Riverside’s iconic century-old venue continues to be entertainment hub for the neighbourhood

The Opera House has been Riverside’s entertainment hub for more than 100 years, starting out as a vaudeville theatre and eventually hosting rock, rap, punk and of course, an opera.

The space first opened in 1909 as La Plaza Theatre. It later became a single-screen cinema before being sold and transformed into The Opera House in 1989.

But the Queen East staple almost never existed. After about a million dollars in renovations and two failed openings, disaster struck during the final inspection.

“A fire panel decides to blow up in the lobby, fills the whole place up with black smoke. I was in tears, it was like the week before our opening,” explained long-time owner Athena Towers. “The Fire chief took some pity on me, decided to go for an extended coffee break. Came back late in the day, after the fire panel was repaired and finally gave us the stamp of approval.”

The historic building isn’t the only thing that makes this venue unique, the Opera House is actually a family business.

“There’s three siblings … I was running the family restaurant and I didn’t feel that I was being challenged at all, and I said, ‘Okay Gus, I want a club too.’ and I was the youngest nagging little sister,” shared Towers.

Over the last three decades since, that same family business has hosted some of Toronto’s most iconic concerts. “There’s a degree of love and care that you get when you’re dealing with someone who actually owns the venue as opposed to some shadowy corporation,” Daniel Tate of The Flyer Vault tells CityNews

“Rage Against the Machine, their first show was at the Opera House in 1993 on a five-dollar ticket, it was one of those shows where everybody says they were there,” said Tate.

And it’s not just bands on their way to the top that play at the Opera House, Metallica hit the stage in 2016. “One of the top three most legendary shows at the Opera House, if not all of Toronto,” said Tate.

“We were kind of freaking out, but the second it started, it was otherworldly … you’re never getting a band that size into a room this small,” said Daniel Cumming, Technical Director of the Opera House.

A lot has changed in Riverside since the Towers family bought the venue and that’s in part because of the Opera House.

“We are the space in the Riverside community,” said Towers. “When we opened 33 years ago, there was nothing in this neighbourhood other than the Opera House and Jilly’s on the corner … it took bringing all those people here night after night for shows for the neighbourhood to be looked at differently.”

“This room breathes life to the whole neighbourhood, where it’s entertainment, it’s people, there’s something in the air when concerts are going on here,” said Cumming.

And there’s never a dull moment at The Opera House. “There’s so many different things we use the venue for. We’ve hosted weddings. We’ve hosted wrestling matches on our dance floor with a punk band on stage, so anything goes,” explained Towers.

On hosting an opera, Towers said, “I had to do it because… it’s called the Opera House. Where can you go and get opera, poutine, and a beer? And that was the whole thing — it’s a non-traditional space to actually watch opera.”

Staff say they used the downtime of the pandemic on upgrades and renovations and are working their way back up to the usual 200 shows a year.