Click here for a list of Opera Companies in Kansas City
Opera is often assumed to be a rather rare and unique event and, therefore, it will probably amaze many in Kansas City to learn that our city is well into its second century of devoted opera going. We are greatly indebted to Dr. Milford Crabb for the research done on Opera in his History of Music in Kansas City, 1900-1965, which gives us so many interesting facts on our early days. It is more than apparent that our forebears in Kansas City had not been without the splendid variety as a popular form of entertainment.
Kansas City's Operatic premier occurred over 100 years ago at Franks Hall located at 5th and Main. It was "sometime" in 1868, the company was the Fairies Great Comic Opera Company, but, alas, we have not been able to find any record of the production. Colonel Kersey Coates opened his Opera House in October 1870 but it was not until August of 1872 that he engaged Aimee Boulette and her French Opera Bouffe Troupe for performances of three popular Offenbach operas one of which was La Perichole. This opera which was first heard in Paris in 1868, interestingly enough will have centennial celebration performances this Fall when the Kansas City Lyric Theater produces its 1973 season at the Capri Theatre.
Although the August weather did not co-operate with Colonel Coates 1872 premier of La Perichole, undaunted, in 1873/1874 he engaged Mrs. James Oates Comic Opera Company for six opera performances. For the 1878/1879 season he brought to Kansas City four different companies, who presented fifteen different operas including the first Gilbert and Sullivan, H.M.S. Pinafore. By 1881/1882 he raised the ante to seven companies and thirty eight operas and it was during this season that Kansas City opera lovers heard Aida for the first time.
In 1883 the Gillis Opera House at 5th and Main was completed, so that between the Gillis Opera House and the Colonel Kersey Coates Opera House one could see ten companies with forty different operas. By 1884 the Music Hall had been completed at 9th and Broadway and the opera lovers of Kansas City were being treated to 45 different operas given by 13 different companies. With all these additional theaters being completed the result was an opera bonanza and the beginning of the "Golden Age" of opera in Kansas City. The Warder Grand Opera House opened in the early 1880's but had a short life as it burned in 1887.On its site was built the Auditorium Theater at 7th and Walnut where their opening production was Carmen Up To Date. Who wouldn't like to see the rerun of this first performance! Fire unfortunately destroyed the Coates Opera House on January 31, 1901, but two new theaters, the Willis Wood and the Convention Hall were in business.
By the beginning of the 20th Century, the south city limits expanded to Brush Creek and the population had zoomed to about 165,000. Opera was going strong in four theaters. In 1904, Ottley Cranston came to the Willis Wood with the Henry Savage Opera Company in a performance of Parsifal, returning again the next year to present Die Walküre.
In 1905, Kansas City was treated to a performance of the great Caruso for the first time when Heinrich Conrad Grand Opera Company presented Lohengrin at the Convention Hall. In 1906, John Cowan, established the Kansas City Conservatory of Music at 914 Walnut, the Shubert Theater opened and Walter Fritschy inaugurated his concert series in a dance hall between 10th and 11th on Broadway. Later he moved to the Grand Avenue Temple, then the Schubert Theater, on to the Arrarat Temple (now the Capri Theater) and finally the Music Hall.
By 1910 Cowan's Conservatory was well established, and he invited Ottley Cranston to become the head of his voice department. Cranston had been so well received in Kansas City that he accepted. He subsequently formed the Kansas City Grand Opera Company and later started his own school at 10th and Grand. A little while later in 1914, Charles Horner established the Horner Institute of Fine Arts at 30th and Troost.
Thus, in Kansas City, each season brought at least twenty to thirty operas. It was not an uncommon occurrence that two different opera companies would perform the same opera in two theaters during the same week. During this period of about forty years when opera was so popular in Kansas City, the European and Eastern companies rode special cars, and in many cases, had a special train carrying the cast, the scenery, the stagehands, the conductor and the basic orchestra. They could leave New York and travel west making the principal cities enroute and pick up other cities on the return trip.
It is also interesting to find that an opera first performed in Europe would appear in Kansas City during the year it premiered or the following year. Copyrights didn't seem to mean much in the 1880's. However, many of those operas performed in the '70's and '80's are now forgotten or unknown. Anyone who knows the composers of Amorita (produced in Kansas City in 1887), The Black Hussar (KC 1885), Tarintza (KC 1873) or who did what to Carmen Up To Date, please come forward.
Since the present day Kansas City Lyric Theater company is committed to presenting opera in English, it would be interesting to know if the operas in this period were in English. So far, in all the reviews found, the critic doesn't mention the language so we may assume that they were in the original language. However, the title of the opera was almost always shown in English. Planquette's Les Cloches de Dorneville, for instance, wins the prize for the most performances in the period 1875 to 1912, 30 times, but always under the title of The Chimes of Normandy or The Bells of Corneville. Gounod's Faust was runner up, not counting a Faust Up To Date in 1890.
Opera in Kansas City never recovered after World War I. The European companies which had toured America had been disrupted by the war. The artist's agent required a fee, radio was the "in" thing, and the "flicks" had become movies. These and many other reasons made opera tours economically unfeasible. Music and opera were kept alive, however, by the now well established Fritschy series, and the Cranston Opera Company. In 1924 the Horner Institute and Cowan's Conservatory of Music merged for greater strength and they began to present opera.
In February, 1930, the Chamber of Commerce to prove that "Everything was up to date in Kansas City" engaged the German Grand Opera company under the personal direction of s. Hurok for a four-night operafest in the Convention Hall. A fourteen car special train with cast, stagehands and scenery arrived in Kansas City on February 16th and a complete replica of Wagner's Bayreuth stage was built. Then on the nights of February 17, 18, 19 and 20 Richard Wagner's Der Ring Des Neblungen was given to an audience of 3,000 and 3,500, a surprising of Wagnerites for Kansas City. It was such a success that the Chamber of Commerce brought the company back in 1931 to perform Tristan and Isolde and The Flying Dutchman.
In the early '30's Charles Horner retired and Ottley Cranston passed away. The Horner Conservatory was re-organized and renamed The Conservatory of Music of Kansas City, a variation of the original Cowan name. Fritschy and the Conservatory produced two or three operas a year during this period, and about the time the young Music Department of the University of Kansas City was ready to try its wings producing opera, World War II was upon us. During the war years it was only Walter Fritschy who managed to give Kansas City opera lovers about one opera a year. The schools could do nothing, for how many operas do you know for "all girl" casts.
When the "boys came marching home" in the late forties, both the University of the Conservatory produced one or two operas each year, and the veteran Mr. Fritschy one. Mrs. Ruth Seufert established her Celebrity Series in 1946 and Hans Schwieger, as conductor of the Philharmonic brought a few productions of opera for Kansas City lovers. But until the Kansas City Lyric Theater opened in 1958, Kansas City was lucky to have 6 opera performances a year. The Lyric currently produces four different operas in a repertory season at the Capri Theatre, an old renovated Masonic auditorium. This year their repertoire includes besides La Perichole, the professional premier of The Sweet Bye and Bye, by the American composer, Jack Beeson, their first Wagnerian production, The Flying Dutchman (not heard for 42 years) and the ever popular Tosca premiered in Kansas City in 1904.
It is ironic that this city with less then 100,000 population could support fifty performances of opera and now with a million people within driving distance only half the number of performances and one-fifth of the operas. The Kansas City Times reviewer, in 1872 commended Colonel Kersey Coates on the venture in Opera and expressed the hope "that before the winter of 1873 has passed Kansas City will be a favorite place for opera managers to visit." Now, one hundred years later with the formation of a coalition of professional opera companies, OPERA America, they not only visit Kansas City, but they also often hold their meetings here.
1Dr. Milford Crabb graduated with the Doctor of Musical Arts Degree in Music Education from the Conservatory of Music, University of Missouri-Kansas City in 1967.