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magazine / jf06
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January/February 2006 issue |
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FEATURE
SCIENCE OF SILENCE
Sounds of silence
The operatic experience can be shattered by the slightest interruption.
So how do you build an opera house in the middle of one of Toronto's
noisiest districts?
Excerpt of story by Paul Webster
A thunderclap crashes, howitzer-like, above the looming, unfinished bulk of the Four Seasons
Centre for the Performing Arts, Toronto’s new opera house, and Robert Essert, the building’s
acoustician, winces. With sheets of late-summer rain sweeping toward the downtown construction
site, the soft-spoken New Yorker known for his sensitive ears watches as workers attach
plate-glass panels to the building. But even as the thunder reverberates off Bay Street’s
bank towers, Essert is adamant: "No, you won’t hear that inside the new opera hall — absolutely
not."
Nor does Essert seem concerned when a streetcar — more than 37 tonnes of steel on steel — screeches
past University Avenue, the city’s most prestigious thoroughfare. "Toronto is built
on geology that makes it an excellent transmitter for that streetcar rumble," muses
Essert, who has been working for years with architect Jack Diamond and Canadian Opera Company
(COC) general director Richard Bradshaw to ensure that none of the sounds of the city intrude
on September 12 this year, opening night of Richard Wagner’s cycle of four operas, Der
Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung). "There’s also a subway line underneath
University Avenue and helicopters landing at a nearby hospital," Essert adds. "But
it’s all going to be OK. The audience won’t hear any outside noise whatsoever. Not even
during the ultraquiet moments — the pianissimos, the pauses, the silences."
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While Essert is responsible for setting these lofty acoustical goals for the Four Seasons Centre,
Diamond and Schmitt Architects are making sure the building will achieve them. With Diamond’s
lifelong interest in acoustics and performing arts centres, there is little doubt that he will.
Based in Toronto, his major projects include Jerusalem City Hall, the Jewish Community Center
in Manhattan and the Canadian Embassy in Prague. Touring the building’s partially completed
interior, Diamond stops on the edge of the proscenium — exactly where the stage ends and the
deep orchestra pit that will hide as many as 85 musicians begins. A series of massive reinforced-concrete
beams runs underneath where the floor of the orchestra pit will be. "The entire auditorium
sits on rubber pads placed beneath those beams," he says. "They absorb shocks, vibrations
and sound waves."
He then surveys the other main architectural feature that will separate the audience from
the outside world: a fivecentimetre gap, which almost completely separates the auditorium’s
shell-like interior walls from the rest of the building. Diamond reiterates the goal of eliminating
all outside sound. "To do that," he explains, "we’ve built a totally isolated
structure within a structure. You could say the auditorium is an egg in a nest."
For the rest of this story, visit your local newsstand or go to our store to buy this issue.
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