The Opera House, Red Cloud's "Window to the World"
The Opera House, Red Cloud's "Window to the World"
From Hear Nebraska / Andrew Stellmon
Standing in the doorway of the Red Cloud Opera House auditorium, restored almost exactly to its 1885 condition, you can see the exact spot where Willa Cather gave her famed 1890 high school graduation speech. Eloquent and dense, it remarks on the history of human progress and its stunting by superstition, rather heady for a 16-year-old with little formal education.
She stood there that day in front of her two other graduating classmates on the same stage from which she devoured numerous theatrical productions as a patron. As an admirer of the arts, the famous author spent a significant amount of her time in Red Cloud in that auditorium, seeing traveling productions of The Bohemian Girl and The Mikado on their ways to bigger cities. In the small, southern Nebraska town, the opera house provided one of the only opportunities to glimpse the outside world.
