Boston Opera House (1980)
Encyclopedia
Movie palace
A movie palace is a term used to refer to the large, elaborately decorated movie theaters built between the 1910s and the 1940s. The late 1920s saw the peak of the movie palace, with hundreds opened every year between 1925 and 1930.There are three building types in particular which can be subsumed...
, it opened on October 29, 1928 and was rededicated in 1980 as a home for the Opera Company of Boston
Opera Company of Boston
The Opera Company of Boston was an American opera company located in Boston, Massachusetts that was active during the late 1950s through the early 1990s. The company was founded by American conductor Sarah Caldwell in 1958 under the name Boston Opera Group. At one time, the touring arm of the...
. Completely restored in 2004, the theater currently serves as the home of the Boston Ballet
Boston Ballet
Boston Ballet, founded in 1963 by E. Virginia Williams, was the first professional repertory ballet company in New England. Boston Ballet’s national and international reputation developed under the leadership of Artistic Directors Violette Verdy , Bruce Marks , and Anna-Marie Holmes...
and also presents touring Broadway shows.
History
The Boston Opera House was originally built as the B.F. Keith Memorial Theatre, a lavish movie theaterMovie theater
A movie theater, cinema, movie house, picture theater, film theater is a venue, usually a building, for viewing motion pictures ....
in the Keith-Albee chain, The Keith's Memorial was designed by the prominent theater architect Thomas W. Lamb
Thomas W. Lamb
Thomas White Lamb was an American architect, born in Scotland. He is noted as one of the foremost designers of theaters and cinemas in the 20th century.-Career:...
in one of his most elaborate designs. The theater was dedicated to the vaudeville pioneer B.F. Keith
Benjamin Franklin Keith
Benjamin Franklin Keith was an American vaudeville theatre owner, highly influential in the evolution of variety theater into vaudeville.-Early years:...
and opened October 29, 1928 presenting first run films along with live vaudeville
Vaudeville
Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...
. By 1929 the theater, now operated by RKO Theatres, had converted to showing only films and remained a leading Boston movie showcase through the 1950s. In the 1970s, the Sack Theaters company owned the theater, operating it under the name Savoy Theater. Sack operated two screens in the house: one in the original auditorium, and a second smaller cinema in the stage space, separated by a masonry wall built across the proscenium.
In 1980, after closing as a movie house, the theater became the home of opera director Sarah Caldwell
Sarah Caldwell
Sarah Caldwell was a notable American opera conductor, impresario, and stage director of opera.- Life :Caldwell was born in Maryville, Missouri, and grew up in Fayetteville, Arkansas. She was a child prodigy and gave public performances on the violin by the time she was ten years old...
's Opera Company of Boston
Opera Company of Boston
The Opera Company of Boston was an American opera company located in Boston, Massachusetts that was active during the late 1950s through the early 1990s. The company was founded by American conductor Sarah Caldwell in 1958 under the name Boston Opera Group. At one time, the touring arm of the...
and was renamed the Boston Opera House. The theater was acquired and renovated by the opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
company with the help of Boston arts patron Susan Timken. After a decade of innovative opera productions at the house, Caldwell's company collapsed due to financial troubles in 1991. Having previously produced opera since 1958 in rented theaters, the company was not financially prepared to cope with the substantial costs of upkeep for the large theater which had previously been poorly maintained for decades. The company's failure left the theater dark and without funds to maintain it.
Unheated, the building fell prey to extensive water damage, severely damaging the electrical system and the decorative plaster interior of the auditorium. The company's costumes, collected for decades and stored under the damaged roof, were lost. In 1996 the former opera company relinquished ownership of the building.
Mayor Thomas Menino
Thomas Menino
Thomas Michael "Tom" Menino is the mayor of Boston, Massachusetts, United States and the city's first Italian-American mayor...
, with the aid of Senator Edward Kennedy
Ted Kennedy
Edward Moore "Ted" Kennedy was a United States Senator from Massachusetts and a member of the Democratic Party. Serving almost 47 years, he was the second most senior member of the Senate when he died and is the fourth-longest-serving senator in United States history...
(whose father, Joseph
Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr.
Joseph Patrick "Joe" Kennedy, Sr. was a prominent American businessman, investor, and government official....
, was the first owner), helped to get the theater landmark status. After a series of failed or delayed development proposals, the Clear Channel
Clear channel
A clear-channel station is an AM band Radio station in North America that has the highest protection from interference from other stations, particularly concerning night-time skywave propagation. Usually known as class A stations since 1982, they are occasionally still referred to by their former...
Company agreed to renovate the theater. The need to enlarge the trapezoidal stage house into the street between buildings provoked a multi-year court fight with the neighboring Tremont on the Commons condominium building, whose concerns with fire safety were eventually overcome with the persuasion of Mayor Menino.
The Boston opera community welcomed the efforts of Mayor Menino and Clear Channel to refurbish the Opera House and the damaged interior was carefully restored in a $38 million renovation. It reopened on July 16, 2004 with the Broadway production of The Lion King
The Lion King (musical)
The Lion King is a musical based on the 1994 Disney animated film of the same name with music by Elton John and lyrics by Tim Rice along with the musical score created by Hans Zimmer with choral arrangements by Lebo M. Directed by Julie Taymor, the musical features actors in animal costumes as well...
. Clear Channel kept the historic theater busy and active with long runs of touring Broadway musicals and pop concerts. While its agreement with city included a clause that opera be produced at least two weeks a year, no opera company has yet returned to make the Opera House its home.
The current owner of the theater is Boston Opera House Ventures, LLC, a partnership of local Boston businessmen Don Law and David Mugar. Its primary tenants are Broadway Across America
Broadway Across America
Broadway Across America is a presenter and producer of live theatrical events in the United States and Canada since 1984. It is currently owned by Key Brand Entertainment , who purchased it from Live Nation in 2008...
and the Boston Ballet
Boston Ballet
Boston Ballet, founded in 1963 by E. Virginia Williams, was the first professional repertory ballet company in New England. Boston Ballet’s national and international reputation developed under the leadership of Artistic Directors Violette Verdy , Bruce Marks , and Anna-Marie Holmes...
. Home to Boston Ballet's annual production of The Nutcracker
The Nutcracker
The Nutcracker is a two-act ballet, originally choreographed by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov with a score by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. The libretto is adapted from E.T.A. Hoffmann's story "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King". It was given its première at the Mariinsky Theatre in St...
since 2005, the theater became the company's permanent home in 2009.