Civic Opera House (Chicago)
opera house in Chicago, Illinois, United States
The Civic Opera House, also often referred to as the Lyric Opera House, is an opera house located at 20 North Wacker Drive in Chicago. The Civic's main performance space, named for Ardis Krainik, seats 3,276, making it the second-largest opera auditorium in North America, after the Metropolitan Opera House. Built for the Chicago Civic Opera, it has been home to the Lyric Opera of Chicago since 1954 and the Joffrey Ballet since 2021. It is part of a complex with a 45-story office tower and two 22-story wings, known as the Civic Opera Building that opened November 4, 1929 and features Art Deco details.
History
Samuel Insull envisioned and hired the design team for building a new opera house to serve as the home for the Chicago Civic Opera. The building has been seen as being shaped like a huge chair and is sometimes referred to as "Insull's Throne" or "Insull's Folly."
Insull selected the architecture firm Graham, Anderson, Probst & White who were responsible for numerous buildings in the downtown Chicago Loop (including the art deco Merchandise Mart and the former Morton Salt headquarters building next door to the Civic Opera House at 110 N Wacker, constructed in the 1950s). As they did on other occasions, the architects commissioned Henry Hering to produce architectural sculpture for the building. The Indiana limestone used on the exterior was brought from Bedford, Indiana and carved by a team of stone carvers at Ingalls Stone Company under the direction of Harry (Enrico) Liva.
The inaugural season was marked by the première of Camille, a modern opera by 28-year-old Chicago-composer Hamilton Forrest July 15, 1929. It was commissioned by the Civic Opera's prime star and manager, Mary Garden.
The public source identifies “Civic Opera House (Chicago)” as opera house in Chicago, Illinois, United States. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Civic, Opera and House.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1833594. Authority coordinates are 41.883, -87.638. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1954, 2021 and 1929.
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This entry incorporates text from “Civic Opera House (Chicago)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.