Contents
Foreword 8
Renzo Piano
Foreword 9
Esa-Pekka Salonen
Architecture in the Service of Music 12
Michael Webb
Performing for the Court 16
Haydnsaal, Eisenstadt, Austria 17
Markgräfliches Opernhaus, Bayreuth 19
Cuvilliéstheater, Munich 23
Drottningholms Slottsteater, Sweden 26
Neues Palais Theater, Potsdam 29
Opéra-Royal de Versailles 31
City of Music: Berlin 34
Staatsoper unter den Linden 36
Deutsche Oper 39
Komische Oper 40
Konzerthaus 4 3
Berliner Philharmonie 46
Kammermusiksaal 50
Opera Goes Grand 54
Staatstheater, Meiningen 56
Teatro di San Carlo, Naples 58
Teatro La Scala, Milan 61
Grand-Théâtre de Bordeaux 65
Opéra-Municipal de Marseille 70
Teatro La Fenice, Venice 72
Teatro Malibran, Venice 74
La Monnaie, Brussels 77
Opéra-Royal de Wallonie-Liège 80
Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich 80
Gran Theatre del Liceu, Barcelona 84
Opernhaus, Zürich 92
Hessisches Staatstheater, Wiesbaden 96
Kungliga Operan, Stockholm 100
Early Memories 102
Thomas Aujero Small
City of Music: Vienna 106
Wiener Staatsoper 107
Musikverein 109
Muzik Theater an der Wien 11 4
Volksoper 1 19
Wiener Konzerthaus 119
Symphonic Stages 122
Concertgebouw, Amsterdam 12 3
Muziekgebouw aan’t IJ 123
Palau de la Música Catalana, Barcelona 12 8
Die Glocke Konzerthaus, Bremen 13 3
Liederhalle, Stuttgart 13 3
Kulturpalast, Dresden 13 7
Brucknerhaus, Linz 142
Konzerthalle, Bamberg 144
City of Music: Paris 150
Palais Garnier 15 1
Opéra-Comique 154
Théâtre des Champs-Elysées 157
Radio-France Auditorium 160
Philharmonie de Paris 163
La Seine Musicale 163
Yasuhisa Toyota on Acoustics 168
Esc ape to a Festival 170
Goethe-Theater, Bad Lauchstädt, Germany 17 1
Festspielhaus, Bayreuth 173
Regentenbau, Bad Kissingen, Germany 175
Grosses Festspielhaus, Salzburg 175
Snape Maltings, U.K. 179
Angelika Kauffmann Saal, Schwarzenberg, Austria 182
Glyndebourne Theatre, Lewes, U.K. 18 4
Wolkenturm (Cloud Tower) Grafenegg, Austria 18 6
National Opera House, Wexford, Ireland 18 8
Festspielhaus Erl, Austria 19 2
Auditorium Giovanni Arvédi, Cremona 196
City of Music: Prague 200
Stavovské divadlo (Estates Theater) 204
Národní divadlo (National Theater) 205
Státní Opera (State Opera) 209
Music Ac ademies 212
Salle Cortot, Paris 213
IRCAM, Paris 21 4
Mumuth, Graz 21 5
Royal Academy of Music, London 216
Haus Marteau, Lichtenberg, Germany 21 8
Pierre Boulez Saal, Berlin 22 1
City of Music: London 224
Sinfonia Smith Square 226
Covent Garden 227
Royal Albert Hall 227
Wigmore Hall 229
Royal Festival Hall 230
Barbican Concert Hall 23 3
Reconceiving the Opera House 236
New Hamburg Opera House 23 7
Teatro Regio, Turin 23 9
Opéra National de Lyon 23 9
Musiktheater im Revier, Gelsenkirchen 241
Theater St. Gallen 243
Aalto-Theater, Essen 246
Oslo Opera House, Oslo 249
Stavros Niarchos Cultural Center, Athens 254
Contemp orary Concert Halls 258
KKL , Lucerne 259
Casa da Musica, Porto 26 2
Parco della Musica, Rome 266
DR Koncerthuset, Copenhagen 270
Harpa, Reykjavik 272
Konzerthaus, Blaibach, Germany 276
Filharmonia, Szczecin, Poland 278
CKK Jordanki, Toruń, Poland 281
Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg 28 5
Isarphilharmonie, Munich 298
Photo credits 294
Acknowledgments 298
Contributors 299
Foreword by Renzo Piano
I have always loved to create spaces for music.
This is what architecture knows how to do.
It creates acoustic chambers so that music can be heard properly, whether they are concert halls, recording studios, or sound labs.
Just as a luthier crafts instruments to produce sound, architecture creates spaces so that music can be heard in the best possible conditions.
When designing spaces for music, there are measurable elements, such as sound intensity, clarity, and its distribution in space. But then, there is a kind of magic, and that is where collaboration with musicians becomes essential.
There are so many things that bring music and architecture closer together.
The same need for a geometric, sometimes mathematical, structure.
The same need for order, one that can be disrupted when necessary.
Renzo Piano Building Workshop: St Cecilia Hall, Park of Music, Rome
Foreword by Esa-Pekka Salonen
The field of acoustics is partly scientific and partly subjective, yet we can still describe in broad terms what makes a hall sound good. A symphony orchestra moves from the faintest whisper to overwhelming power, and the architecture of a hall must be able to carry that entire dynamic range. But there is another element—more subjective, yet just as important, if not more so: the vibe, the atmosphere of the space, its feeling and expressive character, which profoundly shapes the listening experience. The crucial moment comes when the audience first enters the hall. If the environment feels welcoming, expressive—perhaps even exciting—it prepares them for the music. This relaxation is not passive, not switching off, but a kind of openness: settling into the experience and becoming ready for what is about to unfold.
During the lockdown I realized how deeply I had missed the concert experience. When I finally returned to a hall and stood at the bar before the performance, I suddenly had the powerful sense that I was among “my people.” Many of them I did not know, yet we were bound together by our shared love of music and by the simple fact of being present in that space at that moment. What struck me was the quiet diversity of this tribe—certainly in age, but in many other ways as well. A concert hall gathers people who might otherwise never meet, and the entire experience, from arriving at the building to leaving after the final notes, feels subtly shaped and curated, preparing us to share something meaningful together.
Frank Gehry observed that in music the timeline is fixed: the composer and performers determine it, and the listener simply follows its unfolding from beginning to end. In architecture, by contrast, the visitor creates
their own timeline through movement in the space— returning, lingering, or changing direction. Music unfolds relentlessly; architecture allows time to be shaped by the individual experience. In a great concert hall, the two ideas meet: the musical timeline is fixed, but everything surrounding it—the journey into the hall, the gathering of the audience, the atmosphere of the space, the musical program itself—is thoughtfully shaped.
Frank and I agreed that the message of an ideal hall should be one of openness, excitement, and inclusivity—qualities not always associated with classical music. That, I think, is a mistake. Music needs a sense of play. Composers like Beethoven were not solemn priests of culture; their music is full of wit, energy, and surprise. A concert hall should invite that spirit. The experience should not feel reverential and glum, but alive—something shared with curiosity, openness, and joy.
Esa-Pekka Salonen on the rostrum © Benjamin Ealovega
top left Stuttgart Opera © Matthias Baus, top right San Carlo, Naples © Luciano Romano, bottom left La Fenice, Venice © Nicola Grassetti, bottom right Hesse State Theater, Wiesbaden
top left Concert House, Berlin, top right Municipal Opera, Marseilles, bottom left Garnier Opera, Paris, bottom right Estates Theater, Prague courtesy National Theater
Architecture in the Service of Music
by Michael Webb
Verdi’s Don Carlos at the Meiningen State Theater © Christina Iberl
Architecture and music are universal languages, and fluent practitioners are at home wherever they go. These arts can also be tightly interwoven, each intensifying what the other has to offer.
“Architecture is like music: it is made to move and delight,” declared Jean Nouvel, who has designed several exemplary theaters. Frank Gehry was an architect whose passion for music produced some of the world’s best concert halls. As he explained in an interview with The Seattle Times in 2017,
“In music, you’re taking sounds and putting them together to create beauty and a feeling. When you do a building, you’re taking inert materials and putting them together to create beauty and a feeling. You make the space comfortable, interactive, and humane so that people feel together in the room and people feel together with the orchestra. The orchestra feels the relationship with the people. And it makes it better.”
In this survey the focus is on classical music—an imprecise term that embraces a host of forms and styles from medieval motets to contemporary experiments; compositions that challenge, delight, inspire, and stand the test of time. For centuries in Europe, religious institutions were the principal clients for artists and composers, and even agnostics like me can thrill to plainsong in a Romanesque abbey or a cantata of Johannes Sebastian Bach performed in the church of St. Thomas, Leipzig, where he served as music director 300 years ago. Bach created music to be heard in a soaring Gothic nave; other composers scaled
their work to an intimate salon or a grand public hall.
Music is a primal human expression and constantly evolving. Classical music emerged from domestic performances, steadily growing in scale and popularity, and generating an enduring repertoire. Great composers, from Handel and Bach to Haydn and Mozart, Beethoven and Wagner, Schoenberg and Stravinsky, pushed the bounds of the art, creating new sounds and structures. Opera evolved from the masques and entertainments staged to celebrate dynastic marriages. The first true operas, in which music carries the story, were composed in Florence in the late sixteenth century. Those scores have disappeared, but Monteverdi’s Orfeo, composed for the Gonzaga court in Mantua in 1607, is still revived along with later work by that master of the genre.
The joy of listening to great music superbly performed is enriched by the design of purposebuilt halls. When sight and sound are perfectly matched, all your senses are engaged, and you can have a sublime experience. Greek amphitheaters may be the oldest surviving structures purpose-designed for musical dramas, and variations on that model were constructed throughout the Roman empire. The Teatro Farnese in Parma and Palladio’s Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza show how Renaissance architects were inspired by antique models.
Private or public, large or small, plain or grandiose, each hall reflects the changing demands of composers, performers, and auditors over the past four centuries. A standard model quickly emerged. A rectilinear “shoebox” plan proved acoustically rewarding for concerts and the seats could be cleared when the flat floor was required for an event—such as the annual Vienna Philharmonic Ball in
the Musikverein of Vienna. A horseshoe of stacked boxes and galleries made the audience for opera a part of the spectacle and expressed the hierarchy of rank and wealth.
These configurations survived, with subtle variations and a few radical departures, until the last century. Then, the urge to create a more democratic experience prompted architects to put the entire audience on a single bank of seats with a few token side boxes. The evocation of a Greek amphitheater in Wagner’s Bayreuth Festspielhaus was a daring departure from convention, as was the vineyard plan of Hans Scharoun’s Berlin Philharmonie where discrete blocks of seating surround the orchestra on every side. The goal of recent designs is to blur or eliminate the barrier between audience and players and to ensure that every seat enjoys the best possible sight lines and sound quality.
All music lovers have their favorite performers and theaters, and Europe offers a bewildering range of options. That’s especially true in Germany where, prior to unification, a multitude of independent states, cities, and patrons fostered competition and local pride. The same constructive rivalry occurred in the city-states of Italy. In Britain, France, and other European countries that have long been centralized, the capital overshadows provincial cities.
This book focuses on theaters in which architecture and programming both excel—if only for the duration of a festival—and enjoy a fruitful relationship. It’s a collection of legendary stages, personal favorites, and little-known treasures. Chapters on the evolution of concert halls and opera houses are interspersed with chapters on the varied resources of five musical cities, musical academies, and acoustics. Most historic theaters have been rebuilt at
least once: the dates on each entry indicate the earliest surviving shell and the last important reconstruction of the interior. Geographically the selection extends from Athens to Reykjavík, Portugal to Poland, with a concentration in German-speaking countries at the heart of Europe. There’s great variety: the horseshoes and shoeboxes come in a dazzling variety of styles. Architects have been exploring radical new solutions since the Second World War. Standards are constantly in flux. An inspiring music director may transform an underperforming company, and acousticians can remedy defective halls.
Do I hear voices complaining that these art forms have lost their relevance to all but an aging minority and will soon disappear? In a world racked by uncertainty, craving novelty while vainly seeking to resurrect the past, the traditional arts are under attack. Opera and classical music, performed by dedicated individuals whose natural talent has been honed by a lifetime of training and practice, are disparaged as elitist—a diversion for the privileged few.
One wonders when these naysayers last left their couches or removed their earbuds. Long gone are the days when the rich sported their finery and came to the theater to be seen, to play cards and entertain friends in their boxes, pausing occasionally to listen to a celebrated diva. Now, with few exceptions, operagoers dress for comfort. In the top houses, tickets sell out months in advance. New operas, often addressing contemporary issues, are commissioned, and a fresh approach is taken to the classics. But the sense of occasion remains. There’s a choreographed promenade to your seat, a hush as the performance begins, and rapturous applause as it ends. For a few hours, cell phones are
silenced and pocketed, and the audience is immersed in a live, unamplified experience for eye and ear. Opera qualifies for a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage award, and there’s little evidence here of a dying art.
In most countries, tickets for the best seats tend to be pricey—though little more than those for a pop star viewed as a speck in a stadium—because the cost of mounting opera or supporting a major orchestra is high and constantly increasing. Ticket revenue typically covers only a small percentage of the annual budget. In Germany, where generous state and municipal subsidies make all but a handful of seats quite affordable, companies offer generous discounts to youths and seniors. They invite school groups to special performances of the classics and send performers into the classroom. Though Germany has reduced arts subsidies by 10 percent as an economy and neighboring states may do the same, there’s enough public support to carry companies through this crisis.
We hope that this book encourages others to share our sense of delight as we explored these venues, experienced their offerings, and spoke with the artists who plan programs, conduct, or perform. Never has great music been more universally accessible, through recordings, streaming, and live performances. Never has the partnership of architects and acousticians created better auditoriums for musicians and audiences alike. Never, in their long history, have the great halls of the past been so finely tuned and well-serviced—down to multilingual subtitles in the seat backs. The world may be teetering on the brink of catastrophe, but the fusion of architecture and music can still provide inspiration, solace, and the dream that our better angels may yet prevail.
Vivaldi’s Il Giustino at the Castle Theater, Drottningholm © Markus Gårder
City of Music: Berlin
To understand why Berlin is such a powerhouse in classical music today, it helps to go back— way back—to Frederick the Great. His passion for music helped lay the foundation for the city’s deep-rooted musical culture. It flourished through the nineteenth century and again during the Weimar Republic. Then came the devastation of World War II, which left much of the city (and its cultural institutions) in ruins. But Berlin’s music scene didn’t just recover—it came back stronger than ever. In the postwar years, the city cemented its status as a global capital of classical music, attracting top musicians and conductors from around the world. Many of the best talents, especially from the US, come here to study, perform, or even settle permanently. Tradition mixes with innovation in a city that operates at the highest international level while maintaining a deeply local musical identity.
Berlin’s turbulent history helps explain its preeminence. As the city rose from the ashes of 1945, the arts became weapons in the Cold War. The division of Berlin brought duplication. The venerable Staatsoper unter den Linden, Komische Oper, Konzerthaus, Humbolt University, and other cultural treasures were reconstructed to boost the prestige of the communist German Democratic Republic (DDR) but were shut off by the Berlin Wall. In the 1960s, the Culture Forum was constructed as a bold response by the West. Hans Scharoun designed two innovative halls for orchestral and chamber music, as well as a soaring public library. The New National Gallery was the crowning achievement of Mies van der Rohe, who had begun his career in the early 1900s working with Peter Behrens on the Berlin Turbine Hall. Close by is the Deutsche Oper, a
brutalist concrete block containing a deliberately spare auditorium. Berliners might have preferred something more ornate—as they made clear when the Staatsoper was being rebuilt—but the West employed modernity as a symbol of democracy and to mark itself off from the Soviet bloc.
A passion for music overrode political divisions, as it did throughout Germany. Kurt Masur, the long-time conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, was such a venerated figure in that city that he was able to mediate between the authorities and protestors and avert a confrontation. His calming influence did much to speed the peaceful collapse of the DDR. When the Wall came down, thousands braved the cold to stand in Berlin’s Gendarmenmarkt on Christmas Day 1989 and watch the live video of Leonard Bernstein conducting Beethoven’s Ninth in celebration of the city’s reunification. Soloists, musicians, and children’s choirs from East and West performed side by side, in an expression of harmony and reconciliation.
The exhilaration of that moment quickly subsided. An impoverished city was challenged to sustain three opera houses and four important concert halls. To its great credit it has continued to do so, and spend generously on improvements and upgrades, despite a downturn in the German economy. The Schiller Theater, rebuilt in 1951, has provided a temporary home for the Staatsoper and Komische Oper while they were under restoration. In 2017 Frank Gehry designed the Pierre Boulez concert hall within the shell of a listed building, and this exciting stage for the Barenboim-Said Akademie and the Divan Orchestra will be explored in the chapter on Music Academies. A cut in arts funding in 2024 set
Teatro di San Carlo, Naples (1737/2009)
Located across the street from the soaring Galleria Umberto I and around the corner from the vast expanse of the Piazza del Plebiscito, the Real Teatro di San Carlo is one of the grandest monuments of a storied city. Magnificence and squalor, culture and depravity have coexisted since Roman times, but Naples is now on an upswing, its landmarks scrubbed clean, and a new art-filled subway offering an alternative to traffic-clogged streets. Credit Mirella Barracco and her Fondazione Napoli 99 for launching the renaissance and boosting civic pride.
San Carlo was commissioned by the Bourbon King Charles III as an adjunct to his palace in 1737, making it the world’s oldest continuously operating opera house. Destroyed by fire in 1816, the theater was immediately rebuilt, with a larger stage and the capacity of seating and standing reduced from 3,000 to 1,390, greatly improving the acoustics. Naples was then the preeminent musical city of Europe.
In the nineteenth century, San Carlo became a crucible of artistic revolution. Gioachino Rossini presented his Otello and Mosè in Egitto. Gaetano Donizetti, virtually a house composer, premiered no fewer than seventeen operas here, including Lucia di Lammermoor. Giuseppe Verdi’s early ties to the theater blossomed into a lifelong association, with his mature works forming the backbone of the theater’s repertory.
The twentieth century brought legends to its stage: Maria Callas, Beniamino Gigli, and Tito Schipa gave lyrical voice to Italian romanticism. Every singer aspired to perform there. The one exception was San Carlo, Naples © Luciano Romano
and Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia—with bold contemporary offerings like the ballet Quatre tendances, Wayne McGregor’s Obsidian Tear, and music by Esa-Pekka Salonen and Philip Glass. Recitals by acclaimed artists, including baritone Matthias Goerne and the superb string quartet festival, Quatuors à Bordeaux, further enrich a season that affirms the theater’s role as a dynamic cultural force in Bordeaux and beyond.
Opéra-Municipal de Marseilles (1787/1924)
The Grand-Théâtre of Marseille was inspired by that of Bordeaux and completed soon after. An electrical fire gutted the interior in 1919, and the architects Ebrard, Castel, and Raymond transformed the theater into a showcase of art deco. Renamed Opéra-Municipal, it opened in 1924 on the eve of the Paris exposition that launched the style worldwide. A frieze of gods that embody the arts was added to the eighteenth-century façade with its row of Ionic columns; the theater faces onto a square just off the waterfront.
There’s an engagingly provincial character to the interior, though it makes up in invention and exuberance what it lacks in refinement. It recalls the hedonistic spirit of the French Riviera in the Jazz Age, as sunseekers flocked to beaches that their grandparents had shunned on their winter promenades. In the marble foyer, frescoes and a sculptured frieze celebrate the arts of music and dance, voluptuous nude statuary adds a note of eroticism, and there’s even a squid motif in the mosaic floor to evoke the Mediterranean. Stairs ascend to a salon where chamber music concerts are presented.
The horseshoe auditorium seats 1,750 in the stalls, a loggia, two balconies, and an upper gallery from which caustic critics have been known to hurl tomatoes or set off alarms. Every surface is richly modeled with stylized volutes and fluted columns, stepped parapets, and masks, alternating pink marble and silvered stucco. Sculptor Antoine Bordelle contributed a frieze. Ornament and lighting are deftly interwoven in the jeweled necklace that encloses the ceiling. The theater is celebrated not only for its exacting standards but also for its superb acoustics and rare intimacy between stage and audience—an atmosphere that inspires both precision and expressive freedom.
Michele Spotti, the recently appointed music director, has conducted at many leading international opera houses and collaborated with the most distinguished stage directors of our time, including Robert Wilson and Barrie Kosky. Historically, the Opéra de Marseille has served as a critical launching ground for major artists in France. Alfredo Krauss, Plácido Domingo, and Renata Scotto gave early, career-defining performances here.
The repertoire has a strong connection to the life of the city. Film composer Vladimir Cosma’s Marius et Fanny, based on Marcel Pagnol’s beloved Marseille trilogy, evokes the French chanson-like rhythms of the Vieux Port and was memorably performed by Robert Alagna and Angela Gheorghiu. General director Maurice Xiberras, also a native of Marseilles, says that he fell in love with opera at the age of seven, sitting in the notorious upper galleries with his grandparents. Looking ahead, the company plans to revive works by Ernest Reyer, a Marseille-born composer whose overlooked operas are poised for rediscovery.
The Marseilles Opera is a treasury of Art Déco
Palace of Catalan Music, courtesy of Barcelona Obertura
La Seine Musicale: a basket within a glass sphere. © Didier Boy de la Tour
interwoven with new construction, and it became an influential model for other schemes of adaptive reuse.
Like Wagner’s Festspielhaus and the IRCAM complex in Paris, the Maltings was shaped to the preferences of a composer. The narrow, lofty room has similar dimensions to that of Britten’s favorite local church. The architects preserved the original brick walls and their openings but raised them a meter and created a new roof with a forty-five-degree pitch and exposed triangulated trusses. A double layer of pine produces the long reverberation time that Britten specified. The steeply raked bank of cane seats is designed for minimal sound absorption. Though the hall was conceived for orchestral concerts, it successfully hosts modestly scaled operas with a pit that accommodates up to sixty musicians. The immediacy of these performances is a large part of the festival’s appeal and the year-round events the Maltings now presents.
In 1973, Britten’s final opera, Death in Venice, was premiered at Snape—a haunting farewell to the composer’s artistry. The festival has continued this history of daring and discovery: in 1997 Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Twice Through the Heart premiered there as a dramatic portrait of modern anguish; in 2004, Harrison Birtwistle’s The Io Passion explored myth and desire; and in 2019, Thomas Larcher’s Das Jagdgewehr brought a new poetic intensity to the stage. More recently, in 2025, Colin Matthews’ A Visit to Friends—with a libretto by William Boyd—affirmed Snape’s role as a crucible for contemporary opera.
Angelika Kauffmann Saal, Schwarzenberg, Austria (1984/2001)
A picture-perfect Alpine valley is one of two venues for the Schubertiade, a summer festival of chamber music and lieder by Franz Schubert and his contemporaries, founded by German baritone Hermann Prey in 1976. Concerts are presented in the village of Schwarzenberg using the community hall named for Angelika Kauffmann, the neoclassical painter who grew up there in the mid-eighteenth century. It was designed by Bartle Moosbrugger, an architect who drew on the rich tradition of wood construction in the Bregenz Forest region near the western border of Austria. The Schubertiade began using the hall in 1994, extolling its acoustics but soon outgrowing the space. In 2001, they commissioned Herman Kaufmann, another local architect, to extend the hall by seven meters, increasing its seating capacity to 600, while adding a spacious foyer, an upper-level terrace, and other improvements.
Attending a concert there in June or August can be a magical experience. From the approach on steep, winding roads there’s a constantly shifting perspective of scattered farmhouses, cows grazing in lush meadows, forests, and jagged peaks. Audiences arrive early to drink in the scenery—and a glass of Grüner Veltliner, perhaps—before the afternoon concerts. A horn duet is the signal to move indoors. The hall, constructed entirely of local fir and beech, has the aroma of a forest and the sensuous lines of a cello in its rib vault. And the sound is thrilling. Critics have ranked it among the best chamber music halls in Europe, which has drawn leading singers and instrumentalists to play there.
opposite:
Angelika Kauffmann Hall, Schwarzenberg. top: courtesy Bregenzerwald Tourismus; bottom: courtesy Schubertiade
As the architect explains, the Susie Sainsbury Theatre was inspired by the curved shapes of string instruments and is lined with cherry wood. Designed to accommodate opera and musical theater as well as a wide range of instrumental and vocal performances, it has 309 seats, 40 percent more than the theater it replaced, as well as a larger orchestra pit, a stage wing, and fly tower. A galaxy of 600 fiberoptic crystals reinterprets the traditional chandelier. Immediately above is the 100-seat Angela Burgess Recital Hall, which hosts public concerts, master classes, and recording sessions. Its footprint is as large as that of the main stage, providing an ideal rehearsal space. The room is lined in pale, lime-washed oak, and a ribbed ceiling vault frames an oculus that bathes the room in natural light.
Haus Marteau, Lichtenberg, Germany (1913/2021)
Violin prodigy Henri Marteau (1874–1934) made his professional debut at age ten, toured Europe and the US, and became a professor at the Royal Prussian Conservatory in Berlin in 1908. The First World War ended his career, and he retired to the villa he had built in 1913 in Upper Franconia, north of Bayreuth. There he gave lessons, and a respected music school evolved from his individual efforts. The International Music Centre Haus Marteau now offers forty master classes a year in all aspects of classical music, culminating in public recitals. The traditional villa and its original furnishings offer students a cozy domestic environment in which to study and practice, but the addition that opened in 2021 is a startling departure from convention.
Susie Sainsbury Theater in the Royal Academy of Music. © Frances Marshall
Marteau House auditorium, Lichtenberg © Edward Beierle
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spread, above, opposite: The Oslo Opera is a gathering place for the city that regenerated the harbor front. © Martina Pipprich/ courtesy Snohetta
Authors
Thomas Aujero Small has written extensively for the French music journal Concertonet. He studied Comparative Literature at Yale and later received an NEA Fellowship in Music and Opera at the Columbia School of Journalism, as well as a French National Fellowship at the Sorbonne Nouvelle. He is the former Mayor of Culver City, California, and was also the city’s Commissioner of Cultural Affairs.
Michael Webb, Hon. AIA/LA, grew up in London where he worked for The Times and Country Life, and directed film programming for the AFI at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, before moving to Los Angeles. He is the author of thirty books on architecture and design, plus many monographs, and has contributed to The New York Times, Architectural Record, The Architectural Review, A+U, The Plan, Architectural Digest, Wallpaper, and World of Interiors.
Contributors
Yasuhisa Toyota worked for Nagata Acoustics in Japan before taking the company international in 2001. He has been chief acoustician on fifty projects worldwide, including eight of the halls featured here. They include the Danish Radio Hall, Radio France, the Elbphilharmonie, the Philharmonie de Paris, La Seine Musicale, the Pierre Boulez Saal, the Bamberg Konzerthalle, and the Arvédi auditorium.
Renzo Piano made his reputation with the iconoclastic design of the Pompidou Center he developed with Richard Rogers. In 1981 he established the Renzo Piano Building Workshop in his native Genoa and rapidly became one of the most creative and widely admired of contemporary architects with offices in Paris and New York. His music venues include IRCAM (with Rogers), Rome’s Parco della Musica, the Nicolo Paganini Auditorium in Parma, the Giovanni Agnelli Auditorium in Turin, and the Stavros Niarchos Cultural Center in Athens.
Esa-Pekka Salonen has been instrumental in shaping the modern orchestral landscape, both as composer and conductor. He is the Creative Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, where he served as Music Director for 17 years. He also serves as Creativity and Innovation Chair of the Philharmonie de Paris and Principal Conductor of the Orchestre de Paris. As a composer, he was awarded the Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition, and his works—including concertos written for Yefim Bronfman, Leila Josefowicz, and Yo-Yo Ma—are performed and recorded internationally.
Further Reading
Buildings for Music, Michael Forsyth (The MIT Press, 1985)
Auditoria: Designing for the Performing Arts, Michael Forsyth (Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1987)
Site and Sound, Victoria Newhouse (Monacelli, 2012)
Concert Halls & Opera Houses: How They Sound, Leo Beranek (Acoustical Society of America, 1996; Springer, 2004)
Grand Opera: Story of the World’s Leading Houses, ed. Anthony Gishford (Viking, 1972)
Theatres: An Architectural and Cultural History, Simon Tidworth (Praeger, 1973)
Theater Design and Modern Architecture, George C. Izenour (Carnegie Mellon, 1978)
Opera: A Concise History, Leslie Orrey & Rodney Miles (Thames & Hudson, 1987)
Opera: Guide to Western Europe’s Great Houses, Karyl Zietz (John Muir, 1991)
Oxford Illustrated History of Opera, ed. Roger Parker (Oxford U. Press, 1994)
Opera Houses of the World, Thierry Beauvert (The Vendome Press, 1995)
Opera Houses of Europe, Andras Kaldor (Antique Collectors’ Club, 1996)
Performing Architecture: Opera Houses, Theaters & Concert Halls for the 21st Century, Michael Hammond (Merrell, 2006)
The Most Beautiful Opera Houses in the World, Antoine Pecqueur (Abrams, 2013)
Music and Urban Life in Baroque Germany, Tanya Kevorkian (U. Virginia Press, 2022)
Herzog & de Meuron Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg, (ed. Gerhard Mack (Birkhäuser, 2018)
Jean Nouvel by Jean Nouvel 1981–2022, Jean Nouvel (Taschen, 2022)
Auguste Perret, Karla Britton (Phaidon, 2001)
Piano: RPBW Complete Works 1966–Today, ed. Philip Jodidio (Taschen, 2021)
Gottfried Semper: Architect of the Nineteenth Century, Harry Mallgrave (Yale U. Press, 1996)
Acknowledgments
Our deepest thanks to the many directors, publicists, and musicians who showed us their theaters, discussed their programming, and shared their artistry. We are especially grateful to Per Boye Hansen of the National Theater in Prague and Susanne Moser of the Komische Oper in Berlin for endorsing our project at the outset, and to Markus Klimmer and Princess Sabine von Anwalt for their invaluable assistance. Yasuhisa Toyota, Renzo Piano, and Esa-Pekka Salonen, who have done so much to enhance the appreciation of classical music, generously contributed comments. A special thank you to the talented photographers who shared their images.
It was a great pleasure to work with Gordon Goff, Jake Anderson and the team at ORO, especially Brooke Biro and Caesar Wong, on the conception, editing and promotion of the book. Would that all publishers were so committed and supportive! Pablo Mandel did an exemplary job of design and was well-equipped for the task. As he remarks, “Music has deeply influenced my design philosophy—particularly my approach to white space, which I equate to silence. Without space, design cannot exist. And without silence between the notes, there wouldn't be music. Much of this reflection stems from my 30 years of work with Robert Fripp’s Guitar Craft, and my work as a design teacher.”
Thomas dedicates this book to Joanna, Jeff, and Julie.
m.w. t.a.s.
opposite: Parking lot for stringed instruments backstage at the Elbphilharmonie
