Music and Architecture in Harmony

Foreword by Renzo Piano

I have always loved to create spaces for music.

This is what architecture knows how to do.

It creates acoustic chambers so that music can be heard properly, whether they are concert halls, recording studios, or sound labs.

Just as a luthier crafts instruments to produce sound, architecture creates spaces so that music can be heard in the best possible conditions.

When designing spaces for music, there are measurable elements, such as sound intensity, clarity, and its distribution in space. But then, there is a kind of magic, and that is where collaboration with musicians becomes essential.

There are so many things that bring music and architecture closer together.

The same need for a geometric, sometimes mathematical, structure.

The same need for order, one that can be disrupted when necessary.

Foreword by Esa-Pekka Salonen

The field of acoustics is partly scientific and partly subjective, yet we can still describe in broad terms what makes a hall sound good. A symphony orchestra moves from the faintest whisper to overwhelming power, and the architecture of a hall must be able to carry that entire dynamic range. But there is another element—more subjective, yet just as important, if not more so: the vibe, the atmosphere of the space, its feeling and expressive character, which profoundly shapes the listening experience. The crucial moment comes when the audience first enters the hall. If the environment feels welcoming, expressive—perhaps even exciting—it prepares them for the music. This relaxation is not passive, not switching off, but a kind of openness: settling into the experience and becoming ready for what is about to unfold.

During the lockdown I realized how deeply I had missed the concert experience. When I finally returned to a hall and stood at the bar before the performance, I suddenly had the powerful sense that I was among “my people.” Many of them I did not know, yet we were bound together by our shared love of music and by the simple fact of being present in that space at that moment. What struck me was the quiet diversity of this tribe—certainly in age, but in many other ways as well. A concert hall gathers people who might otherwise never meet, and the entire experience, from arriving at the building to leaving after the final notes, feels subtly shaped and curated, preparing us to share something meaningful together.

Frank Gehry observed that in music the timeline is fixed: the composer and performers determine it, and the listener simply follows its unfolding from beginning to end. In architecture, by contrast, the visitor creates

their own timeline through movement in the space— returning, lingering, or changing direction. Music unfolds relentlessly; architecture allows time to be shaped by the individual experience. In a great concert hall, the two ideas meet: the musical timeline is fixed, but everything surrounding it—the journey into the hall, the gathering of the audience, the atmosphere of the space, the musical program itself—is thoughtfully shaped.

Frank and I agreed that the message of an ideal hall should be one of openness, excitement, and inclusivity—qualities not always associated with classical music. That, I think, is a mistake. Music needs a sense of play. Composers like Beethoven were not solemn priests of culture; their music is full of wit, energy, and surprise. A concert hall should invite that spirit. The experience should not feel reverential and glum, but alive—something shared with curiosity, openness, and joy.

Cesti’s 1656 opera L’Orontea at La Scala transposed the action from antiquity to present-day Milan. The Queen of Egypt became a gallerist in spike heels, the wandering Assyrian prince an unemployed artist who progresses from rags to gold lamé. The contrast of picture and frame was surreal, but the story became more accessible, and the music carried it though.

This selection and recent examples in a later chapter represent a small fraction of opera houses that deserve attention for their programming, their architecture, or both. A few picks from the many excluded for lack of space include the Teatro Real in Madrid, the Teatro dell’Opera in Rome, the National Opera and Ballet in Amsterdam, and the Lithuanian National Opera in Vilnius. Meiningen, a former princely capital in the German state of Thuringia, has only 25,000 inhabitants, but its Staatstheater is as ambitious as that of a large city. There, the opera house is the hub of the community.

and Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia—with bold contemporary offerings like the ballet Quatre tendances, Wayne McGregor’s Obsidian Tear, and music by Esa-Pekka Salonen and Philip Glass. Recitals by acclaimed artists, including baritone Matthias Goerne and the superb string quartet festival, Quatuors à Bordeaux, further enrich a season that affirms the theater’s role as a dynamic cultural force in Bordeaux and beyond.

Opéra-Municipal de Marseilles (1787/1924)

The Grand-Théâtre of Marseille was inspired by that of Bordeaux and completed soon after. An electrical fire gutted the interior in 1919, and the architects Ebrard, Castel, and Raymond transformed the theater into a showcase of art deco. Renamed Opéra-Municipal, it opened in 1924 on the eve of the Paris exposition that launched the style worldwide. A frieze of gods that embody the arts was added to the eighteenth-century façade with its row of Ionic columns; the theater faces onto a square just off the waterfront.

There’s an engagingly provincial character to the interior, though it makes up in invention and exuberance what it lacks in refinement. It recalls the hedonistic spirit of the French Riviera in the Jazz Age, as sunseekers flocked to beaches that their grandparents had shunned on their winter promenades. In the marble foyer, frescoes and a sculptured frieze celebrate the arts of music and dance, voluptuous nude statuary adds a note of eroticism, and there’s even a squid motif in the mosaic floor to evoke the Mediterranean. Stairs ascend to a salon where chamber music concerts are presented.

The horseshoe auditorium seats 1,750 in the stalls, a loggia, two balconies, and an upper gallery from which caustic critics have been known to hurl tomatoes or set off alarms. Every surface is richly modeled with stylized volutes and fluted columns, stepped parapets, and masks, alternating pink marble and silvered stucco. Sculptor Antoine Bordelle contributed a frieze. Ornament and lighting are deftly interwoven in the jeweled necklace that encloses the ceiling. The theater is celebrated not only for its exacting standards but also for its superb acoustics and rare intimacy between stage and audience—an atmosphere that inspires both precision and expressive freedom.

Michele Spotti, the recently appointed music director, has conducted at many leading international opera houses and collaborated with the most distinguished stage directors of our time, including Robert Wilson and Barrie Kosky. Historically, the Opéra de Marseille has served as a critical launching ground for major artists in France. Alfredo Krauss, Plácido Domingo, and Renata Scotto gave early, career-defining performances here.

The repertoire has a strong connection to the life of the city. Film composer Vladimir Cosma’s Marius et Fanny, based on Marcel Pagnol’s beloved Marseille trilogy, evokes the French chanson-like rhythms of the Vieux Port and was memorably performed by Robert Alagna and Angela Gheorghiu. General director Maurice Xiberras, also a native of Marseilles, says that he fell in love with opera at the age of seven, sitting in the notorious upper galleries with his grandparents. Looking ahead, the company plans to revive works by Ernest Reyer, a Marseille-born composer whose overlooked operas are poised for rediscovery.

Since 2010, Michel Franck has added fresh vitality to that legacy. Over the last few years, he presented Les Troyens with John Eliot Gardiner, Don Carlo with Jonas Kaufmann, and Der Freischütz with Laurence Equilbey. The hall’s Sunday-morning concerts brim with emerging stars, while its participatory projects transform opera into civic celebration—as in the 2025 Elisir d’amore, which enlisted thousands of French schoolchildren to sing the choruses, their voices rising from both the stage and the audience. Today its seasons balance great tradition with forward motion: concert performances of Strauss and Massenet, new works by Saariaho and Adès, chamber programs curated by Quatuor Diotima, and a centenary tribute to Josephine Baker that bridges symphonic and jazz idioms.

Radio-France Auditorium (2014)

This addition to the Paris headquarters of the French national broadcasting organization is home to two major orchestras, a choir and its school, and it serves all seven channels of Radio France. Concerts are streamed worldwide, but nothing beats the experience of a live event in this 1,460-seat theater in the round. Architecturestudio worked closely with Nagata Acoustics and Jean-Paul Lamoureux Accoustique to achieve an immediacy of sound, and the rear seats are only seventeen meters from the performers. A canopy, suspended over the stage, contributes to the even diffusion of sound. Equally important to the audience are the psychoacoustics, for the balconies—clad in cherry, birch, and beech—are staggered to impart a sense of

warmth and dynamism. And its central location on the Avenue du Président-Kennedy in the sixteenth arrondissement makes it easily accessible to visitors.

The Orchestre National de France, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Chœur de Radio France, and its school, Maitrîse de Radio France, perform in this space, which is in constant use for public concerts, broadcasting, recording, and screenings. Symphonic evenings alternate with jazz, world music, and adventurous contemporary projects, broadcast live to millions. The resident choirs add a vocal dimension ranging from Renaissance polyphony to monumental oratorios. Equally striking is the hall’s role as a laboratory for recording innovation: Radio France engineers have pioneered immersive and spatial audio techniques now adopted worldwide.

The Orchestre National de France, led by Cristian Măcelaru and soon by Philippe Jordan (2027–2028), continues a distinguished lineage that includes Jean Martinon, Lorin Maazel, Charles Dutoit, Kurt Masur, and Daniele Gatti. Its history includes the premieres of Boulez’s Le Soleil des eaux and Messiaen’s TurangalîlaSymphonie. The Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, inheriting Marek Janowski’s structural poise and Myung-Whun Chung’s luminous intensity, and soon to be guided by Jaap van Zweden, embraces the Parisian ideal of order enriched by experiment. On its 2025 tour to Vienna, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla led the orchestra to triumph at the Musikverein, winning praise for luminous precision and expressive daring.

of natural disasters. He opened an office in Paris to supervise construction of a satellite for the Pompidou Museum in Metz and then won a competition to design this concert venue on an island in the Seine formerly occupied by the Renault car factory. Constrained by the narrow sliver of land and a modest budget, Ban created an austere wedge of spaces that step down to the narrow tip of the island where the concrete block sprouts a bubble of glass enclosing an 1,150-seat concert hall. It adjoins an arena for popular music, rehearsal rooms, and offices, and opens onto a plaza that hosts outdoor performances and projections.

The flattened glass sphere is supported by a diagonal grid of laminated beams that articulate the exterior and cast a pattern of shadows within. A triangular sail of photovoltaic panels follows the course of the sun, shading the glass and generating power. Steps lead up from the end of the internal concourse to a gallery that encircles the hall, and is lined with an iridescent tile mosaic that shifts color as the light changes.

The auditorium is designed to bring audience and players together. Shallow balconies surround a steeply raked wedge of red plush seats constructed from cardboard tubes. Walls are clad in milled oak strips, and the density of the weave is varied to modulate the sound. Ban collaborated with Yasuhisa Toyota to achieve the exemplary acoustics. Tubes of varied diameters are cut in thin sections to clad the undulating ceiling—to diffuse the sound and create a richly varied geometry that evokes Islamic decoration.

La Seine Musicale has emerged as one of Paris’s most interesting musical centers, home to a wide spectrum of performances that unite classical excellence

with contemporary energy. The resident Insula Orchestra, under Laurence Equilbey, has drawn acclaim for its visionary stagings of Mozart’s Requiem, Weber’s Freischütz, and Beethoven’s Fidelio, integrating music, movement, and digital imagery in ways that redefine the concert experience. The Orchestre National d’Île-deFrance brings symphonic programs of rare scope—from Mahler and Ravel to recent commissions by French and international composers—while visiting ensembles such as the London Symphony Orchestra, the Berliner Philharmoniker, and Les Arts Florissants lend the hall an international prestige.

Recent seasons have showcased a bold mix: John Adams’s El Niño, Handel’s Jephtha, collaborations with choreographer Blanca Li, and film-concerts from West Side Story to The Lord of the Rings. The coming years promise the same adventurous range, with Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, symphonies by Shostakovich and Bruckner, and a new production of Haydn’s The Creation.

City of Music: Prague

Alove of music is deeply embedded in the Czech DNA, as Mozart discovered on his first visit to Prague in 1787. He wrote to a friend in Vienna, “All the people leapt around in such heartfelt delight to music from my Figaro—for here they are talking about nothing except Figaro; nothing is played, tooted, sung and whistled except Figaro; no one goes to any opera except Figaro, certainly a great honour for me.” Later that year he premiered Don Giovanni at the Estates Theater, where it still regularly performed, and received another rapturous reception.

Music played a key role in the wave of nationalism that swept over Europe in the late nineteenth century, from Finland to Italy and throughout the AustroHungarian Empire. Bedřich Smetana embodied the artistic soul of the Czech lands, and his symphonic poems Má Vlast (My Homeland) are still a staple of the repertoire. Antonín Dvořák, Leoš Janáček, and a host of lesser names also expressed the popular yearning for a stronger cultural identity. In the 1880s Czech musiclovers built a grand opera house (now the National Theater), and the German community topped it with what is now the State Opera. Both still flourish along with the Estates Theater.

Per Boye Hansen, currently artistic director of the Prague Opera, which manages all three theaters, is determined to restore the international musical reputation of the city, which turned inwards during the four decades of communist rule. “We don’t have the same economic muscle as Berlin, Munich, or Vienna, but developments are positive,” he says. “Our visitor numbers have been increasing rapidly. We present over 320 performances of about forty operas a year with an audience turnout

of about 85 percent, which is an indication that we are doing something right.”

Soon after arriving in Prague from Berlin’s Komische Oper in 2018, Hansen initiated the Musica non Grata project, dedicated to composers whose careers were cut short by Nazi rule. With major support from the German government, this program highlighted works by composers such as Alexander von Zemlinsky (who managed the Prague Opera from 1911 to 1927) and Erwin Schulhoff. The response from local audiences and internationally was overwhelming, and the project put the Prague Opera back on the international map. Another festival is planned for 2028.

Hansen has also developed clear identities for the three houses: the National Theatre as the home of the Czech repertoire and the country’s best musical talent; the Estates Theatre for Mozart and baroque operas; and the State Opera for the Romantic repertoire and modern classics. The company maintains two orchestras and a resident ensemble of thirty-five singers. Given budgetary constraints, the Prague Opera cannot afford the most expensive international singers. Instead, it focuses on discovering and nurturing emerging talent, often elevating young singers to the world stage. The Opera Nova festival highlights contemporary Czech composers, ensuring that new operas have a platform. Another priority is to give modern operas their crucial second performances, programming works from the latter half of the twentieth century, such as György Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre and Wolfgang Rihm’s King Lear

There’s an abundance of orchestral music. The Czech Philharmonic plays year-round in the Dvořák Hall of the Rudolfinum, a neo-Renaissance edifice located

the structure, ascending to the second-floor foyer and to workshops, offices, and rehearsal spaces on the two upper floors. UN Studio principal Ben Van Berkel likens the twisting structure to serialism in contemporary music.

The shoebox auditorium is named for the Hungarian composer György Ligeti and can seat up to 450. The goal was to create a dry acoustic that can be quickly adjusted to suit small orchestras, vocal soloists, and everything in between, along with opera, jazz, and electronic music. CNC-milled fiberboard panels on the side walls diffuse sound evenly and eighty speakers enhance different kinds of music. The latest technology is employed to vary reverberation time electronically from just over one second to over two seconds. The hall can also be transformed by removing the seats and raising or lowering a hundred floor modules of different sizes. In contrast to many public concert halls that find it too difficult or costly to exploit such capabilities, the Ligeti Hall is constantly being reconfigured.

Royal Academy of Music, London (1911/2018)

Britain’s oldest music school, founded in 1822, has acquired two exemplary new performance spaces. For architect Ian Ritchie the challenge was to shoehorn them and a score of new studios and practice rooms into the protected shell of the old building and shield them from the roar of traffic on Marylebone Road. The new spaces have been put to good use. They are in constant use by the school and allow it to present up to 500 public events a year in the new halls and the 330-seat Dukes Hall of 1911.

Parco della Musica, Rome (2002)

An audacious, though much-delayed project to give Rome a center for classical music worthy of a capital city. An earlier concert hall was removed from the Mausoleum of Augustus when that monument was restored in 1934, and it took sixty years before a competition for its replacement was organized. Wisely, it was decided not to build in the congested center but to the north in the park surrounding the stadia and village built for the 1960 Olympic Games, where traffic can move freely. Its nearest neighbor is Pier Luigi Nervi’s Palazzetto dello Sport, and Zaha Hadid’s MAXXI Museum of Contemporary Art has reinforced the appeal of this suburb.

Renzo Piano drew on his long experience of designing concert halls and won the contest with a trio of separate halls, arranged in an arc and linked by an inner concourse and outwardly by a semicircular, 3,000-seat amphitheater facing a plaza for outdoor concerts and events. As Piano describes the configuration:

“The 750-seat Sala Petrassi is a very versatile space, using some of the solutions adopted in the IRCAM hall in Paris: a movable floor and ceiling, and the characteristics of the walls can also be altered to obtain the best possible acoustics. The Sala Sinopoli, with a 1,200-seat capacity, also has flexible elements, with a mobile stage and adjustable ceiling—features that recall the large hall of the Lingotto in Turin and make it particularly suited to chamber music and dance performances. The main hall, Sala Santa Cecilia, seats 2,800 people and is reserved for symphonic concerts.”

Construction in Rome is frequently disrupted by the discovery of ancient ruins, and here it was a villa dating back to Six BC. Nothing fazed, Piano’s team adjusted their plan to incorporate the ruin into the arc and added a museum to house the relics found on-site and, as a bonus, an important collection of antique vases donated by the conductor Giuseppe Sinopoli. In a city full of spectacular ruins, the foundations of the villa are of interest only to archeologists, but they strengthen the sense of place. And the architects have created a new monument by enclosing each hall in a carapace of lead scales and raising it above a base of Roman bricks.

The vineyard plan of the Sala Santa Cecilia is heir to Scharoun’s Berlin Philharmonie, but Piano also took inspiration from musical instruments, selecting highly polished cherry wood for the twenty-six suspended shells that diffuse the sound. The acoustics of the facility were worked out by Helmut Müller in collaboration with Pierre Boulez and Luciano Berio. And the angular balustrades that define the different sections of seating use a lighter wood to play off the sensuous curves of the shells, enhancing the quality of sound and the experience of the audience, which may feel it has been transported to the string section on stage.

The Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, founded in 1585, has been resident at the Parco della Musica since 2005—now one of the world’s most coveted stages. At its heart is the Orchestra dell’Accademia, an ensemble whose lineage stretches from Strauss and Toscanini to Bernstein, Sinopoli, and Antonio Pappano. In 2024 a new era began with Daniel Harding, one of the most soughtafter conductors of his generation, bringing fresh energy and international vision.