Takasaki City Theatre

Takasaki City Theatre opened on 20 September 2019 by the east exit of Takasaki Station, as the successor to the Gunma Music Center of 1961, a hall the city’s residents had helped to build. The opening was marked by Beethoven’s Ninth played by the Gunma Symphony Orchestra, the city’s own orchestra. The complex has a Grand Theatre of about 2,000 seats with one of the largest stages in Japan, which can be fitted with an acoustic shell for orchestral concerts, a flexible studio theatre, and a wood-lined concert hall of about 400 seats, the first hall in Gunma built only for music. Rehearsal rooms and studios fill the rest of the building. The Vienna Philharmonic has included Takasaki on its tours of Japan.