Email: "Patterson adds support to Wieting restoration"
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TOLEDO CHRONICLE- Editor’s Note: This letter was written by Toledo native Michael Patterson, a professor of music at Simpson College Indianola, in support of the Iowa Great Places and other grant efforts for the Wieting Theatre restoration.

Patterson’s opera, A Dream Fulfilled: The Saga of George Washington Carver, will be performed at the Wieting next year to benefit the theatre project.

A $1.2 million fund drive is underway to renovate the 1912 historic building located in downtown Toledo.



For more information on how you can help or make a pledge:

•Amy Doyle, Box 387, Toledo, IA 52342

•Call 641-484-4440

•www.wieting.tamatoledo.org

•Search ‘Wieting’ - tamatoledonews.com

A pdf Pledge Card Accompanies This Article



Michael Patterson writes––

I am delighted to write this letter of support for The Wieting Theatre restoration process as they apply to the “Great Places Across Iowa” Program. A former Toledo resident, I currently am a Simpson College Professor and summer employee of the Des Moines Metro Opera.

The Wieting Theatre is a most remarkable landmark in Tama County. Built shortly after the turn of the twentieth century, the opera house served as a performing center in Toledo, the County seat and at the time a college town.

Touring performing groups, school and collegiate ensembles, civic and church groups, all used the Wieting for performances and special events. With the advent of moving pictures, the theatre found an additional venue for community related activities. The theatre has been a most adaptable home for the arts in the area for over 100 years.

Ask many towns across the country and they will reply that their town had an “opera house”. But few communities have an ‘honest to goodness” opera house with a functioning backstage area, that is capable of hosting any appropriately sized performing venue. The house represents the very best in 19th century architecture, complete with wooden floors and plaster walls, with corresponding acoustics that 21st century architects can only dream of designing. I don’t think it’s a stretch of the imagination to say that the quality of sound at the Wieting is comparable to the great performing halls anywhere.

These qualities are currently intact, but there is work to be done to refurbish and recondition the house, to make safer, and to re-beautify the facility, and to preserve the theatre for generations of central Iowans to perform and to attend performances in the future.

My father, my grandfather, and my great-grandmother have served on the board and guild organizations of the Wieting. I was nine years old when I began selling tickets for local productions, served as a janitor at the theatre as a kid, performed as a high school student and was never more proud than when I watched an opera I’d written in performance at the Wieting Theatre. Opera Iowa returns this spring to perform a second opera I’ve written called A Dream Fulfilled: The Saga of George Washington Carver.

The set was designed to replicate the beautiful main drape at The Wieting.

I hope that your program will discover in your research that this place is truly a magical hall, and that it is truly worthy of your support. Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Dr. Michael Patterson, Professor of Music, Simpson College, Indianola, Iowa 50125

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