The Metropolitan Opera House was an opera house

Opera house

An opera house is a theatre building used for opera performances that consists of a stage, an orchestra pit, audience seating, and backstage facilities for costumes and set building...

 located at 1411 Broadway

Broadway (New York City)

Broadway is a prominent avenue in New York City, United States, which runs through the full length of the borough of Manhattan and continues northward through the Bronx borough before terminating in Westchester County, New York. It is the oldest north–south main thoroughfare in the city, dating to...

 in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

. Opened in 1883 and demolished in 1967, it was the first home of the Metropolitan Opera

Metropolitan Opera

The Metropolitan Opera is an opera company, located in New York City. Originally founded in 1880, the company gave its first performance on October 22, 1883. The company is operated by the non-profit Metropolitan Opera Association, with Peter Gelb as general manager...

 Company.

History

Sometimes referred to as "the old Met", the Metropolitan Opera House opened on October 22, 1883, with a performance of Faust

Faust (opera)

Faust is a drame lyrique in five acts by Charles Gounod to a French libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré from Carré's play Faust et Marguerite, in turn loosely based on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust, Part 1...

. It was located at 1411 Broadway, occupying the whole block between West 39th Street and West 40th Street on the west side of the street in the Garment District

Garment District, Manhattan

The Garment District, also known as the Garment Center, the Fashion District, or the Fashion Center, is a neighborhood located in the Manhattan borough of New York City. The dense concentration of fashion-related uses give the neighborhood, which is generally considered to span between Fifth Avenue...

 of Midtown Manhattan

Midtown Manhattan

Midtown Manhattan, or simply Midtown, is an area of Manhattan, New York City home to world-famous commercial zones such as Rockefeller Center, Broadway, and Times Square...

. Nicknamed "The Yellow Brick Brewery" for its industrial looking exterior, the original Metropolitan Opera House was designed by J. Cleaveland Cady

J. Cleaveland Cady

J Cleaveland Cady was a New York-based architect whose most familiar surviving building is the south range of the American Museum of Natural History on New York's Upper West Side...

. On August 27, 1892 the nine-year-old theater was gutted by fire. The 1892-93 season was canceled while the opera house was rebuilt along its original lines.

In 1903 the interior of the opera house was extensively redesigned by the architects Carrère and Hastings

Carrère and Hastings

Carrère and Hastings, the firm of John Merven Carrère and Thomas Hastings , located in New York City, was one of the outstanding Beaux-Arts architecture firms in the United States. The partnership operated from 1885 until 1911, when Carrère was killed in an automobile accident...

. The familiar golden auditorium with its sunburst chandelier, and curved proscenium

Proscenium

A proscenium theatre is a theatre space whose primary feature is a large frame or arch , which is located at or near the front of the stage...

 inscribed with the names of six composers (Gluck, Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner, Gounod and Verdi), dates from this time. The first of the Met's signature gold damask

Damask

Damask is a reversible figured fabric of silk, wool, linen, cotton, or synthetic fibers, with a pattern formed by weaving. Damasks are woven with one warp yarn and one weft yarn, usually with the pattern in warp-faced satin weave and the ground in weft-faced or sateen weave...

 stage curtains was installed in 1906, completing the look that the old Metropolitan Opera House maintained until its closing.

In 1940 ownership of the opera house shifted from the wealthy families who occupied the theater's boxes to the non-profit Metropolitan Opera Association. At this time the last major change to the auditorium's interior was completed. The second tier of privately held boxes (the "grand tier") was converted into standard row seating. This enlarged the seating capacity and left only the first tier of boxes from the "golden horseshoe" of the opera house's origins as a showplace for New York society.

The Met had a seating capacity of 3,625. In addition, there were 224 standing room places.

While the theater was noted for its excellent acoustics and elegant interior, as early as the 1900s the backstage facilities were deemed to be severely inadequate for a large opera company. The Met's scenery and sets were a regular sight leaning against the building outside on 39th Street where they had to be shifted between performances. Various plans were put forward over the years to build a new home for the company and designs for new opera houses were created by various architects including Joseph Urban

Joseph Urban

Joseph Urban Born in Vienna, Austria, died in New York City, trained as an architect, known also for his theatrical design and his early illustrations of children's books....

. Proposed new locations included Columbus Circle

Columbus Circle

Columbus Circle, named for Christopher Columbus, is a major landmark and point of attraction in the New York City borough of Manhattan, located at the intersection of Eighth Avenue, Broadway, Central Park South , and Central Park West, at the southwest corner of Central Park. It is the point from...

 and what is now Rockefeller Center

Rockefeller Center

Rockefeller Center is a complex of 19 commercial buildings covering between 48th and 51st streets in New York City, United States. Built by the Rockefeller family, it is located in the center of Midtown Manhattan, spanning the area between Fifth Avenue and Sixth Avenue. It was declared a National...

, but none of these plans came to fruition. Only with the development of Lincoln Center on New York's Upper West Side

Upper West Side

The Upper West Side is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan, New York City, that lies between Central Park and the Hudson River and between West 59th Street and West 125th Street...

 did the Met finally have the opportunity to build a modern opera house.

The old Met closed on April 16, 1966 with a sentimental gala farewell performance featuring nearly all of the company's current leading artists. The long time Met star soprano Zinka Milanov

Zinka Milanov

Zinka Milanov was a Croatian-born operatic spinto soprano who had a major career centred on the New York Metropolitan Opera.-Biography:...

 made her last Met appearance that night and among the many invited guests was soprano Anna Case who had made her debut at the house in 1909. Despite a campaign to preserve the theater, it failed to obtain landmark status and the old Met was razed in 1967. It was replaced by a 40-story office tower, 1411 Broadway, intended to provide a steady income for the opera company. Designed by Irwin S. Chanin and completed in 1970, the building was later sold by the Metropolitan Opera and today it is owned by 1411 TrizecHahn-Swig LLC, a partnership of the TrizecHahn and Swig real estate companies. Since 1966, the Metropolitan Opera House

Metropolitan Opera House (Lincoln Center)

The Metropolitan Opera House is an opera house located on Broadway at Lincoln Square in the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. Part of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the theater opened in 1966. It replaced the former Metropolitan Opera House at Broadway and 39th St...

at Lincoln Center has been home to the Metropolitan Opera.

Sources

• Mayer, Martin. The Met: One Hundred Years of Grand Opera. 1983. Thames and Hudson. London.

External links

• Metropolitan Opera House interior photo 1966 LIFE Magazine