metropolitan opera house philadelphia pa

The Met used the theatre through 1920, after which various opera companies used the house through 1934.įor over five more decades it remained in constant use in turn as a movie theater, a ballroom, a sports venue, mechanic training center, and a church. Hammerstein sold the house to the Metropolitan Opera of New York City in 1910, when it was renamed. It was initially the home of Hammerstein's Philadelphia Opera Company, and called the 'Philadelphia Opera House'. themetphilly.Close ▲ Proscenium Arch in 1917 View from the stage in 1917īuilt over the course of just a few months in 1908, it was the ninth opera house built by impresario Oscar Hammerstein I.

So while the historic Philly Metropolitan Opera House, set to re-open as The Met Philadelphia, a 110,000-square-foot, 3,500-seat, state-of-the-art music venue, of course includes things like “fanciful woodwork decorating the ceiling and stage frame, and a dramatic curtain draping the performance area,” what really matters is that the $56 million restoration went toward restoring a Philly feature to prominence, a Philly favorite, a becoming beacon of the sort only a city with blue collar ethics and white collar capabilities could create. So we can live our lives like always, celebrating the exceptional while embracing the everyday. Or so we can catch a cabaret before we head to Chinatown for some pillowy pockets of vegetables and dough. No, we do it so we can go see hometown boy Kurt Vile rip a few sing-talk songs. It’s down-to-earth.Īnd as cheesy as it sounds, it’s, well … Gritty.Īnd so, unlike most other major cities, when we renovate one of our oldest and most storied buildings, we don’t just do it so it can be a pretty, overproduced monument to all the hoity toity nonsense none of us ever actually want to do.

That puts pomp in its rightful place collecting mothballs at the back of the closet. It’s a culture that doesn’t ask the same question twice. It just so happens that, within the cozy confines of the City of Brotherly Love, we have our own special brand of green-bleedin’, cheese whiz-drenched, liberty first, last and always kind of culture. If there’s one thing Philly knows, it’s culture.

Metropolitan opera house philadelphia pa