Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
1989
Abstract
During the last third of the nineteenth century opera houses sprang up across the midwestern frontier in every town and village that had any pretense of becoming a city. Some were elegant structures of three to five stories, constructed with the hope of actually staging grand opera there; others were small theaters, often located on the second floor of a business establishment, with little chance of presenting anything grander than an occasional play; still others were simply community halls that from time to time served the function of a playhouse. All were multi-purposed facilities that became viewed as the social and cultural heart of a town and helped define its sense of community. While "opera house" proved a generic term, applied to a wide variety of architectural types, each served a common purpose-to take advantage of urban frontiersmen's need for camaraderie to enhance the cultural development of a populace whose lives were otherwise shaped mainly by home, church, and school and who had little time for reflective thinking.
Comments
Published in Great Plains Quarterly SUMMER 1989 .Copyright 1989 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska—Lincoln.