B.P.O.E. Lodge 944
Ashland Oregon

Tony Pastor's Opera House

In his history of popular culture, Jim Cullen gives the following account of Pastor and his Opera House:

"Born in the early 1830s, Pastor began his theatrical career as a child, singing songs about the evils of alcohol at temperance meetings. He also performed at Barnum's dime museum, with a minstrel troupe, and in a circus. ...by the mid-1870s, crackdowns on the saloons, a restlessness with their narrow clientele, and perhaps a residual middle-class streak from his temperance days led Pastor to consider alternate forms of entertainment. ... In 1865, he opened Pastor's 201 Bowery Opera House, and he spent the next ten years successfully riding a fine line between retaining his concert saloon base and trying to expand his audience."
(Cullen, 131-2)

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Last updated on 3/20/03