tenor. During the tour, which this time also took in Pittsburgh and Indianapolis, Mapleson inaugurated 'Sunday evening concerts', the first half of which was usually a performance of Rossini's Stabat Mater given by Valleria, Cary, Campanini, Galassi and Novara. The London season of 1881 resumed the run of Mefistofele, and the October tour in New York saw Camapanini perform in Lohengrin (with Minnie Hauk, Anna de Belocci, Galessi and Novara) and in Carmen (Hauk, Valleria and del Puente, the original line-up.) In February 1882, the company was at the second great Cincinnati Opera Festival, where Campanini appeared again as Don José (opposite Hauk, del Puente and Louise Dotti). The company also staged Les Huguenots, Faust, Fidelio, Magic Flute, William Tell and Lohengrin. Meanwhile, the company also rehearsed, and then presented, Meyerbeer's L'Africaine, in which Campanini played Vasco da Gama opposite Hauk and Galassi; and in the spring 1882 Ernani, Don Giovanni and Les Huguenots were produced at the New York Academy of Music. Collapse of Mapleson's company On his return to England, Campanini found that the 1882 season was being disrupted by negotiations over the Royal Italian Opera Company, Covent Garden, Ltd—formed to seek the lease of the new Metropolitan Opera House, New York, which was then being built. Campanini was among the large team taken to New York that October by Mapleson, with Commander Herbert Gye as his treasurer, on its behalf. If the plan worked, the Academy (to which Mapleson was still tied by contract) would be closed and a monopoly achieved, in which he would have a share. Despite immense difficulties a successful tour was achieved, but in the process all Mapleson's resources were carved up between the American impresario, Henry Eugene Abbey, who actually obtained the lease, and the Royal Opera Company, which repudiated all its agreements with Mapleson, leaving him with a heavy liability. The best singers of his company, including Nilsson, Marcella Sembrich, Scalchi, Trebelli and Campanini, and all his orchestral and choral resources, were recruited by Abbey. Campanini took the occasion to spend a season in Italy, where his younger brother Cleofonte Campanini was launching a significant career as an operatic conductor. In 1883, at Parma, Campanini sang in a series of performances conducted by his brother, so helping to establish him as conductor of the first rank. When he returned to America in the autumn it was to the completion of the