Dubai: Placido Domingo has a big task on his hands — cutting the figurative ribbon at Dubai Opera, the city’s first opera house.
The Spanish tenor is performing the inaugural — and sold-out — show at the Downtown Dubai venue. Expectations are sky high, but Domingo isn’t sweating it. In fact, he only had one evening of rehearsal at the venue, the day before his performance.
“This is Placido Domingo. He’s been in almost every opera house, every concert hall around the world. I don’t need to show him what it looks like,” said chief executive Jasper Hope.
Shaikh Mohammad arrives
“I need to assure him in advance that it’ll be right. It’ll have everything that he wants and needs to be able to give this kind of performance, but I don’t need to send him a picture.”
If he did send him a picture of Dubai Opera, it would likely include several construction workers — inside, outside, and on the surface of the building — who worked hard through Tuesday afternoon to put finishing touches on it as members of the media, including Gulf News, sat in for a dress rehearsal of the light-hearted Italian opera The Barber of Seville, which has two performances, on September 2 and 4.
To Hope, the ongoing construction wasn’t cause for concern — just a signifier of what’s to come.
“My belief is [tonight] will look absolutely stunning,” he said.
“We’ve always said that there’s so much more to come. This, what you see now, is not the extent of Dubai Opera, and certainly not of the opera district.”
A rooftop restaurant, as well as landscaping that will connect the venue to Burj Island, are in the pipeline.
The interior of the auditorium, however, was polished and ready for business. It’s made up primarily of a rich, dark wood and leathery red seats, luxurious when compared to some flimsier seating arrangements around town.
The orchestra and vocals during the dress rehearsal were loud and clear from various spots in the venue, while subtitles in both Arabic and English ran above the stage.
Stefano Pace, CEO of Teatro Verdi Trieste, the Italian company that is putting on the productions of The Barber of Seville, Pearl Fishers, and others taking place at Dubai Opera until September 5 — called the acoustic “generous”.
“It’s an acoustic that makes the life of the singer easier than in other places,” said Pace.
“The best seat in the place is always in the middle. But I have to say that I went all around, and I think that the visibility of all the seats is very good. It’s quite astonishing — there are no seats where you think, ‘oh, I wouldn’t like to be there.’ This happens sometimes in Europe, in the ancient theatres,” he added.
“But [this] theatre has been very well designed for all the audiences.”
Pace was also impressed with the decor of the venue, which he said was neither too traditional nor too contemporary.
“It’s a quite nice mix of modern with traditional [aspects] of the local culture. It fits very well in the place and it’s in a very central spot,” he said.
Astonishingly, the entire auditorium can be transformed from a theatre hall — cascading balconies, a deep-set orchestra pit, an elevated stage, and rows upon rows of seats — into a 2,000 square metre floor, or in other words, a generic ballroom. According to Hope, it is available to rent for events.
“All of those seats and stalls — 950-odd seats and the orchestra pit — can all hydraulically descend into the basement levels. The seats can be rolled off. The floor can raise back up to the stage height. We can revolve the moving boxes on the sides, so you don’t see them at all, you see simply the flat walls,” he said.
They can also lower the ceilings from 35 metres to eight metres, giving a more intimate feel.
As long as it’s in its theatre form, however, Hope will be there, watching the audience’s reactions instead of the performers.
“In some cases, I hope to hear wonderful things, and in some cases, I’m sure it won’t be — I might learn more from those people,” he said.
But one thing he knows for sure: Wednesday night is just the beginning. Hope is already thinking of Dubai Opera on Thursday, Friday, Saturday — and even several decades from now.
“In 50 years’ time, I will no longer be sitting here,” he said. “But Dubai Opera will have put on 50 years of performances.”
