Franz Mesmer summers he lived on a splendid estate and became a patron of the arts. In 1768, when court intrigue prevented the performance of "La finta semplice" (K. 51), for which the twelve-year-old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had composed 500 pages of music, Mesmer is said to have arranged a performance in his garden of Mozart's "Bastien und Bastienne" (K. 50), a one-act opera, though Mozart's biographer Nissen found no proof that this performance actually took place. Mozart later immortalized his former patron by including a comedic reference to Mesmer in his opera "Così fan tutte". In 1774, Mesmer produced an "artificial
McCaull Comic Opera Company truly wonderful organization, the like of which we shall probably never know again." McCaull Comic Opera Company McCaull Comic Opera Company, sometimes called the McCaull Opera Comique Company, was founded by Colonel John A. McCaull in 1880. The company produced operetta, comic opera and musical theatre in New York City and on tour in the eastern and midwestern U.S. and Canada until McCaull's death in 1894. It nurtured such stars, in their early careers, as Lillian Russell and DeWolf Hopper. McCaull (1846–1894) was born in Scotland. He served as a colonel in the Confederate Army and later became a lawyer