Music Hall celebrates 125 years
By Mary Ellyn Hutton
Cincinnati Post
May 2, 2003
Cincinnati's Music Hall inspires many things: mystery, awe, love.
Photo by Bruce Crippin/The Post
Drive past her at night, and you can feel
the mystery. She was built over a
19th-century potter's field and human
remains have been unearthed over the
years. Bats in her belfry?
"Occasionally, but it's very rare," said
Music Hall facility engineer Ed Vignale, Jr.
Music Hall's hulking façade, with its spires
and huge rose window, is arresting any
time of day. It made a perfect backdrop for
the over-sized banner of CSO music
director Paavo Jarvi, which hung over its
stone steps last season, his first with the
CSO.
Jarvi feels a kind of awe himself, he said.
"It has a sense of grandeur and occasion.
Every time I perform there I somehow feel
the history of the place."
That history will be celebrated with a 125th
anniversary party on Wednesday of next
week at Music Hall. There'll be a food fest
at 5 p.m. in the ballroom and a 7 p.m.
concert in Music Hall featuring the CSO
Youth Orchestra, May Festival Youth
Chorus and ensembles from the University
of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of
Music, the School for Creative and
Performing Arts and others.
WCIN-AM's Courtis Fuller will host. The
party kicks off a year of celebration entitled
"Music Hall: Forever New."
Music Hall is as old as the carved wooden
panel from the old Music Hall organ in CSO
president Steven Monder's office and as
new as the elevator providing handicapped
access. At 3,416 seats, it is the largest
concert hall in the country.
Music Hall has seen 81 May Festivals,
countless Cincinnati Symphony and Pops
concerts, a sleigh full of Cincinnati Ballet
"Nutcrackers," graduation ceremonies,
speeches and, in 1880, the Democratic
National Convention (Gen. Winfield Scott
Hancock nominated here lost to James
Garfield).
There have been parties in the Music Hall
ballroom, weddings in the foyer and
basketball games, ice skating, wrestling
matches, auto shows and horticultural
exhibits in the north and south wings
She is, "in a sense," said Pops conductor
Erich Kunzel, "the history of Cincinnati."
"It's been not only musical activity, but
commercial, exhibition type of activity way
before convention halls were a part of the
city landscape."
Nobody knows Music Hall better than
Vignale, who has kept watch over her since
1981. A custom tour of the building, what
he calls his "insurance" tour, proceeds
from the old Music Hall offices in the North Wing, now gutted to make way
for Cincinnati Opera's projected Corbett Opera Center, through the paint
and carpentry shops down into the basement, where props like the giant
birthday cake rolled onstage for the Pops' 75th birthday tribute to Dave
Brubeck is stored. An ornate cello case belonging to former CSO cellist
Liz Elsaesser stands in a corner, waiting to be recovered.
Crossing the Music Hall stage, Vignale explains the counter weight
suspension system used to raise and lower the CSO "ceiling" and sets
used in Cincinnati Opera productions.
The CSO's priceless music library is protected by a halon gas fire
suppression system backed up by sprinklers, he said. "You get this
300-pound rush of air -- Doors close, the ventilation system stops."
Reaching the attic is a heady climb up a ladder. There, underneath the
great eastern gable, you can see the rose window, the steel trusses that
support the roof and the winch used to raise and lower Music Hall's
1,500-pound crystal chandelier.
On the National Register of Historic Places, the red brick, "Victorian
Gothic" structure, designed by architect Samuel Hannaford, has hosted a
"who's who" of the world's great performers: Jascha Heifetz, Maria Callas,
Luciano Pavarotti, Andres Segovia, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Duke Ellington,
Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Miles Davis, Bob Dylan, The Who, Ella
Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra, among others.
Bach's "Magnificat" received its U.S. premiere at the 1875 May Festival,
Mahler's Symphony No. 5 by the CSO in 1905. Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man,"
commissioned by the CSO, was
premiered at Music Hall in 1943.
Kunzel has made 91 Pops recordings at Music Hall and taped five PBS
television shows. A sixth, "Patriotic Broadway," airs June 2. Järvi's 2001
CSO inaugural concert will be telecast June 4 on PBS.
With a sound-decay time approaching 3 seconds, Music Hall's acoustics
are renowned. "We have loved working in Music Hall since our first
recording in 1978," said Robert Woods, Grammy-winning president of
Telarc. "The hall is old and therefore splendidly organic. There is no
concrete under the stage, just huge wooden beams, and thick, solid
plaster walls," he said. "There are a lot of great orchestras that don't
record in their own halls," Monder said.
"We're very, very fortunate."
Twelve CSO music directors have conducted at Music Hall, including
Leopold Stokowski, Fritz Reiner, Max Rudolf, Thomas Schippers and
Jesús López-Cobos. Visitors to the Music Hall podium include Richard
Strauss, Igor Stravinsky, Arthur Fiedler, Leonard Bernstein, Robert Shaw
and John Philip Sousa.
It all began with the Germans in Over-the-Rhine, said Kunzel. "A lot of
hard-working Germans came to Cincinnati in the 19th century and settled
in Over-the-Rhine. They were famous for their breweries, their beer halls
and their singing. When conductor Theodore Thomas came to Cincinnati
to start a May Festival, he noticed that the Germans, who loved to sing,
were situated in Over-the-Rhine. So when he asked the city to build a hall
for the May Festival, it was decided, hey, let's not build it downtown, let's
build it where the singers are."
"Music Hall is truly a jewel," said president Tom Besanceney of the
Over-the-Rhine Chamber of Commerce. "We need to move down the road
with improvements to Washington Park and the schools. We are very
much committed to making these surrounding developments for Music
Hall happen."
Music Hall was built for the May Festival. The first one, in 1873, was
housed in a wood frame exposition hall, formerly Sängerhalle, built for the
German song festivals. Situated at 14th and Elm streets -- the same spot
as Music Hall -- it was built over a potter's field.
At the second May Festival in 1875, a torrential rain beat on the tin roof of
the building, halting the performance. Reuben Springer, a wealthy local
businessman, pledged $125,000 toward the building of "a proper hall" for
the festival, to be matched by the citizens of Cincinnati.
Charles Aiken, superintendent of music in Cincinnati public schools, led a
"children's crusade" in which students donated $3,000 in pennies toward
construction. The cornerstone was laid in 1877. The hall opened in 1878
with the third biennial May Festival led by Thomas. Two exhibition wings,
Arts Hall (south) and Mechanics Hall (north), were added in 1879. Total
cost was $446,000.
The CSO, founded in 1894-95, first performed in Music Hall in 1897 in a
concert led by founding music director Frank van der Stucken. In 1908, the
CSO moved to Emery Auditorium, a smaller hall on Walnut Street in
Over-the-Rhine custom built for Stokowski. The CSO returned to Music
Hall in 1936.
Music Hall has seen many changes over the years. With the advent of the
CSO, accommodations had to be made for symphony concerts, including
addition of a stage and proscenium arch. Electric lighting and permanent
seating were also installed.
The modern era began when Cincinnati Opera moved to Music Hall from
the Cincinnati Zoo in 1972. With $6 million from the Corbett Foundation,
extensive renovation began in 1969. The hall was air conditioned and
escalators, new seating, the chandeliers, a new organ and a parking
garage with a skywalk over Central Parkway were added.
Nicholas Muni "optimized Music Hall for opera" when he became opera
artistic director in 1998. Refinements included covering the proscenium
arch with a black frame, extending the stage outward, installing up-to-date
lighting and video monitors for SurCaps (English captions). "The grand
design and scale of Music Hall make it a wonderful venue for the huge
proportions of opera," he said.
It will be home more than ever when the opera moves from its cramped
quarters in Music Hall's south wing to its new space in the north wing.
Renovation is expected to take ten months, pending finalization of a lease
agreement with the Cincinnati Arts Association. The center will
consolidate all opera activities in one "building within a building," with its
own ticket office, headquarters and rehearsal and production areas.
Patricia Corbett, who has maintained the Corbett Foundation's
philanthropy since her husband J. Ralph Corbett's death ($9 million for
Music Hall alone), says of Music Hall: "Part of my heart resides there. I
have spent some magical times (there). My hope is that generations to
come will have those same opportunities."
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Wide-eyed children visit Music Hall for the first time
By Nick Clooney
Cincinnati Post
May 2, 2003
So the magnificent pile of bricks on Elm Street is having a birthday, is it?
What comes as a shock to me is that I've been around more than half as long
as Music Hall. It is sobering to admit that the proud old building is aging better
than I am.
How about your personal history with Music Hall? When did you first go
there?
When my sisters Rosemary, Betty and I were growing up in Cincinnati, there
were certain things we knew because our family told us they were true.
Cincinnati had the world's first and best baseball team and Crosley Field was
the best ballpark. We had the biggest and most beautiful railroad terminal, the
biggest and oldest suspension bridge across the mighty river, the most ornate
movie palace in the world, the Albee, America's best radio station, WLW, the
Nation's Station and although we were grudgingly told Carew Tower was not
the tallest building, it was the best tall building and went up faster than any.
Coney Island was the cleanest amusement park, we had the country's largest
municipal University and General and Children's hospitals were at the top in
health care. There were more, but these were some of the dogma of our
Cincinnati catechism.
Of course, at the center of it all was the world's best symphony orchestra and
its unparalleled home, Music Hall. We knew of it long before we visited it.
Rosemary, Betty and I had walked all the way around it on a downtown
excursion, much too intimidated to peek in.
It must have been the fourth grade or so for me when a big yellow bus picked
up a crowd of us schoolchildren and took us for our first inside visit. It was the
vastness and the colors that first assaulted our young senses. Red, cream,
gold, crystal. The huge, overpowering stage.
There were about a dozen musicians on stage that morning. The busloads of
children stopped chattering while someone on stage introduced us to each of
the instruments in turn. Trumpet, trombone, violin, bass, oboe, snare drum
and so on. I'm sure none of us ever forgot it. We chattered about it for days
and lorded over those who had not yet been there.
Not in our wildest dreams did any of us imagine we might some day stand on
that terrifying stage and face the rows and rows of red seats, but some of us
did.
First, my sister Betty sang there when she was with WLW-T in 1949. Betty,
always the family trailblazer. I was there narrating a Christmas program in the
1960s. Shortly after that, Rosemary began a series of appearances with the
newly-minted Cincinnati Pops under Erich Kunzel, including a memorable
birthday celebration of her own. This doesn't count visits by the Clooney
Sisters with Tony Pastor's band to what was then known as the adjoining
Topper Ballroom in the 1940s.
Over the years, I've made a number of trips to that stage, courtesy of the
Pops. A couple of Christmas programs, a movie music salute, a few holiday
specials. My 50th year in broadcasting was held at what is now called Music
Hall Ballroom. Each time I go to Music Hall I recall that long-ago morning and
all of us breathless children looking at that beautiful room, hearing impossibly
talented musicians spinning gossamer melodies, and dreams.
I was driving past Music Hall on a recent weekday morning. Several school
buses were parked in front and a double line of excited kids clambered up the
steps, wide-eyed at what might be inside. I envied them.
Happy birthday, you irreplaceable old pile of bricks.
Thanks for everything.
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