Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
1989
Abstract
As the last frontier approached an end, nearly every town of any distinction on the Plains boasted an opera house. The term "opera house" was preferred over "theater" since opera was considered a highly respected art form rather than mere popular amusement, even though grand opera itself was seldom actually performed in the Great Plains. What the management offered on its stage depended primarily on the town's proximity to a railroad, which in the late nineteenth century served as the major link to the outside world. Whether or not opera troupes ever sang for local audiences, a town's opera house----on the Plains, as throughout small-town America-was viewed as the crowning achievement in the community's social and cultural life, symbolic of civilization in the most exalted sense. More a monument to local dreams of grandeur than a profitable business, the opera house became a rallying point for civic boosterism, tangible proof that a town had come of age. Civic pride knew few limits. When Hallo's Opera House opened in Lincoln, Nebraska, in 1873, it was proclaimed "the finest west of the Missouri River"-definitely a challenge to more illustrious theaters in San Francisco.
Comments
Published in Great Plains Quarterly [GPQ 9 (Winter 1989): 13-26]. Copyright 1989 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska—Lincoln.