The Academy of Music has been described as "the first successful dedicated opera house in the United States," but it was not the first building in New York designed specifically for opera. That honor goes to the Italian Opera House built in 1833 by Lorenzo Da Ponte as a home for his new New York Opera Company, which lasted only two seasons before the company was disbanded and the theatre sold. Over a decade later, in 1847, the Isaiah Rogers-designed Astor Opera House opened on Astor Place, only to close several years later after a riot provoked by competing performances of "Macbeth" by English actor William Charles Macready at the Opera House and American Edwin Forrest at the nearby Broadway Theatre. By May 1853, the interior had been dismantled and the furnishings sold off, with the shell of the building sold to the Mercantile Library Association.