The Twin City Opera House

In order to understand the history of an entity as important as the Opera House, we should understand the culture in which was it was created. The doors of the Opera House Theater opened to the public in 1892, but the building really had its beginnings several years earlier.

The formal opening was held Saturday, May 28, 1892. The opening was to be a grand affair. The program for the evening was the Arion Opera Company’s performance of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “The Mikado.” The cast, crew and orchestra numbered nearly one-hundred. All of the eight-hundred seats that were then available in the auditorium were sold. Railway excursions had been arranged from neighboring towns to bring the cultured and the curious. Many of the ticket holders were not so much patrons of the opera, but curiosity seekers eager to see what the newspapers described as the “light of the day

The Opera House Theater’s auditorium was dedicated “Birch Hall,” in honor and memory of MacDonald Birch, Master Magician. Birch was a Morgan County native and frequently entertained his hometown friends and relatives at the Opera House, when he was not traveling the globe and entertaining before “the crowned heads” of the world