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34-528: The Metropolitan Opera House is a historic opera house and current pop concert venue located in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania . It has been used for many different purposes over its history. Now known as The Met , the theatre reopened in December 2018, after a complete renovation, as a concert venue. It is managed by Live Nation Philadelphia . Built over the course of just a few months in 1908, it

68-505: A Bob Dylan concert. One year later Sirius XM radio hosted at the Met the smallest Phish performance in two decades on December 3, 2019. 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

102-424: A movie theater , a ballroom , a sports venue, mechanic training center, and a church . The building then fell into serious disrepair and was unused and vacant from 1988 until 1995, when it became the "Holy Ghost Headquarters Revival Center at the Met". The church stabilized much of the building, eventually paving the way for the latest renovation of the opera house in 2017–2018. The opera house has been included in

136-537: A crowd of 6,000 supporters, including 200 active members of the Philadelphia Police Department with German Nazi sympathies, filled the Met to hear the radical anti-Jewish preacher Father Charles Coughlin commission John F. Cassidy to lead his new pro-fascist Christian Front organization. In the late 1930s, the MOH became a ballroom and in the 1940s a sports promoter bought the venue, covered

170-565: A lease as a concert promoter and tenant for the building and they and the owners announced a $ 45-million renovation to bring the theatre back as a mixed use concert venue. It will also continue as the home of the Holy Ghost Church. With restoration work led by Atkin Olshin Schade Architects and Domus as the general contractor, the completely renovated Met Philadelphia reopened to the public on December 3, 2018, with

204-405: 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

238-495: A year after the Wall Street Crash of 1929 . The PCOC performed all of their productions at Philadelphia's Metropolitan Opera House (MOH) up through the spring of 1928. The company's first performance was of Giacomo Puccini 's La bohème on November 6, 1924 with Anna Fitziu as Mimì, Romeo Boscacci as Rodolfo, Alfredo Gondolfi as Marcello, Emily Stokes Hagar as Musetta, and Smallens conducting. Occasionally

272-526: 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

306-466: 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

340-600: The Chicago Grand Opera Company on May 5, 1934. By 1920, while still being used as a performing venue for operas, the house began presenting silent films to the public. It remained a cinema venue after the MOH stopped presenting operas. In April 1922, J.F Rutherford gave the first radio broadcast from the Metropolitan Opera House to an estimated 50,000 people on the discourse "Millions Now Living Will never Die". On July 14, 1939,

374-649: The National Register of Historic Places since 1972. The Metropolitan Opera House was built by Hammerstein to be the home of his then new opera company, the Philadelphia Opera Company (POC). Hammerstein hired architect William H. McElfatrick of the firm J.B. McElfatrick & Son to design the opera house in 1907, and construction began the following year. When it opened as the Philadelphia Opera House in 1908, it

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408-565: The Philadelphia La Scala Opera Company , two companies that primarily performed at the Academy of Music, also occasionally performed there during the 1920s and 1930s. The MOH was also host to many traveling productions by opera companies from other cities. The last opera production mounted at the MOH was a double billing of Cavalleria rusticana and Pagliacci under the baton of Aldo Franchetti, presented by

442-679: 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

476-895: 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

510-483: 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

544-572: The Academy up until financial problems forced the company to disband in 1930. With the onset of the Great Depression , the PCOC, like many other American arts organizations, began experiencing serious financial concerns. Although numerous efforts to assuage the company's problems were made, the company was forced to declare bankruptcy in April 1930. One last effort to revive the company was made

578-500: The Met for several of its recordings. After 1988 however church membership decreased and the building began to deteriorate. The building would eventually be declared imminently dangerous by city building authorities but was saved from demolition in 1996 when it was purchased by the Reverend Mark Hatcher for his Holy Ghost Headquarters Revival Center. Between 1997 and 2013 the church spent approximately $ 5M USD to stabilize

612-614: The New York Metropolitan Opera. The theater was then renamed the Metropolitan Opera House. The Met, which had annually toured to Philadelphia with performances at the Academy of Music , had been the POC's biggest competition for opera audiences. In spite of two sold-out seasons of grand opera for the POC, Hammerstein ran into debt and had to sell his highly popular opera house to his competitor. The Met's first production at

646-469: 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

680-460: The autumn of 1928 the company began performing at the Academy of Music instead of the MOH. Their first performance at the Academy was Giuseppe Verdi 's Aida on October 18, 1928 with Emily Roosevelt in the title role, Paul Althouse as Radamès, Julia Claussen as Amneris, Reinhold Schmidt as the King of Egypt, Nelson Eddy as Amonasro, and Smallens conducting. The PCOC continued to perform at

714-411: The building, alleging that Blumenfeld misled the congregation regarding his finances and "...never restored the Met as promised. Rather he gutted the auditorium the church had worked so hard to renovate, effectively displacing the church and left the unfinished project in shambles." In May 2017, Blumenfeld and Holy Ghost Church had reached a joint ownership agreement. At the same time, Live Nation signed

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748-472: The building. In October 2012, Holy Ghost Headquarters Church and developer Eric Blumenfeld entered into a development partnership with Blumenfeld eventually purchasing the building for $ 1. Some interior demolition work began in September 2013 but was halted because the developer had not obtained necessary permits. In February 2015, the church filed a lawsuit against the developer over the lack of progress on

782-468: The company presented more rarely heard works, including the American premieres of Erich Wolfgang Korngold 's Der Ring des Polykrates (February 10, 1927), Manuel de Falla 's El amor brujo (March 17, 1927), Richard Strauss 's Feuersnot (December 2, 1927), and Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos (November 1, 1928). However, the company mainly presented works from the standard opera repertory. In

816-464: The house for its productions through March 1910. The company's last performance at the house was of Giuseppe Verdi 's Rigoletto on March 23, 1910, with Giovanni Polese in the title role, Lalla Miranda as Gilda, Orville Harrold as the Duke of Mantua, and Giuseppe Sturani conducting. On April 26, 1910, Arthur Hammerstein , with his father's power of attorney, sold the Philadelphia Opera House to

850-546: The orchestra pit with flooring so basketball, wrestling, and boxing could take place. This venture closed after attendance waned following a decline in the quality of the surrounding neighborhood. In 1954, the building was sold and became a church. In 1954 the building was purchased by the Rev. Theo Jones who then had a large congregation. During this time the Philadelphia Orchestra chose the superior acoustics of

884-443: The renamed theater was on December 13, 1910. The Met performed regularly at the MOH for the next decade, giving well over a hundred performances at the house. The Metropolitan Opera's last performance at the MOH was Eugene Onegin on April 20, 1920, with Giuseppe de Luca in the title role and Claudia Muzio as Tatyana. While the Met owned the MOH, it also rented the venue to other opera companies for their performances. The theater

918-499: 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

952-473: The theater morally objectionable. Notes Sources Philadelphia Civic Opera Company The Philadelphia Civic Opera Company (PCOC) was an American opera company located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania , that was actively performing between 1924 and 1930. Founded by Philadelphia socialite Mrs. Henry M. Tracy, the company was established partially through funds provided by the city of Philadelphia and its then-mayor, W. Freeland Kendrick . The company

986-523: 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

1020-434: Was led by Artistic Director Alexander Smallens . Tracy served as the company's President and ran the business side of the organization while Smallens served as the company's primary conductor and made all of the artistic decisions. W. Attmore Robinson was later brought in to help Smallens with some of the artistic direction. The company performed between 10 and 15 operas every year during an annual season until it went bankrupt

1054-644: 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

Metropolitan Opera House (Philadelphia) - Misplaced Pages Continue

1088-590: Was the home of the Philadelphia-Chicago Grand Opera Company between 1911 and 1914. The Philadelphia Operatic Society also used the house during and after the Met's tenure, through 1924. After the Met returned to performing at the Academy of Music for the 1920-1921 opera season, the MOH became the home of the Philadelphia Civic Opera Company until 1928. The Philadelphia Grand Opera Company and

1122-442: Was the largest theater of its kind in the world, seating more than 4,000 people. The opera house officially opened on November 17, 1908, with a production of Georges Bizet 's Carmen for the opening of the POC's first season. The cast included Maria Labia in the title role, Charles Dalmorès as Don José, Andrés de Segurola as Escamillo, Alice Zeppilli as Micaëla, and Cleofonte Campanini conducting. The POC continued to use

1156-530: Was the ninth opera house built by impresario Oscar Hammerstein I . It was initially the home of Hammerstein's Philadelphia Opera Company , and called the "Philadelphia Opera House". Hammerstein sold the house to the Metropolitan Opera of New York City in 1910, when it was renamed. The Met used the theatre through 1920, after which various opera companies used the house through 1934. For over five more decades it remained in constant use in turn as

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