On June 6, 1861, spectators filled Albany's Green Street Theatre to capacity. Flickering gaslights cast a golden glow throughout the evening, allowing spectators to greet friends and mingle. When the curtain lifted, a row of calcium lights – flames of nitrogen gas reflecting off sheets of lime – outlined the stage with a bright blaze of white light. Young men – mechanics, clerks, journalists, tradesmen – and a few women crowded the pit while others sat on low-backed wooden benches in the gallery behind them. Peanut shells crunched under the feet of the patrons, and the smell of freshly roasted nuts penetrated the warm, sticky air, briefly masking competing odors of beer, tobacco, and unwashed bodies. The number of people attending that night forced some spectators to seek refuge along the edges of the auditorium, behind the seating, and against the back wall of the balcony, despite the anticipated three-hour length of the performance.

They came to see Menken perform the title character: Mazeppa, the rebel prince whom they had never seen played by a woman. Many of them had probably seen Mazeppa; or, The Wild Horse of Tartary before; the play had proven itself to be a crowd-pleaser over the past thirty years with its sword fights, battle scenes, and horse tricks. But this time advertisements claimed that Menken would do what no actor had attempted: At the end of the first act she would allow herself to be tied to the back of a horse and sent up a mountain of scaffolding that rose from the stage floor into the rafters.