Napa Valley Opera House
Encyclopedia
The Napa Valley Opera House is a theatre
Theatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...

 in Napa, California
Napa, California
-History:The name Napa was probably derived from the name given to a southern Nappan village whose people shared the area with elk, deer, grizzlies and cougars for many centuries, according to Napa historian Kami Santiago. At the time of the first recorded exploration into Napa Valley in 1823, the...

, USA. It opened on February 13, 1880 with a production of Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan refers to the Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the librettist W. S. Gilbert and the composer Arthur Sullivan . The two men collaborated on fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which H.M.S...

’s HMS Pinafore
HMS Pinafore
H.M.S. Pinafore; or, The Lass That Loved a Sailor is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and a libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It opened at the Opera Comique in London, England, on 25 May 1878 and ran for 571 performances, which was the second-longest run of any musical...

. At the time, the town had a population of 5,000 people. The original owner was George Crowey and Charles Levansaler managed the facility.
The building was designed in the Italianate
Italianate architecture
The Italianate style of architecture was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. In the Italianate style, the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century Italian Renaissance architecture, which had served as inspiration for both Palladianism and...

 style by Newsom and Newsom, renowned architects of the 19th century who also built the Carson Mansion
Carson Mansion
The Carson Mansion is a large Victorian house located in Old Town, Eureka, California. Regarded as one of the highest executions of American Queen Anne Style architecture, the home is "considered the most grand Victorian home in America." It is one of the most written about and photographed...

 in Eureka, California
Eureka, California
Eureka is the principal city and the county seat of Humboldt County, California, United States. Its population was 27,191 at the 2010 census, up from 26,128 at the 2000 census....

. Construction of the theater featuring a stained glass skylight, brass chandeliers and a curved staircase leading to the balcony started in 1879. The building had stores and restaurants on the first floor while the stage occupied the second and third floor. The floor of the auditorium was uniquely constructed with a flat floor in order to accommodate local dances and pageants. The theater had an advertising curtain where local businesses were promoted.

Early Days

During the height of 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...

, the theatre flourished with the presentation of music and variety acts. In 1896 John L. Sullivan
John L. Sullivan
John Lawrence Sullivan , also known as the Boston Strong Boy, was recognized as the first heavyweight champion of gloved boxing from February 7, 1881 to 1892, and is generally recognized as the last heavyweight champion of bare-knuckle boxing under the London Prize Ring rules...

 fought an exhibition match and John Philip Sousa
John Philip Sousa
John Philip Sousa was an American composer and conductor of the late Romantic era, known particularly for American military and patriotic marches. Because of his mastery of march composition, he is known as "The March King" or the "American March King" due to his British counterpart Kenneth J....

 brought his brass band to the venue. In 1905, following her debut in San Francisco, Luisa Tetrazzini
Luisa Tetrazzini
Luisa Tetrazzini was an Italian coloratura soprano of great international fame.Tetrazzini's voice was remarkable for its phenomenal flexibility, thrust, steadiness and thrilling tone...

 performed on stage and in the same year, Jack London
Jack London
John Griffith "Jack" London was an American author, journalist, and social activist. He was a pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction and was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone...

 read from his works.

The theatre closed in 1914 due to damage from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake
1906 San Francisco earthquake
The San Francisco earthquake of 1906 was a major earthquake that struck San Francisco, California, and the coast of Northern California at 5:12 a.m. on Wednesday, April 18, 1906. The most widely accepted estimate for the magnitude of the earthquake is a moment magnitude of 7.9; however, other...

, the decline of vaudeville, and the advent of film. During the following seventy years, the building was used for a variety of commercial purposes.

Revival and Restoration

The structure was added to the National Register of Historic Places
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...

 in 1973 however it was not until 1985 that a non-profit group was set up to restore the theatre. In 1997 Robert Mondavi
Robert Mondavi
Robert Gerald Mondavi was a leading California vineyard operator whose technical improvements and marketing strategies brought worldwide recognition for the wines of the Napa Valley in California. From an early period, Mondavi aggressively promoted labeling wines varietally rather than...

 and his wife Margrit
Margrit Mondavi
Margrit Biever Mondavi is Vice President of Cultural Affairs at Robert Mondavi Winery. A pioneering woman of the modern-day California wine industry, she joined the winery in 1967, pursuing a life-long interest in uniting wine with fine arts, music and culinary artistry...

 issued a challenge grant of $2.2 million to spur the theatre's reconstruction towards the total cost of $13.7 million for the project.

Reopening

The bottom floor of the building was converted to an intimate venue with seating for 200 people. It was named the Cafe Theatre and it opened in June 2002 with a performance by jazz singer Dianne Reeves
Dianne Reeves
Dianne Reeves is an American jazz singer. She currently lives in Denver, Colorado.-Early life:Reeves was born in Detroit, Michigan to a very musical family. Her father, who died when she was two years old, was also a singer. Her mother, Vada Swanson, played trumpet. A cousin, George Duke, is a...

. The larger upstairs venue opened on July 31, 2003 with an opening night performance by Rita Moreno
Rita Moreno
Rita Moreno is a Puerto Rican singer, dancer and actress. She is the only Hispanic and one of the few performers who have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony, and was the second Puerto Rican to win an Academy Award....

followed by a performance of HMS Pinafore, the same show that opened the original venue 123 years prior The upstairs theatre has seating for an audience of 500, modern lighting and sound system with an orchestra pit large enough for 40 musicians. The venue now hosts several headline entertainment acts every month including plays, musical performances and dance.

Current Status

In June 2011, the City Council of Napa voted to grant a $1.5 million forgivable loan to help retire the $3.4 million debt remaining on the facility. Funds for the grant will come from existiing redevelopment funds that had not been committed to other projects. The terms of the loan included several conditions that would benefit the city and its citizens by allowing the city to use the building for up to 24 days per year at cost and requiring the facility to be rented twice per year to nonprofit organizations at a discounted rate. By 2011, the facility was booking over 100 events per year with a goal of increasing this number to 200 events.

In August 2011, the Board of Directors hired Peter Williams as the new Executive / Artistic Director. Peter comes to the Opera House from Yoshi's Oakland where he was the Artistic Director from May 1999 through July 2011.

External links

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