Houston Grand Opera will play in a convention center

Press release:

Houston, September 25, 2017— Houston Grand Opera (HGO) will transform an exhibit hall in Houston’s downtown convention center into an intimate theater for “unconventional opera.” The first three operas of the company’s 2017–18 season will now take place at the George R. Brown Convention Center in downtown Houston, due to the closing of the Wortham Theater Center for repairs. The three operas to be presented in Exhibit Hall A3 of the convention center, to be called the HGO Resilience Theater, include the season opener, Verdi’s La traviata (Oct. 20–Nov. 11); Handel’s Julius Caesar (Oct. 27– Nov. 10); and the world premiere of Ricky Ian Gordon and Royce Vavrek’s The House without a Christmas Tree (Nov. 30–Dec. 17). The HGO Resilience Theater will hold approximately 1,700 seats with a combination of stadium and floor seating, including excellent wheelchair accessibility. Every seat will be less than 100 feet from the stage.