The Gilded Age Season 2 Episode 1 “You Don’t Even Like Opera” on HBO sets up the primary conflict of the season — the Opera Wars — right from the jump. The year is 1883, Bertha Russell (Carrie Coon) has managed to push her way into the highest echelons of New York society, and still she wants more. Specifically, she wants an opera box. When her doting robber baron husband George (Morgan Spector) points out, per the title of the episode, that she doesn’t even like opera, Bertha explains what an opera box really is. It’s not so much a seat to a show, but a doorway to social opportunities. And if Bertha can’t secure a box at the old guard’s choice of opera house, the Academy of Music, she will put her weight (and her wealth) behind the creation of a rival theater, the Metropolitan Opera House.

Yes, The Gilded Age Season 2 will explain how the Metropolitan Opera became the iconic pillar of culture we know today. It’s a juicy story insomuch that the Met really was created by the new money matrons who felt insulted by the Academy patrons’ resistance to include them. And it’s a story so well known amongst opera fans that The Gilded Age‘s production designer Bob Shaw quizzed creator Julian Fellowes on it during his initial job interview.

“When I interviewed for the show many five years ago now, I guess it is, I asked, are you going to get into the Opera Wars? And, you know, I think that may have been part of what indicated that I might have been the person for the job,” Shaw shared during a recent virtual press conference for The Gilded Age Season 2.

So The Gilded Age Season 2 is based on a true story, but how close does the HBO series hedge to history? Potential spoilers ahead, but here’s what you need to know about the true story behind the Opera War that’s unfolding on The Gilded Age Season 2…

As The Gilded Age shows us, the robber barons of the 19th century shook New York society to its core. Before the Age of Industry created a new class of mega-wealthy with last names like Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, and Carnegie, American high society was comprised of various families who had been wealthy since before the American Revolution. These “old money” families looked down on the “new money” folks for their ostentatious ways and rabid ambition. While old money power players like Caroline “Lina” Astor (Donna Murphy) reluctantly socialized with new money ladies like Alva Vanderbilt — the main inspiration behind Bertha Russell — there was one place where they could still exclude them. That was the Academy of Music.

The Academy of Music opened in 1854 on the corner of East 14th street and Irving Place. It was designed to replace the recently shuttered Astor Opera House and to provide a meeting venue for the “uppertens,” or the Upper Ten Thousand richest New Yorkers. It remained the cornerstone of elite culture, even hosting a reception for the Prince of Wales in 1860, until the new money arrived in town.

see also

‘The Gilded Age’ Season 2 Review: HBO’s Lavish Period Drama Triumphs Thanks to One Masterful Twist

Julian Fellowes serves up another fine, fizzy treat. By Meghan O'Keefe @megsokay

Because the private boxes at the Academy were held by families who had invested in the theater from the very beginning, there was literally no room for the new money families to butt in. In 1880, the Metropolitan Opera Association was formed to fund a new theater large enough to accommodate the Goulds, Morgans, and Vanderbilts eager for their own opera boxes.

The original Metropolitan Opera House — or Old Met — opened on October 22, 1883 on 1411 Broadway (between 39th and 40th streets) with a production of Faust starring Swedish soprano Christine Nilsson as Marguerite. Nilsson was a superstar of the time who had played the same role at the Academy just a few years earlier, a fact that American novelist Edith Wharton references, along with the Opera Wars, in the beginning of The Age of Innocence.

The Old Met was nicknamed “The Yellow Brick Brewery” because its industrial facade was considered rather meh. However it soon became a massive success, leading to the Academy of Music’s swift decline. The Academy’s 1886 opera season would be canceled outright and by 1888 Vaudeville acts had taken center stage at the venue.

In 1892, the Old Met was almost ruined by fire and renovations took place to restore it to its original design. More extensive updates and renovations occurred in the 1900s. The Old Met would eventually be razed to the ground in 1967 after the opening of the current Metropolitan Opera House in Lincoln Center.

You’ll have to wait to watch the full season of The Gilded Age to see how closely creator Julian Fellowes follows this history. That said, The Gilded Age Season 2 premiere seems to hint that the HBO show is staying pretty close to the true story. Alva Vanderbilt was a huge proponent of the Met and her fictional stand-in Bertha Russell has made it clear she “intends to win the [opera] war.” Standing in as Bertha’s rival? Caroline Astor. She was indeed one of the Academy’s biggest fighters. Even more interesting? We already have a preview of Christina Nillson (Sarah Joy Miller) as Marguerite in Faust in the The Gilded Age Season 2 premiere.

So besides the fact that Bertha Russell is driving the action instead of real life Gilded Age figure Alva Vanderbilt, HBO’s The Gilded Age has gotten the history pretty darn right.