FLORIDA PLACE TO EXPLORE
Sarasota Opera House
Sarasota County · Gulf Coast
A 1926 Mediterranean Revival theater in downtown Sarasota where Elvis played in 1956, rebuilt as an opera house in 2008.
ABOUT THIS PLACE
A.B. Edwards, Sarasota's first mayor, built this as the Edwards Theatre and opened it on April 10, 1926. Roy A. Benjamin designed it in Mediterranean Revival style, three stories holding eight shops at street level, twelve offices above and twelve furnished apartments, with the auditorium and a pipe organ behind. Will Rogers played here in 1927 and the Ziegfeld Follies in 1928. Cecil B. DeMille premiered The Greatest Show on Earth here in 1951, which was fitting in a circus town. Elvis Presley played the house on February 21, 1956. By the 1970s it was failing, and the Asolo Opera Guild bought it in 1979 for 150,000 dollars. Renovation began in 1982 and it went on the National Register in 1984. A twenty million dollar rebuild in 2007 and 2008 reconfigured the auditorium and reopened the original three-story atrium under a new skylight. It seats 1,119 at 61 North Pineapple Avenue
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