Four Seasons Centre: Star on the Opera House
Today's GTA section in the Star is completely devoted to the new Opera House. Piece by Martin Knelman:
Toronto's Opera Mania
After decades of uncertainty and false starts, the curtain's about to rise. Martin Knelman gives us an inside look at the final stages
Jun. 2, 2006. 01:00 AM
MARTIN KNELMAN
Just 11 days from today, Toronto's one and only opera house — the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts at the corner of University Ave. and Queen St. W. — will open with a gala concert.
After the singing stops, there will be a fundraising dinner on stage for those who paid $2,000 a seat. The event, sponsored by BMO, will raise $1 million for the Canadian Opera Company, which needs every penny it can raise to pay for its classy new digs.
June 14, 2006, is a day this city's cultural visionaries have been looking forward to for so long — a quarter century — that it's hard to believe it is actually upon us, especially since Toronto had come to be known all over the world as the city that couldn't get its opera house built.
Even now, it wouldn't be happening without the phenomenal personal crusade of Richard Bradshaw, the opera company's unstoppable 62-year-old general director.
This week, Bradshaw returned from a desperately needed European vacation looking more relaxed, rested and mellow than he has in a long time.
Radiating confidence, he remarked: "Now, at last, I can go back to what I love to do, conducting, without having to focus on raising money for a building. But as a conductor, I had a passionate interest in building the opera house of our dreams where the acoustics would be perfect and the orchestra pit would be fabulous. And I think that is what we've achieved."
With most of his fundraising burden out of the way, Bradshaw has been liberated to focus on making music. He will be in the pit on June 14 while members of his family occupy his box at the new opera house.
The concert will be just 90 minutes long, in marked contrast to the Metropolitan Opera's gala two weeks ago bidding farewell to long-time general manager Joseph Volpe. A dazzling all-star affair, the Met's concert went on for 5 1/2 hours.
One of the stars of the Met gala — Ben Heppner — will be a major presence at the Four Seasons gala. Heppner will also appear a few nights later as a guest of the Toronto Symphony at Roy Thomson Hall.
At the post-concert dinner, Bradshaw will be presiding over an eclectic group of friends at his table. His guests: embattled tycoon Conrad Black and Barbara Amiel; writers Margaret Atwood and Graeme Gibson; Massey College master John Fraser and Elizabeth MacCallum; and Margaret MacMillan, the celebrated U of T historian.
Let's hope Atwood is not seated next to Black and Amiel. Remember Atwood's comic novel The Robber Bride? The villain was a character with a striking resemblance to Amiel. And it's hard to imagine any political subject the novelist and the fallen press baron could agree on.
But perhaps they might agree that among the heroes who should be feted on this night to remember are those who gave millions to make sure Toronto at long last got its opera house.
At the top of the list are Isadore Sharp, president of Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, whose company put up $20 million for naming rights. He will be present, along with his wife, Rosalie Wise Sharp.
Sadly, one of the company's greatest patrons, R. Fraser Elliott, who gave $10 million, will not be present. He lived long enough to attend the groundbreaking, but not long enough to be at the opening of the auditorium named after him.
Other members of the million-dollar club include:
Hal Jackman
Joey and Toby Tanenbaum
Leslie and Anna Dan
the Rotman family
Tony and Anne Arnell
John and Claudine Bailey
Gerard and Earlaine Collins
Peter and Shelagh Godsoe
Arthur and Sonia Labatt
Roger D. Moore
Jack Diamond's building is the kind that has to be experienced from the inside out rather than the other way around. Because of the attention to technical detail and complex teamwork that went into the acoustics and sightlines, Diamond and Bradshaw are confident Toronto will have one of the world's best places for an audience to experience opera.
But if you are less than dazzled by the exterior on the south side, which presents a long wall of black brick punctuated by small windows, there's a $500,000 solution. That is the price of the glass canopy Diamond designed to run along the entire Richmond St. side of the building over the sidewalk. This elegant finishing detail was eliminated to keep the project within its $150 million budget.
Another Diamond touch that was chopped because it saved $1 million — a roof garden entertaining space offering vistas of the entire city. But if the right benefactor comes along, it might be possible to add this touch of class later.
Meanwhile Diamond is relieved because a worrisome problem has been solved. His cascading glass staircase, providing the wow factor in his showcase City Room, was invisible behind tarp and scaffolding when the first concerts were presented in late April. The reason: because of a problem with the bolts, the staircase had failed a stress test, and were considered unsafe to use.
Now the bolts have been replaced, and the staircase has passed its stress test. And on June 14, opening gala ticket-holders will be free to skip the elevator and use this more elegant way of proceeding from one level to another.
The curtain may be going up, but the COC is not quite ready to show us the money.
With just days to go before the gala, the project is still almost $15 million short of its funding target.
Best recent news: In March the Ontario government unilaterally gave its $49 million half of the $98 million in top-up funding requested by the so-called Gang of Six — Toronto arts institutions with current building projects. That translated into $10 million for the opera house from the Queen's Park coffers, in addition to the 2002 gift of the site (valued at $31 million).
Worst recent news: Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and Heritage Minister Bev Oda are in no hurry to say yes to their half of the top-up funding, which would be on top of the $25 million infrastructure cash Ottawa donated in 2002 as part of the SuperBuild bonanza (under which $230 million of government money went to Toronto arts building projects). There could be a long wait, and the answer could be no.
Hopeful Sign: A certain flurry of extra giving was precipitated by a break for donors announced in last month's federal budget. Flaherty eliminated capital gains tax on charitable gifts made in the form of shares.
To help set an example, Donald K. Johnson — the former chair of Nesbitt Burns who crusaded for this change in the tax law — increased his own pledge to the opera house from $100,000 to $250,000. Other opera benefactors have begun to follow his lead. But the opera company needs to get the message out to all its supporters that there is now a good incentive for them to increase their gifts.
Surprisingly, no one has yet scooped up the most attractive naming opportunity — the spectacular City Room. The price tag: a very reasonable $10 million. A few months ago rumours were circulating among Galen and Hilary Weston's acquaintances that the Westons — who have Canada's second largest fortune — had toured the house and were keen to put their name on the City Room.
But more recently, their excitement appears to have cooled. Since Weston said several years ago he intended to contribute to all Toronto's cultural projects, the question now is: What numbers will be on the cheque he writes for the opera?
Let's hope the number has a minimum of seven figures.
Besides the big gala, the opera company has two more concerts scheduled for opening week — one on Friday, June 16 and another on Saturday, June 17.
The National Ballet of Canada, by contrast, is having only one opening gala. That's on Thursday, June 22. Having decided years ago that it could not afford to be a partner in raising the money to build the house, the ballet company finds itself now in the position of being a tenant, paying $1 million a year in rent and obliged to go through stressful negotiations with its landlord, the opera company.
The upshot: Four years after deciding to leave the Hummingbird and move to the Four Seasons, the ballet company and the opera company have not signed an occupancy agreement.
Their respective lawyers are still duelling over obscure clauses of the long and complicated document.
The fact is that as the proud owners of a new opera house, the COC is not only in the real-estate business but also the parking business.
Preliminary budgets for the house included an eight-figure endowment fund. But consultants explained the company would enjoy a better return if it put the endowment money into building underground parking. So there are now 200 spaces. And if you want to contribute to the opera company, you should park there often — preferably while warbling an aria.
mknelman@thestar.ca
Operatics
Cost: $181 million, plus land from Ontario valued at $31 million
Principal architect: A.J. (Jack) Diamond
Seats: 2,000
Wheelchair locations: 46
Washroom stalls: 100 (two-thirds for women)
Stage width: 15.85 metres Distance: Centre stage to last row (Ring 5) — 37.18 metres
Construction
8,250 truck loads of excavated soil were removed — equal to digging 600. backyard swimming pools
489 isolation pads installed to reduce sound vibration in the auditorium
15,329 square metres of formwork used during construction — enough lumber to frame 600 homes.
8,000 cubic metres of concrete poured — enough for a sidewalk from the Four Seasons Centre to Horseshoe Falls in Niagara.
1,050 tonnes of steel.
If all the electrical wire were laid end to end it would stretch to the Buffalo Sabres HSBC Arena.
Total Area: 35,716 m2.
Source: Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts ww.fourseasonscentre.ca
Compiled by Deborah Wingate and Andrea Hall
Toronto opera buildings
Where: Temperance St.; Front St.
When: 1948
There was opera in Toronto before 1848, but it was largely confined to churches, taverns and even stables. Things changed dramatically in 1848, when the city got not one but two new opera halls.
That year, John Ritchey opened the Royal Lyceum, the city's largest entertainment hall, with an orchestra pit, balcony, footlights and dressing rooms, on Front St. near Bay.
Also that year, wealthy tanner, Reform politician and philanthropist Jesse Ketchum opened his new opera hall one block north of Adelaide off Yonge St. Ketchum donated land and building with one condition — alcohol could never be sold on its street. Not surprisingly, the site became known as Temperance St. But the booze ban is gone.
At the Lyceum, acts like Sarah Bernhardt, Irish comedian and dramatist John Brougham and touring Italian opera stars thrilled audiences where the cow pasture sculptures of the TD Centre stand today.
AoD