Opera in our past and opera in our future
August 21, 2014
By Temple Ligon
Columbia began in 1786 when the South Carolina legislature voted on both the name and the location of their new capital city. Columbia’s city hall as a separate building, however, didn’t come along until 1818 at the northwest corner of Richardson (Main) and Washington. It was the first of four city halls, the last one still standing as a replacement function for the former federal courthouse on the southwest corner of Laurel and Main.
And kudos to Mayor Benjamin and his council for our city hall’s glorious interior refurbishment, returning the building to some of the showy stuff of its origins.
The first city hall, which burned with everything else in February 1865, had a clock tower hovering over the Main Street sidewalk, where the town crier would yell “All’s well” on the half-hour, or he might call out, “Fire at the corner of Park and Gervais!”
The second city hall on the same site included an opera house, and the whole compound burned to the ground in 1899.
Columbia’s third city hall, probably the most impressive of them all, was designed by Charlotte architect Frank P. Milburn, who also designed the dome for the state house. His design for Columbia’s city hall called for the same flecked brick as he specified for his Union Station down the street.
City offices took the ground floor at city hall, while the rest of the building was dedicated to the opera house. With seating of about 2,000, the opera house was later called the Columbia Theatre and then the Carolina Theatre as a movie house. It began, though, as strictly live stage performances with far more minstrel shows and vaudeville gigs than grand operas; and as movies came around in a big way, especially after the first talkie – Al Jolson’s The Jazz Singer (1927) – the opera house became more of a movie house.
Showing movies up to demolition in 1939, the Carolina Theatre probably did pretty well that last year as a participating part of Hollywood’s golden era, including Stagecoach, Gone With the Wind, Wizard of Oz, Good-bye Mr. Chips, Gunga Din, Hound of the Baskervilles, and other blockbusters in the same year. Still, with absence of adequate air-conditioning, the movie house and city hall sweltered and suffered to the point the city saw the wisdom and the wealth in giving up its city hall site for the Wade Hampton Hotel, a $1 million project that held together until the hotel had to make way in the late 1980s for the AT&T building, which became Affinity, which became SouthTrust, which became Capitol Place, and is now called BB&T.
With twin towers facing Main Street at the corner with Gervais, city hall had its clock tower, too, with four clock faces at the same diameter of six feet.
Remember: Columbia had an opera house, first at the corner of Washington and Main for the last third of the 19th Century and then at the corner of Gervais and Main for the first third of the 20th Century. With no funds for such things, still, it would be nice to imagine an opera house, a real opera house – not another one of those multipurpose performing arts halls – in Columbia for most of the 21st Century.
Most opera houses around the world were built with donations, usually huge contributions from just a few rich folks. Money like that is hard to find in any major metropolis, but in South Carolina, it’s almost impossible. What kind of money is that? The very best opera houses recently built or restored can spend $50,000 per seat or more – even twice that. There are several new opera houses in the world that cost $100,000 per seat to complete.
If an average size opera house – 2,300 seats, say – were built with a budget of $100,000 per seat, the total tab could easily come to $230,000,000. In other words, if the Koger Center were built today as an opera house and not as its current status as an all-purpose performing arts hall suitable for symphony and road shows, the Koger Center’s 2,300 seats could cost $230,000,000 instead of the $16,000,000 it cost in the late 1980s. Adjusting for inflation, $16,000,000 in 1989 buys about $30,000,000 today.
At the time, the late 1980s, the Peace Center in Greenville was built for about $15,000 per seat, and the Blumenthal in Charlotte cost maybe $20,000 per seat, while Houston’s Wortham Theater cost $20,000 around the same time. The Koger Center was a relative bargain back in the late 1980s at $6,500-$7,000 per seat.
If Columbia wants to get serious about an opera house, if Columbia wants to meet the definition of a great city, following what is happening at Rice University might help. Rice just finished its 10-year capital campaign and raised more than $1 billion, including startup money for a new opera house on campus. Rice will keep its opera house small – called a jewel box theater – with only 600 seats, but a small number of seats assures ideal proximity with the stage from most any seat.
With an announced budget of $50,000,000, Rice is ready to spend more than $80,000 per seat.
I still think Columbia’s opera house needs 1,500 seats, and I still think Columbia can build its opera house for $65,000 per seat, which approaches $100,000,000 all told.
A city Columbia’s size should be able somehow to double the opera house budget of a small university, albeit a rich university. Rice has only about 6,600 students, while USC has an enrollment of more than 31,000. Columbia’s population within the city’s borders is 132,000.
With a huge university – and several small ones – Columbia’s 132,000 people should be able to come up with the means to build an opera house of some high standing in the world.
Keep the definition in mind: All great cities have a great opera house.
(Note: Part of this article appears in the next issue of Jasper Magazine.)
