What people see has a great effect on how they hear, and there is here the sense of openness and social contact. Ambitious cultural planners for American cities are advised to put delusions of civic grandeur aside, come down to Raleigh and have a look. In both halls we suggested adding columns that, while they do act structurally, were not strictly required either, as other ways could have been found to support the roofs. The columns were added to lend grace and stature to the stages and auditoria. The columns are part of a consistent effort on our part to build strong rooms with vertical emphasis, with hierarchy, with extraordinary focus, stature, and grace.
Columns are perfect tools to lend all of the right qualities to a good performance room.
The Fletcher Opera Theater has 600 seats. According to older thinking this is impossibly small for the economics of opera. Already there is a worldwide trend evident among opera companies to build smaller rooms. The performers and audiences can only benefit from the resulting closeness. Both rooms are exceptionally quiet, which should be a primary goal of all performance spaces.