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 On December 1, 1859 a gala performance of Rossini's Guillaume Tell inaugurated the new theatre which thereafter would be celebrated as the French Opera House. French Opera Seating French Opera Interior French Opera House French Opera House French Opera House, by artist Persac French Opera House Postcard French Opera House New Orleans French Opera House Postcard French Opera House Postcard French Opera House French Opera House French Opera House Night French Opera House - Carmen Ladies In Balcony French Opera House - 1864 French Opera House - Creole Night French Opera House - Grill Loges for "Ladies Of The Evening", Widows, Ladies In Mourning, and Expectant Mothers Sarah Bernhardt 1881 Mascot At The Opera - After The Opera - Dec. 29, 1888 L'Africana, heard there first in November 1866
"L’Africaine” Meyerbeer, 12/30/1888.
 French Opera House Invitation 1889 French Opera House 1895 "Mlle de Biazi, Première Danseuse; French Opera Saison 1896-1897. Model for Scenery. New Orleans Courtyard with Fountain and Banana Plant. French Opera - Biazi Scenery French Opera Bourbon Street 1905-1910 French Opera Interior - (about) 1919 French Opera Program - Season 1919-1920 - Noted Final Performance French Opera 1919 Fire French Opera House Fire - 1919 French Opera 1919 Ruins, Photograph by Pembrandt French Opera House Lintal Baton Rouge Museum The Creatore - [from LSU archives - is this Gallier?]-
 New Orleans Theatres - National Theatre - Academy Of Music - St. Charles Theatre - Varieties Theatre - The French Opera House
The Inn on Bourbon, on the corner of Toulouse and Bourbon Streets, rests on the site of the Old French Opera House, for 60 years, the cultural center of New Orleans Creole society, and the first opera house in the United States. Erected in 1859 at a cost of $118,000, it was opened to the public on December 1, 1859.
The opera house was one of the most famous masterpieces designed by noted architect James Gallier, architect of Gallier Hall and many other classic 18th century buildings. The great elliptical auditorium was beautifully arranged with a color scheme of red and white, and seated 1,800 persons in four tiers of seats. It was Greek revival in design, and its colonnaded front measured 166 feet on Bourbon Street and 187 feet on Toulouse Street. Its 80-foot high loft towered above all of the buildings of the French Quarter. In the loges of the opera house, there were screened boxes for pregnant ladies, ladies in mourning, and "ladies-of-the-evening" (elegantly dressed madams from nearby Storyville).
On December 1, 1859 a gala performance of Rossini's Guillaume Tell inaugurated the new theatre which thereafter would be celebrated as the French Opera House. During the following season, 1860/61, great excitement was generated by frequent appearances there of the gifted young soprano Adelina Patti, who, aged seventeen, and prior to her debut on the international scene, appeared first in Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor and then, during the remainder of the season, was heard in various other roles, including Leonora in Il Trovatore, Rosina in Barbiere, Lady Harriet in Martha, Gilda in Rigoletto, Valentine in Les Huguenots, and Dinorah in the first United States staging of Meyerbeer's Le Pardon du Plo�rmel.
French Opera Programs"La Juive" Halevy, 11/10/1888, "Les Huguenots"
"Les Huguenots" Meyerbeer, 3/2/1889.
"L'Africaine" Meyerbeer, 12/30/1889.
"Le Prophete", Meyerbeer, 3/3/1889.
"Lucia di Lammermoor", Donizetti, 11/29/90.
Ghioni/Susini troupe, passed through the city, offering Faust and Un Ballo in Maschera for the first time, both sung in Italian, as was Meyerbeer's L'Africana, heard here first in November 1866.
Before the century ended New Orleans also experienced its first stagings of Carmen (1879, in Italian) and A�da, of Boito's Mefistofele (1881, in English), Les Contes d'Hoffmann (1887),Cavalleria rusticana (1892, in English), Manon (1894), Berlioz's La Damnation de Faust in a concert version (1894), and Pagliacci (1895, also in English). Other United States premieres during the final decade of the century were Ernest Reyer's Sigurd (1891) and Salammbo (1900).
In the early hours of the morning of Thursday, 4th December 1919, the French Opera House burned to the grounds to the shock and horror of the people of New Orleans. The emotional account of the fire in The Times-Picayune echoed the sentiments of everyone in the city:
"The French Opera House burned early Thursday morning. Only the toppling walls remain, surrounding a heap of ruins. Gone is all the glory which marked the building for more than half a century - gone in a blaze of burning gauze and tinsel, a blaze more splendid and more terrible than Walpurgis Night, that long-famous brocken of the opera Faust.
"And into the hearts of the people of New Orleans there has come a great sorrow, a great mourning. For there are few women here who have not tender memories of their vanished youth, their debutante days, loves, heartburnings, joy - all intimately linked with the French Opera House. There are few men who have loved or been loved, who have not recollections of the nights when they sat in the dreamy darkness of the old building, listening to the voices of the great singers blending with the orchestra, and thrilling at the touch of a bit of gauze as it brushed their cheeks.
"Children, taken to the opera with their mothers, learned their first lessons in art and music, while watching the singers upon the brilliantly lighted stage. . . .
"Gone, all gone. The curtain has fallen for the last time upon Les Huguenots, long a favorite with the New Orleans public. The opera house has gone in a blaze of horror and of glory. There is a pall over the city; eyes are filled with tears and hearts are heavy. Old memories, tucked away in the dusty cobwebs of forgotten years, have come out like ghosts to dance in the ghastly Walpurgis ballet of flame.
"The heart of the old French Quarter has stopped beating." (quoted in Lyle Saxon. Fabulous New Orleans, Robert L. Crager & Company, New Orleans, 1928 at pp 280-281)
From 1859 until it burned in 1919, the French Opera House was not only the scene of hundreds of operas, but was the hub of the dwindling Creole society, the last refuge of the "creme-de-la-creme."
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