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
Jacobowsky und der Oberst (opera) Jacobowsky und der Oberst (opera) Jacobowsky und der Oberst, Op. 49, ("Jacobovsky and the Colonel") is an opera in four acts by Giselher Klebe who also wrote the libretto based on the 1944 play of the by Franz Werfel. It premiered on 2 November 1965 at the Hamburg State Opera which had commissioned the work. Klebe dedicated it to the then director of the Staatsoper, Rolf Liebermann. Time and place: 1940, Paris, St. Cyrill, Bayonne and Saint-Jean-de-Luz The first American performance was on 27 June 1967 at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, using the same cast, conducted by Matthias Kuntzsch.