by employing singers from the local Italian community. The company debuted with Carmen, the French opera of Italian lyrics, under the new title Fortune Gallo’s San Carlo Opera Company. The company was an Italian-American success, raising not only Gallo’s own name to prominence, but also the musically gifted he had plucked from the community. The triumph prompted Gallo to erect the San Carlo Opera Company Theater on 54th Street in 1927 (this site would eventually come to house the infamous Studio 54), creating a sort of monument to his attainment of the “American dream.”

 

This invitation to view Gallo’s company was, judging by the creases in the flyer and the attached letter, mailed to an Italian-speaking New Yorker on August 20th, 1917. The date, as well as the 44th St address, inform today’s viewer that the company was still in its traveling form; the theater was still a few years from construction. The event was to be help on the 4th of September and invites the recipient to “the benefit for the family of the Red Cross called the Italian Hospital of the Blind and Maimed.” The tickets range in price from fifty cents to twenty-five dollars, the latter of which translates into nearly $500 today. The fact that a fundraiser for the Red Cross was held within the Italian-American community implies a level of success amongst the neighborhood. This letter and invitation prove that by 1917 the Italian-American community had achieved a point of wealth high enough to not only provide the community with musical events, but to also donate the money to a cause. 

 

References 

 

Gallo, fortune, 1878-1970, papers, italian american collection, immigration history research center, university of minnesota. (2012). Retrieved 10/22, 2013, from 

http://www.ihrc.umn.edu/research/vitrage/all/ga/ihrc760.html

 

The New York Times. (1970, March 30,). San carlo opera founder fortune gallo dead at 91. The Palm Beach Post, pp. 8

 

 

Metadata tags: San Carlo Grand Opera Company; Fortune Gallo; 57th Street; New York City; immigration; Italian-American; Red Cross; Italian Hospital of the Blind and Maimed; fundraiser; pursuit of happiness