The Age of Innocence

Publisher Marketing: On a January evening of the early seventies, Christine Nilsson was singing in Faust at the Academy of Music in New York. Though there was already talk of the erection, in remote metropolitan distances "above the Forties," of a new Opera House which should compete in costliness and splendour with those of the great European capitals, the world of fashion was still content to reassemble every winter in the shabby red and gold boxes of the sociable old Academy. Conservatives cherished it for being small and inconvenient, and thus keeping out the "new people" whom New York was beginning to dread and yet be drawn to; and the sentimental clung to it for its historic associations, and the musical for its excellent acoustics, always so problematic a quality in halls built for the hearing of music. It was Madame Nilsson's first appearance that winter, and what the daily press had already learned to describe as "an exceptionally brilliant audience" had gathered to hear her, transported through the slippery, snowy streets in private broughams, in the spacious family landau, or in the humbler but more convenient "Brown coupe." To come to the Opera in a Brown coupe was almost as honourable a way of arriving as in one's own carriage; and departure by the same means had the immense advantage of enabling one (with a playful allusion to democratic principles) to scramble into the first Brown conveyance in the line, instead of waiting till the cold-and-gin congested nose of one's own coachman gleamed under the portico of the Academy. It was one of the great livery-stableman's most masterly intuitions to have discovered that Americans want to get away from amusement even more quickly than they want to get to it. Review Citations: Library Journal 04/01/2008 pg. 123 (EAN 9780307268204, Hardcover) Criticas 06/19/2006 (EAN 9788472232136, Paperback) Wilson Senior High Core Col 01/01/1992 pg. 729 (EAN 9780891905080, Hardcover) Entertainment Weekly 07/05/2013 pg. 99 (EAN 9780140189704, Paperback) School Library Journal 08/01/1998 (EAN 9781556855337, Analog Audio Cassette) Wilson Senior High Core Col 01/01/1992 pg. 729 (EAN 9780684719252, Paperback) Wilson Senior High Core Col 01/01/1992 pg. 729 (EAN 9780684146591, Hardcover) Wilson Senior High Core Col 01/01/1997 pg. 673 (EAN 9780684146591, Hardcover) Wilson Fiction Catalog 01/01/1995 pg. 691 (EAN 9780684146591, Hardcover) Wilson Fiction Catalog 01/01/2014 pg. 1130 (EAN 9780553214505, Mass Market Paperbound) Wilson Senior High Core Col 01/01/2002 pg. 647 (EAN 9780375753206, Paperback) Wilson Fiction Catalog 01/01/2010 pg. 983 (EAN 9780486298030, Paperback) Contributor Bio:  Wharton, Edith Edith Wharton (1862-1937) was raised in New York City in a socially prominent family. She wrote the novels The Age of Innocence, Ethan Frome, Old New York, The Old Maid, and The House of Mirth.