The theatre has been operating without a break for fifty years mainly as an operetta house up until 2002. It was established thanks to the efforts of artists who moved to Wroclaw from all over Poland after the Second World War. The Lower-Silesian Operetta, the original name for the theatre, began its life with the staging of Johann Strauss' The Bat under the direction of Szymon Szurmiej, which was performed on 21 March 1965.
Up to the 1990s the repertoire mainly included classical operettas such as Offenbach, Abraham, Dostal and Strauss. In the 1990s Jan Szurmiej the artistic director and Marek Rostecki the general director broadened the profile of the operetta theatre inviting concerts, variety shows and musicals. An undoubted success at that time was Broadway's Fiddler on the Roof directed by Jan Szurmiej, which is still found in the repertoire to the present day.
The Musical Theatre in Wroclaw has notched up a number of spectacular artistic and commercial successes, known to audiences all over Poland thanks to TV broadcasting. Among those worthy of specific note is an innovative musical show entitled Scat. This is a musical in which the artists sing without words, using the jazz singing technique called scat. It is probably the first musical in the world where not one word is heard from the stage.
The headquarters of the theatre are located in the period building of the pre-war Capitol cinema-theatre, which was built in 1929. The complex, designed by Berlin architect Friedrich Lipp, was composed of three integral buildings: the theatre seating an audience of one thousand two hundred, a hotel and an administration building. Sadly, the theatre did not survive the war in its former glory. It lost its frontage and a few of its floors; the rest of the destruction was caused by the theatre's modernisation. The cinema-theatre has now become a listed building and is under state protection. The flood of 1997 significantly destroyed the equipment and walls of the ground floor and basement rooms. At present, the period pre-war art deco styled theatre can seat an audience of six hundred and fifty and is one of the few facilities like this in Wroclaw.
The present theatre now has installed a professional sound reinforcement system, lighting system and the technical support staff necessary to run and maintain it. In the public tender procedure the theatre opted for a sound reinforcement system manufactured by d&b audiotechnik for the front of house PA.
The FOH reinforcement system is based on d&b's Ci-Series loudspeakers. The main reinforcement is achieved with two Ci7-TOP loudspeakers, two additional Ci subwoofers per side that are suspended over the stage, and one other Ci subwoofer placed on the stage. The central loudspeaker system comprises one Ci90 and one Ci60 loudspeaker. Because of the shape of the theatre and its reverberant characteristics, two additional delays were installed. One consisting of four Ci80s covers the seats beneath the balcony and the other of two Ci90s covers the final rows in the balcony. The system is supplemented with one Ci90 side-fill loudspeaker per side and four E3 front-fill loudspeakers. To complete the install two B2 subwoofers were incorporated to ensure the reproduction of the lowest frequencies. The entire system is driven by ten d&b D12 amplifiers, which are driven via AES/EBU digital inputs.
(Chris Henry)
