But six performances of Gyorgy Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre from 10 December have had to be abandoned after problems with backstage equipment.
Covering an entire block and developed over 16 years, the £214m restoration and extension of the house have all the makings of a French-style “grand projet”. Except that is, for the architecture.
Although larger in scale, the extensions are subservient to the classical opera house of 1856. Admittedly, there are grand set pieces: the classical auditorium has been restored to its crimson and gilt splendour, and the Victorian glass-and-steel Floral Hall market has been rebuilt with a barrel-vaulted roof to serve as foyer.
But these are the juicy plums in a very English pudding. Designed by joint venture Dixon Jones BDP, the scheme is an extensive and tightknit collection of new and refurbished facilities. It includes a “roof village” of four ballet studios and workshops that float over the opera stage and its facilities below.
The architectural style is similarly eclectic – the historic areas have been restored, the new extensions are modern Italian and stripped classical faces the piazza. This mix comes together in the Floral Hall.
However, the project’s real raison d’être has been to provide “a machine for producing opera”, in the words of Charles Broughton, project director of Dixon Jones BDP. The central element of this is a huge backstage area that can house scenery for three productions at once on mobile trolleys, thereby increasing the opera company’s productivity by 50%.
Construction was managed by Schal, with Ove Arup & Partners as consultant engineer and Gardiner & Theobald as cost consultant.
