Wright's Opera House

Wright's Opera House is an Italianate brick building from 1888 that remains in active use as a performing arts venue in the center of Ouray. The building retains its original pressed-tin ceiling, balcony, and stage, and the interior restoration has preserved the character of a late-Victorian mountain-town opera house while updating it for contemporary use.

Performances run throughout the summer season — music, theatre, and film — and the building is also rented for private events. The exterior is part of the Main Street streetscape that makes up the Ouray Historic District. If you're passing through Ouray without a specific cultural itinerary, it's worth checking the schedule; performances in a restored Victorian mining-era opera house in a mountain box canyon is exactly the kind of incongruous pleasure that makes small western towns worth visiting.

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A story
Wright's Opera House opened in 1888, and the program of its first year included theatrical performances, a boxing match, a wrestling tournament, and a circus. The building was designed to project respectability onto a mining boomtown — Ouray's residents apparently wanted to demonstrate that culture had arrived alongside the silver. It hosted performances continuously for over a century before a major restoration in the late 1990s.