Missouri Classical Music News and Notes

The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra played for years in the Kiel Opera House. They shared facilities and an adjoining wall with the Kiel Auditorium. Veteran musicians still recall how the screams and whistles of basketball fans bled through the common wall onto the stage; it was a surreal element that might have been in tune with the times, but not with great music-making.

The orchestra's leaders decided the orchestra needed a home of its own. They settled on the St. Louis Theatre, which was transformed into an acoustically friendly, architecturally old-fashioned fantasy in white, gold and red velvet.