23. The Academy of Music

© Podcast text copyright Peter Schmitz. All rights reserved.

[OPENING THEME]

Hello, Everyone!  Welcome once again to Adventures in Theater History: Philadelphia.

Last time we talked about bad behavior at Philadelphia theaters, and how early 19th Century audiences could get quite unruly on certain occasions, if some among them felt sufficiently aggrieved about the quality of the performance, or about political matters, or somehow felt that their ethnicity or national pride had been insulted. 

This is a bit surprising, because Philadelphia was known for being a fairly clean and orderly city, as American urban spaces went. We heard how Fanny Kemble, for example, when she arrived in America for the first time, felt that it was a much more pleasant town than New York. But we also know from the way an angry crowd pursued William Wood from the stage door of the Chestnut Street Theatre to Independence Hall, that the sort of mobs that had occasionally gotten out of hand in Philadelphia theaters could also erupt in the city’s streets. This tendency got worse as the city continued to grow in size over the course of the first half of the 19th Century. In 1838, for example, was the infamous and awful anti-Abolition riot that had burned down Pennsylvania Hall while it hosted a meeting protesting against the institution of chattel slavery, and a few years later there were the nativist meetings led by Protestant Philadelphians who were deeply distrustful of immigrants, Catholics in particular. Feelings reached a fever pitch in 1844 when Anti-Catholic riots broke out in the city and also in the adjoining townships of Frankford and Southwark. Churches were burned, the local militia was called out, and there were open gun battles in the streets. 

But what does this have to do with theater history, our subject at hand? As Philadelphia’s population had expanded, more theaters that catered to popular tastes for melodramas, ballad operas, pantomime spectacles, circuses, and minstrel shows were to be found throughout the city, and even though more sedate and wealthy people were also attending these theaters - when push came to shove, as it were, raucous behavior was often the norm.  Philadelphians of a social reform mindset felt keenly the lack of a large formal theater in the city, suitable for the reverent appreciation of the European artistic dramatic and musical spectacle that was “grand opera” - Bellini, Rossini, Mozart, Weber, Verdi, that sort of thing. Believe it or not, many people thought maybe opera had the answer, and could spread over the roiling city a calming and uplifting spirit of Art.

[MUSIC - Bellini’s “Casta Diva” from Norma]

There was a widespread sentiment among the city’s political leadership and educated classes that promoting opera, and the sort of large public institutions necessary to support the art form, would have a civilizing effect on Philadelphians public behavior. Opera would prove a ‘means of social refinement’, wrote one supporter, who envisioned that an opera house would “lay the foundation of such a system as would enable us hereafter to command the best musical and dramatic talent of the world” and “would elevate generally the tone of dramatic entertainments, with a view to reform in the morale of our theaters.”

Emulating the great opera institutions of Paris, Milan, and London was the ambition of  many in Philadelphia’s business leadership. They felt it would bring more travelers to the city, increase educational levels and general sophistication, and raise property valuations - as well as making life in the city exciting and edifying. But it was not just Europe, competition between the large cities of the American Eastern Seaboard was already quite keen, and Philadelphia did not feel at all secure in this race. Having been well outpaced by the growth of New York City, Philadelphia had also been briefly surpassed in population during the 1840s by its southern neighbor, Baltimore. The political extension of city boundaries that would occur with the great Philadelphia ‘Consolidation’ of 1854, was in large part meant to remedy that problem. Now in physical area the largest municipality in the world, doubled in population, and increasing in its industrial capacity due to access to Pennsylvania’s coal and petroleum reserves, Philadelphia was booming once again, and its elites were keeping a jealous eye on the efforts of their counterparts in New York and Boston to build large civic institutions, like opera houses. Philadelphia had once been the Great American City, the seat of culture and government, after all. Like an opera diva worried about younger rivals displacing it from a starring role, it did not want to be forced to leave the stage!

As early as 1839, small groups of wealthy and influential Philadelphians had been meeting to discuss the problem. The Chestnut Street Theatre, which was the longstanding favorite house of genteel Philadelphia society, was regarded as too small for truly great opera productions. The Arch Street Theatre, the Walnut Street Theatre, and its neighbor the National Theatre, occasionally hosted operas, but for the most part were also considered unsuitable. This was due not only because of their limited size, but there was also the indelicate matter of the managers of these houses being financially dependent on liquor sales in their saloons and upper galleries (which were both factors associated with attracting prostitutes).  The Musical Fund Hall, a concert space on Locust Street to the South of the Walnut Street Theater, was also occasionally utilized for opera, but its stage was not really built for it. The lack of an opera house in Philadelphia was coming to be seriously felt. Ambitious plans were discussed to fund and construct a new hall in the district near Chestnut and 6th, but the financial panic and bank failures of the early 1840s put a temporary halt to these plans.

But by mid-century, urban elites in all American cities were once again seeking to build theater spaces where audience behavior could be completely regulated. The wealthy elite of New York City moved first. The Astor Place Opera House, built in 1847 at the corner of Broadway and Astor Place, was meant to be this grand civilizing space (for Manhattan), but the 1800 seat theater failed financially when producing opera its first year of existence, and then when it subsequently became a legitimate theater - hosting tours of  great Shakespearean actors - another disaster occurred. (SFX: crowd sounds) It was the site of the famous riots of May 1849 when the fans of Philadelphia’s Edwin Forrest clashed with the supporters of English actor William Charles Macready. (SFX out)

Now in the runup to that riot in New York there had been demonstrations against Macready at the Arch Street Theatre in Philadelphia, too. But as I’ve said before the Astor Place riots are mostly a New York story, and one that has been well documented in many other books, articles and podcasts. But if you’re interested in learning more I’ve written about the Astor Place Riots  - as well as two other famous early 19th Century theater disturbances in London and Paris, in the blog for our website: AITHpodcast.com. Look for the post dated December 3, 2021, entitled “The Riot Act”. 

So, let’s take the Astor Place Riot as ‘being read’. Now that the Astor Place theater was in a complete ruin, Manhattan’s opera lovers decided to try again, and in 1852 the New York Academy of Music with the specific mission of “advancing musical taste and to secure musical entertainments accessible to the public ‘at moderate charge’ ” was founded by a small private group of stockholders. That’s generally how things were done back then, we are long before the era of non-profit corporations.  And although the founders of the New York Academy of Music also looked to avoid “the odor of exclusiveness,” they could hardly avoid that unfortunate odor, since they were careful this time to locate their new grand opera house in a nicer part of town, farther away from working class areas.

The 4000-seat New York Academy of Music was opened in 1854, at the corner of Irving Place and 14th Street. Its frontage had a long series of elegant tall arched windows with classical columns placed between them. Inside were elaborate and costly decorations and sumptuous saloons and galleries. It was perfect for being a showplace for wealth and elegance, and grand balls were immediately held in it. Now admittedly as a theater space it left something to be desired - it endured much immediate criticism about poor sight lines, for instance. 

But let’s take a moment to consider the name: The Academy of Music. Why not ‘The New York Opera House’? Well, okay, there were now two problems with the term “Opera House” in America . One was that it seemed too elite - the placards posted on lampposts by the pro-Forrest side before the Astor Place Riots had sneered at the “Aristocratic Opera House''. Nominally this new Academy was supposed to be a civic venture where all classes were welcome. And then there was the second problem: “Opera House” was paradoxically also becoming too down-market. There were minstrel theaters and vaudeville halls starting to call themselves “Opera Houses” and “Museums” in an effort to claim some air of respectability. No, “Opera House,” as a description, would not do at all. So if ‘opera’ seemed both standoffish and yet also downmarket, what about “Academy”? After all, the very art form of opera had been invented by ‘academies’ in Italy - centuries before, groups of scholars and musicians who wanted to recreate ancient classical music of the Greeks and Romans and bring it back to the people of the world had called themselves ‘academies’. An ‘academy’ had the air of intellectual seriousness, and also civic pride. It was high minded and civilizing, like the Academie Francaise. And who were the members of the Academy? Why wealthy men of culture, who invested in becoming shareholders of the organization, buying themselves lifetime passes to the premiere artistic events of the social season. That’s why ‘the New York Academy of Music’!

So, thought the bigwigs of Philadelphia, a hundred miles to the south, we’re going to have an Academy too. One like New York has, but better. And they looked to Boston, as well, where they were also building a great new home for opera, and there was already the established school, called, you guessed it, the Boston Academy of Music, so, thought Philly, okay let’s have one of those too. Unfortunately some enterprising folks in the Quaker City had already founded a small music school on Chestnut Street called The Philadelphia Academy of Music, so that was taken. What else could they call it? - Well, over the years many of Philadelphia’s theaters, at various stages, had attempted to claim patriotic primacy by calling themselves The American Theatre or The American Company. Allright, so how about “The American Academy of Music'' - now that sounded right for the city where America was born! 

They would even do New York and Boston one better: the American Academy would actually be a national institution, so an opera house AND a music school were planned! The original charter provided for ‘The establishment of a school of Vocal and Instrumental Music; and for the organization of a competent corps of Professors . .  [whose] pupils would prove very useful among the members of Orchestras and Choruses.” Eventually this aspect of the project in Philadelphia would be abandoned as unfeasible. But the decision on what to call the building was made: the American Academy of Music - and that name can still be seen carved onto the centerpiece of the building’s cornice today. The appellation, ‘Academy of Music’, one that over the course of the 19th Century would be applied to the major theater/concert halls of almost every large and mid-sized city in America, signaled social and intellectual propriety. 

 [MUSIC - from Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro:]
 
The designation “Academy”, was therefore an assertion of a superior social space, and suggested that a theater was governed by a group of eminently respectable citizens, who would oversee the status and quality of all performances. The original Prospectus for the Philadelphia Academy of Music specified that the management “would give throughout the whole year a series of Operas, English and Italian, promenade and other concerts, the pure drama, Pantomime and French Vaudeville.” Families of all classes, it was stressed, would find it a pleasant resort of superior character. 

So now we have the name, what are we going to build, and where in Philadelphia would we put it? A structure that would comfortably hold up to 5000 people, with magnificent ornamentation and open sight lines for every seat, was envisioned. Although a site at the corner of Eighth and Chestnut Streets was briefly considered, it was decided the “confusion and personal exposure” of the longtime Philadelphia theater district made the area too difficult for opera goers to navigate.

So, Go West. With the Consolidation of 1854, it became clear that not only would the location of desirable residences inevitably shift to the largely undeveloped western side of the city, but also that the eponymous width of the central North-South spine of Philadelphia’s grid plan, known as Broad Street, was now an attractive feature for prestigious new cultural institutions. This was especially important for a facility that would require a huge amount of traffic at very particular hours of the evening, with anticipated crowds of thousands of people arriving and leaving in carriages simultaneously. 

There were already some existing entertainment venues along Broad Street, such as the rebuilt open-air Vauxhall Gardens between Sansom and Walnut, signaling that the heretofore sparsely developed thoroughfare could be a most promising location for entertainment. In 1853, the popular and well-attended General Welch’s Circus, with its star the clown Dan Rice, had set up at the corner of Broad and Locust and had apparently accommodated the thronging crowds quite handily. William Parker Foulke, who was a leading member of the group of Philadelphians organizing the plan for the Academy, wrote: “The attendance at the hippodrome from all parts of the city and incorporated districts, [shows] how readily these citizens are collected from every quarter, when the entertainment offered them is such as to please.” 

Acting swiftly, the group purchased the lot that the circus had occupied, although of course they griped about the expense that the previous owner had charged them, it proved to be well worth the price. On September 22, 1854, the building committee announced an architectural competition for a theater on this lot, measuring 238 by 150 feet. Specified in the requirements was that it should seat at least 4000 spectators in three tiers of boxes, along with a balcony and a parquet. It was meant to be both a concert hall and an opera house. As far as the exterior, it was to be “a simple but imposing style built of brick, with dressings of granite, brownstone and cast iron.” Strictest modern methods of ventilation and fire safety were also to be included. And they were in a hurry, said the committee - proposals were due by December 1st. Only two months away. This seems like an incredibly quick turnaround to me for such a major project, but at least five architectural teams had their proposals submitted by the deadline - among them was the young architect Edwin Forrest Durang, the son of our old friend the theater historian Charles Durang.

The architectural historian Michael J. Lewis has recently published a monumental book entitled Philadelphia Builds, and he has an entire chapter about the design competition for the Academy of Music. I highly recommend it for his erudite examination of how exactly this competition played out. He devotes a lot of space to the questions of the interior designs, and the politics behind it, and how they showed the influence of German or Italian classical architecture. But I will cut to the chase and tell you that eventually the commission unanimously chose and approved a design by the German architects Gustav Runge and Napoleon Le Brun, who submitted what Lewis terms “an opulent Venetian design . . . [with a curving domed roof, and a facade consisting of] an arcaded entrance capped by a classical Corinthian colonnade . . statues at the summit celebrated the arts that would mingle within: Poetry, Music and Dance.” Now those of you who are familiar with the Academy of Music will immediately note that this is nothing like the building that stands there today - what happened? It turned out that no sooner had the winners gotten their prize money, than the head of the committee, the distinguished Geroge S. Pepper, turned around and asked them to completely redo the exterior design into something much more simple. Runge and Le Brun immediately complied, and produced instead the rhythmic parade of tall rounded windows with the detailed brick exterior that Philadlephians were to become so familiar with. Michael Lewis even gives us the proper name for this type of architecture Rundbogenstil or ‘round-arch style’ - a very popular and respectable type of design typical of north German theaters and public buildings.

Why this change? The answer seems to be that a) the committee was worried about the cost of the original design and b) the prevailing remnants of Quaker sensibility in the city always preferred simple plain exteriors without much ornament. But the main thing that the committee wanted was that interior space. That was where the social display and the civilizing and uplifting mission of the Academy would have its greatest effect. No crowd has ever been calmed down or uplifted by an imposing exterior - the Astor Place Opera House proved that - in fact such an imposing exterior rather tends to provoke people’s resentment. But a grand and welcoming interior space, with wide staircases, commodious lounges and glittering chandeliers, one that welcomed people and signaled to everyone that they should be on their Best Behavior - that was what they committee loved about Runge & Le Brun’s plans. Don’t change a THING about that, they said. In fact, if today you look at the front lobbies and the grand ballroom of the Academy of Music, you can clearly see the Venetian design with the classical columns that had originally been planned for the outside, too. But best of all it was their plans for the auditorium itself - that’s what won the day - an ‘open horse shoe’ design, with an emphasis on proper acoustics, ventilation, and fire prevention, with great sight lines for every seat in the house and an orchestra pit that would accommodate 84 musicians. A subterranean ‘sound pit’ underneath the house would add reverberance and warmth to its music (they thought). The architects proposed that the auditorium be lit by a huge central chandelier, and that allegorical paintings adorn the dome ceiling, with its plaster carefully embedded with horsehair to dampen echoes, and a method of raising the parquet floor to make it suitable for balls and assemblies. This was what the committee had wanted. Philadelphia’s desire to hear and see and to experience opera on a grand scale was at last to be satisfied.

[MUSIC UNDER: from Verdi’s Aida]

The contract for construction was given to John Davis Jones, a Philadelphian of great reputation in the building trades, and the groundbreaking took place on June 18, 1855. The foundations were dug and the massive four foot thick brick walls began to rise above Broad and Locust. For such an elaborate and technically complicated structure, the Academy of Music was engineered, built, decorated, and furnished with astonishing speed. The venerable Philadelphia myth that the walls stood open to the air for a year to acoustically ‘season’ them is not only nonsensical, but demonstrably not true, as the roof was put on the building six months after the foundation was laid. By the end of the year 1856, the job was completed, and managers and staff were being assembled to run the enormous building.

Things were proceeding so swiftly on Broad and Locust that it almost masked other events occurring elsewhere - in the old center of Philadelphia theater as it had been. The enormous and popular venue, the National Theatre on Chestnut and 9th had burned down in 1854, as we detailed in Episode Twelve. And there was one other much more consequential departure. It was assumed by everyone that once the Academy was completed, the grand old Chestnut Street Theater near Independence Hall would therefore be hopelessly outmoded. The beloved “Old Drury” was closed and razed in 1855. This demolition caused some dismay in longtime Philadelphia theatergoers, but at least the theater’s brass gong that summoned audiences to their seats for decades was rescued, and was preserved to be used again for its familiar purpose in the Grand new space on Broad Street.

[MUSIC: Verdi, Waltz in F Major]

The Inaugural Ball of the Academy of Music on January 26th of 1857 was a glittering social success. Thousands lined Broad Street to watch the arrival of all the carriages and people in their finery for the dedicatory concert and ball. As they arrived at the new home for Philadelphia culture, everyone gawked and marveled at the decor, as they were meant to. The hallways and stairs were blazing with gas torchieres and sconces as the light bounced off the pale floors and walls. In the auditorium itself, the dimensions of the interior of the auditorium was modeled after the opera house of La Scala in Milan. The ceiling surrounding the enormous central chandelier was decorated by murals executed by the German painter Karl Heinrich Scholze. As the ball goers gazed upward, they could see his four elegant frescoes, three paintings depicting allegorical figures of the Muses of Poetry, Music, and Dance, and a fourth representing the dual figures of Comedy & Tragedy.

The wide stage was filled with an artificial grove arranged around a grotto. Ladies displayed dresses and jewelry whose costs were clearly in the thousands of dollars. This was a future the founders of the city of Philadelphia had never dreamed of. A newspaper reporter from New York was duly impressed, and remarked to his readers: “In the great rolling, heaving elegant crowd I cannot discover a single Quaker in Quaker uniform - not a plain coat, nor a plain cap. Would Wiliam Penn recognize this European fashion and art institution as an offshoot of his original design? . . vanity of vanities, the thousands revolve around and around, the dancers glide and pant, the musicians strike forth the sugary thunder; the mass, the whirl, the roar of the crowds, all are here.”

The only trouble of the Inaugural Ball evening was at the end: after a huge mixup in the gentlemens’ cloak room, and after the ball, many a Philadelphia gentlemen went home with someone else’s coat, hat, and overshoes. The classified ads of the paper were full for a week with offers to find the proper owners. But on the whole, the general feeling was that it had been the grandest night the city had ever seen.

More was to come. On February 25th, finally the long-awaited first grand opera at the Academy of Music, Giuseppi Verdi’s new Il Trovatore, received its American premiere starring the great diva, Madama Marieta Gazzaniga. Scenery painted with rich backdrops by Russell Smith decorated the stage, and the orchestra pit was filled with the best local musicians. Wealthy patrons and their families rented the luxury boxes, while a broad spectrum of other Philadelphians eagerly filled the parquet and upper balconies. Even the curmudgeonly diarist Sidney Fisher, the Samuel Pepys of Philadelphia of the era, pronounced himself satisfied and impressed with the hall: “the woodwork is white and gold, the seats all covered with crimson velvet and the walls with crimson paper. It is thoroughly heated and brilliantly lighted. The central chandelier is very beautiful, light, and airy, of cut glass, with innumerable burners; it looks like a fairy fabric of gleaming crystal and diamonds.” Oh, and he also allowed that the opera itself was produced successfully.

[MUSIC TRANSITION: “Anvil Chorus” from Il Trovatore]

The new season continued on subsequent nights, Other Italian operatic works, including Lucrezia Borgia, Norma, and La Traviata soon followed. And then Don Giovanni, Martha, the Daughter of the Regiment, La Sonnambula and so on and so on. There were English language operas and German operas too. As would be true for the next 165 years, there was rarely a night when the Academy of Music was not booked. 

Interestingly, though, after the first couple of years it was used less and less as an opera house. Many other balls and receptions were held there - the Bachelor’s Ball, the Floral Ball, the Academy Ball . . .  and many other entertainments filled the stage, ballets, concerts, childrens’ pantomimes, acrobatic acts, scientific lectures, orators, political meeting - all could be counted on to fill the Academy’s seats, and keep the stairways bustling.

And, let us not forget, the Chestnut Street Theatre had been torn down, so the Academy was also frequently booked to present plays. Attentive listeners of this podcast will remember that we’ve already talked about a lot of these. In 1861, when the Civil War was naturally dominating the city’s attention, Edwin Forrest had played the Academy’s stage. The famous son Philadelphia had offered the public works of muscular performances in his long-standing and familiar repertory: Hamlet, Damon & Pythias, Richelieu, Virginius, Metamora, Jack Cade, Othello, Macbeth, and Richard III, and Forrest returned late in 1864 in a spectacular and highly impressive production of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus. In 1863, Louisa Lane Drew had appeared in a benefit evening for the Union military hospital charity called The Sanitary Commission, playing Portia in the ‘trial scene’ from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. The great Charlotte Cushman, whom we will learn about in an upcoming episode, had also played the Academy as part of her efforts in many cities to support the Sanitary Commission.

in August of 1863. Edwin Booth had made his Academy debut, presenting, among other plays, his version of Richard III. The Booth family already had a deep history in Philadelphia, going back to the days when his father, the erratically brilliant Junius Brutus Booth, had arrived from England in 1821. He and his brother-in-law had bought the Walnut Street Theatre and he was often performing there as well. It was, in fact, soon after his Philadelphia appearance that Booth would begin the record-setting run of his “hundred nights of Hamlet” at the Winter Garden in New York. 

And as you may also recall, our old friend Fanny Kemble would use the Academy stage for her public readings of Shakespeare, performing single handedly the entire text of such plays as King Lear and Hamlet. So there was plenty of theater and poetry on the Academy’s stage. But throughout the Civil War years and for the decade after, concerts and operas continued to appear with regularity.

After the war, the demand for the Academy only increased. It was constantly used for charitable balls and assemblies and plays and operas and concerts. Adelaide Ristori appeared in the plays Medea and Mary Stuart. The great divas of their day Gazzaniga, Patti, and Parepa-Rosa all sang there. The Reverend Henry Ward Beecher gave lectures. Pianists Anton Rubenstein and Louis Moreau Gottschalk played concerts. The variety of performances, in fact, could be startling: Cairncross and Dixie’s Minstrel troupe performed not long after the premiere of Offenbach’s opera The Grand Duchess of Gerolstein. Scientists demonstrated on the Academ’s stage early versions of something called ‘moving pictures’, to the amazement of all. In fact, the Academy was rather like a modern day video streaming service: there were dozens of genres and acts and plays and operas, enough to suit anybody’s tastes. And it wasn’t just entertainment and education and art. In 1870 the second reunion of the Grand Army of the Republic was held there, attended by their former general, President Ulysses S. Grant. And in 1871 a grand reception and ball was held for the visiting Grand Duke Alexis of Russia. In 1872 the Academy hosted the Republican National Convention, during which President Grant was triumphantly nominated for his second term.

Year after year, the shareholders of the Academy pronounced themselves highly satisfied with their project. It had all turned out exactly as they planned. Philadelphia had a temple of high art and culture and science, and the whole country knew it. And all for ticket prices that usually ranged between merely a dollar and 25 cents! And the only incidence of audience misbehavior I can find are complaints that at the end of some opera performances, people threw too many bouquets onto the stage, in slavish devotion to the singers they idolized.

In the year 1876, the City of Philadelphia once again took center stage in the national celebration of the 100 anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The great Centennial Exposition and World's Fair spread across Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park, along the Schuylkill River. That’s a whole podcast series in itself, though I’m not sure I’m the guy to do it justice. For our purposes today, we can note that the Academy of Music did its share in the national celebration. On the night it opened, May 10th, Edwin Booth and his company performed Shakespeare’s Henry V on the Academy stage. (By now William Shakespeare was regarded as fully American by most people in the country, and no one minded a play about the triumph of English arms defeating the forces of France - our allies in the Revolutionary War, after all.) That summer, the Academy also hosted the seventh annual reunion of the Society of the Grand Army of the Republic, and on the stage could be seen General Sheridan, Sherman, Hancock and many other heroes of the recent triumph over the Confederacy.

It should also be mentioned at this point that the Academy now had some new neighbors, as the center of gravity of Philadelphia culture kept shifting to be closer to it. The Third Chestnut Street Theater had been built just a few blocks away in 1863, and Horticultural Hall, another concert and exhibition space, had been constructed next door to the Academy to the south. Across the street the Kiralfy brothers, the Hungarian-born producers from New York, had erected a fantastical Moorish palace directly across the street from the Academy to hold their grand spectacular production Around the World in Eighty Days for the thousands of people arriving from around the world to see the Centennial exposition. When the show was over, patrons could stroll in a garden with fountains, flowers, statuary adjoining to the north in a pleasure garden. And all the while the now familiar round-arched windows of the Academy of Music glowed down onto passersby on Broad Street. Operas, concerts and plays continued to fill its stage that entire year, and well-behaved audiences flowed in and out of its doors nightly, their minds filled with memories of music and theater and dance that would last them their entire lives.

And on that note, we’ll leave things for today. I’ve been thrilled to finally talk about the Academy of Music, still Philadelphia’s grandest and most intact 19th Century theater space. I can’t possibly fit the entire history of the place into one episode, there’s so much more to talk about. Rest assured that we will come back to it again and again.

I’m Peter Schmitz. Our podcast’s theme music, as well as all the other sound engineering and sound effects, are created by Christopher Mark Colucci. We’ll put the credits for all the musicians and ensembles you hear on today’s episode in the show notes.

[UNDER - Wagner's overture to Tannhäuser ]

As we sign off, Chris and I both want to say that It’s been such an honor and pleasure to bring this podcast to you throughout this past year. We hope that all of you enjoy a very safe and happy holiday season, and that you have a happy and prosperous New Year.

We leave you with the gift of this music, the overture to Richard Wagner’s Tannhäuser, an opera first performed on the Academy of Music’s stage in 1897 under the conductor Walter Damrosch. But the recording you are hearing right now was a performance made in 1963 on the Academy of Music stage by the Philadelphia Orchestra, under the baton of Leopold Stokowski. We’ll have lots of new episodes coming up in 2022, and we urge you all to keep listening, keep sending us those supporting emails, keep posting reviews online about us, keep following us on Facebook and Twitter, and most of all, keep supporting your local theater companies, whether in Philadelphia or anywhere else you might be listening! Thank you and we’ll see you again real soon, on another Adventure in Theater History: Philadelphia!

[CLOSING THEME MUSIC]

© Podcast text copyright Peter Schmitz. All rights reserved.