Grand Theatre de Quebec
Two-hall performing arts complex of 1971, wrapped in glass around a Jordi Bonet concrete mural.
The Grand Theatre opened on 16 January 1971 as Quebec City's main performing arts centre, built to a Brutalist design by the Polish-born Montreal architect Victor Prus. It contains two halls: the Salle Louis-Frechette, with about 1,885 seats, named after the nineteenth-century poet Louis-Honore Frechette, and the smaller Salle Octave-Cremazie, seating roughly 510. The Conservatoire de musique du Quebec a Quebec has occupied part of the building since 1972.
The foyer walls carry a vast concrete mural made in 1969 by the Catalan-born artist Jordi Bonet, whose inscribed slogans caused considerable controversy before the opening. Frost damage to the exposed concrete led to a major intervention completed in 2020, in which the exterior was enclosed in a glass envelope on a steel frame that shelters the mural while leaving it visible from outside. Resident companies include the Orchestre symphonique de Quebec, the Opera de Quebec and Theatre du Trident.
Highlights
- Jordi Bonet's inscribed concrete mural of 1969 in the foyer
- Glass envelope of 2020 enclosing the Brutalist concrete shell
- Salle Louis-Frechette, seating about 1,885
- Resident home of the Orchestre symphonique de Quebec and Opera de Quebec
