Verdi at the Golden Gate: Opera and San Francisco in the Gold Rush Years - George Martin - Google Books

https://books.google.de/books?id=kPWtE0eFdFcC&pg=PA296&lpg=PA296&dq=%22Lucy+Escott%22+1895&source=bl&ots=WfkWH5gHn6&sig=azdD-Kzn

Opera is a fragile, complex art, but it flourished extravagantly in San Francisco during the Gold Rush years, a time when daily life in the city was filled with gambling, duels, murder, and suicide. In the history of the United States there has never been…