Boston Opera House records

The Boston Opera House was the local citadel for lyrical drama for nearly 50 years.  It cost the late Eben D. Jordan $700,000 to build in 1909  Most contemporary singers of note, including Enrico Caruso and Kirsten Flagstad, sang on the Opera House stage.  In September 1957, the Boston City Building Department declared the Boston Opera House unsafe, and it was sold three weeks later by the Opera Holding Company to the S. & A. Allen Construction Company for $135,000.  The Charlestown-based construction company then sold the Huntington Avenue property to Carl S. Ell, President of Northeastern, for $160,000.  The building, directly across the street from the University, was razed in the summer of 1958 to provide space for campus expansion.

Eben D. Jordan, President of the Boston Opera Company, set the granite cornerstone of Boston's home for grand opera on November 30, 1908.  The ceremony was followed by the depositing, beneath the surface, of a hermetically sealed bronze box.  The box contained books and programs documenting the musical activities of the day.  The cornerstone also contained phonographic records and contemporary operatic periodicals.

The Boston Opera House opened on the night of November 8, 1909 with a performance of Ponchielli's "La Giaconda."  The Boston Globe called the Boston Opera House "the best equipped temple of music in America."  Plans were to offer grand opera there for 15 weeks each year at prices ranging from 75 cents to 3 dollars.

Henry Russell ran the Boston Opera Company until the outbreak of the first World War, less than five years later.  There was an opera-less interim from March, 1914 to November 15, 1915, when Max Rubinoff's new Boston Grand Opera Company began with Montemezzi's "The Love of Three Kings."

For years the Boston Opera House was the local showcase of companies on tour, most notably New York's Metropolitan Opera, the Chicago Opera Company, and the Chicago Civic Opera.  The tours stopped during the Great Depression, from 1932-1933, but the Metropolitan resumed their Boston weeks in 1934.  With the exception of the wartime season of 1943, the Metropolitan Opera performed at the BOH every year until 1957.

In September of 1957 the building's foundations and steelwork were found to be in poor condition and the falling exterior terra cotta brickwork caused complaints from the Boston Buildings Commissioner.  Upon receiving the news, the Opera Holding Company, a subsidiary of the J. J. Schubert Theater Company in New York, sold the landmark to the S. & A. Allen Construction Company of Charlestown for $135,000.  Allen then transferred the structure to President Carl S. Ell of Northeastern on September 25, 1957, for $160,000.  The Bernard L. Baker Wrecking Company began razing the BOH in early 1958, and by mid-summer the building had been demolished.