![]() ![]() Construction delays due to the finishing of the neighboring New York State Theatre (in time with the opening of the 1964 World's Fair), resulted in the excavation site being nicknamed "Lake Bing" after then-Met General Manager Rudolf Bing. After a long process of redesigns, revisions and opposing interests (provided by the Met wanting a more traditional design for its home, and the conflicting wishes of the architects of the other Lincoln Center venues), construction of Harrison's forty-third design of the Metropolitan Opera House began in the winter of 1963, the last of the three major Lincoln Center venues to be completed. Young Rockefeller Center architect Wallace Harrison would be approached some 20 years later by officers of the New York Philharmonic Society and the Met to develop a new home for both institutions.Īs chief architect again for the development of Lincoln Center, Harrison was chosen to design the new opera house, to be built as the centerpiece of the new performing arts complex- a twenty-five acre, eighteen block site on the Upper West Side, chosen by Robert Moses as a major urban renewal and slum clearance project. replaced the opera house development with the Rockefeller Center complex this included a 70-story skyscraper, the RCA Building, which opened in 1933. With the development moving forward, John D. Financial problems and the following stock market crash of 1929 postponed the relocation of the Metropolitan Opera, and the complex became more commercial-based. As part of the development of the present-day Rockefeller Center site, there was to be a development with a new 4,000-seat opera house at its center. Planning for a new home for the Metropolitan Opera began as early as the mid-1920s, when the backstage facilities of the former house were becoming vastly inadequate for growing repertory and advancing stagecraft. Home to the Metropolitan Opera Company, the facility also hosts the American Ballet Theatre in the summer months.ġ3 Jazz at Lincoln Center Planning and construction With a seating capacity of approximately 3,850, the house is the largest repertory opera house in the world. It opened in 1966, replacing the original 1883 Metropolitan Opera House at Broadway and 39th Street. ![]() Part of Lincoln Center, the theater was designed by Wallace K. ![]() The Metropolitan Opera House (also known as The Met) is an opera house located on Broadway at Lincoln Square on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. Wallace Harrison, Harrison & Abramovitz Architects In 1985, executive producer Bernard Gersten took over the nonprofit space and turned it into a successful membership-based theater presenting such works as The House of Blue Leaves, Six Degrees of Separation, The Coast of Utopia, and The Light in the Piazza.Metropolitan Opera House seen from Lincoln Center PlazaĤ0☄6′22″N 73★9′3″W / 40.77278°N 73.98417°W / 40.77278 -73.98417 For many years, producers found it difficult to program the theater due to this unusual configuration. Mielziner made the interior of the theater very flexible by designing the auditorium with a stage that could be either a thrust stage that projects into the audience or could convert into a more traditional proscenium stage. Eero Saarinen, a Detroit-based architect, was chosen to design the theater and he collaborated with the prominent set designer Jo Mielziner on the interior. The first Broadway theater to be built since 1928 and part of a complex that included the Metropolitan Opera, the New York City Ballet, and the New York Philharmonic, it was one of the most important cultural commissions in the United States at the time. Part of Lincoln Center, the Vivian Beaumont was conceived as a repertory theater. ![]()
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