Times said: Harris continued with his policy of starry casts, impressive staging and texts sung in their original language – a practice that became known as "the cosmopolitan system". By 1892, when he engaged Gustav Mahler to conduct the British premiere of The Ring, it had become the norm at Covent Garden, and has remained so (with the exception of the late 1940s and 1950s, when opera in English was the general house policy). To reflect the new reality the "Italian" was dropped from the name of the opera house in the same year. When there was no room in Covent Garden's schedules for a new work that he favoured, he leased another theatre for the purpose. At Covent Garden, as earlier at Drury Lane, Harris was keen to present new works; his 1894 season included the world premiere of Massenet's La Navarraise and the British premieres of Massenet's Werther, Puccini's Manon Lescaut and Verdi's Falstaff. He made the auditorium of the Royal Opera House both brighter and darker: he introduced electric lighting in 1892, and instituted the practice of lowering the house lights completely during performances, to the chagrin of those in the expensive seats who were used to directing their attention to their fellow operagoers as much as to the opera. Palace Theatre of Varieties Harris played a part in the brief story of Richard D'Oyly Carte's abortive project The Royal English Opera House. Carte commissioned the theatre and opened it in 1891 with Arthur Sullivan's romantic opera Ivanhoe, which ran exceptionally well (161 performances); he followed it with André Messager's The Basoche, for which Harris adapted the original French dialogue into English. Despite enthusiastic reviews The Basoche ran for only 61 performances. Having failed to commission an opera to replace it, Carte eventually sold the theatre, at a loss, to a company formed by Harris to run it as a music hall. It re-opened in December 1892, after some remodelling, as The Palace Theatre of Varieties. After running it for a year, Harris appointed the veteran Charles Morton – "the father of the halls" – as manager. Morton, though more than thirty years his senior, continued to run the Palace successfully for eight years after Harris's death. Last years In the 1890s Harris maintained his various activities at an unflagging pace. At Covent Garden he presented the debuts of Emma Eames (1891) and Emma Calvé (1892), and