Circle of Life
The final hours at the famously restored Opera House before the curtain went up on opening night of The Lion King proved to be organized chaos, as Globe photographer Suzanne Kreiter recorded with this behind-the-scenes photo essay.
In his lyrics to the song "Circle of Life," written for The Lion King and released in 1994, Elton John opens with these words: "From the day we arrive on the planet/And blinking, step into the sun/There's more to be seen than can ever be seen/More to do than can ever be done."
That feeling of plunging into the unknown is what faced a group of business leaders, politicians, and architects after Mayor Thomas M. Menino, in 1995, got Boston's faded and dilapidated Opera House on Washington Street declared one of the country's 11 most endangered historical sites by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Of course, it's one thing to get a building declared endangered, quite another to do some- thing about it once it's on the list. It helped that ownership of the theater had fallen into the gloriously rich hands of entertainment conglomerate Clear Channel, but even that didn't guarantee the building would be restored -- and with the appropriate touches.
Nine years later, on the evening of Friday, July 16, the curtain went up on The Lion King, and the Opera House, with its 100-foot-high vaulted ceiling and new and expanded 45-foot-long stage, was officially back in business.
So what, exactly, does it take -- besides $38 million -- to bring back to life a venue that opened in 1928 as the B. F. Keith Memorial Theatre, became the Opera House in 1978, and ran its last production -- Black Nativity -- on December 23, 1990?
For starters, about 30,000 work hours, much of them spent cleaning and recasting molds and cleaning existing plaster throughout the theater. Also, 4 pounds of gold leaf were added to the walls, and 900 sprinkler heads were installed, along with 79 miles of new electrical wiring and 1,600 new light fixtures.
In its previous life, the theater had 2,900 seats and was used mainly for vaudeville performers or comedians. The new version has 2,600 seats, fewer so that patrons can be more comfortable. One restoration wrinkle was removing the 6-foot-deep swimming pool, where seals used to perform, from beneath the original stage.
For now, the Opera House's wedding-cake facade is so bright that it stands out along the grit of Washington Street like a Rolls Royce in a parking lot of Dodge Darts. By the time The Phantom of the Opera opens in March, however, maybe the shine on the Opera House will have dulled just enough, and the neighboring buildings will have undergone their own touch-ups, so that the block looks as seamless as it did back in the Roaring Twenties. 