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His wife, a popular New York singer, sang Broadway - not opera. Unfortunately for all the architecture tour guides (and those partial to love stories), the reality is Samuel Insull built the opera house because he loved the arts.
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The building was designed to look like a chair supposedly turning its back on New York as a snub to The Met. Legend says the owner, Samuel Insull, built the opera house for his opera singer wife because she didn’t get hired at the Met in New York.
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There’s a story told on Chicago’s architecture boat tours to describe the Civic Opera House. It was not built as a love token to Samuel Insull’s wife. 5 Incredible Facts About the Civic Opera House in Chicago The view of the Civic Opera House from the orchestra pit.ġ. So I signed up for the Lyric Backstage Tour and what I learned about the opera house surprised me. The other day I was thinking how crazy it is that the basement of the Paris Opera House is completely flooded ( inspiring the Phantom of the Opera) and how people used beer to put out a fire at the Munich Opera House when I realized I’ve never toured the Civic Opera House in Chicago, despite having season tickets to the opera for two years now. But what I learned from touring opera houses all around Europe is these ornate theaters actually reveal a lot of about the city’s cultural and historical past - and, surprisingly, the Civic Opera House in Chicago is no different. Let’s face it: Wrigley Field probably tells more about Chicago than the Civic Opera House. When I think about places that tell the secrets of a city’s past, opera houses are pretty low on that list, especially outside of Europe.
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