Orpheum Theatre/Théâtre Orpheum

Orpheum Theatre (Montreal)/Théâtre Orpheum. An 1100-seat hall located in Montreal on Ste-Catherine St West. Inaugurated in August 1907 as the Bennett Theatre, for 10 years it housed mainly US vaudeville shows. Its acoustic properties led the impresario J.-Albert Gauvin to present recitals and French plays by touring companies there beginning in 1920. By that time the theatre's name had been changed to Orpheum. Until the end of the 1920s, artists appearing there included Clara Butt, Anna Case, the Flonzaley Quartet, Percy Grainger, Clara Haskil, Bronislaw Huberman, Georgette Leblanc, the London String Quartet, the National Civic Grand Opera, the Opéra de Feo, and the Canadian singers Éviola Gauthier, Ulysse Paquin, and Rodolphe Plamondon. The Montreal Orchestra gave its first concerts, in the fall of 1930, at the Orpheum. Under the management of Consolidated Theatres Ltd, it was subsequently a cinema until 1957, when the Théâtre du Nouveau-Monde leased the hall. Somers' The Fool and Blackburn's Silent Measures were presented at the theatre, as were concerts by the Orchestra da Camera (1959). Productions of Brecht and Weill's The Threepenny Opera with Monique Leyrac and Pauline Julien were staged there in 1961, followed by Breffort and Monnot's Irma la douce with Guylaine Guy in 1963 and Languirand and Charpentier's Klondyke in 1965. Shortly after, the theatre was torn down to make way for an office building.

Author Gilles Potvin

Links to Other Sites
Orpheum Theatre
A photograph of Montréal's historic Bennett Theatre (later: Orpheum Theatre). Click on photo to magnify the image. From the "Albums Massicotte" website.