The Globe and Mail

Architects Diamond & Schmitt

No wonder Richard Bradshaw likens the building of Toronto's opera house to the Thirty Years' War. In the 1960s, there were hopes leading up to the Centennial, but we got the O'Keefe (now the Hummingbird Centre) instead. In the 1980s, there were lavish plans to build the Ballet Opera House at the corner of Bay and Wellesley streets, but that dream fizzled too. Now Bradshaw has pulled off something no other general director of the Canadian Opera Company has been able to achieve: the creation of a purpose-built opera house that is, he says, "everything I desire acoustically," and which came in on time and on budget. That's not to say the process went smoothly. There were huge hurdles to surmount, and more are still to come as the opera house prepares to launch its first complete version of Wagner's Ring cycle in September, followed by Mozart's Cosi fan tutte to open the regular season in October. Here are the major ones.