Here we are now, entertain us: An audience inside the new Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts in Toronto. CP Photo/ Aaron Harris.
Architect Jack Diamond toured many of the world’s leading opera houses before starting work on Toronto’s Four Seasons Centre, which has its gala opening tonight.
“I learned a lot — about what I wanted, and what I definitely did not want,” says the plainspoken South African ex-pat and now Toronto resident, roundly abusing some venues (“sheer kitsch”) while praising others. Diamond says he loathes opera houses that are self-consciously spectacular, preferring buildings that “keep their powder dry, until they have the target in sight.” He likes complexes that reserve their most impressive effects for the concert halls themselves, not the exterior or assorted foyers.
Diamond’s building has an almost dour grey-brick exterior, which belies the warmth of the hall’s interior, an effect created by ambient lights, a cozy horseshoe-shaped auditorium — small for an opera hall — and rich wood paneling. To make the opera-going experience less elitist than European halls built by and for aristocrats, Diamond has opened the main lobbies to the passing eye, with nothing but glass between show-goers and outsiders gaping from the street. “Opera has been described as the art form born with the silver spoon in its mouth,” says Diamond. “We wanted to get away from that as much as possible.”
Some commentators predicted opera would never make it through the 20th century. Instead, it’s thriving. As Canadian Opera Company head Richard Bradshaw recently commented, “Younger audiences want to have something to look at while they listen — which of course opera provides.” The Four Seasons Centre assures better visuals: the farthest any audience member will be from the stage is 40 metres, far closer than they would be in the cheap seats in the COC’s last home, the long barn that is the Hummingbird Centre.
Still, it remains to be seen if the Four Seasons Centre will become an integral part of Toronto’s cultural life. The good modern and traditional houses become so iconic that they’re celebrated not just by hardcore buffs but in mainstream movies and books. At their best, they can lend a sense of high occasion, almost a sacred feeling, to a night at the opera. Some are free-spirited, some restrained; others, like Diamond’s new creation, are a bit of both. Here, a look at how Toronto’s new venue stacks up against the world’s great opera houses.
Photo Steven Evans/Diamond and Schmitt Architect Inc/Canadian Opera Company.
Four Seasons Centre, Toronto
Opened: June 14, 2006
Seats: 2,043
Tiers: Five
Architect: Jack Diamond, Diamond + Schmitt
Style: Kind, gentle modernism
Prime movers: Canadian Opera Company head Richard Bradshaw; former Ontario premier Ernie Eves; hotelier Izzy Sharpe; late lawyer R. Fraser Elliott
Features: Longest unsupported glass staircase ever built; space above the stage for surtitles, an innovation pioneered by the Canadian Opera Company and widely exported; a subterranean storey filled with sound-absorbing pads to stop subway noise from filtering upward.
Opening-night fare: Sadly, no Canadian composers. Performers led by Ben Heppner and Adrianne Pieczonka take a whistle-stop tour of the major opera-producing nations, including Austria (Mozart), France (Délibes), Germany (Wagner), Italy (Rossini, Verdi) and Russia (Tchaikovsky).
Miscellaneous details: Some of the little extras include a backstage machine to dry wigs and individually heated seats. Three glass stairs in the opulent staircase blew up, but otherwise the project was completed in a comparatively short three years and on budget, at a bargain-basement price of $150 million.
In a nutshell: The rectilinear, severe, pinstriped-grey-suit exterior belies a warm, sensuous womb of a concert hall within.
Photo Getty Images.
New National Theatre, Tokyo
Opened: 1997
Seats: 1,810
Tiers: Four
Architect: Takahiko Yanagisawa
Style: International modernism
Prime movers: A number of corporate donors who formed and funded the Tokyo City Cultural Foundation to plan and manage the site.
Features: A glass mosaic, without Japanese motifs, dominates the foyer; spare, unadorned plywood walls enclose the shoebox-shaped concert hall. The whole complex covers 4.5 hectares, including a retail galleria and a 54-storey skyscraper, which houses the opera company’s administrators.
Opening-night fare: Ikuma Dan’s Takeru
Miscellaneous details: Japan’s prime minister, as well as the country’s Emperor and Empress, attended the gala opening.
In a nutshell: This bland edifice is really an annex to a shopping mall and could have been plopped down anywhere.
Photo Voitto Niemelä/Finnish National Opera.
Suomen Kansallisooppera, Helsinki, Finland
Opened: 1994
Seats: 1,385
Tiers: Four
Architects: Eero Hyvämäki, Jukka Karhunen, Risto Parkkinen
Style: Homage to Bauhaus
Prime movers: The municipality of Helsinki, Finnish architectural lion Alvar Aalto
Features: A glass curtain wall dominates the façade, which may have inspired the similarly sunroom-like front of the Four Seasons Centre; square windows and tiles are a repeating design element throughout.
Opening-night fare: Aulis Sallinen’s Kullervo
Miscellaneous details: Only Finns were eligible to design the house, which took 12 years to build and cost the equivalent of $250 million.
In a nutshell: The water’s edge site adds drama to this otherwise conventional hall.
Photo Torsten Blackwood/AFP/Getty Images.
Sydney Opera House Concert Hall, Sydney, Australia
Opened: 1973
Seats: 2,679
Tiers: Three
Architects: Jorn Utzon (1959-1966), replaced by E.H. Farmer, Peter Hall, Lionel Todd and David Littlemore (1966-1973)
Style: Unique in its time, it opened the door for the exuberant likes of Frank Gehry.
Prime mover: New South Wales premier Joe Cahill. Hardly an opera buff, this Labor politician and former railroad worker preferred such populist pieces as The Donkey Serenade.
Features: A world-famous profile that resembles ship sails, a stegosaurus or — as local cynics contend — two turtles mating, this building houses a concert hall that was once rated 98th out of 100 international venues in acoustical quality; as in Toronto’s Roy Thomson Hall, some audience members sit behind the stage, under the largest tracker organ in the world.
Opening-night fare: Prokofiev’s War and Peace
Miscellaneous details: After seven years on the job, the Danish architect Jorn Utzon was fired for going wildly over budget and past deadline; he was supplanted by less dreamy local architects and refused to attend the building’s grand opening — which occurred almost 15 years after construction began.
In a nutshell: One of modern architecture’s great icons creates maximum drama by the Sydney Harbour, but doesn’t house an adequate performance space.
Courtesy Metropolitan Opera
Metropolitan Opera House, New York City
Opened: 1966
Seats: 3,816
Tiers: Five
Architect: Wallace Harrison
Prime mover: John Davison Rockefeller Jr.
Style: A modernist take on the arcaded Greek temple
Features: Marc Chagall murals bedeck the lobby while in the auditorium massive crystal chandeliers — gifts from the Austrian government — are raised out of sight before every performance.
Opening-night fare: Samuel Barber’s Antony and Cleopatra starring Leontyne Price
Miscellaneous details: In Norman Jewison’s Moonstruck, the Met provides the backdrop for Nicolas Cage’s romance with Cher; it’s also where Cher’s on-screen father canoodles with his mistress.
In a nutshell: Featuring a stage and hall that are almost twice as big as those in the Four Seasons Centre, this behemoth is situated on a fountain-focused piazza and lights up like a lantern at night — two of the many reasons the Met lends a greater sense of occasion to an evening than any other modern hall.
Photo courtesy of San Francisco Opera.
War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco
Opened: 1932
Seats: 3,176
Tiers: Four
Architects: Arthur Brown, G. Albert Lansburgh, Willis Polk
Style: Beaux-Arts
Prime movers: Impresario Gaetano Merolo, the City of San Francisco and well-to-do WWI veterans
Features: Doric columns adorn an otherwise plain exterior; inside, a gold brocade stage curtain (that weighs a tonne) picks up on the copious gilding throughout the hall; red velvet seats enhance the luxurious feel, as do bodacious sculptures of amazons above the proscenium.
Opening-night fare: Puccini’s Tosca
Miscellaneous details: Both the United Nations Charter and the International Declaration of Human Rights were signed on the premises; in the movie Pretty Woman, Richard Gere flies Julia Roberts from Los Angeles to San Francisco on his private jet so she can take in an opera; a $50 million retrofit was required to make the building safe after the 1989 earthquake.
In a nutshell: A radical departure from the pre-war European aesthetic, which views excessive ornamentation as vulgar.
Photo Jack Guez/AFP/Getty Images.
Palais Garnier, Paris
Opened: 1875
Seats: 1,979
Tiers: Six
Architect: Charles Garnier
Style: Every which way — baroque, rococo, neoclassical, second empire — and loose
Prime movers: Napoleon III, Empress Eugenie, Baron Haussmann
Features: Ten types of marble and six varieties of limestone were quarried from Europe and Africa for the exterior; more than a dozen artists collaborated on the sumptuous murals; gilded putti and nymphs abound in the scarlet-upholstered concert hall
Opening-night fare: Jacques Halevy’s La Juive, Jakob Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots
Miscellaneous details: Construction took 15 years, and was delayed by a flood and an insurrection, during which the rebel Communards used the nearly completed structure as a prison; it was this opera house that the phantom haunted in Gaston Leroux’s 1910 novel of that name; Marthe Chenal sang La Marseillaise on the steps of the Palais to celebrate her nation’s survival of the First World War.
In a nutshell: As frou-frou as a wedding cake, it reflects Italian and French opera’s more-more-more aesthetic.
Photo Sean Gallup/Getty Images.
Staatsoper, Vienna
Opened: 1869
Seats: 2,276
Tiers: Six
Architect: Eduard van der Nüll, August Siccard von Siccardsburg
Style: Neo-renaissance
Prime mover: Emperor Franz Joseph
Features: A suave and streamlined red-velvet-and-gilt interior; according to the world’s leading acoustics expert, its sound is “not very live”
Opening-night fare: Mozart’s Don Giovanni
Miscellaneous details: The architects were so displeased with alterations to their plans that one refused to attend the opening-night performance and the other committed suicide; Allied bombs greatly damaged the hall in the Second World War, requiring extensive rebuilding.
In a nutshell: A classic — and classy — reflection of the premium the Austro-Germanic operatic tradition placed on civility, intellect and control.
AP Photo/Bridget Jones.
Royal Opera House Covent Garden, London
Opened: 1858
Seats: 2,174
Tiers: Five
Architect: E.M. Barry
Style: Neoclassical
Prime movers: Duke of Bedford, merchant Frederick Gye
Features: A Corinthian portico and iron-and-glass bar appear up front (a look that’s mimicked and modernized by the Four Seasons Centre’s glass-facaded City Room); a Wedgwood-style medallion of a young Queen Victoria presides over the concert hall, which although gilded, is as restrained as the Palais Garnier is ebullient.
Opening-night fare: Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots
Miscellaneous details: Served as a dancehall during WWII; a renovation costing the equivalent of $400 million was completed in 1999; Tony Blair’s Labour Government once demanded the company lower ticket prices to enable the hoi polloi to attend — the company refused.
In a nutshell: As refined — and somehow prissy — as the queen during whose reign it was built.
Photo Giuseppe Cacace/Getty Images.
Teatro Alla Scala, Milan
Opened: 1778
Seats: 2,800
Tiers: Seven
Architect: Giuseppe Piermarini
Style: Palladian
Prime mover: Austrian Empress Maria-Theresa
Features: Gold-lined royal box glitters in the centre of the theatre; leading conductors have rated the acoustics the second-best in the world (after Argentina’s Teatro Colon).
Opening-night fare: Salieri’s L’Europa Riconosciuta
Miscellaneous details: After attending a performance here, the French writer Stendhal once wrote: “I’m forever condemned to be disgusted with our [French] theatres;” an $80-million renovation was completed in 2004.
In a nutshell: Like its most famous diva, Maria Callas, La Scala is little on the outside — at least compared to the Met or the Palais Garnier — but packs an aesthetic and acoustic punch.
Alec Scott writes about the arts for CBC.ca.
Related
Internal Links
- Sandra Abma reports for CBC-TV (Runs 2:29) Play: RealAudio»
More from this Author
Alec Scott
- Honouring the Dead
- Anne Nelson talks about The Guys, the first 9/11 play
- Crowd Pleaser
- Sizing up Toronto's new opera house
- Write of Passage
- Madeleine Thien's quest for Certainty
- Happy Birthday, Bob
- Sixty-five quotes about Dylan
- Unscripted
- Tara Rosling follows her instincts