In the autumn of 1900 Richter was installed at Bowdon with his wife and two daughters and opened his first season as the Hallé's regular conductor. After a quick trip to Hamburg to conduct a Berlin Philharmonic concert he began with a Gentlemen's Concert at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester on 15 October, in which Muriel Foster sang three of Elgar's Sea Pictures and Stanford's arrangement of Purcell's Mad Bess. The Gentlemen's Concerts Society had been founded in 1770 and continued until 1920. When Hallé, a refugee from revolution in Paris in 1848, arrived in England he was persuaded by Hermann Leo, a Manchester business man, to come north and revive the city's musical fortunes. He took over the Gentlemen's Concerts in May 1850 and then established his own series. Richter's season of twenty Thursday concerts (the traditional concert night since 1861) began three days later on 18 October. His soloist was the soprano Blanche Marchesi, who sang La Cloche by Saint-Saëns and Leonore's aria ‘Abscheulicher’ from Fidelio. A year earlier she also sang Beethoven's aria at the first concert of the season (19 October 1899), the fourth anniversary of Hallé's death.