Orpheum Theatre - MN Tickets and Seating
The Orpheum Theatre is a popular destination for touring Broadway productions, especially those produced by Broadway Across America. The historic theater has been a terrific venue to hold preview runs as well. The Lion King the Musical played at the Orpheum Theatre in the summer of 1997 before heading to Broadway and becoming an international hit, a hit still in production today in many cities around the globe.
While the Orpheum Theatre, or the Historic Orpheum Theatre, is considered an integral part of the Hennepin Theater District in Minneapolis today, it began as a movie house in the 1920s. The movie house opened on October 16, 1921 as the Hennepin Theater. The single screen easily earned back its cost of operation every performance, with a captive audience of 2,600 sitting on the edge of their seats.
Like many early movie houses, this theatre was built to impress its audience with incredible attention to detail. The venue features the long lobby with six terra cotta bas relief sculptures and a huge auditorium with a labyrinth of medallions, garlands, and many more decorative forms carved into the plaster and a ceiling with an incredible 30,000 squares of aluminum leaf.
This kind of attention to detail has always been appreciated and remains an important part of the experience when attending a production at the Orpheum Theatre in Minneapolis. The history and the entertainment on stage make this truly a historic venue, a sentiment seconded by the National Register of Historic Places.