Eva Tanguay was a Canadian singer and entertainer who billed herself as "the girl who made vaudeville famous". She was known as "The Queen of Vaudeville" during the height of her popularity from the early 1900s until the early 1920s. Tanguay also appeared in films, and was the first performer to achieve national mass-media celebrity, with publicists and newspapers covering her tours from coast-to-coast, out-earning the likes of contemporaries Enrico Caruso and Harry Houdini at one time, and being described by Edward Bernays, "the father of public relations", as "our first symbol of emergence from the Victorian age."

The Holyoke Opera House was a theatre operating in Holyoke, Massachusetts during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Built in 1877, and christened on March 25, 1878, the theater was built by then-mayor William Whiting who privately-funded its construction along with the adjoining "Windsor House" hotel. Designed by architect Clarence Sumner Luce, its interior was decorated by painter and designer Frank Hill Smith, who is best known today for the frescoes in the House of Representatives' chamber in the Massachusetts State House, and whose commission for the venue's main hall paintings has been described by the American Art Directory and historian John Tauranac as one of his definitive works.