National Post

Architecture, as British critic Deyan Sudjic compellingly argues, "is the means to tell a story about those who built it." If this is the case, what kind of story will Toronto's new opera house, the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, tell? Ribbon-cutting for the Canadian Opera Company's long-awaited hall at the corner of Queen and University is scheduled for June 11, and as a small army labours to meet that deadline a provisional answer is already clear. The new building may not become iconic in the way some opera houses and cultural venues have -- think Sydney or Paris -- but it is emphatic testament to a very Canadian propensity for unostentatious practicality. The Four Seasons Centre -- at less than half what Moishe Safdie's lavish opera house at Bay and Wellesley would have cost in 1990 if Bob Rae's government hadn't scuttled it -- actually looks as if it will do what its creators primarily intended, namely provide optimal conditions for the enjoyment of opera and ballet. As COC general director Richard Bradshaw, the man who more than any other has turned a long-held slippery dream into reality puts it: "This building is about the art of the possible."