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The Best Show in Town: A Study of Friend, Nebraska and Fairfield, Nebraska Opera Houses
Abstract
In the 1880s and 1890s small towns all over the country began erecting opera houses to hold performances put on by traveling troupes and local talent. The Warren Opera House in Friend, Nebraska, and the Columbian Opera House in Fairfield, Nebraska, facilitated the development of the arts culture in these small towns. The Best Show in Town: A Study of Friend, Nebraska and Fairfield, Nebraska Opera Houses looks at the towns before the opera houses, follows them as they acquired and built the opera houses, highlights a number of performances, investigates how the houses gained an audience, tracks the development of local arts and society, and gives reasons for the eventual demise of the opera house. Around the turn of the century, the opera house was the center of all cultural and societal life in any small town. The comparison of these two opera houses shows each was unique, yet, overall, each brought the town together by providing arts to small towns in the Midwest.
Subject Area
American history|Music|Performing Arts
Recommended Citation
Bloch, Talea CMS, "The Best Show in Town: A Study of Friend, Nebraska and Fairfield, Nebraska Opera Houses" (2014). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI3618585.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI3618585