History
It was built in 1903 and designed by Frank Matcham, one of Britain's finest theatre architects. He also designed two famous London theatres: the London Palladium (1910) and the London Coliseum (1904).
The Opera House ran as a successful theatre, receiving touring companies until 1927, when it was turned into a cinema. Silent films were shown until 1932 when the theatre was wired for sound and could present ‘talkies’. The Opera House also became the venue for an annual summer theatre festival from 1936 to 1942, two of them in conjunction with Lillian Bayliss and her London-based Old Vic company. After the Second World War, the theatre continued to serve as a cinema, gradually falling into disrepair until it was closed in 1976 and renovated in 1979.
Since then, the Opera House has been a full-time venue for stage productions, presenting approximately 450 performances per year, including opera, dance, musical theatre, pantomime, comedy, drama, children’s shows and concerts. The theatre is staffed by a small full-time technical crew for all the backstage work, setting up all the shows and artists that appear. Volunteers from the local community are also employed for front-of-house duties including bar work and ushers.
Read more about this topic: Buxton Opera House
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“A poet’s object is not to tell what actually happened but what could or would happen either probably or inevitably.... For this reason poetry is something more scientific and serious than history, because poetry tends to give general truths while history gives particular facts.”
—Aristotle (384–323 B.C.)
“In history the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty;—and you have Pericles and Phidias,—and not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and in the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astrigency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“There is no example in history of a revolutionary movement involving such gigantic masses being so bloodless.”
—Leon Trotsky (1879–1940)