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Boullée’s Opera

ÉTIENNE-LOUIS BOULLÉE was an architect whose great influence can chiefly be attributed more to his unexecuted designs than to those that were actually constructed. His most famous creation is the Cenotaph to Isaac Newton of 1784, conceived but never built. Many of his designs — especially his plan for a metropolitan basilica — exude a certain feeling as cold and soulless as can be expressed within the welcome restraints of classicism. One of his museum designs is almost proto-secessionist. But I am rather fond of his design for an opera house.

The perennial problem with opera house design is the flyspace: the large area above the stage into which elements of the set design can be lifted to change scenes during a performance. Garnier’s Paris Opera House uses a recessed pediment for its flyspace, while the Teatro Colon has a consistent sloped roof the length of the building tall enough to conceal the space. The modernist Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center here in New York has a bland rectangular box stuck on top. At first, you glance at the exterior of Boullée’s design and think “Where’s the flyspace?” Boullée’s solution was simply to design on a scale large enough to encase the entire auditorium, stage, and flyspace in a single unified domed structure.

A sectional view towards the proscenium.

A cross-section from the side showing the auditorium on the left and the stage on the right.

A sectional view looking from the stage towards the auditorium.

While Boullée’s opera was never built, I’ve often thought it had something of an imitator in the opera house of Novosibirsk, Russia’s third-largest city. The Novosibirsk State Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre is the largest theater in all of Russia and is located right at the center of the Siberian capital (which, founded in 1893, had originally been known as Novonikolayevsk, after Czar St. Nicholas II).

The first scheme for the Novosibirsk opera house was a modernist design drawn up in the 1930’s.

A classical design won the day, however, and the building was completed in 1945. As you can see, the Novosibirsk structure fails to follow Boullée in unifying the entire opera house under a single dome, but rather opts for the more pragmatic if less handsome separate flyspace. (Interestingly, the ratio of its dome’s thickness to its radius is less than that of a typical chicken egg). I still hope someone comes around and fulfills Boullée’s plan.

Published at 8:28 pm on Wednesday 9 January 2008. Categories: Architecture Tags: .
Comments

Reminiscent of the Pantheon!

— Alessandro 10 Jan 2008 1:15 am

Also seems to have inspired Convocation Hall at the University of Toronto.
http://snipurl.com/1x3dc

Interesting post! Andrew, please apply to architecture school–we need more people like you on the team.

— Dino Marcantonio 10 Jan 2008 1:57 pm

To paraphrase someone, neoclassicism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. I looked at this and saw Speer’s Grand Hall design for Berlin. A quick google confirms Boullee was a Speer influence. As a good Catholic suggest you stick to Gaudi’s modernism, or the futurism of Mussolini’s Italy, and avoid the brutalist neoclassicism of Stalin and Hitler. Neoclassicism has a kind of Protestant enlightenment reductionism about it. Time for your conversion to the baroque, my boy ! Embrace complexity !

— Bridey 11 Jan 2008 6:24 pm

Neoclassicism does indeed have an enlightenment reductionism about it, but what does the baroque have to do with futurism or Gaudi?

— Dino Marcantonio 12 Jan 2008 11:03 am

I just happened upon your site while searching out information on the architect of the opera house at Novosibirsk. Students from a school in Novosibirsk have written an essay on Sergey Poligalin (their spelling) who designed it. Have you ever heard of him?

Beautiful design by Boullée, by the way! It seems indisputable to me that he must have inspired Poligalin.

— Becky 14 Jan 2008 4:23 pm

Surely inspired by the Pantheon, but my original thought for some reason was Speer’s model for the ‘Great Hall.’

— Keir 2 Feb 2008 12:19 am
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