1. The Monument-National in the City
2. A Community Under Threat in a Changing World
3. The Early Years: the Monument’s "Open Arms"
4. The Monument-National and the Women’s Movement
5. The Monument-National: A Breeding Ground of New Ideas and a Multiethnic Cultural Centre
6. On Stage at the Monument: Innovation and Avant-Garde
7. On Stage at the Monument: Eclecticism and Popular Success
8. The Long Slide Downhill
9. Renaissance: Rebirth, Centenary

7. On Stage at the Monument: Eclecticism and Popular Success

From 1898 to the late 1940s, the Monument-National’s two main stages (the main auditorium and the Starland) hosted thousands of shows and attracted millions of spectators from Montréal and the surrounding area. From Olivier Guimond father, and son, to La Bolduc (Mary Travers), from Gratien Gélinas to the famous Jewish comedian Menasha Skulnick, from Édith Piaf or Charles Trenet to Molly Picon and Alys Robi, there wasn’t a national or international celebrity in theatre, song or variety that did not stop over or spend a few days or weeks at the Monument. Acts or groups like Les Veillées du Bon Vieux Temps (1923-1943), the Canadian Operetta Society (1921-1933), Lionel Daunais and Charles Goulet’s famous Variétés lyriques (1937-1955), Gratien Gélinas’ Les Fridolinades (1938-1946), and Pierre Dagenais’s astonishing Équipe (1942-1947) and New Yorker Maurice Schwartz’s Yiddish Art Theatre not only played at the Monument-National, but they had very long performance runs.

The Variétés lyriques and Les Fridolinades, like the Canadian Operetta Society, had their offices and rehearsal and production rooms at the Monument.

Until the end of the 1940s, the Monument-National was thus the most important creative centre for the performing arts in Montréal and one of its most important stages.