The Metropolitan Opera House was built by Hammerstein to be the home of his then new opera company, the Philadelphia Opera Company (POC). Hammerstein hired architect
William H. McElfatrick of the firm
J.B. McElfatrick & Son to design the opera house in 1907, and construction began the following year. When it opened as the Philadelphia Opera House in 1908, it was the largest theater of its kind in the world, seating more than 4,000 people. The opera house officially opened on November 17, 1908, with a production of
Georges Bizet's
Carmen for the opening of the POC's first season. The cast included
Maria Labia in the title role,
Charles Dalmorès as Don José,
Andrés de Segurola as Escamillo,
Alice Zeppilli as Micaëla, and
Cleofonte Campanini conducting. The POC continued to use the house for its productions through March 1910. The company's last performance at the house was of
Giuseppe Verdi's
Rigoletto on March 23, 1910, with
Giovanni Polese in the title role,
Lalla Miranda as Gilda,
Orville Harrold as the Duke of Mantua, and
Giuseppe Sturani conducting. On April 26, 1910,
Arthur Hammerstein, with his father's power of attorney, sold the Philadelphia Opera House to the New York Metropolitan Opera. The theater was then renamed the Metropolitan Opera House. The Met, which had annually toured to Philadelphia with performances at the
Academy of Music, had been the POC's biggest competition for opera audiences. In spite of two sold-out seasons of grand opera for the POC, Hammerstein ran into debt and had to sell his highly popular opera house to his competitor. The Met's first production at the renamed theater was on December 13, 1910. The Met performed regularly at the MOH for the next decade, giving well over a hundred performances at the house. The Metropolitan Opera's last performance at the MOH was
Eugene Onegin on April 20, 1920, with
Giuseppe de Luca in the title role and
Claudia Muzio as Tatyana. While the Met owned the MOH, it also rented the venue to other opera companies for their performances. The theater was the home of the
Philadelphia-Chicago Grand Opera Company between 1911 and 1914. The Philadelphia Operatic Society also used the house during and after the Met's tenure, through 1924. After the Met returned to performing at the Academy of Music for the 1920-1921 opera season, the MOH became the home of the
Philadelphia Civic Opera Company until 1928. The
Philadelphia Grand Opera Company and the
Philadelphia La Scala Opera Company, two companies that primarily performed at the Academy of Music, also occasionally performed there during the 1920s and 1930s. The MOH was also host to many traveling productions by opera companies from other cities. The last opera production mounted at the MOH was a double billing of
Cavalleria rusticana and
Pagliacci under the baton of Aldo Franchetti, presented by the
Chicago Grand Opera Company on May 5, 1934. By 1920, while still being used as a performing venue for operas, the house began presenting
silent films to the public. It remained a cinema venue after the MOH stopped presenting operas. In April 1922, J.F Rutherford gave the first radio broadcast from the Metropolitan Opera House to an estimated 50,000 people on the discourse "Millions Now Living Will never Die". On July 14, 1939, a crowd of 6,000 supporters, including 200 active members of the Philadelphia Police Department with German Nazi sympathies, filled the Met to hear the radical anti-Jewish preacher Father
Charles Coughlin commission John F. Cassidy to lead his new pro-fascist
Christian Front organization. In the late 1930s, the MOH became a
ballroom and in the 1940s a sports promoter bought the venue, covered the orchestra pit with flooring so basketball, wrestling, and boxing could take place. The
Eastern Pennsylvania Basketball League's
Philadelphia Lumberjacks played many of the home games at the Opera House during the 1946-1947 season. The venture to bring sports to the Opera House closed after attendance waned following a decline in the quality of the surrounding neighborhood. In 1954, the building was sold and became a church. ==Decline==