The Detroit Opera House is a beautifully decorated building located at 1526 Broadway Street in Downtown Detroit, Michigan, within the Grand Circus Park Historic District. This 2,700-seat building is where the Detroit Opera performs and where many other events take place. The theater was originally designed by C. Howard Crane, who also designed other famous theaters in Detroit, such as The Fillmore Detroit, the Fox Theater, and the Detroit Symphony's Orchestra Hall. It opened on January 22, 1922.
The building was restored through a major renovation led by the Detroit-based architectural firm Albert Kahn Associates, Inc. The theater reopened in 1996.
History
Over time, opera performances have taken place in many different places in Detroit. These include the Old Detroit Opera House (1869–1963) at Campus Martius, the Whitney Grand Opera House (Garrick Theatre) at Griswold Street and Michigan Avenue, and the New Detroit Opera House (1886–1928) at Randolph and Monroe Streets.
The Nederlander Organization, a major theatrical producer, started in Detroit in 1912 with a 99-year lease on the Old Detroit Opera House.
The current Detroit Opera House opened in 1922 and was called the Capitol Theatre. It was one of the first performance venues built around Detroit’s Grand Circus Park. When it opened, the Capitol was reported to be the fifth largest movie theater in the world, with seating for about 3,500 people. In 1929, the theater became the Paramount Theater, and in 1934, it was renamed the Broadway Capitol Theater.
For the first few decades of its history, the theater showed movies and live performances, including artists like jazz musicians Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington. Later, the Broadway Capitol changed to only showing movies. After a small restoration in the 1960s, the building became the 3,367-seat Grand Circus Theatre. The theater closed in 1978 after showing second-run movies and adult-themed films for several years. It briefly reopened in 1981 but closed again in 1985 after a small fire caused damage.
In 1988, the Michigan Opera Theatre bought the building and renamed it the Detroit Opera House after a major restoration and stage expansion. The theater reopened in 1996 with a celebration featuring singer Luciano Pavarotti and other famous artists. The Detroit Opera House now has seating for 2,700 people. Since 1996, it has hosted five opera productions, five dance performances from touring groups, and many other musical and comedy events each year.
The Opera House is shown in the 2012 documentary Detropia.