Bella Alten operatic career included six Metropolitan premiere performances – Adele in Die Fledermaus (1905), Gretel in Hänsel und Gretel (1905), Saffi in Der Zigeunerbaron (1906), Olga in Fedora (1906), Columbina in Le Donne Curiose (1912), and Lisetta in L'amore Medico (1914). In November 1905 when she sang Gretel in the premiere Metropolitan performance of Hänsel und Gretel, the composer Engelbert Humperdinck was in the audience. This opera received 11 performances that first season and was selected by Theodore Roosevelt's wife as a benefit for the Legal Aid Society. Alten sang Gretel in this opera every season she was with the Met
Tristan und Isolde Tristan und Isolde Tristan und Isolde ("Tristan and Isolde", or "Tristan and Isolda", or "Tristran and Ysolt") is an opera, or music drama, in three acts by Richard Wagner to a German libretto by the composer, based largely on the 12th-century romance "Tristan" by Gottfried von Strassburg. It was composed between 1857 and 1859 and premiered at the Königliches Hof- und Nationaltheater in Munich on 10 June 1865 with Hans von Bülow conducting. Wagner referred to the work not as an opera, but called it "eine Handlung" (literally "a drama", "a plot" or "an action"), which was the equivalent of