musical.today Blackpool, United Kingdom
Blackpool Opera House
2,812 seats
The third largest theatre in the United Kingdom, after the Hammersmith Apollo and the Edinburgh Playhouse — and the third building of that name on the site inside the Winter Gardens — Matcham's original of 1889 was outgrown, its 1911 replacement was demolished, and the present modernist house opened in 1939.
The building
Matcham's first Opera House cost £9,098, seated 2,500 and opened as Her Majesty's Opera House with the premiere run of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Yeomen of the Guard. It was full enough to be rebuilt bigger within twenty-one years, and rebuilt again a generation later.
The 1939 house has a sweeping curved proscenium and the last new Wurlitzer organ installed anywhere in Britain, played on the opening night by Horace Finch and Reginald Dixon and still in use.
Opening dates, capacities and architects on this page come from the theatre's own history pages and from Wikipedia.