Gala Days of Piper’s Opera House and the California Theater

©2012 Clarence D. Basso

Impresario David Belasco (1859-1931) was one of the great showmen of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and was known for creating his own persona and his own legend. The famous Belasco “touch” brought audiences to theaters wherever he worked and so it was with his brief tenure at Piper’s Opera House in Virginia City, Nevada, between October 1873 and March 1874.

Belasco filled several engagements on the Comstock before the 1875 fire destroyed the original Piper’s Opera house on D Street, and in reminiscences published in 1914, he related his experiences and impressions of life on the Comstock during its tumultuous boom days.

Of Virginia City, Belasco remarked, “There is scarcely a page in [its] history before the fire that would not make lurid melodrama too strong for the palate of the theatergoer of today.”

Belasco’s time on Nevada’s Comstock had a permanent influence on his perceptions of the human condition; he noted: “Art must temper life and shape it into consistency, but Virginia City entered into my make-up in other subtle ways.”

Belasco’s observations of the drama that was Virginia City and the tragedy that was Piper’s Opera House were captured in an autobiographical article in Hearst’s Magazine in 1914. That piece was re-issued in 1991 as limited hard and soft cover editions by Clarence David Basso at Falcon Fill Press in Sparks, Nevada.

Long out of print, Gala Days of Piper’s Opera House and the California Theater by David Belasco now may be read in this copyrighted PowerPoint presentation: Gala Days of Piper’s Opera House and the California Theater.

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