Word: palau
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Almost ethereal, Valencia's Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía stands at the edge of the Mediterranean, its egg-shaped dome looking something like an ocean liner's hull or a spaceship. Designed by leading architect and native son of the city Santiago Calatrava, the building is a gleaming composition: curved walls, rolling stairways; turquoise reflecting pools topped by a detached, feather-like roof. But the Palau is more than an architectural masterpiece. An opera house that cost in the neighborhood of €325 million to build, it is also the riskiest element in the city's gamble...
...Palau is certainly a worthy effort and just part of Valencia's quest, one that's even bolder than Bilbao's famous gamble. The opera house is the final piece of the immensely popular City of Arts and Sciences, a complex of beautifully integrated white buildings, most designed by Calatrava, that includes a planetarium with IMAX cinema and laser dome, a science museum, a botanical garden and Europe's biggest marine park. "An art museum draws a fairly narrow audience, while the City of Arts and Sciences appeals to a much wider range of people," says Julio...
...Fair enough, but, with its three halls seating 4,000 people, including some 1,700 in the main auditorium, the Palau is the crown jewel. Calatrava himself described the 40,000-sq-m building as the culmination of 14 years' work. "This project is the most intense, the one I've devoted most time to," he said. "It represents a correlation between spectator, musician and artist." With its ample rehearsal and performance spaces, as well as its fine acoustics (Calatrava brought in his own team to ensure their quality), the Palau holds obvious appeal for any musical performer...
...building worked for Copenhagen, where the Henning Larsen house, with its roof plated with 24-carat gold, is already a destination for both tourists and native aficionados. Oslo is currently completing its own dramatic hall, located at the edge of a fjord, that promises a pristine acoustic environment. The Palau is also taking risks on unusual performances. Classic crowd-pleasers like Don Giovanni and Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle appear in new garb: La Fura dels Baus, the avant-garde theater troupe best known for its choreography of the Barcelona Olympic Games' opening ceremonies, is staging the latter. Inventive...
...Valencia's biggest selling point is, quite simply, the talent it has attracted. Classical music legend Lorin Maazel is the opera company's music director and Mehta is its orchestra director, but Helga Schmidt, the former artistic director of London's Royal Opera House, is the Palau's artistic director and its driving force. Once Mehta heard Schmidt was heading Palau, he says, "I was convinced that the artistic quality would be extremely high...