AUGUST 2006 » book review

Coal and culture

Coal and Culture: Opera Houses in Appalachia
by William Faricy Condee
Ohio University Press, Athens, OH; 2005
222 pp.; hardcover; 62 b&w illustrations; $34.95
ISBN 0-8214-1588-3

Reviewed by Nicole V. Gagné

The Latin word "opus" translates as "work," and has become most familiar as the term for a musical composition; its plural is sometimes given as "opuses," but the more correct Latinate form is "opera" – a word that has of course become enshrined in its Italian usage, denoting a drama set to music. One can't help but marvel, therefore, at the etymological appropriateness with which American theaters built in the 19th and early-20th centuries were called "opera houses": these establishments might not have offered very much opera, but their patrons certainly did get the works!

In his fascinating study Coal and Culture: Opera Houses in Appalachia, William Faricy Condee explains that the average opera-house audience during those years encountered "little, if any, opera [....] An opera house was a community entertainment and meeting hall. It was used for traveling theatrical productions, which included contemporary and classical drama, melodrama, comedy, musicals, vaudeville, and even the occasional opera. But it was also used for concerts, religious events, lectures, high-school commencements, boxing matches, benefits for local organizations, union meetings, and, if the auditorium had a flat floor, skating and basketball."

His book also details the frequency with which opera houses were the sites of costume balls, temperance meetings, and political rallies – the 1908 election returns were announced at the Winchester Opera House in Winchester, KY. Segregated towns would rent out their opera houses to African-American citizens for their own masquerades and fraternal meetings on select evenings, and then turn around and use the same building to host Ku Klux Klan gatherings. In 1911 a black man suspected of a shooting was brutally gunned down by a white mob at the Livermore Opera House in Livermore, KY; contemporary reports described tickets being sold for this atrocity.

The face of American life, both benign and malignant, was openly visible at our opera houses, and Condee is right on target when he defines them as "multipurpose facilities that were inextricably intertwined with the life of the community." He's also right to regard opera houses as an essential subject for study if Americans are to understand the kind of people we have been and are, and Coal and Culture rises to this considerable challenge superbly. One hopes this groundbreaking book stimulates further research into other regions of the country, as Condee restricts his investigation to Appalachia, examining more than 125 opera houses across Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia that were built mostly from the 1860s through the 1920s.

Only a third of those buildings still survive, and so his book is also an invaluable tool for preservationists: "Communities are once more trying to find a social center that binds people together," Condee observes. "The opera house was that site, and can be once again. The goal of this book is to lay a historical foundation for the restoration of opera houses in Appalachia [... and] to explicate how and why these buildings were a nexus of culture for the communities in which they were located."

Condee's study concentrates on small- to mid-sized Appalachian towns, with populations that ranged from three to ten thousand. For these communities, the opera houses that proliferated shared many intriguing design qualities. They were most often built "in the center of town, on the main street or square, usually with an Italianate facade." Although smaller opera houses were of wood construction, the more monumental examples would be built most often of brick or stone, and ornamented with cast-iron decorations – which frequently included the words "Opera House" emblazoned on the cornice. "Monumental" here is, of course, a relative term, as the seating capacity usually ran from 300 to 1,000, depending on the size of the town; thus, the typical opera house accommodated 10 or 11 percent of the town's population at one time.

Interior design tended toward simplicity – "plastered ceiling and walls with stenciling at the top and wainscoting below;" only the larger opera houses would sport thematic designs and Classical flourishes within. The auditoriums tended to measure some 48 ft. wide by 65 ft. long from the stage to the back wall, with a stage that was "small by modern standards. The average width of the proscenium arch was 28 ft., narrower than the 30- to 40-ft. prosceniums of today. [...] The acting area was thus quite small, perhaps 20 ft. wide and 12 ft. deep." These performance spaces were regularly located on the opera house's second floor, while the ground level was reserved for commercial storefronts. A central ground-floor door was another typical feature, opening onto a wide staircase that led to the second-story opera house and its box office.

Unfortunately, Coal and Culture is rather stingy with regard to illustrations – and those offered are not elegantly printed or displayed. However, the book does provide several fascinating historic photos, exteriors and interiors, as well as some delightful reproductions of period posters and advertisements. (What in contemporary American theater can compete with Stuart's Opera House in Nelsonville, OH, offering its 1905 audiences "The Greatest of all Spectacular Productions, A TRIP TO THE MOON," in which one could "SEE Your Mother-in-law at the North Pole"?) These illustrations are well balanced by Condee's own photos of those opera houses still extant, from restored treasures such as the Ariel Opera House in Gallipolis, OH, to the neglected hulk of the Knights of Labor Opera House in Shawnee, OH.

Although clearly a labor of love by an Appalachian native, Coal and Culture is also Condee's response to the growing efforts by communities to save and restore their opera houses. The movement has arisen even though, as Condee acknowledges, these buildings "are not great architectural landmarks, the plays that were staged in them are rarely performed today, and the community events that took place in them are no longer memorable."

Above and beyond the love of vintage architecture, the efforts to restore these opera houses are also a response to a deep inner need by people to recognize their own history and character. This is reflected here by community centers that defined the cultural, political, social, racial, economic and spiritual values of their era. Whatever facet of American life is of interest, Coal and Culture: Opera Houses in Appalachia will amply reward any and all who read it. TB

«BACK TO AUGUST 2006 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Have something to say about this article? Feel free to comment!

Comments feed