About the institution
Klaipėda State Music Theatre (KSMT) is the largest professional performing arts institution not only in Klaipėda but also in the western region of Lithuania. It was established in 1987, in place of the reorganized Klaipėda People’s Opera Theatre, with an aim to present musical theatre performances at the highest professional standard. Over more than three decades of its activity the theatre has produced well over a hundred stage works in various genres, including operas, music dramas, operettas, musicals, ballets, contemporary dance performances, and musical performances for kids. Besides serving as a testing ground for the fresh talent, the KSMT often recruits acclaimed theatre artists and international production teams.
The theatre now has a personnel of over 200, including opera soloists, a mixed choir, a ballet company, a symphony orchestra, administration, front of house staff, and production services. In 2018, Laima Vilimienė was appointed General Manager of the Klaipėda State Musical Theatre. Tomas Ambrozaitis currently serves as Chief Conductor of the KSMT Symphony Orchestra, Vladimiras Konstantinovas as Chief Choirmaster of the KSMT Choir, Aurelijus Liškauskas as Chief Choreographer of the KSMT Ballet Company, and Slovene choreographer Gaj Žmavc as Artistic Director of the KSMT Ballet Company (since September 2023).
Each season the theatre offers a calendar packed with performances, 2–4 premieres of new productions, concerts and tours in towns of the coastal region and major venues around Lithuania. To see all performances in the KSMT’s current repertoire please click here. In summer 2020 the KSMT mounted an extraordinary production of Richard Wagner’s Flying Dutchman at the site of the historic Paul Willy Lindenau Shipyard in Klaipėda. Hailed as one of the country’s most celebrated cultural events of the year, it sparked the idea of launching a new annual summer festival for opera and classical music in Klaipėda and using the scenic location as its open-air stage. The 1st Klaipėda Festival inaugurated in summer 2021.
From 2018 the theatre implemented a major modernisation and construction project. It aimed to retain original post-war elements in the architecture of the administration building, while the newly built section, designed by the team of architects from the German “studioGA” (Wolfgang Gollwitzer, Mitsuhisa Matsunaga, Goda Visockaitė) and the Lithuanian company “Inžinerinė mintis” (Nomeda Karolina Petniūnienė, Eimantas Pranevičius), now has impressively decorated lobbies, the Sea Hall with uniquely clay-plastered walls (interior architects: Marius Mateika, Indrė Ankudavičienė, Audronė Pakalniškytė, Gintarė Privedienė) and an audience capacity of 732 and the Lagoon Hall of 164, as well as fully equipped underground dressing and rehearsal rooms, dance studios, and costume and props storage spaces. The new building was inaugurated with the grand opening gala night on 20 April 2024 to become the first music theatre built in Lithuania in thirty-four years of its re-established independence.
