It’s Curtains for California Music Theatre : Stage: The Pasadena organization, more than $1 million in debt, will fold next week--unless a last-minute miracle saves it.

Barring a last-minute miracle, Pasadena-based California Music Theatre will go out of business next week.

The organization has a debt “well in excess of $1 million” and “an inability to refinance some of our debt,” said Richard Fiedler, board chairman. “The last straw,” he added, was a poorly attended and subscribed benefit last Saturday at the organization’s home since last summer, the Raymond Theatre in Pasadena’s Old Town.

Although employees already have been laid off and actors released from productions that had been scheduled, the pulling of the plug won’t formally take place until a board meeting early next week, since a quorum wasn’t available this week. Fiedler said he anticipates a unanimous vote for dissolution and he’ll accept dissenting votes “only if they came with a check attached.”

California Music Theatre presented its first show, “The Most Happy Fella,” in 1987 at Pasadena Civic Auditorium and was a tenant there until moving to the smaller Raymond for two shows last year. Seasons included four shows a year.

Judging from the Actors’ Equity contract it used, the group began at a level of professionalism second only to that of Los Angeles Civic Light Opera among Southland musical producers. However, the organization also began with a debt, “and it became onerous in the last two or three years,” said Fiedler.

Three California Music shows toured to other locations: “Strike Up the Band” to the Music Center and Orange County Performing Arts Center in 1988; “Babes in Toyland” to the Orange County center, also in 1988, and “Annie” to the Orange County center in 1990. The group concentrated on old musicals--including some that hadn’t been produced locally in years, such as “On the Town”--but also presented a world premiere, “Clothespins and Dreams.” Ambitious plans to present an almost-new musicalization of “Sayonara” were chucked when financing collapsed.

One disgruntled former board member said the theater “tried to do stuff that you do when you have money flowing out of both pockets.” He also contended that it was difficult for him to obtain information about the group’s finances.

“Perhaps we tried to do too much too soon,” said Fiedler. “But the founding fathers thought Los Angeles Civic Light Opera was not operating as it did in its heyday, and that we could fill that void. And the unions perceived us as being another Shubert because we were in a 3,000-seat auditorium.”

In recent years, the group settled one fractious dispute with the Musicians’ Union, only to run into a contract squabble with Actors’ Equity last fall, which resulted in a non-Equity cast and a picket line at the opening of “The Wizard of Oz” last year.

“We never got super cooperation from the city,” added Fiedler. “We would have liked to have been somewhat of a line item in the city budget. But cities are looking at the bottom line too. It’s a very tight economic climate.”

Ticket sales and solicitations were stopped Tuesday, said Fiedler. “We’re working on ways to satisfy our subscribers,” who bought a four-show season that hasn’t even begun. “We should have more information on Monday or Tuesday.”

He “assumes” that the organization will declare bankruptcy, without any plans to reorganize, “unless something new and exciting and immediate happens.”

Fiedler himself is probably the group’s biggest creditor, he said, but he wouldn’t say how much he’s owed--”my wife would kill me.”

The group’s co-founder and artistic director, Gary Davis, referred all questions to Fiedler.