![]() ![]() The Southwark Theatre, built in 1766, was the first permanent theater in the American colonies. With some notable exceptions, grand opera-the type of large-scale musical theater production that has generally come to define to the term “opera”-was rarely performed in America until the 1820s. The term “opera” has been used to denote several types of musical theater in America over the centuries: grand or serious opera, ballad opera, operetta, and even Ethiopian opera, the latter another name for blackface minstrelsy. The city has long been a key center for opera and holds several important distinctions in opera history, including being the site of the first serious opera performances in America, birthplace of the first major American opera composer, and home to the nation’s oldest continuously operating opera house. ![]() Opera has played an important role in Philadelphia arts and entertainment since the mid-eighteenth century. Philadelphia, the Place that Loves You Back. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |