Toronto Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts | ?m | 5s | COC | Diamond Schmitt

And on the glass staircase, from the same:

THE OPENING
Shattered glass staircase shatters nerves
Four Seasons steps may be the most complex feat of glass engineering ever. And it almost wasn't ready in time

SANDRA MARTIN AND VAL ROSS

Exaggerate the scale by a thousandfold -- otherwise, the frenzied tidying and last-minute daubing at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts this week were the same rituals ordinary folk perform before a housewarming. On Wednesday afternoon, four senior architects from the firm Diamond + Schmitt Architects were checking lights, monitoring finishes and examining seals on doors as the Canadian Opera Company prepared for its ribbon-cutting ceremony tomorrow . Jack Diamond, having inadvertently stepped into some caulking on the bottom step of the glass staircase, was down on his hands and knees polishing the maple floor to erase his solitary imprint.

But why was the caulking still sticky just days before the opening?

And why won't the lighting under each glass step be ready either for the ribbon-cutting or next Tuesday's gala concert?

The answer lies in the complex design of the glass staircase -- and a discovery that some found unnerving just a few weeks ago.

The staircase, which vaults 14 metres from the first floor to the second, and then another 14 metres, may be the most complex piece of glass engineering in the world, says Diamond -- probably the longest unsupported glass staircase ever built. John Kooymans, senior associate at Halcrow Yolles structural engineers, one of the companies that has turned Diamond's opera-house vision into Four Seasons reality, explains that instead of being supported, the stairs are hung from the ceiling by steel rods.

"All the critical joints are moveable, to allow for differential movements between the main structure and the glass structure," says Kooymans. And movement can be affected by everything from the number of hefty opera patrons who decide to descend at any one time, to snow-loading on the Four Seasons's roof.

The stair is built of heat-tempered, low-iron, extra-strong glass. Nevertheless, it had its breaking point, as was discovered during installation back in late March, when four of the 23 panes of glass shattered. The workers had to take those parts of the stairs down and try to identify the problem. After eliminating design and engineering faults, they realized that tolerances of some of the materials were not to spec. Steel is relatively flexible, glass relatively brittle: The differences were out by just two to three millimetres in the case of the glass, says Kooymans, but enough to cause the higher stresses.

So new staircase materials were reordered from the German manufacturer, Josef Gartner of Munich, and shipped to Canada. By May 15, the Four Seasons Centre workers and Yolles engineers assembled for the in situ test. Some held their breaths as more than 9,000 kilograms of steel counterweights were hung off the bottom of the stair (the equivalent of 100 opera patrons weighing 200 pounds each standing simultaneously on the structure).

"The stair passed with flying colours," says Kooymans. Well, not all of it: The lighting fixtures will be installed "in the near future," but no date has yet been set. (Diamond suspects that the manufacturer had used an old set of drawings.) "It was nerve-wracking," says Diamond. "A close-run thing."

Kooymans points out that there were also breakages during installation of the glass on the exterior of the building. Such occurrences are not uncommon.

But the staircase was special. Says Kooymans, "No one has ever done this before. It looks simple and elegant, but there were erection issues." The main thing is, the structure is ready to bear human traffic.

AoD
 
And from the Star:

Something to sing about
$150 million built the Canadian Opera Company a sparkling first-class venue
It's the ideal place to experience the world of words and music, reports John Terauds
Jun. 10, 2006. 01:00 AM
JOHN TERAUDS
CLASSICAL MUSIC WRITER

Some of us will tailor our home to our needs by spending thousands on a renovation — not by building a $150 million structure modelled after the world's gold standards.

But that was the now-realized dream of Canadian Opera Company general director Richard Bradshaw.

Seated overlooking the clear-glass panorama of Queen St. W. and Osgoode Hall in the members' lounge of the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts earlier this week, Bradshaw is the happiest kid in the sandbox.

Unlike many big-buck construction jobs, Bradshaw's new digs are about work, not just show. Although the crowd gathered for the official ribbon cutting tomorrow morning will likely marvel at the building's design and amenities.

Architect Jack Diamond's spare, modernist structure is first and foremost an ideal place to experience the powerful blend of words, music and drama that is opera.

If the opera company and its associated Canadian Opera House Corporation can continue to pay their way, the new structure heralds a bigger dot for Toronto on the world's cultural map.

While working out of its original, rented digs at the Hummingbird Centre, the COC had to work around a tight backstage area and a limited number of performance dates.

The venue's notoriously bad acoustics deterred many top-rank opera singers and orchestra conductors from visiting our city.

That's now a thing of the past.

Over the course of an hour, Bradshaw will several times mention how many of the company's future plans hinge on oft-promised grants from the federal government and the Canada Council.

But the energetic English ex-pat now presides over a dream home that many said could not be built. So his optimism about a glorious future at the Four Seasons Centre is warranted.

How can we not be cheered by the prospect of international stars such as Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky appearing on a Toronto opera stage?

"Hvorostovsky wouldn't sing at the Hummingbird," Bradshaw says. "But he promised that he would be interested in coming to the new house."

The general director also drops the names of tantalizing divas such as Cecilia Bartoli and Renée Fleming — while also reiterating his priority of building a strong "ensemble" company.

"I'm not interested in the star system as the be-all and end-all," Bradshaw says.

The opera company's move-in bonus — and greatest opening flourish — is staging Richard Wagner's monumental four-opera Ring of the Niebelungs cycle over three weeks, starting Sept. 12.

The COC's assistant technical director David Feheley says Ring Cycle designer Michael Levine conceived all four operas to be performed in repertory at the new house.

For example, the collapsed columns from the second opera, Die Valkyrie, are upright in the first, Das Rheingold. The raked floor in Valkyrie is used again in opera No. 3, Siegfried.

At the Hummingbird Centre, there was little room to store sets backstage and in the fly tower (a large area above the stage).

"The backstage area is almost three times larger at the new house," says Feheley. He adds that the new fly tower will accommodate scenery from more than one opera.

For instance, the massive three-dimensional "tree" from Siegfried, with its hundreds of suspended pieces, "will simply travel up into the flies, so that they don't have to be disassembled and reassembled every time."

Asked if all four operas could have been presented in repertory at the Hummingbird, Feheley reacts in mock horror.

"Oh, no ... but if they had asked us to try and figure out a way, we certainly would have tried to make it work."

Both Bradshaw and Feheley are careful to praise the company's good relationship with the Hummingbird Centre, but both are relieved to now be masters of their own domain.

The Four Seasons Centre's extra space will save on overtime fees for the stage crew, which had to find creative ways to move sets around.

This became instantly clear when watching the Hummingbird crew switch sets between Norma and Wozzeck earlier this year.

As the Wozzeck set was struck and the Norma set brought in, the crew had to play what Feheley described as a game of "Chinese checkers" to get the pieces in and out.

It was like a monster-sized dance: Norma risers left the loading dock area to stage left, only to be replaced by Wozzeck risers.

In the new house, risers only need to be moved once: into or from their place on stage. And everything fits under one roof.

At the Hummingbird, bits of sets often had to be carted into a temporary tent and a semi-trailer parked on Scott St.

Did Feheley have to worry about theft when leaving valuable stage property on the street?

"No, not really. But sometimes I did have to go in (the tent) and wake people up," he replies.

When Bradshaw suggests future productions, Feheley says the technical team has to look at each touring package to see if it will fit the space.

At the Hummingbird, his team had to turn away many a promising production, "because we couldn't make it fit."

Greater backstage space can have other benefits, too.

People who saw this year's production of Norma noticed that the rising moon in Act One bounced haplessly across the sky. It was distracting, if not downright funny.

When asked about this, Feheley explains in detail how the deeper backstage area at the new opera house would have allowed the moon to glide serenely across the heavens.

The Hummingbird was also a tight squeeze for performers.

What was supposed to be a rehearsal hall for the orchestra and chorus would be filled with props, makeup tables and improvised cubicles for hasty costume changes.

In the new house, there is a stage-sized rehearsal hall for the orchestra and chorus, as well as extra rooms for makeup, costumes and storage of miscellaneous props.

Bradshaw points out that the new venue is about "small things" as much as big productions.

He says Mozart operas, for instance, were not suitable for the cavernous Hummingbird. The new house's open orchestra pit and responsive acoustics mean that the light, limpid music from works such as Don Giovanni and Magic Flute will now get its full due.

Bradshaw will conduct the new house's first Mozart opera on Oct. 17, when the curtain rises on the riotous Così fan Tutte. And he is eager to explore other smaller-scale works, such as the operas of Benjamin Britten. More variety on the program. The prospect of visiting international stars. Excellent acoustics. Easier staging.

"The new house has exceeded my expectations," says a beaming Richard Bradshaw.

Now comes Toronto music lovers' turn to see how the Four Seasons Centre measures up to its promise, starting with a series of public and private gala concerts in the coming week.

The omens are good.

AoD
 
Again, the Star:

Top digs for tiptoes
Better sightlines, acoustics mean missteps will be more scrutinized
But ballet studios and extra space a boon to dancers, writes Susan Walker
Jun. 10, 2006. 01:00 AM
SUSAN WALKER
DANCE WRITER

When the National Ballet of Canada holds its opening gala performance at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts on June 22, the dancers will be performing familiar pieces from the company repertoire. But even long-time patrons might feel as if they're seeing this ballet company for the first time, given the improvements in the viewing conditions presented by the Four Seasons Centre.

For 42 years, the National Ballet has presented its works in the Hummingbird Centre, a theatre that is ill suited for the full appreciation of dance.

In that cavernous, 3,200-seat auditorium, dancers were always urged to "go bigger," to project their performances to the back row, half a city block away. The National Ballet orchestra, cramped and buried under the stage, had the same problem getting its sound out to the most distant rows in the upper balcony.

The most distant seat in the Four Seasons Centre, up in the last row of Ring 5, is 37.18 metres away. Designed in horseshoe formation, like the great ballet opera houses of Europe, the new auditorium affords a much more intimate experience of ballet. Many patrons will be seeing the faces of the dancers for the first time without benefit of binoculars.

"I have every reason to believe it will stack up with the best experience (of ballet) anywhere, either as a performer or member of the audience," says the National Ballet's artistic director Karen Kain. Remarking on the priority given by the architects to acoustic conditions and sight lines, Kain says of the new house, "It has all the best things of the old opera houses, but it's a contemporary place. I have very, very high hopes for it."

The National Ballet came onto the project as a tenant after the basic design of the Four Seasons Centre was completed, but not too late to have the company's requirements met.

"The ballet studios were put in specifically for us and one of them is right beside the stage," says Kain. The proximity is a huge improvement over previous arrangements in which the dancers would warm up and then have to climb several staircases to wait in the wings.

The provision of physiotherapy and massage rooms is another welcome feature for injury-prone dancers. And a bigger backstage area means that there won't be any pile-ups in the wings during exits and entrances.

Thanks to a sophisticated lighting system, advanced acoustics and a stage that is a bit narrower than the Hummingbird's but much deeper, audiences at the Four Seasons will enjoy a much more detailed and engaged experience of ballet. Some newly perceived elements might take some getting used to.

For instance, the sound of the dancers' pointe shoes hitting the floor will be clearly audible throughout the auditorium. "We used to not pay a lot of attention to how loud our shoes are," says first soloist Rebekah Rimsay.

"We will now. And we sometimes speak, to give each other messages on stage. I think we're going to have to rethink that."

From her experience of smaller theatres with seats closer to the stage, Rimsay predicts that audiences will even hear the rustling of costumes. On the tour she recently had of the Four Seasons, people on the fifth ring were able to converse with people on the stage, barely raising their voices.

Former artistic director James Kudelka, says Rimsay, used to urge the dancers to lighten their footfalls. But for others, the plock-plock sound of pointe shoes hitting the floor is part of the ballet aesthetic.

Increasing the audibility, however, will also make any wrong steps more obvious.

Her experience of dancing in houses like the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City tells Rimsay that certain adjustments will be made to accommodate viewers in a steeper auditorium. "You really have to pay attention to projection, both with our body language and our faces so that we really include the fifth ring."

Even from the closest seats at the Hummingbird Centre the exquisite details and workmanship that goes into the dancers' costumes could hardly be appreciated.

Wardrobe supervisor Marjory Fielding couldn't be happier about the greater scrutiny the dancers' apparel will now undergo.

"I can't wait," says Fielding. "We put in a huge amount of work with the detail because we want the dancers to feel good and feel that the costume is a part of the role. You'll see all the subtlety of texture that for many people was a blur before. When we have open houses and people see those costumes up close, they are always amazed."

Fielding imagines that future costume design considerations will change once the company is dancing in the new theatre. "I've been having an ongoing discussion with (lighting designer) Christopher Dennis about how the new lighting will change the way that costumes are perceived." Effects painted on to costumes, to make them look older for instance, may look too stylized. Fielding wonders if costumes might have to be more naturalistic.

In any case, greater awareness of the costumes will mean "the whole audience will be able to recognize characters more easily and follow the story more easily."

Just as the audience will feel closer to the dancers, with the ability to pick out their expressions and the nuances of a performance, so will the dancers feel the presence of their viewers more acutely. Principal dancer Aleksandar Antonijevic, who has often danced in European-style opera houses, says, "You really feel you're very, very close to them. They're almost surrounding you from all sides. It's not just this black hole that goes on forever."

One of the biggest benefits for the dancers that comes with the reduced number of seats in the new house is the increased number of performances for the dancers. For instance, the company's opening show in November, The Sleeping Beauty, will be performed 14 times, as opposed to the seven shows of Swan Lake that opened the 2005-06 season. These demands necessitate both a greater number of dancers but also more performances for everyone.

"It's tough to work on the really difficult ballets and then just get two performances," says Antonijevic. The more times they get to dance in front of an audience, the deeper their grasp of a role.

Audibly excited, Antonijevic calls the move into the Four Seasons "a huge, gigantic step forward for the ballet. And a big thing for the audience."

He expects the new house will induce ballet patrons to get dressed up and make an occasion of it. And he believes the location of the opera house will draw new fans to ballet, especially on days when passers-by can be tantalized with a glimpse — through the windows of the Four Seasons rehearsal studio on Queen St. — of the country's finest dancers in their new performance home.

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And two personal op-pieces:

`Milestone in cultural evolution'
Jun. 10, 2006. 01:00 AM

At its very essence, opera is a celebration of the extraordinary. The operatic voice is superhuman, able to convey emotions and experiences that are transcendent and unforgettable. In many places in the world, opera houses are therefore held with the same reverence as cathedrals. They reflect something essential about the character of the city.

We finally have an opera house, which reflects who we are. Like the spirit of Toronto, it is not what it seems. It takes a while to get to know. You have to give yourself time to explore, to root out characteristics which may not be obvious at first glance.

The acoustics are amazing, and rank with the finest houses in the world. The sightlines are all perfect, and the technical resources and sense of space are breathtaking. Like Toronto, it is supremely practical and easy to access.

What makes it a true gift to our city, however, is its ability to express the more mysterious aspects of our nature. Its austere shell gives way to a host of sensual pleasures. Its magnificent glass lobby offers ways of seeing and, more profoundly, hearing the city that could never be imagined.

This beautiful structure is a milestone in our cultural evolution. We deserve it.

—Atom Egoyan, director of the COC's Die Walkure
_________________________________________________

`A truly Canadian building'
Jun. 10, 2006. 01:00 AM

With all of the talk these days about how music education makes students better at other subjects like math and science, one crucial point often gets lost: Music education also makes for better citizens.

As a product of the public education system of the 1970s and 1980s, I am of a generation of students who learned the value of art as an essential part of everyone's lives. Arts education teaches students critical-thinking skills and an appreciation of beauty; we learned that music sharpens the intellect and stirs the soul.

My greatest memories of school are of singing in choirs, band trips, and of Scarborough's music camp, where Barenaked Ladies had their genesis, and where I met my wife, Carolyn, herself a musician and scholar. She and I have been long-time subscribers and supporters of the Canadian Opera Company because we see opera as the convergence of so many of the arts (vocal and instrumental music, drama, movement, literature), and we are fans of the COC's vision of what opera is and what it can be.

But we also realize that as students have ever-decreasing access to the arts, the COC is more essential than ever in helping to broaden Toronto's musical landscape.

We welcome the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts to Toronto, and look forward to years of great performances there, both by the COC and the National Ballet. With Toronto as the home city for these two national institutions, it is only fitting that we finally have a purpose-built home for them, with state-of-the-art sound and excellent sightlines from every seat in the house.

In a world of increasing cultural homogeneity, the Four Seasons Centre is a truly Canadian building. From the architect to the interior designers, to the performers onstage, the Four Seasons Centre gives a home to Canada's unique take on opera. We have seen the work of great directors and designers like Robert Lepage, Michael Levine and Atom Egoyan, along with the amazing vocal talents of Canadian singers like Michael Schade, Richard Margison and Ben Heppner, all international superstars.

Now they have a home stage that fits the calibre of talent we have in this country, and we as a city have an exciting new centre for our growing and vital arts scene.

—Steven Page, singer/songwriter

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rdaner:

I will see if I can find it online. It would be difficult to scan it since it's a two page spread, and the resultant file would be way too huge.

I am spamming the thread with other articles from the Post:

His noble materials
Architect Jack Diamond designed the opera house not for pizzazz but for its enduring purpose

Peter Kuitenbrouwer, National Post
Published: Saturday, June 10, 2006

After 40 years as an architect in Toronto, Abel J. ("Jack") Diamond, 73, is riding high. He is preparing to bask in applause Sunday morning at the grand opening of his piece de resistance, Toronto's new opera house at the keystone intersection of Queen Street and University Avenue. The austere glass and black-brick building has its critics. But in a conversation with the Post, Diamond offered a vigorous defence of the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts as a marriage of simple form and perfect acoustics.

Not that Mr. Diamond needs to prove anything to anyone. His firm is as busy as it wants to be, designing museums, university campuses, homes, community centres and even a winery.

We begin with the grand tour of his firm's new digs. After years in Berkeley Castle east of St. Lawrence Market, in 2004 Diamond and Schmitt Architects bought a four-storey textile building, built in 1913, on the northeast corner of Adelaide and Spadina. They restored the place and added all mod cons, including custom lighting and glass doors that roll on stainless steel tracks hung from the ceiling. Diamond and Schmitt's 115 staff occupy half of the second floor, plus the third and fourth floors. It may be a measure of the outfit's success that there is no sign, either outside or inside the building, that indicates the firm's presence here.

"The first time around we didn't have any money. We used doors for desks," recalls Diamond.

Today the firm, owned by 14 principals, boasts custom workstations and its own print shop. There is also, in the kitchen, a massive tureen. Each staffer has the job, in sequence, of making soup for lunch, and the firm plans to publish a cookbook of the most popular soups.

On the third floor are two meeting rooms across the hall from one another, each behind a glass wall. Using the ceiling track, one can slide all the glass away to make a huge room, in which the whole staff gathers each Friday at 5 p.m. for beer, popcorn and a review of projects. "I encourage criticism," says Diamond. "It shows the most minor people they can have an effect. They're not just a cat's ball, an instrument."

As he gives his tour, he points to renderings stuck to cubicle walls of current and recent projects. Or he asks a staffer to show images on a computer screen. There is a competition for a museum in Canada (he asks we not name it), for which drawings cover the walls of the kitchen; a master plan for McGill University; a master plan for the Banff Centre for the Performing Arts; a winery in Niagara; the School of Engineering at the University of Michigan; the Jewish Community Centre in New York; the Life Science Centre at the University of British Columbia.

"It's rated LEED gold," he says of the UBC project. I ask what LEED stands for. "What does LEED stand for?" Diamond asks the receptionist. She gets on the phone. Within a minute another woman comes down the hall and hands Diamond a Post-it note, on which she has written "Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design."

Born in South Africa, Diamond got his masters in architecture at Oxford, where he met math scholar Gillian Huggins. The pair married in 1959; they have a son, a daughter and four grandsons. Diamond taught architecture in Philadelphia and Toronto before founding his first firm, Diamond & Myers, in 1969. Today he has homes in Toronto and the island of Mustique, a fleck between St. Vincent and Grenada in the Lesser Antilles.

Diamond and Schmitt's work is relentlessly contemporary. Its new opera house is a cluster of big black brick boxes with a glass front. Diamond describes it as an egg (the performance hall) in a nest (the surrounding building). Reviews are mixed. Christopher Hume, writing in Where magazine, dubbed it "modest." Another architect, who worked with Diamond years ago, said, "An opera house should be the raisin in the rice pudding in the context of urbanity. There's something not quite there in that place."

Post: And yet if I stand on the corner of York and Richmond and look at the back of the building, it's the back of the building. You don't really want to be on that corner looking at it.

Diamond: See, I do. There is a sequence, an important totality about all of it. If you look at opera houses around the world, they are often very big hulks. What I've done is to deconstruct the building. [Sketches on a pad in front of him]. You get the Richmond Street wing and the Queen Street wing, all of it orthogonal and lining the sidewalk. And then you've got the service wing and the fly tower. And then, quite differently, you've got this curvilinear. This is black brick with black mortar. These are not modest. These are powerful components sitting in the city. If you change your view about the superficial, and begin to understand what's going on and the way this will read over a long period of time, these are powerful components. It's like a mastaba, those minor temples that the Egyptians built with very, very powerful components, batted walls that sat on the ground in an extremely powerful way.

Post: On your Web site you speak of "Architecture shaped by the life within it and the life around it."

Diamond: University Avenue is our principal boulevard, where all our grand institutions are. That's why while I want to be responsible, with good manners, this is a very special room, with the glass staircase and the glazing. And then [you enter the concert hall and] there is the contrast to the curvilinear opaque, warm colours, everything curved and shaped and sculpted inside. And you move from one to the other. This whole structure is entirely independent.

Post: This is the egg in the nest.

Diamond: Right. It's got N1 rating. That means it's silent. People go in that room and gasp. They love it. It's got an intimacy, it has a warmth, it has an enclosure. The scale is huge and yet it feels intimate. These are architectural accomplishments. I wouldn't normally boast like that, but I have these superficial criticisms of half-baked ideas of people who have not experienced architecture and don't understand the longevity of a piece like this that won't just be yesterday's fashion.

Post: Given the fact that the budget was not the sky ...

Diamond: You make a virtue of a necessity. I couldn't afford stone, I used brick. Brick's a noble material. And you can make it plastic by making the mortar the same colour as the brick. Choosing black: it's silver in the day, it's gold in the evening and the morning, when it rains, it's matte black. And these pieces have a presence in the city. This is a building of durability and power. Trust me. That's not modest.

But it's not of the kind of novelty that comes from the kind of attitude of throwing glass beads in front of savages ... not savages, barbarians.

Post: Are there buildings in Toronto that you care for?

Diamond: I love Queen's Park. I love Osgoode Hall, I think the library there is spectacular. I think Union Station and its hall is marvelous. Harris's waterworks [the water-treatment plant in The Beach] are extraordinary buildings. Some of the high-rise building being done by Peter Clewes, his apartment buildings are really pretty good. I think the new buildings of the ballet school are excellent. I think that's a very good ensemble.

Post: Old City Hall? New City Hall?

Diamond: New city hall would benefit hugely by taking down that walkway around the square. That building is flawed inasmuch as all of the inner offices have no windows. [Draws a sketch]. There's a classic instance of the form overpowering the livability of the building. All the main offices are on that level. So f--- the aesthetic on that. Oops.

All of the principal dressing rooms in the opera house have windows. The only budget cuts -- but I've designed it so they can be put back -- I had a glass canopy that would have been a foil to the Richmond Street facade. Right across the sidewalk. And above this lounge, I had a wonderful roof garden, with decks and plantings and awnings and all the infrastructure is there, it can be done at a later stage.

I think that there is good architecture being done in Toronto.

Post: What about all the condos going up down here by the Rogers Centre?

Diamond: The problem is with the way those deal with the city. I don't think that's going to be another neighbourhood like the other neighbourhoods in the city, very commercial, retail and residential. It's pretty sterile at base.

[Pulls down a Hebrew-language coffee-table book about the Israeli foreign ministry building he designed in Jerusalem.] Look. Let me show you something. I designed a building that Business Week and Architectural Record nominated in 2004 as one of the 10 best buildings in the world. This building has a purpose: to create a diplomatic centre of some importance for a beleaguered democracy. It's bombproof. I had it tested in the desert with bombs. This is a superb office building, aesthetically thrilling, and it doesn't look like a fortress. It's the most secure building in Israel. But it doesn't look it.

It's not that I can't make a fine object. But using our judgment, of making something novel and solving one element, and being dramatic about that, is often a recipe for long-term disaster. And so the opera house has a gravity about it. It's sitting in the city. It's a democratic house, I've captured the sidewalk. The main lobby is not up a flight of stairs, for the aristocracy, with hoi polloi going up the side entrances as in many European houses. Everybody comes in the front at ground level. The transparency makes it accessible. It provides animation.

Post: Are you an opera-goer?

Diamond: Of course I am. My two loves are choral music and chamber music.

Post: Did you build the house in which you live?

Diamond: It's a renovated house. I restored it. It's the Moore's house on Moore Park, built in 1872. It's the first house in that area. It's the original farmhouse. During the war it was a rooming house. So it needed some work.

Post: You obviously have an appreciation for the city's history.

Diamond: When I bought that house in the late '60s, I couldn't have afforded to build a house. You could buy houses in Toronto pretty cheap. And I didn't have any money. I thought I was going to go broke because I had a mortgage of about $20,000. But my holiday house is a modern house, on an island called Mustique. It's a house I designed from scratch.

Post: Do you feel more comfortable there?

Diamond: Napoleon won his battles by fighting the battle according to the terrain. He didn't invent a strategy and impose it on the terrain as some architects do. I fight battles according to the terrain. You've got an old house in an inner-city residential area, you deal with that.

I'll tell you the difference between an amateur and a professional. An amateur sees something they like -- a French chateau, or a farmhouse or an English cottage. And when they go to another country or another climate they say, "I want that." A professional says, "We've got humidity, we've got wind, we've got sea spray, we've got abundant rainfall, so let's have a fantastic garden, design something with that." You've got different light and different heat. Why would you put a French chateau in that circumstance? What I do is look at what is done historically in that circumstance, by those who didn't have air conditioning. What did they do on a natural basis? Verandas, shade, living outside.

Make a modern veranda.

I've made a modern opera house. It's a classical form, but there are a whole bunch of techniques there that are totally modern. Although it's done without any electronic enhancements. There's no microphone. There's no intervention between the voice and the receiver. It's pure voice and instrument.

© National Post 2006

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Again, from the Post:

It's what's inside that counts
In the centre of downtown Toronto, an eerie silence. And that's the point

Michael Crabb, National Post
Published: Saturday, June 10, 2006

Given the jolly nature of gala crowds, it's unlikely those attending Wednesday's inaugural concert at the Four Seasons Centre will get to hear what is perhaps the new hall's most stunning acoustic feature -- its eerie silence. You could say it has to be not-heard to be believed.

The challenge of designing an opera house so that it sounds fantastic when orchestra and singers let rip is daunting enough. It becomes doubly so when the hall is closely framed by busy downtown streets and built on ground that rumbles with every passing streetcar and subway train. Making sure unwanted noise from the outside will not desecrate the inner sanctum of operatic art was as crucial as creating a resonant interior in which great voices can soar.

The feat has been accomplished by building what architect Jack Diamond vividly describes as ''an egg in a nest.'' The auditorium and stage area, massively reinforced with steel and concrete, form a rigid box-like structure that floats on a matrix of hefty pads. Lead acoustician Robert Essert, in a thoughtful nod to a Canadian obsession, calls them ''large hockey pucks.'' Actually, they're cuboid and strengthened with steel layers. Never mind. They perform the important task of absorbing ground-borne vibration.

Vertical isolation is accomplished by separating the hall from the outer building by a two-inch gap filled with dense rubber. Special care has also been paid to the acoustic isolation of air conditioning and other machinery.

Where entranceways penetrate the hall's thick, plaster-over-concrete walls, tight-fitting double doors act as sound locks.

Engineering all this does not come cheap. The hall's acoustic isolation cost $6-million. That's a significant chunk of the project's roughly $127-million construction budget. Judging by the results, it was worth every penny.

In late April, the Canadian Opera Company held two ''acoustic commissioning'' concerts for invited audiences. As explained in prefatory remarks, you can never know for sure how a new hall will sound until it's built and until real musicians and singers perform before a live audience.

Before the music started, though, Essert and his team needed to conduct a scientific test of the hall's acoustic properties. Specially designed loudspeakers on stage and in the pit sequentially emitted a ''swoop'' -- a sound wave spanning the entire range of audible frequencies. Essert's cohorts, strategically placed throughout the auditorium, recorded the results for later analysis. For the test to work, however, the hall had to be perfectly quiet. The audience of schoolchildren at the first concert, many of them already exposed to opera through the COC's various education programs, were far more co-operative than the following day's adult attendees. When Essert raised his hand to signal silence, it was if he'd flipped a switch. You could have heard the proverbial pin drop.

Then it was the turn of COC supremo Richard Bradshaw to put the hall to the test of live music. He worked his way through the impressively large pit -- more than large enough for the massive forces Bradshaw will be conducting for The Ring Cycle this September -- and took the customary bow from the podium. Amidst much applause and a smattering of ''bravos,'' Bradshaw turned to acknowledge the first audience ever gathered in the Four Seasons Centre. Just as he was about to wield his baton and launch into Mozart's overture to The Magic Flute he heard a boy's voice call out: ''Go, dude!'' It happened to be Bradshaw's 62nd birthday.

''I can tell you,'' the maestro recalled a few days later, ''it made me feel very young again. It was an amazing moment.'' And not just for him. As the orchestra played and a roster of young singers, mostly from the COC Ensemble of professionals in training, worked through a repertoire of Handel, Mozart and small-ensemble Britten, it became immediately obvious why Bradshaw had battled so tirelessly, against considerable odds, to get the hall built.

Invited media had been firmly instructed at an earlier session with Essert and Bradshaw that these commissioning events were not to be taken as opportunities to render summary judgement on the hall's acoustics. They were experiments to probe its properties and variables.

The pit can be raised or lowered to adjust the balance of voice and music, the orchestral colour subtly changed according to the placement of musicians in the pit and the ''liveness'' of the room -- basically, the reverberation time -- modified according to the requirements of different repertoire.

An opera house is not a concert hall. Their ideal reverberation times differ, with concert halls tending toward the live side. For an opera house, however, too live means you get an echoey effect that can blur the lyrics. Too damp and the hall will seem flat and lifeless. Interior volume is also a factor. Sound waves must be contained. Roy Thomson Hall underwent a costly retrofit a couple of years ago to reduce its volume -- with notably improved acoustics as the result.

In Europe, where opera houses were and continue to be built and operated in subsidized environments -- in the past by rich kings, now by culture-friendly governments -- interior volume (and therefore the number of seats) is kept small and intimate. In North America, where governments treat the arts as frills, performing-arts organizations are forced to pay heed to the financial imperative of human posteriors on padded seats.

Box office really matters. As a result, most opera houses on this side of the Atlantic are too big to deliver a satisfying experience to the majority of patrons.

The COC, which vacated its long-time 3,200-seat Hummingbird Centre venue in mid-April (crocodile tears flowed profusely) believes it has a business plan that can work with a mere 2,000-seat hall. Given the fickle funding environment it's a brave decision and even then pushes the limit in terms of acoustic ideals.

From the earliest planning stages, Essert, who was involved in an aborted Toronto opera-house project in the late 1980s, worked in close collaboration with Diamond and Schmitt Architects and theatre planning and design consultants Fisher Dachs Associates to create the optimal acoustic.

Compromise became a dirty word. When the National Ballet of Canada, the COC's tenant in the new hall, expressed concern about the narrowness of the proscenium -- calculated to meet optimal acoustic targets -- Bradshaw sent Essert back to his computer to run the numbers. Widening the stage opening, Essert determined, would have a marginally negative impact. ''Sorry. No go,'' was Bradshaw's response to the ballet.

Computer technology helped to perfect the hall's traditional horseshoe shape. Floating, aesthetically pleasing curvaceous panels in the ceiling help reflect sound into the body of the hall and counteract its tendency to get captured in the upper reaches of the top balcony. The undulating Weimaraner-colored wall surfaces -- Diamond says he mixed the paint himself to get just the hue he wanted -- help reflect sound waves in a complex pattern to produce the kind of ''voluptuous'' sound Bradshaw ordered.

Yet, as the charmingly voluble maestro with a tendency to impolitic candor and a taste for Italian cuisine concedes, ''There is no perfect opera house for every opera.'' What everyone who loves opera hopes is that the COC's new home will do a superior job at accommodating most. So far, the auguries are suggesting it will.

AoD
 
And another...

The back story
The opera house's backstage, and especially the loading docks, had a ripple effect on the layout

Kelvin Browne, National Post
Published: Saturday, June 10, 2006

Architect Gary McCluskie, a principal of Diamond and Schmitt Architects, laughingly describes the impact of the backstage on the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts: ''It's the tail wagging the dog.''

''It's a relatively small site -- a small footprint -- and behind-the-scenes elements, such as the loading docks, are much more significant determinants in the configuration of the building than people would imagine.'' In fact, the roughly 52% of the total square footage that's behind the scenes, including the stages, are among the most essential puzzle parts the architects had to piece together.

Architects often wax poetic about all sorts of things that influence the design of a structure. But unlike Sydney's Opera House, for instance, sailboats can't be given credit for generating the Four Seasons Centre's form. Instead, the key design decisions were less metaphorical and more practical. Of course, every building project has practical imperatives, even buildings that begin as images of sailboats, but what exacerbates the importance of these considerations here is the small site and the immutability of such things as loading docks and stages. There's little room to manoeuvre on site, and few of the key components can be modified if they're to function properly.

One given for major performance venues, where shows have enormous sets that are often borrowed from other productions, is getting the sets in and out efficiently. At the Four Seasons Centre, even when sets are owned by the Canadian Opera Company, for example, they're likely built off-site and often used in rehearsals not at the opera house. In other words, there's no avoiding the omnipresent transport trailer truck.

''Semi-trailers are huge,'' says McCluskie. ''While 67 feet is standard, many are 72 feet long. They need large dock spaces, but they also need considerable room to get in and out of a shipping/receiving area. We initially had a scheme where trucks pulled in forward and then drove out forward but the site couldn't accommodate this. Instead, after consultation with the city, we have a configuration that allows trucks to back in and then drive forward off the site.''

Loading docks can dominate an architect's arithmetic on a small site. At the Four Seasons Centre, the basic positioning of them seemed inevitable: Since the front of the opera house is naturally oriented toward University Avenue, the ceremonial street, the loading area (which needs to be to the back of the building) would be towards the ''back,'' or York Street end, of the property. After discussions with the city, the loading area indeed came to be along York, with the entrance to it from Richmond Street, just west of York.

Once the loading docks are in place, inadvertently there are a lot of other decisions made. For example, where does the stage go? There's really only one realistic option -- next to the loading area. And then the auditorium is next to the stage. And then, guess what the architects realized on this site -- they were almost out of space. The area remaining for the lobby is squeezed right up against University Avenue.

''We didn't start with the idea of a lobby as a City Room, but the realities of the site meant our lobby was almost on the street. We've taken advantage of this fact. It's a great public space and it works well with the entry plaza area off of Queen Street.''

But the loading docks have an even broader influence. ''It's much more efficient if the stage level is the same as the loading dock,'' says McCluskie. ''It increases the effort to move sets exponentially if pallets have to be moved between floors.'' Once the stage level is determined, the level of the auditorium floor corresponds to it. At the Four Seasons Centre, the auditorium level didn't quite reconcile itself with the level of the lobby. ''The Queen Street entrance plaza is subtly ramped, as is the floor between the City Room and the ground floor of the auditorium.'' This is how the divergent floor levels are seamlessly resolved.

Then there's space required to store sets if you're performing several operas at once (for instance, three operas in one week) or to have massive sets on dollies, or ''wagons'' as they're called, moved in from the wings for quick changes between acts. To accommodate this demand, there are two large areas the size of the main stage to the north and east of it. These wings take up a big percentage of a small site.

Another major behind-the-scenes consideration was a rehearsal hall the size of the stage, approximately 60 feet by 50 feet. It's positioned just east of the north stage wing and this facilitates scenery and props being moved there from the stage areas for rehearsals. This space was conceptualized to do double-duty as a recital hall. The public access that makes this dual role possible is through the Queen Street entrance, another factor that positioned the rehearsal hall where it is. There's not much room left at the stage level now.

But there's more stuff required backstage too, such as dressing rooms and a green room, sort of a performer's lounge area. While there are some star dressing rooms at the stage level, most are on the second floor, and the orchestra's dressing rooms work well at orchestra-pit level, one level below the stage. The green room is on this level too, near the orchestra pit. Breaks aren't long and this makes it close at hand for most. The stage door is off Richmond Street.

What's the biggest surprise with the backstage areas? McCluskie says, ''Unlike many opera houses where corridors are buried in the building and many dressing rooms and other spaces don't have natural light, the backstage of this opera house has lots of light. Corridors are often glazed. It's quick a shock, a pleasant one, for people to come a light-filled back stage.''

© National Post 2006

AoD
 
rdaner:

No luck. On the bright side, there is an interesting interactive photo gallery that shows the view of the stage from different levels/sections.

www.theglobeandmail.com/p...ns-centre/

Pretty awful that they used a *really* old rendering of City Room for the front page of the gallery, however.

AoD
 
Not only did the Globe use a really old rendering, but their article about the glass staircase made several factual errors:

The gala concert is on Wednesday, not Tuesday; the glass staircase rises from the second floor ( Grand Ring ) to the third ( Ring 3 ), and then up to the fourth floor ( Ring 4 ), not from the first floor to the second and then up to the third; the glass staircase is misidentified as the grand staircase in the print version photograph.

The woman next to me at the Itzhak Perlman concert last night at RTH had been to both commissioning concerts. She said that there was no comparison between acoustics at RTH and at the FSCPA - where someone speaking on stage can be heard clearly up in the 5th Ring. She felt that there wasn't enough leg room in the front rows of the balconies at the new house though! Also, she said that there was a sign advertising tickets for the Gala concert when she went to the donor open house last weekend. I was surprised. Also a Globe item on Saturday claimed that there were $250 Gala tickets left, whereas I was told they were all gone when I bought my ticket some time ago.

I don't think I can ever remember such an exciting time in our fair city. OCAD and the National Ballet school redone, the opera / ballet house opening today, the Gardiner on the 23rd, the ROM opening in stages, the Conservatory of Music well under construction, the AGO being redone, the Film Centre about to begin. This is simply thrilling!

Thanks for posting all these articles, Alvin.
 
Diamond explains it best in his own words, that the marvel of the opera house is in its design, functionality and subtle - hopefully timeless and classic - details. He makes a "virtue of necessity" in that in the absence of adequate funding he designs a building that avoids pandering to T.O.'s neurotic need to be 'world class' in that it eschews any impulse to pomp or excess, and rejects cheap flourish or detail, putting what precious little money there was into stunning simple details. So, for those of us who hoped for a building-as-monument, and who may feel that the opera house should have been an opportunity for spectacle and a flexing of architectural muscle, it should be acknowledged that that just simply was never going to happen!! The parameters for this building were established long ago, the result of politics and power struggles. That Diamond managed to work within this limited context, with such frugal and challenging parameters, is a testamony to his talent. In the meantime we will look for our grand gestures elsewhere, the waterfront perhaps?
 
Diamond's use of the word "deconstruct" to describe what he's done ties in with views I've expressed here before. The component parts of the building are clearly defined to reflect their inner function. Yet they form a coherent whole.

Fly tower, service wing, horseshoe auditorium roof, and public spaces, are expressed clearly. They are located logically, facing the streets that are most appropriate for their use. As such, it is an iconic building and says "opera house" much as the redesigned VW Beetle said "car" when it was relaunched.
 
tudarams:

He makes a "virtue of necessity" in that in the absence of adequate funding he designs a building that avoids pandering to T.O.'s neurotic need to be 'world class' in that it eschews any impulse to pomp or excess, and rejects cheap flourish or detail, putting what precious little money there was into stunning simple details.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, during today's opening ceremonies, the powers that be used the phrase "world class" enough times to make me cringe in horror.

AoD
 
Pretty awful that they used a *really* old rendering of City Room for the front page of the gallery, however.
Click to expand...

It's too bad they didn't stick with that design. A lot better than the current city room, IMO.
 
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