Some things really do withstand the test of time. When the newly built Napa Valley Opera House opened in 1879, its first presentation was Gilbert and Sullivan’s H.M.S. Pinafore. Often hailed as the world’s first musical comedy, the show had taken the world by storm the year before, so it was quite a coup that the opera house, one of the few respectable venues west of the Mississippi, had managed to mount a production.
In August, the show will return to the same Napa stage, bringing all its mirth, silliness, satire and infectious tunes to new audiences in the almost completely restored theater. After 128 years, characters like Dick Deadeye, Ralph Rackstraw and Josephine, the captain’s daughter, retain their mass appeal. H.M.S. Pinafore is on the summer schedule along with Lavay Smith and her Red Hot Skillet Lickers (Sat., June 30), Queen Latifah (July 12) (sold out), the Pocket Opera’s premiere of Madame Butterfly (July 15) and the Best of the San Francisco Comedy Competition (Aug. 18).
The fare is a medley of classical and contemporary offerings, a blend for which the opera house has become known. While it’s a bit on the square side, the year’s lineup also included Woody Allen and the Indigo Girls. Not exactly George Clooney and Kenny Wayne Shepard, granted, but the NVOH is still experimenting.
“We’re always looking for the right mix, always trying new things,” said executive director Evy Warshawski. “We’re still learning as we go.”
In addition to the expected, NVOH occasionally books the unexpected, such as the Moscow Cats Theater that played here earlier in the year. “They had 35 cats, a dog and five clowns. The cats skateboarded and ran on parallel bars. They performed beautifully,” Warshawski said, as straight-faced as if she were reviewing a troupe of adolescent tap dancers.
In all, the Napa Valley Opera House presents between 80 and 100 shows a year, in addition to renting space to the community, said Warshawski, who came here three years ago after a long stint running the summer festival in Ann Arbor, Mich.
“We do present popular shows, to attract audiences. But we are a nonprofit, so we are trying to raise the bar.”
Unlike the H.M.S. Pinafore, which is obviously still going strong, the Napa Valley Opera House did eventually fall from favor over the years. The first 35 years must have been heady, with appearances by Jack London and John Philip Souza’s band along with a variety of productions, -- from operas, melodramas, musical comedies and minstrel shows -- that alternated with political rallies and town meetings in packing the house.
Regarded as an excellent example of the Italianate Victorian style so popular in the latter half of the 19th century, Crowley’s Opera House, as it was originally named, offered a combination of grandeur and intimacy. All 500 seats boasted excellent sight lines and acoustics. Thanks to a sizable orchestra section and cleverly designed balcony, no seat was more than 16 rows from the stage.
The so-called “Jewel of the Napa Valley” could not, however, stop or even slow the march of progress. Audiences gradually lost their taste for hypnotists, minstrels and other vaudeville acts. Finally, the one-two punch of the popularity of movies and the damage inflicted by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake brought the opera house to its knees. It closed in 1914.
For the next 60 years, the building became home to various enterprises – a rug shop, a dry cleaners, a Chinese restaurant and, during World War I, an armory. So it went until 1973, when a local historic preservation group lobbied to have the opera house registered as a National Historic Landmark, thus saving it from the wrecker’s ball or conversion to office spaces. Twelve years later, a group of concerned citizens led by artist Veronica di Rosa and historic preservationists John Whitridge III and Thomas Thornley formed the nonprofit group known as the Napa Valley Opera House. The group, which raised the funds to purchase the building and to begin restoring it.
By 2002, the ground floor Café Theatre was up and running; it is still the preferred venue for stand-up comedians and other small productions that can operate on a stage moved in for each occasion.
A year later, the Margrit Biever Mondavi main stage theater opened. The original curved balcony is in place, its pine fronting clearly etched and dented from use and disuse by 19th-century theater enthusiasts. The entire building, though buffeted by the big quake, was still intact enough that a full restoration was feasible, including the orchestra pit and the Green Room. Old elements such as interior brick walls are still visible behind the fly system.
When Evy Warshawski uses the term 20/20, she is referring to the 20 years of restoration work and the $20 million it has cost so far. Everyone at NVOH has a wish list of things to be done, from upgrading the kitchen (adding, say, a stove) to building a real box office.
For now, NVOH is content to be part of the ongoing revitalization of downtown Napa, where new restaurants open almost every month (Ubuntu, a vegetarian spot, is expected to open next week), a Westin hotel/condo building is going up near the Wine Train station and a Ritz-Carlton is rumored to be in the works at a location just east of Copia.
“People used to just pass through, not stopping, not shopping,” Warshawski said. Now we’re forcing a reason for them to stay.”