Like many opera ventures in Chicago, both succumbed to financial difficulties within a few years, and it wasn't until 1954 that a lasting company was formed in the city.

His opposition, and difficulties arising from its own management disagreements cost the Metropolitan a deficit of close to $300,000 for the 1908–9 season; whereas Hammerstein made a profit of $229,000.

However, he had considerably less success at his Philadelphia Opera House the following season, and on January 1, 1910, he confided to the press : "The operatic war is suicide.

The company also mounted the United States premieres of Jean Nouguès's Quo vadis (1911), Karl Goldmark's Das Heimchen am Herd (1912), and Alberto Franchetti's Cristoforo Colombo (1913).

Notable performers who sang with the company included (in alphabetical order) Paul Althouse, Marguerite Bériza, Alfredo Costa, Armand Crabbé, Charles Dalmorès, Dora de Phillippe, Enrica Clay Dillon, Jenny Dufau, Hector Dufranne, Minnie Egener, Amy Evans, Dorothy Follis, Mary Garden, Jeanne Gerville-Réache, Orville Harrold, Gustave Huberdeau, Frances Ingram, Lydia Lipkowska, Vanni Marcoux, Carmen Melis, Lucien Muratore, Giovanni Polese, Albert Reiss, Myrna Sharlow, Tarquinia Tarquini, Luisa Tetrazzini, Carolina White, Alice Zeppilli, and Nicola Zerola among others.