Detroit Opera House - Location for a PBS Concert DVD

[Gistok]

How was the Opera House selected for this?

Well the fact that WTVS Detroit decided to be the IL VOLO pledge drive host probably didn't hurt. But this past weekend IL VOLO and the Geffen/Unversal folks were at the Detroit Opera House after their Fox Theatre performance. While I wasn't at their $250 per person banquet, I imagine that they likely did some performing while there. The place does sell itself... from an opulence and acoustic perspective.

When the late Luciano Pavoratti and Dame Joan Sutherland christened it back in 1996, they were surprised at the marvelous acoustics. Later New York opera critics [[not known for kindness) were surprised as well when world class opera stars that usually performed at New York and San Francisco, and little else, were making pilgrimages to Detroit to perform here. Andrea Bocelli made his North American opera premier in Werther in the late 1990s.

I attended a Cleveland-San Jose Ballet "Elvis Blue Suede Shoes" tribute about a decade ago... and was horrified to see that they were doing classic ballet to no music [[I hate classic ballet) before they did their Elvis music "schtick". Well sitting in the back row of the DOH balcony you could hear every ballet footstep they made... unbelieveable from such a distance.

When theatre architect C. Howard Crane designed the Capitol Theatre [[DOH) back in 1922, he designed it like an Italian Opera House... and that's just what it "sounds" and with its' Italian Renaissance opulence... "looks" like.

Crane had just finished his Orchestra Hall design 3 years earlier [[1919), and people compare that with Carnegie Hall. No theatre architect had mastered acoustics as well as Crane did. Most American theatre conversions to opera/symphony performance require sound baffles, moveable shells, or other devices... but not Crane's venues. All they had to have done was to have the original plasterwork and finishes restored, and they were worthy of "world class" operatic or symphonic use.

And like this image of the circulation space of the DOH Grand Foyer shows... the place does sell its' self....
http://www.michiganopera.org/plan-your-visit/tours/

As Crane so aptly noted... "if it was pleasing to the eye... it would be pleasing to the ear as well"...

If you've never been there... that is a pity...