Guangzhou Opera House

It is a paradox of buildings for the performing arts that the space where the spectacle is consumed - the auditorium- tends to be overwhelmed by the factory-like accommodation where the performance is prepared and produced.

A section through the Paris Opera reveals a Faberge egg in which finally the auditorium - the last egg - is tiny in comparison to the volume of the whole. In the classical opera the inflated areas around the auditorium- the galleries, foyers monumental staircases, grand entrances - accommodated richly textured, hierarchical social rituals. The opera remains a last refuge of bourgeois culture. In opera, spaces of representation exceed the space of presentation. Only through the liberation from the adjunct volumes can the primacy of the theater itself - the room - be reasserted.