What’s the difference between ‘theatre’ and ‘opera house’?
What’s the difference between ‘theatre’ and ‘opera house’ mentioned in the last sentence of the passage?
Besides, I don’t think the word ‘theatre’ means a movie theatre. Considering that he was English, the author would have used ‘cinema’ if he referred to a place where people went to see moives. What do you think?
Thank you.
PS: the context is extracted from ‘The Fall of Edward Barnard’ written by the English writer William Somerset Maugham.the context:
"When I saw you this morning, Bateman," he said then, "I seemed to see myself as I was two years ago. The same collar, and the same shoes, the same blue suit, the same energy. The same determination. By God, I was energetic. The sleepy methods of this place made my blood tingle. I went about and everywhere I saw possibilities for development and enterprise. There were fortunes to be made here. It seemed to me absurd that the copra should be taken away from here in sacks and the oil extracted in America. It would be far more economical to do all that on the spot, with cheap labour, and save freight, and I saw already the vast factories springing up on the island. Then the way they extracted it from the coconut seemed to me hopelessly inadequate, and I invented a machine which divided the nut and scooped out the meat at the rate of two hundred and forty an hour. The harbour was not large enough. I made plans to enlarge it, then to form a syndicate to buy land, put up two or three large hotels, and bungalows for occasional residents; I had a scheme for improving the steamer service in order to attract visitors from California. In twenty years, instead of this half French, lazy little town of Papeete I saw a great American city with ten-story buildings and street-cars, a theatre and an opera house, a stock exchange and a mayor."