Kennedy Center Opera House Tickets and Seating
The Opera House is a part of the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts on the Potomac River. In fact, despite the popularity of Broadway and the efforts by huge stadiums to keep the seats filled all year long, the Kennedy Center is the busiest performing arts complex in the nation, regularly topping 2,000 performances and two million patrons.
The Opera House is one of three main venues at the Kennedy Center. This particular venue sits between the Concert Hall and the Eisenhower Theater and holds 2,300 people. Unlike most theaters, this venue is adorned by gifts from other nations, including a red and gold silk curtain from Japan and a Lobmeyr crystal chandelier from Austria. The Kennedy Center’s major opera and musical productions are held within its confines, a confine that was renovated just a few years ago from 2003 to 2004.
The entire Kennedy Center was built in the latter half of the 1960s and in the early 1970s. Utilizing $70 million allocated by Congress, grants, and bonds, the venue was erected amidst controversy, from its location to minute detail in the design presented by Edward Durrell Stone.
The Kennedy Center had to be designed to account for a nearby airport and heavy traffic, leading the architectural and theatrical firms involved to be designed as three boxes inside one bigger box. This provides another layer, an exterior shell, to ensure the acoustics Cyril M. Harris worked so hard to refine would not be drowned out be the sound of descending passenger aircraft and commuter traffic.
The Kennedy Center and the Opera House debuted on September 10, 1971 with the premiere of the Alberto Ginastera’s Beatrix Cenci, an original opera composed just for its honor. Now Wicked the Musical will grace the stage and entertain thousands at the cultural center of the nation’s capital.