Metropolitan Opera House (Iowa Falls, Iowa)
Encyclopedia
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...
in Iowa Falls, Iowa
Iowa Falls, Iowa
Iowa Falls is a city in Hardin County, Iowa, United States. Iowa Falls is the home of Ellsworth Community College. It is also a regional transportation center, located along U.S. Routes 20 and 65 and the Canadian National and Union Pacific Railroads. The population was 5,193 at the 2000 census. A...
and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...
. Commissioned by Eugene S. Ellsworth, the house was designed and built in 1899. Three stories tall, the MOH was designed in the style of Italian Renaissance
Italian Renaissance
The Italian Renaissance began the opening phase of the Renaissance, a period of great cultural change and achievement in Europe that spanned the period from the end of the 13th century to about 1600, marking the transition between Medieval and Early Modern Europe...
which was currently in vogue in late 19th-century America. The ground floor of the original theater once sat 441 people and the balcony seated another 390. The original stage of the house had a width of 66 feet and a depth of 30 feet with large wings extending to each side. Offices existed on the second and third floors at the front of the building. Much of the house's interior has been altered to accommodate the movie theatre that now operates there. However, a ballroom on the third floor is still largely intact.
The Metropolitan Opera House opened with its first performance on December 27, 1899 with an audience numbering over 800 people, an occurrence which was later proclaimed in the local newspaper as the "biggest social event in the history of Iowa Falls." During its early years the house staged opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
s, such as Charles Gounod
Charles Gounod
Charles-François Gounod was a French composer, known for his Ave Maria as well as his operas Faust and Roméo et Juliette.-Biography:...
's 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...
, and plays, like Uncle Tom's Cabin
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852, the novel "helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War", according to Will Kaufman....
and The Merchant of Venice
The Merchant of Venice
The Merchant of Venice is a tragic comedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1596 and 1598. Though classified as a comedy in the First Folio and sharing certain aspects with Shakespeare's other romantic comedies, the play is perhaps most remembered for its dramatic...
. The theatre garnered a reputation in the area as the "big time theater in a little town" and drew patrons from neighboring towns and cities into Iowa Falls. The house was also host to several notable artists, including Otis Skinner
Otis Skinner
Otis Skinner was an American actor.He was the son of a Universalist minister; his brother, Charles Montgomery Skinner, was a noted journalist and critic in New York. Skinner was educated in Hartford, Connecticut, with an eye towards a career in commerce. A visit to the theater left him stage-struck...
, Walker Whiteside
Walker Whiteside
Walker Whiteside was an American actor who had played Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Shylock while still in his teens.-Early life:...
and John Phillip Sousa and his band. In the 1920s, the venue was used both for vaudeville
Vaudeville
Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...
performances and as a cinema house for silent movie
Silent Movie
Silent Movie is a 1976 satirical comedy film co-written, directed by, and starring Mel Brooks, and released by 20th Century Fox on June 17, 1976...
s. In 1930, the house's first sound system was installed. Between 1930-1954, the house continued to be used to present films, now with sound, and as a venue for the concerts and drama and dance productions of Ellsworth College and Iowa Falls High School. Today the house is still used as a movie theatre under the ownership of BigTime Cinema, a movie theatre chain in the states of Iowa
Iowa
Iowa is a state located in the Midwestern United States, an area often referred to as the "American Heartland". It derives its name from the Ioway people, one of the many American Indian tribes that occupied the state at the time of European exploration. Iowa was a part of the French colony of New...
and Missouri
Missouri
Missouri is a US state located in the Midwestern United States, bordered by Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. With a 2010 population of 5,988,927, Missouri is the 18th most populous state in the nation and the fifth most populous in the Midwest. It...
. The movie theatre's previous owner, Bob Fridley, significantly renovated the house in 1997.