After The Storm
Houston Grand Opera finds an 'unconventional' home for performances after the storm
After being washed out of the Wortham Theater Center by Hurricane Harvey, Houston Grand Opera has found an "unconventional" home for its first three productions.
Officials announced on Monday that an exhibit hall at the George R. Brown Convention Center will be converted into a temporary 1,700-seat space, dubbed "HGO Resilence Theater," for the season opener, Verdi's La traviata. The production will run on the same dates from October 20-November 11 as originally planned, albeit in a smaller space. The opera company usually performs in the 2,405-seat Brown Theater at the Wortham.
Other HGO productions set for the new space include Handel’s Julius Caesar (October 27-November 10); and the world premiere of Ricky Ian Gordon and Royce Vavrek’s The House Without a Christmas Tree (November 30-December 17).
The temporary arena will include a combination of stadium and floor seating, with wheelchair accessibility. Every seat will be less than 100 feet from the stage, officials said in a press release.
To help alleviate parking issues, all HGO ticket buyers to La traviata and/or Julius Caesar will receive a code for a $30 credit per ticket from Lyft to use for rides to and from the convention center location ($15 per ride).
Tickets for all productions are available at HGO.org; seating assignments will be made in early October.
Plans for HGO productions set for winter and spring 2018, including Elektra, The Barber of Seville, and West Side Story, have yet to be addressed in the new plans. The Wortham is closed until at least May 2018 as officials assess the damage to the building from Hurricane Harvey, in which 12 feet of water flooded the basement and damaged the Brown Theater stage, reception and seating areas, and mechanical and electrical systems.
