SINCE THE CURTAIN went up on Verdi's "Il Trovatore" 150 years ago, the Academy of Music - America's oldest opera house (still used for its original purpose) - has reigned as the Grand Old Lady of Locust Street.
The world's greatest singers, dancers, musicians and conductors (not to mention actors, comedians and even a mouse) have graced its stage and marveled at its jewel-box decor. Its audiences have included presidents, popes and princes.
On Saturday night, the Academy of Music and the Philadelphia Orchestra, which called it home for a century, will hold a sold-out birthday party for the 2,897-seat hall.
Former NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw will be host to pianist Peter Nero, actor John Lithgow, and pop icon Rod Stewart, plus the great Wagner singers Deborah Voigt and Ben Heppner. And 146 years after another Prince of Wales visited the academy, the current prince, Charles, and his wife, Camilla Parker Bowles, the Duchess of Cornwall, will attend.
The academy cornerstone was laid on July 26, 1855, and it opened on Jan. 26, 1857. Here's a sampling in words and pictures of what's happened inside since then.
_ Let's start at the beginning - and hope history doesn't repeat itself. The academy's 1857 opening was delayed six days due to a snowstorm that deposited drifts "as high as a man's head" and temperatures of 6 degrees below zero that stopped the railroads. There was a fire at the mayor's house, too.
_ When a Prince of Wales last attended an academy concert, on Oct. 6, 1860, the keeper of the gate receipts stranded the choristers and stiffed all the singers save the leads.
_ Back in the day, the academy functioned sort of like the Spectrum. A scoreless University of Pennsylvania-Princeton University football game was played on its covered parquet floor on March 7, 1889, followed by a field goal demonstration and a tug-of-war.
Though there are few details on how it was done, ice skater Carrie Augusta Moore showed her prowess on the stage three years earlier, and a Penn track meet was held on the floor in 1892.
_ Until the official launch of the Philadelphia Orchestra on Nov. 16, 1900, opera reigned here, though there was competition from Oscar Hammerstein's theater at Broad and Poplar streets. Both houses produced competing performances of "Aida" on Nov. 9, 1909.
_ Composer Giacomo Puccini attended the U.S. premiere of his opera "Madama Butterfly" with J. Luther Long, the Philadelphia lawyer who wrote the original story, on Feb. 14, 1907.
_ In 1916, Philadelphia Orchestra Music Director Leopold Stokowski led the first American performance of Mahler's colossal Eighth Symphony, featuring 958 singers and 111 musicians.
The performance made the orchestra an international star. (During its 2007-08 season, the orchestra will do Mahler's Eighth again, with 500 artists under conductor Christoph Eschenbach.)
_ The academy was host of many benefit performances during the Civil War and World War I. During World War II, local artists painted murals in the basement for the visiting servicemen's Stage Door Canteen. Uncovered during recent renovations, some of Alfred Bendiner's murals can still be seen in the lower lobby.
_ Words as well as music often have filled the hall. June 1872 brought the Republican National Convention. Wild Bill Hickok and Buffalo Bill Cody performed here in an 1873 play. Winston Churchill spoke about the Boer War in December 1900.
_ Stokowski famously admonished suburban ladies in the audience one November 1918 afternoon for making noise during the concert and leaving early to catch the train home.
_ The first real movie shown at the academy, in 1918, was "Over the Top." Later, Deanna Durbin was recorded here for the 1937 film "One Hundred Men and a Girl" (though she re-recorded it in Hollywood). And, of course, Disney recorded the soundtrack of "Fantasia," conducted by Stokowski (with a little "help" from one Mickey Mouse) here in 1939.
_ On Oct. 16, 1929, Marian Anderson made her first academy appearance. And four days after her famous Easter Sunday concert at Washington's Lincoln Memorial (April 13, 1939), Philadelphia's beloved contralto triumphantly reprised that concert at the academy.
_ Famed pianist Arthur Rubinstein celebrated his 89th birthday with a concert on March 24, 1976, finishing an academy performance span that had begun in 1906.
_ Modessa Haskins Floyd was a familiar sight to women visiting the academy. In what began as a temporary job in 1929, she presided over the ladies' cloak room for decades, celebrating 50 years in 1979 with the claim, "I've never lost a coat."
_ At least a dozen presidents have visited the academy. Soon after awarding Philadelphia Orchestra Music Director Eugene Ormandy the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Richard Nixon attended a concert on Jan. 22, 1970, that included Tchaikovsky's noisy "1812 Overture." When the stage manager walked in to the rehearsal carrying an armful of shotguns (used to simulate the cannon noise), Philadelphia police arrested him.
_ On Aug. 4, 1977, the Eucharistic Congress was celebrated with an evening of Polish music. Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, primate of Poland, was led to a proscenium box, but a woman sitting there refused to move. The cardinal later became Pope John Paul II.
In the new millennium
_ While the orchestra's new home, the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, was under construction a block down Broad Street, more than $40 million was spent from 1994 through 2002 to renovate the academy.
Dirt under its foundation was dug out by hand to install concrete to support a new roof and heavy, more-modern backstage equipment. Construction workers were amazed at the meticulous craftsmanship lavished even on cavernous areas never seen by the public.
_ Until its renovation, the academy was the last "hemp house," meaning that its curtains and operations were all operated by ropes. The fly areas above the stage were equipped with gigantic pulleys and thick rope to hoist sets, using the cutting-edge shipboard technology of that time. Electrical devices and metal cables do the job now. *