I worked for Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre for the first 10 years after this theater re-opened as the Benedum Center (and have worked for Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera who also are in residence at this hall) and have never ceased to feel blessed and privileged to have spent so much time in this magnificent building. Not only was the portion of the theater where the audience spends their time brought into great opulence and aesthetic beauty (polished dark hardwood walls and ceiling, cleaning and restoration of magnificent ceiling inlays and chandelier), but the stage itself is spacious, with the kind of generous wingspace you hardly ever find in older theaters and plenty of room upstage, wherever a production chooses to hang the back curtain. There are plenty of dressing rooms and not one but TWO large rehearsal halls upstairs with the same dimensions as the stage itself.
Also now the home of the PIttsburgh Opera, the hall has wonderful acoustics, warm and reverberant. The pit is unusually large (it actually has two different sizes, so that, for example, the CLO uses the “half-pit,” enabling additional audience seating much closer to the stage, while the ballet and opera use the “full pit,” which has plenty of room for a very large orchestra indeed, nearly as much room as the pit at the Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center.
Although the hall I’ve felt most privileged to conduct in is the Academy of Music in Philadelphia (since you’re among such enormous musical history when in that hall), I am deeply grateful for all the years I was able to spend at the Benedum, conducting, rehearsing, playing the piano and watching or accompanying many fine dancers or singers perform in a huge, magnificent, beautiful hall with every amenity and with an ambience and proscenium that make every audience member feel like he or she is experiencing something special indeed. Though I now live in New York City, I have the chance to return to the Benedum Center a few times a year, and these are always very happy and meaningful occasions for me. As a composer, I’ve had several ballet scores and a few other things premiered there, and will always feel a deep affinity with the hall and with its orchestra.
Henry Mancini used to work there as a young man when it was the Stanley, and spoke lovingly and appreciatively of how one would walk into that theater and be transformed by being able to work there. It is still true, and I’m enormously grateful to have had a long association with a hall like this. It’s not just a building, it’s an essential part of the history of the city of Pittsburgh and one of those theaters that reflects the optimism and aethetics and potential grandeur of human life in an American city. It’s a building whose architecture and function represent a positive vision of what our collective communities can strive for.
I worked for Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre for the first 10 years after this theater re-opened as the Benedum Center (and have worked for Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera who also are in residence at this hall) and have never ceased to feel blessed and privileged to have spent so much time in this magnificent building. Not only was the portion of the theater where the audience spends their time brought into great opulence and aesthetic beauty (polished dark hardwood walls and ceiling, cleaning and restoration of magnificent ceiling inlays and chandelier), but the stage itself is spacious, with the kind of generous wingspace you hardly ever find in older theaters and plenty of room upstage, wherever a production chooses to hang the back curtain. There are plenty of dressing rooms and not one but TWO large rehearsal halls upstairs with the same dimensions as the stage itself.
Also now the home of the PIttsburgh Opera, the hall has wonderful acoustics, warm and reverberant. The pit is unusually large (it actually has two different sizes, so that, for example, the CLO uses the “half-pit,” enabling additional audience seating much closer to the stage, while the ballet and opera use the “full pit,” which has plenty of room for a very large orchestra indeed, nearly as much room as the pit at the Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center.
Although the hall I’ve felt most privileged to conduct in is the Academy of Music in Philadelphia (since you’re among such enormous musical history when in that hall), I am deeply grateful for all the years I was able to spend at the Benedum, conducting, rehearsing, playing the piano and watching or accompanying many fine dancers or singers perform in a huge, magnificent, beautiful hall with every amenity and with an ambience and proscenium that make every audience member feel like he or she is experiencing something special indeed. Though I now live in New York City, I have the chance to return to the Benedum Center a few times a year, and these are always very happy and meaningful occasions for me. As a composer, I’ve had several ballet scores and a few other things premiered there, and will always feel a deep affinity with the hall and with its orchestra.
Henry Mancini used to work there as a young man when it was the Stanley, and spoke lovingly and appreciatively of how one would walk into that theater and be transformed by being able to work there. It is still true, and I’m enormously grateful to have had a long association with a hall like this. It’s not just a building, it’s an essential part of the history of the city of Pittsburgh and one of those theaters that reflects the optimism and aethetics and potential grandeur of human life in an American city. It’s a building whose architecture and function represent a positive vision of what our collective communities can strive for.