Early Performances

At the Sorg’s grand opening on Sept. 12, 1891, the opera “The Little Tycoon” played to a house of 1,200 seats. This included the orchestra level plus the two balconies. If you haven’t checked out the lower balcony yet, you can visit it using either staircase in the lobby. It also has excellent acoustics, and offers a wonderfully intimate view of the stage. 

The upper balcony is not yet reopened to the public, but you can get a glimpse of it if you walk to the front of the theater near the stage and look up. Make note of the illuminated “Sorg’s Opera House” sign that is original to the building.  For many years, this upper balcony was segregated seating, and there was a separate entrance on the side of the theater with its own box office and stairs leading directly to the top level. When the Opera House was converted to the Colonial Theater in the 1940s, a drop ceiling was installed that concealed the upper balcony. The drop ceiling was removed by the Sorg Opera Revitalization Group to once again reveal an entire level that had been concealed for decades. At the same time, major work was done on painting the theater, including a lot of detail work. Check out the beautiful gold, red and blue trim on the columns, along the front of the balconies, and especially on the roofs over the box seats. This is all part of the current and ongoing restoration efforts of the SORG group.

Of course, any 19th century opera house had to have box seats, designed not so much for their view of the stage, but to make sure that their occupants could be seen by the other patrons. The theater’s seating has been reconfigured since the Sorg’s opening, and the orchestra, boxes and lower balcony now have a combined total of 737 seats. The current theater seats have come full circle: when Cincinnati’s Music Hall was renovated in 2017 all of its seats were replaced, and volunteers with the Sorg Opera Revitalization Group provided many hours of labor to transport the seats removed  from Music Hall to Middletown, and install them in place of the Sorg’s old and very worn seats. It just seems right that Samuel Hannaford’s Music Hall has made a very recent contribution to the rebirth of his Sorg Opera House.