Middletown
Current Name of Theater: The Sorg Opera House
Current Type: Performing arts theater
Seats:
Historic Names of Theater: The Sorg Opera House
Web site: www.sorgoperahouse.org
Address: S Main St, Middletown, OH 45044
Year Built: 1891
Original Architect:
Original Cost:
Listed on National Register: no? check 14000480
History of Theater – please see below
Architect: Glaserworks Architects
Contractors:
Cost of Rehabilitation:
Source of Funds: $100,000 in individual donations and grants raised to date.
– “Take-a-Seat” campaign – $16,000 raised to date.
-Season’s Greetings from Middletown CD and live benefit show for the – Sorg Opera House raised nearly $10,000. (Volume 2 is in the works)
-Downtown Middletown Inc. awarded SORG a $1500 facade grant to repair or cover broken windows, and a $5725 grant to repair entry doors to the theater and windows in the street level retail spaces.
-Duke Energy Foundation awarded SORG $35,000 for pre-development services and asbestos abatement.
-The Middletown Community Foundation awarded SORG a grant of $16,500 for bathroom renovations, contingent on $100,000 in donations within a year.
-City of Middletown awarded SORG $20,000
over 60 volunteers contributed a combined total of almost 1000 hours, filled five large dumpsters with debris and saved an estimated $17,000 in professional clean-up fees!
Renovation Story
In the 1980’s a community group, Friends of the Sorg, successfully brought back live performances to the opera house. In 2007 the property was sold and in 2010 a major water main break caused the property to close for good. Recently, the old opera house, now under the control of SORG (Sorg Opera Revitalization Group), has undergone much needed renovations and is well on its way to returning to it’s old grandeur by welcoming performing groups, cultural events and more.
History of Theater
The Sorg Opera House in Middletown was built in 1891. It showed opera until 1915, when it switched to movies. In 1985 it was changed back into a stage theater. At some point the second of the two balconies was hidden behind a false ceiling, and remains up there, just the same as it was back in the 1930s, when it was the colored section.
The Sorg Opera House, located in Downtown Middletown, debuted its first opera, “The Little Tycoon”, in 1891. Several famous vaudeville performers including Marie Dressler, Sophie Tucker, and Will Rogers along with troupes of actors, singers, dancers and even opera companies, from all over New York and Chicago, put on shows five nights a week on the opera house’s grand stage. The Sorg Opera House entertained audiences with operas and performing productions for years, and in 1901, Sorg began showing early forms of moving picture shows. By the end of the 1920’s, live shows were discontinued at the opera house and Sorg became a full-time movie theater and became known as the “Colonial” in 1947. The facility operated as a movie theater until the late 1970’s
The theater’s original owner, Paul J. Sorg, haunts the theater in his 1890s formal clothing. Witnesses who have seen him there identify him by a portrait which hangs in the theater lobby. He was an incredibly wealthy man, locally known as “the last of the robber barons,” and he built the theater for his young wife, who was in love with drama and opera. Early on, Bob Hope performed here.
Footsteps are the most common occurrence here, along with the sighting of Sorg”s ghost. He paces backstage and on the catwalks overhead.
Another ghost belongs to a black man who is supposed to sit in the closed-off balcony for every performance, despite the fact that a ceiling blocks his view. The technical people who work at the theater leave programs for him sometimes.
