impresario Augustus Harris to join Alberto Randegger as conductor of a season in June and July 1887 at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane with a starry international cast and a wide repertoire of Italian, French, Austrian and German operas. Harris took over the management of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in 1888, and appointed Mancinelli its chief conductor, a post he held until 1905. He rapidly improved musical standards. Within weeks of his appointment, a French critic commented, "Under M. Mancinelli's baton, his orchestra has achieved the homogeneity that it lacked at first; now it is worthy of Covent Garden". When Harris and Mancinelli took over, the house was officially known as "The Royal Italian Opera House", and operas of any nationality were sung in Italian – Die Zauberflöte being given as Il flauto magico etc. Gradually the policy was changed so that generally operas were sung in the language in which they were originally written. By the 1890s Mancinelli was conducting performances of Faust and Roméo et Juliette in French and Lohengrin in German, although Die Meistersinger continued to be given in Italian translation until 1899, by which time Mancinelli had largely ceded the German repertoire to guest conductors from Germany, in this case Karl Muck. Among the British premieres conducted by Mancinelli was Verdi's final opera, Falstaff, in May 1894. The production featured alterations that Verdi had made to the score since the world premiere in Milan a year earlier, but some of Mancinelli's tempi raised critical eyebrows. Mancinelli was chief conductor at the Madrid opera, 1887–1893, and at the Metropolitan Opera House (the "Old Met"), New York, 1893–1903. At the latter he conducted mostly Italian or French operas, including some relative rarities such as Semiramide, Orfeo ed Euridice, Lucia di Lammermoor and L'Africaine. In the German repertoire, he conducted Lohengrin, Die Meistersinger and Tannhäuser (all given in Italian, as was the Met's practice at the time). As at Covent Garden, Mancinelli introduced Falstaff, but with a starrier cast than in London, including Victor Maurel in the title role and Emma Eames and Zélie de Lussan as Alice and Nannetta Ford. He conducted the first Met performance of what became the familiar double-bill of Cavalleria rusticana and Pagliacci, although on that occasion the latter was given first. Other operas that received their Met premieres under Mancinelli include The Magic Flute, Don Giovanni and La bohème. Mancinelli conducted