National Register of Historic Places in Napa County

National Register #73000414: Napa Valley Opera House in the City of Napa, California Napa Valley Opera House
Napa Valley Opera House and Winship-Smernes Building Napa Valley Opera House and Winship-Smernes Building
20 April 2009
(Click Photos to Zoom)
National Register #73000414
Napa Valley Opera House
1018-1030 Main Street
Napa
Built 1879

The Napa Valley Opera House was designed by the architectural firm of Newsom & Newsom in the Italianate style.

G.W. Crowley opened his newly constructed opera house in January 1880 with a performance of Gilbert and Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore. For the next twenty-six years, the theater hosted vaudeville, concerts, light opera, meetings, and graduations. But after the 1906 earthquake, movies began inexorably to replace live entertainment, and the Opera House went out of business in 1914.

In 1985, Robert Mondavi and Margrit Biever Mondavi assisted in the formation of a nonprofit organization to restore and manage the theater which reopened in 2003. Once again the Napa Valley Opera House offers seasons of classical and popular music.

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