Misplaced Pages

#179820

23-685: The Detroit Opera House is an ornate opera house located at 1526 Broadway Street in Downtown Detroit , Michigan , within the Grand Circus Park Historic District . The 2,700-seat venue is the home of productions of the Detroit Opera and a variety of other events. The theatre was originally designed by C. Howard Crane , who created other prominent theatres in Detroit including The Fillmore Detroit ,

46-500: A few other passages, and from the scanty remains of such edifices, we may conclude further that it had an orchestra for the chorus and a stage for the musicians (of less depth than the stage of the theatre), behind which were rooms, which were probably used for keeping the dresses and vessels, and ornaments required for religious processions. It required no shifting scenery but its stage's back-wall seems to have been permanently decorated with paintings. For example, Vitruvius writes that, in

69-405: A religious nature found a special place in the mystery plays performed on cathedral squares. As before, they dealt with sacred subjects, but they were not about worship per se. Secular musical theater also existed, but had a more popular and intimate aspect (see, for example, Adam de la Halle 's Jeu de Robin et Marion ("Play of Robin and Marion"), in the 13th century). At the beginning of

92-445: A tent. Pausanias wrote that the 1st century BC rebuild of it was "said to be a copy of Xerxes ' tent", and that might well have applied to the original building. Plutarch writes that the original building had many seats and many pillars. Modern excavation work has revealed its foundations as 62.40 by 68.60 m (204.7 by 225.1 ft), and it is now known that the roof was supported by 90 internal pillars, in nine rows of ten. From

115-445: A variety of other musical and comedy events. The Opera House is featured prominently in the 2012 documentary Detropia . Opera house While some venues are constructed specifically for operas, other opera houses are part of larger performing arts centers. Indeed, the term opera house is often used as a term of prestige for any large performing arts center. Based on Aristoxenus 's musical system, and paying homage to

138-526: The Opernhaus vorm Salztor in Naumburg in 1701. With the rise of bourgeois and capitalist social forms in the 19th century, European culture moved away from its patronage system to a publicly supported system. Early United States opera houses served a variety of functions in towns and cities, hosting community dances, fairs, plays, and vaudeville shows as well as operas and other musical events. In

161-466: The Suda , intended for the rehearsal of music that was to be sung in the grand theater or, according to Plutarch , for the jury to audition musicians competing for a prize. Ancient theaters provided the ideal conditions, but it was not yet time for opera: the aim was to worship the deities, not to venerate the muses . The subject was religious, it was accompanied by singing and instrumental music. Worship

184-615: The Fox Theater and the Detroit Symphony 's Orchestra Hall . It opened on January 22, 1922. The building underwent an extensive restoration which took place under the control of Detroit-based architectural design firm, Albert Kahn Associates, Inc. It reopened in 1996. Over the years, opera has been presented at a variety of venues in Detroit - the Old Detroit Opera House (1869–1963) at Campus Martius ,

207-476: The Panathenaea , for audiences from the theatre to shelter in case of bad weather and for chorus rehearsals. Few remains of it now survive, but it seems to have been "adorned with stone pillars" (according to Vitruvius and Plutarch ) and square instead of the usual circular shape for an odeon. It was covered with timber made from captured Persian ships, culminating in a square pyramid-like roof resembling

230-679: The 17th and 18th centuries, opera houses were often financed by rulers, nobles, and wealthy people who used patronage of the arts to endorse their political ambition and social position. There was no opera house in London when Henry Purcell was composing and the first opera house in Germany, the Oper am Gänsemarkt , was built in Hamburg in 1678, followed by the Oper am Brühl in Leipzig in 1693, and

253-895: The 17th century, in Italy, singing underwent yet another renewal, with the emergence of Baroque art at the height of the Renaissance . Italy continues to have many working opera houses, such as the Teatro Massimo in Palermo (the biggest in the country), the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples and the Teatro alla Scala in Milan . The Teatro San Cassiano in Venice was the world's first public opera house, inaugurated as such in 1637. In

SECTION 10

#1732773121180

276-483: The 2000s, most opera and theatre companies are supported by funds from a combination of government and institutional grants , ticket sales, and private donations. In the 19th-century United States, many theaters were given the name "opera house", even ones where opera was seldom if ever performed. Opera was viewed as a more respectable art form than theater ; calling a local theater an "opera house" therefore served to elevate it and overcome objections from those who found

299-615: The Acropolis. It was later fully rebuilt by Ariobarzanes II of Cappadocia , using C. and M. Stallius and Menalippus as his architects. The new building was referred to by Pausanias in the 2nd century AD as "the most magnificent of all the structures of the Greeks". He also refers to a "figure of Dionysus worth seeing" in an odeon in Athens, though he does not specify which odeon. [REDACTED]  This article incorporates text from

322-540: The Broadway Capitol converted to a movies-only policy. Following a minor restoration in the 1960s, the building became the 3,367-seat Grand Circus Theatre. The theater closed in 1978 after surviving several years exhibiting second-run and soft-core porn films. It reopened again briefly in 1981, but closed after a minor fire in 1985 caused damage. In 1988, the Michigan Opera Theatre purchased

345-625: The Whitney Grand Opera House (Garrick Theatre) at Griswold Street and Michigan Avenue, and the New Detroit Opera House (1886–1928) at Randolph and Monroe Streets. The Nederlander Organization , a major theatrical producer, began in Detroit with a 99-year lease on the Old Detroit Opera House in 1912. The present Detroit Opera House opened in 1922 and was known as the Capitol Theatre . It was among

368-469: The architects of ancient Greek theater , Vitruvius described, in the 1st century BC, in his treatise De architectura , the ideal acoustics of theaters. He explained the use of brazen vases that Mummius had brought to Rome after having had the theater of Corinth demolished, and as they were probably used in the Theater of Pompey . As wooden theaters were naturally sonorous, these vases, placed between

391-491: The building and dubbed it the Detroit Opera House , after an extensive restoration and stage expansion. The reopening in 1996 was celebrated with a gala event featuring Luciano Pavarotti and other noted artists. The Detroit Opera House is now configured with seating for an audience of 2,700. Since 1996, the opera house has annually hosted five opera productions, five dance productions from touring companies, and

414-766: The first of several performance venues built around Detroit's Grand Circus Park . When it opened, the Capitol was reportedly the fifth largest movie theater in the world, seating about 3,500 people. In 1929, the Capitol Theater became the Paramount Theater, and in 1934, the Broadway Capitol Theater. During the first few decades of its history the theater presented feature films along with live entertainment including artists such as jazz legends Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington . Later

437-499: The seats on the stands, served as resonators in the stone buildings: "By means of this arrangement, the voice, which will come from the stage as from a center, will extend in circles, will strike in the cavities of the vases, and will be made stronger and clearer, according to the relationship of consonance that it will have with one of these vases." The odeon built by Pericles near the Theater of Dionysus in Athens was, according to

460-537: The small theatre at Tralleis (which was doubtless an odeon), Apaturius of Alabanda painted the scaena with a composition so fantastic that he was compelled to remove it, and to correct it according to the truth of natural objects. The original Odeon of Athens was burned down during Sulla 's siege of Athens in the First Mithridatic War in 87–86 BC, either by Sulla himself or by his opponent Aristion for fear that Sulla would use its timbers to storm

483-510: The theater morally objectionable. Notes Sources Odeon of Pericles The Odeon of Athens or Odeon of Pericles in Athens was a 4,000 m (43,000 sq ft) odeon , built at the southeastern foot of the Acropolis in Athens , next to the entrance to the Theatre of Dionysus . It was first built in 435 BC by Pericles for the musical contests that formed part of

SECTION 20

#1732773121180

506-523: Was completely renewed. The Jeu de Daniel ("Play of Daniel") was a sung play, characteristic of the medieval Renaissance of the 12th century . The subject, taken from the biblical Book of Daniel , deals with Israel's captivity in Babylon . The play was written and performed by students of the Episcopal School of Beauvais , located in northern France. In the 15th century, sung theater of

529-644: Was public, and the audience was made up of citizens as well as other categories of the population. Four centuries later, the Church abandoned spectacles as practiced in Antiquity. Histrions , representative of Greco-Roman civilization , gradually disappeared. The Middle Ages saw the abandonment of ancient theaters, which were transformed into gigantic stone quarries , like many other ancient buildings, both public or private. Music still had its place in worship. It continued to bring audiences together, but its content

#179820