Milwaukeeans looking to enjoy a Sunday night out had a few options on March 5, 1882. They could have gone over to the Academy of Music, which billed itself as "the only legitimate theater in the city," for the 8 p.m. performance of Audran's "The Mascotte!" For 25¢ they could enjoy 60 artists, including a full chorus of 30 fresh voices and an enlarged orchestra -- all part of Hess' Acme (no kidding!) Opera Co.

Or, you could have headed to Nunnemacher's Grand Opera House, which occupied the site of the Pabst Theatre, until it burned to the ground in 1893. You would have been among just a few hundred people who heard acclaimed -- and controversial -- Irish author Oscar Wilde speak. Wilde, a shameless self-promoter, was in Milwaukee as part of a months-long lecture tour of the United States. His "The Picture of Dorian Gray" was still nine years off and the success of "The Importance of Being Earnest" wouldn't come for another 13 years.

But Wilde, who was born in Dublin in 1854, was by no means unknown. As a proponent of Aestheticism, which lauded the beautiful works of nature over the accomplishments of man, Wilde was destined to be controversial. But that also had a lot to do with his much-discussed "effeminate" poses, long hair and outlandish clothing.

In fact, the Milwaukee Sentinel, in an interview with Wilde that was conducted the morning of his appearance (he had arrived at 11:30 p.m. the night before and checked into the Plankinton House hotel on Broadway and Michigan), couldn't help but poke some fun. Readers knew what to expect from the interview thanks to an accompanying line drawing of a limp-wristed dandy clasping a flower and the headlines:

"Arrival in Milwaukee of the Distinguished Apostle of the Beautiful."

"How the Sunflower-and-Lily Young Man Looked and What He Had to Say."

"Long on Hair and Short on Breeches the Only Striking Peculiarities."

The next day's review of the 26-year-old Wilde's event packed a bit more punch, noting the small turnout and the audience's early departure and taking some shots.

"The eccentric genius who is in search of 'The Beautiful' and the Ducat, delivered a lecture on 'Decorative Art' a the Opera House last evening. The audience was distressingly small, not more than 200 or 300 people having gathered to hear the muchly-advertised patron saint of the sunflower and the lily followers. Probably one third of the audience left before the conclusion of the lecture, which was delivered in one hour and ten minutes."

In addition to the unnamed reviewer's suggestion in his lead that Wilde was driven by the dollar (Ducat) as much as by artistic considerations, he (or she, although it was 1882, wasn't it?) spent an inordinate number of column-inches describing Wilde's appearance and manners.