Adress:300 Renmin Da Dao,People's Square near Huangpi Bei Lu,
Phone:+86 021/6372-8701, 021/6386-8686
Transportation:Metro: Renmin Guangchang/Renmin Gongyuan, Metro Line 1 & 2 People's Square Station
Hotels nearby: Laurel Hotel - Shanghai,Ramada Plaza - Shanghai,Park Hotel Shanghai - Shanghai,Shanghai Ceniralstar Hotel - Shanghai

Location
Shanghai Grand Theater is located at the People's Square in the city heart. The construction of the Grand Theater lasted 4 years from 1994 to 1998. The theater covers an area of 62, 803 square meters, with 10 stories, two for underground, two for lofts and six on the ground.

Style of Architecture
Shanghai Grand Theater was designed by well-known French architect Jean Marie Charpentier, it is in concise and graceful geometrical shape as the crown-like white arc-shaped roof stretching to the blue sky. On the top of the theater are outdoor theaters and a mid-air garden, which are in the shape of a treasure bowl, symbolizing the broad-mindedness of Shanghai in attracting the cultural art of the world. The building, as a magnificent addition to Shanghai's resurging arts and culture scene, facilitates the city's enthusiastic pursuit of the world culture and arts as well as its flexibility ever since ancient times.

The theater occupies an area of 2.1 hectares, facing the People's Boulevard in the south, along Huangpi Road North in the west, next to the Shanghai Municipal Building in the East. The new style architecture combines the Eastern and Western flavor. While naturally choosing to represent Chinese tradition,The roof is constructed as an upturned segment of a circle, symbolizing The Sky. Thus, with the surrounding glass facades and pillared entrance hall, a symbolically rich structure is created to contain mostly Western art, and this duality plays a central role in the architecture. The structure accommodates two stages, an auditorium and a foyer, as well as shops and other public spaces, and is based on a square, which in Chinese tradition represents The Earth.

The theater has a total floor space of 70 thousand square meters, inside which are three theaters. The lyric theater, which has 1,800 seats, is for the performance of ballets, musicals and symphonies. It consists of a main state of 728 square meters, a rear stage of 360 square meters and a left and right wings of 257 square meters respectively, all of which can be moved, lifted, sloped and rotated. In addition, the theater is also equipped with orchestra pits that can be raised and electric setting booms. All these have made the lyric theater one of the biggest and most advanced stages in Asia and even the whole world. The drama theater, which has 600 seats, is for the performance of chamber music, and the studio theater, which has 200 seats, is for the performance of operas and song-and-dance dramas. Moreover, the theater also has 12 rehearsal halls of different sizes, gymnasiums, scene-setting rooms and make-up rooms of different kinds, banquet halls, cultural exhibition halls and underground garages

The internal structure has been designed to provide maximum comfort to audiences before and during performances, and the stunning facades create a spectacular image to the outside world, especially at night. Since its opening on August 27, 1998, the theater has successfully staged such shows and evenings as operas, musicals, ballets, symphonies, chamber music concerts, spoken drama and the Chinese operas. The theater has become an important window of cultural exchange between China and the rest of the world and a bridge of artistic exchange.

In recent years, the Shanghai Grand Theater has become the major venue for international cultural exchanges. A large number of world-class outstanding artistic organizations, artists and plays or operas have given their performances here such as the three major tenor singers in the world, Pavarotti, Domingo and Carreras, the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra of Austria, the 󾡰Swan Lake performed by the Ballet Ensemble of Russian Malinsky Theater, the Aida performed by the Florence Opera House of Italy, the Faust performed by the Paris Opera House of France, the Wandering Hollander performed by the Rhine Opera House of Germany and the Broadway classical musicals Song of Music and the Phantom of the Opera. In 2004, the Ministry of Culture named the Shanghai Grand Theater the Demonstration Base of National Cultural Industry. The number of showings given in the three theaters, the main theater, the medium-sized theater and the small theater, totaled 694 performances and an audience of 610,000 in 2004 and 673 performances with an audience of 600,000 in 2005.