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What ensued was a coming together of community leaders and volunteers, including Wisdom, her husband Jerry Wisdom, Patricia Hennessey Laing, Merry Ellen Scully Mosna, Nancy Nicholson, Peter Hrastovec, Eleanor Paine, University of Windsor president Ron Ianni, and MPP Dave Cooke. They started fundraising, campaigning and seeking grants from the province — Cooke helped secure funding from the province — and the feds, culminating in a $5.5-million interior restoration and renovation completed in 1995.
It’s what you see today inside the Capitol, which sank into financial trouble again in the mid-2000s. Its volunteer board declared bankruptcy in 2007, again threatening the Capitol’s future until local arts groups sounded the alarm bells and the City of Windsor came to the rescue the following year, acquiring the building and turning it over to the WSO to manage and use as its performance venue.
“When I think of the Capitol Theatre, I think of it as emblematic of what a lot of people in our community value. It’s here because the community mobilized to save it,” Wisdom said. “And they did that more than once.”
Wisdom describes the WSO/Capitol relationship as an arranged marriage that actually works. The WSO is paid $150,000 annually to manage the theatre on behalf of the city, providing performance space and services for an array of arts groups — both non-profit community organizations and professional performers. And the WSO gets a home of its own, one with “incredible” acoustics, according to WSO musical director Robert Franz.
“I think it’s one of the best acoustics I’ve performed in,” he said, explaining the theatre is “fantastic” for two reasons:
- On stage, the orchestra can really hear itself. “You’d be shocked to know how often orchestras perform where they can’t hear each other across the stage,” he said. “The Capitol Theatre is nearly flawless in that regard.” And when orchestra musicians can hear better, they sound better, and they grow artistically.
- The second quality is what the audience hears. Franz’s preference is to have a sound that envelopes the audience. “You feel like you’re inside the sound,” in the Capitol’s main theatre, the Pentastar, he said. He describes it as a visceral sound, like being inside a jewel box.
“It’s incredible to me. I joke to people the best seat in the house is mine on the podium, but the truth is, in the Capitol, all the seats are as good as on the podium.”
The WSO is grateful the city has provided the theatre “to use as our home,” said Franz. “Most orchestras our size don’t have this kind of opportunity. It really is something special when you have a venue that is so acoustically superior.”
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